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  • From: Bunjov AT aol.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] No Shoes for Eddie Mitchell
  • Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:43:35 EDT

> I think it a bit sad that you had no one to share your pleasure with.
> Film allows multiple people to experience something, hopefully the same
> thing, at the same time...the pleasure, fright, laugh, etc. is shared.

Oh, but I did have someone to share it with. My baby sister was too young,
but I had Eddie.

I may have written to you earlier about Eddie Mitchell. Three doors down.

His family and their - intellect / education / lifetstyle constituted the
only (for shame!) instance I can think of - that my otherwise totally liberal

parents crossed the line into prejudice. I read to Eddie because he couldn't
read, and nobody was teaching him.

I was five and a half, and he was four and a half, and we were partners. Toy
cars and little dirt roads under our dining room window. Hunting spiders.
Bird-watching with a pair of worn-out binoculars. Hiding up under the
boxcars
and pretending we were hoboes. Oh, that's the life for me! Getting into
trouble for firing up the back yard incinerator at 4 a.m. on a Saturday
morning and
stealing our mother's potatoes just to see if we could bake one in the coals
and eat it.

Enter, Kindergarten.

My first day in a brand-new, frightening world. Left him crying in the
driveway. I had already been admonished that I shouldn't be 'hanging out
with'
him, as his parents couldn't read or write, and they saved stacks of
newspapers
in a small stucco building his father had carefully constructed for just
such
purpose. I am sure my parents thought they were looking out for my
'intellectual' safety, but no excuse.

That first day, we - (my classmates and I) - little people that we were,
were instructed to form a line with a 'partner'. Me, too shy and at the end
of
the line, had no partner, and broke away from the group and ran home, proudly

returning with Eddie in tow a few moments later. He WAS my partner.

Eddie was sent home because he had no shoes.

I have never forgiven the 'system' for this horribly cruel malfunction.

My mother and I, several years later, when I was a teenager, were taking the
Long Beach 'red train' and I was so looking forward to finding Eddie again.
But we happened to pick up a local paper at one of the stops,and of the
lead
articles told of how Eddie had been horribly maimed in an auto accident.

I don't know where he is today.

Sandy
Mid-Mojave






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