When I Was Little I Used to Be Colored

The Story of Life in a Real Village

AS A CHILD I WAS SOMEWHAT aware of the differences between colored life and white life but it was not so much based on race, I thought is was just the way it was. I lived in the ghetto and white children lived in the suburbs. Id seen the way they lived when a gang of us would take our shovels and ride the bus to the suburbs to shovel snow for a quarter a yard. Beautiful houses and yards and white kids who didnt have to shovel, just watched us from their windows do the work. The differences were magnified when we saw television and especially the commercials where white women dressed in bright clothes just to mop the beautiful floors in their beautiful homes, or stand at the door and wave goodbye to their men going off to work in suits and ties and wide brimmed felt hats. I thought the most beautiful houses in the world were those houses we shoveled snow from the 200 feet driveways in Shaker Heights. The houses, mansions, were huge white siding mansions with black Shutters on the windows; maybe one hundred windows, or so it seemed. The roofs were black asphalt shingles which set the house off even more than the dozens of trees, mostly pine, around the property. The lawns were so big you could play Hide the paddle, or It and never be found just hiding behind those massive trees. The grass, yes grass, in the yards looked like it had been carpeted with each blade the same height. In the winter the grass would be so white and pure looking you would think it was painted by Thomas Kinkade.