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Wayne Lake
Interesting comments from many of you and as always, I am grateful to have attended the same High School as I continue to learn from you, sort of like soaring with eagles and just proud to be in the same vicinity.
I am currently in the Minneapolis area as I go back and forth between Texas (Fall-Spring) to Minnesota (Summer) such that recently posted comments made do some deep thinking (a challenging task for a pea brain like me) and then do a little ‘google research’ on the two places I call home now a days. Since I feel like I am in the epicenter of the BLM movement (we in the oil and gas bid’ness used to refer to the U.S. Federal government Bureau of Land Management as BLM but ‘times they are a changin’ as ol’ Bob Dylan of Duluth MN said way back then and I guess it still applies), so I thought I should better understand the demographics where I currently reside.
According to Wikipedia:
The racial makeup of the city of Wayzata MN (ZIP Code 55391) is 96.11% White, 0.41% African American, 0.32% Native American, 1.34% Asian, 0.19% Pacific Islander, 0.75% from other races, and 0.88% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.41% of the population.
The racial makeup of Aransas Pass TX (ZIP Code 78336) is 80.58% White, 3.44% African American, 0.76% Native American, 0.45% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 11.28% from other races, and 3.47% from two or more races. Hispanics of any race were 37.70% of the population.
I didn’t knowingly choose either location based on the racial make-up; I bought a house in Aransas Pass because of the close proximity to shallow bays with some of the clearest water of the Texas Gulf Coast (I love to be able to see the bottom when I fish) and Wayzata is near my wife’s family, a bike trail and a big lake (Minnetonka) with some very nice weather from May to September.
Maybe the demographics of my ZIP codes are a coincidence, but I maybe not……….
I worked all over the world during my oil and gas career and gained a fair amount of understanding of myself and a real appreciation of other religions and cultures. Every time I left on an overseas trip, I would call my Mom and she would tell me ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ and I would tell her everybody I see is a stranger!
My favorite location to work was Trinidad – best rum in de’ world, our staff complex where we stayed was right smack on a 5 mile long Atlantic beach, great tarpon fishing, delicious mangos (remind me to tell you the story of the real Mango Man some time) and Atlantic salmon, home of calypso, steel drum bands and Latin fusion music with the liveliest/sexiest Mardi Gras celebration anywhere in the world, lasts about two weeks and is locally referred to as Carnival. The population is mixture of about 45% African descendants of English Colony slaves (freed about 1860), 45% Indian (Hindi) descendants of indentured servants who replaced the slaves in the sugar plantations and the remaining 10% are mixed. Trinidad won independence from the UK around 1960 but they still love the Queen and play cricket. As in many islands throughout the world, they are some of the happiest people I have had the pleasure to meet, poor by our standards but happy. The Trini’s would frequently laugh out loud at work which was not common in other offices of Amoco Production Company. I thought that was pretty neat and I had some very good times over the past 37 years there both at work and after. I still have many Trini friends and never felt threatened or out of place although I am sure I must of looked out of place to most (recently stopped working some for a small company there).
Over the years, I also worked quite a bit in the North Africa and Middle East (Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Algeria, Sharjah/Dubai (UAE), Norway, England, Scotland, France, Indonesia, Netherlands, Singapore, China, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Gabon (French Equatorial Africa). And in all of these places, I never remember being concerned about race of religion differences, or rarely threatened at all with a few exceptions (another story) that could have been caused by my somewhat unpolished, unappreciated and bawdy Texas sense of humor.
