Waiting in Line at the Drugstore

WAITING IN LINE AT THE DRUGSTORE

When I was thirteen, I dropped out of school and went to work as a messenger for the Owl Foto Studio.

The Owl Studio was located in a residential neighbourhood. The area was predominantly white. Six blocks away was the drugstore, where I had to go first thing each morning to pick up "breakfast" for the folks at the Owl. Going to this drugstore each morning was part of my job.

The place had your typical drugstore look-sundries, greeting cards, cosmetics, medicines-but most attractive was the lunch counter. White uniformed waitresses served eats and sweet drinks of varying kinds: from cakes, doughnuts, and pies, to cups of the freshest-smelling coffee one could ask for.

My problem was that I was forbidden to sit at that counter. If any black wanted service, he simply had to stand and wait until all the white folks were served. Those blacks who broke this rule were asking for trouble. I once saw the beating of a black brother at the drugstore, and heard tales of other beatings elsewhere.

Yet, I went to the drugstore each morning with my order of coffee, cakes, and whatever. And, each time, there were rows of white folks seated at the counter waiting for attention. I waited, hating it all the while. As those white faces stored at my black face, I stood there, wanting to be somewhere else.

While waiting there one morning, I realized that I was learning on a bookcase. It held about six rows of books and said 'Lending library'. I began looking idly at the books, studying the titles and names of authors. One book caught my fancy: Oout of the night by Jan Valtin. I opened it and came across a poem by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

Then I read the first page, and then the second. Eleven pages later, I heard the white waitress call my name. My order was ready. I folded a corner of the page and tried to hide the book so no one would take it before I could get back the next day.

I picked up the food and went back to the studio-slowly. I had never begun a real book before. I felt different. Something strange was happening to me. Some how I didn't feel the 'Badness' that I usually felt when I returned from the drugstore.

The next day, my waiting was not the same. I went from page thirteen to page twenty-eight, pinned a carner down, returned to the studio, delivered my routes, and went hom. God, I wondered, when would tomorrow come? Many mornings later, I finished the book. But there were others.

I kept going to the drugstore each morning. I must have read every worthwhile book on that 'Lending Library' shelf. But, during this period, something strange happened: my waiting time got shorter and shorter each morning. I could hardly read five pages before my order way handed to me with-of all things-a sense of graciousness from the waitresses. I didn't understand it.

Later on, I went off to World War II. My mind and attitudes were ready for the books yet to come, and for the words that were to come out of me. I was eighteen then and a dropout, but I was deep into the wonderful would of literature and life. I found myself, and my place, in the word. Who would have thought that a drugstore could provide such a vista for anyone? I keep wondering: which way would I have gone had I not waited?
Good  Question.
here...feeling's...the original contents by www.sensualityface.com or www.fairyage.com / describe with the help of James Thomas Jackson - Adapted