I sort of sponsored/inherited an African guy while working in Gabon in 1984 – ‘Monroe’ his real name was Emmanual Asara but every one called him Monroe. Monroe was the staff complex cook and he was from Ghana. One night me and another Ex-Pat staying at the staff complex took the two cooks out for beers in ‘jungle bars’ near Port Gentil, Gabon. Later on in the evening and after way too many beers, Monroe told me he was planning to go to America and as any true Texan would say, well look me up when you get to the states as I handed him my business card……………well about 6 months later, the former Mrs. Lake called me at work and said she got a collect call from Washington DC but did not understand who was calling. About two days later, I got a call from Monroe as he was in Houston at the Greyhound Bus Station and would like to say hello. I drove downtown, picked him up, brought him back to the office – he slept in the truck (traveling by bus for two days) while I went back to work and tried to figure out what to do next. Come to find out, he had no money other than a little cash from his return plane ticket minus the bus fare and food. I took him back downtown that evening and checked him into the YMCA (down by South Texas Jr College) and told him he could come out to our house and work in the yard – gave him instructions on taking the bus and my address - my boys loved it as they had him doing their chores in no time. Long story short, Monroe moved in with us and sort of became part of the family but that situation got a little tight after a couple of months so I suggested he need to find a place of his own – no problem per se, just time to go to the next life phase so back to the Y we went. I tried to help Monroe find work but it was a challenge since he did not have a green card and somehow he ended up working for George McDermott aka McDermott International Engineering, living in his garage apartment in River Oaks, taking care of his house/lawn/caddy’s and driving him to his ranch near Madisonville TX nearly every week. The story goes on and on as he became a citizen (I attended the ceremony at Stratford High School and we drank Champagne in the parking lot to celebrate). The point of the story is I don’t think I am racist but here I sit in ZIP Code 55391………………We remained good friends for several years and I am sorry to say we lost touch somehow as he took his hard earned savings and built a house in his old village in Ghana with about 10 bedrooms for his whole family!
I did not grow up in Oak Forest like most of you but I can still remember the smell of fresh popcorn in the Sears store at 43rd and Shepard where I loved to look at the tack and bought my 1st Zebco reel. I also remember the ‘Colored’ signs at the restrooms and drinking fountains as these were about the only ones I remember noticing as a kid. When Teddie, Dennis Hansel, Beau, Robert Knox, Lynn Prewitt, Gary Jordan, Marilyn Wolf, Willie Younger and about 10 others from Waltrip went to Sam Houston in the Fall of ’64, I remember several segregated food stands that were not commonly seen in the Houston area. You could say Huntsville Texas was culturally somewhat behind the times as was most of East Texas remains.
My parents built a house at 4405 Sherwood Lane about 75 years ago (right before I was born) and I grew up in the woods around my house and White Oak Baptist Church which was on Mangum Rd between Brook Woods and Sherwood Lane (later moved to the bend in Mangum North of 34th Street). I can still remember singin’ Jesus loves the little Children of the World, Red, Yellow, Black and White………in Vacation Bible School. However, I don’t remember ever seeing anybody in that church that was not white, as a matter of fact I don’t remember anyone that was not WASP as there were no Mexican Americans, African Americans, Middle Easterners or even any Eastern Europeans. This was sort of odd looking back as most of our immediate neighbors were 1st or 2nd generation European or Slavic with names like: Watzlavic with families directly across and up the Street, Grohman, Celgelski, Syzmanski, Seiffert and Majorwitz and none of these folks ever so much as visited our church right up the street or for that matter ever entered our house save a few times to use the phone.
Maybe some of my friends from White Oak Sunday School (Larry Don York, Dennis Hansel, Steve Fain (RIP) or Doug McCuen can remember a even tint of diversity at our church?????????
So here’s my point, if I am a bit racist (I don’t think I am, but here I sit in ZIP 55391), I may simply be a product of my cultural environment and I feel very fortunate to have had the very easy life I have had. I realize we had it made growing up in ‘Dubarry RFD Lily White America’ after WW2 with so many breaks and good families: economically, academically, socially (only bump in the road are those who served as combat vets in Vietnam and those that made the greatest sacrifice in that wrong war) as compared to some Black kid born at the same time growing up in Baltimore or Detroit or Chicago or DC or St Louis or a thousand other towns in the US. The America we knew was not the same as the one they grew up in and I dare say that not many of us would have turned out the way we did if our skin was not white.
Now that was a Lake Winded post if there ever was one…………………
From Lake Wobegon, wtl
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