“Hey, Rex, how ya doin’ on this beautiful Saturday”? I queried as Rex Bronson got into the Pontiac
Firebird that Marvelous Marv had given me at age 16.
“Hey, fine--- always glad
to be in this nice ride,” came Rex’s reply.
“Where you wanna go?” I asked.
“Up to you man, just glad to get outa the ‘hood her for awhile,
you know? Thanks for picking me up.”
“The pleasure is assuredly mine.
Gotta warn ya, though, I’m famous in my family for giving ‘Tours.’ Just let me know if you get bored.”
“Ain’t gonna get bored, man. Got nothin’ but time today.”
So I just drove, following my whims. Rex was a student in the class of Pat Rainey,
the young (24 years or so) teacher in whose class I had been volunteering at L.
G. Pinkston. The class was American
history. I had done a couple of presentations
on conditions on plantations in the old slaveholding South, and on the Reconstruction period that
followed. But mostly I had helped
students with their textbook readings.
Eighty-five percent of students in the class were below grade level proficiency. Seventy percent were many grades below level
of enrollment. Five of the twenty-eight
students in the class were not functionally literate.
Rex was functionally literate and more. He was not at the time that I met him a
voluminous reader, but he aspired to be.
I had connected him with James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Alex Haley’s “as told to” Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. He
gobbled these up, and I kept feeding him more.
“Man, I have learned so much from you,” Rex said, as I drove
northward down Hampton Avenue and over the bridge, where Hampton became Preston
Road and led to the different universe of Highland Park.
“Not as much as I’ve learned from you,” I replied. “How’d you get so wise and observant at only sixteen?”
“Who’s wise and observant?”
“You are, man. You are.”
“Well anything I know is what the few decent teachers at Pinkston
have taught me, momma’s lessons from the
world she’s known, and whatever I’ve learned not to do from watchin’ the cats
in the ‘hood.”
“Yeah, and all that’s plenty.
And how’d you decide that what those cats do is not for you?”
“Man, they’s stupid. Can’t
figure out why anyone would want to follow they lead. Those niggas are the worst specimens of would-be
humanity I know.”
“But you understand why they do what they do, right?”
“Yeah, don’t seem to be much else for them. Lousy schools. Momma either works all the time or not at
all. Gone most the time or layin’ ‘round
all the time. Both situations hurt in their
own way. Too few daddies around. Ways to quick money but no way to a future
worth havin’.”
“So how’d you figure out that wasn’t for you? You’ve had a good many of the same
struggles.”
“I know. I ask myself that,
too. Best I can figure, Mom’s an
inspiration. She tries so hard to put
those little jobs together and take care of me and the shorty.”
“You worry about that little brother?”
“Worry about Jason all the time, man. All the time.
Gotta keep him straight. He is so
smart. Can be anything he wants to
be. Gotta keep him away from the dudes
on the corners.”
…………………………………………………………………………..
I drove first around the campus at SMU, then headed just past
Mockingbird to the toney streets of Highland Park.
“Man, who lives in these mansions?” Rex asked.
“Business executives. Doctors.
Lawyers.”
“Then why you wanta be a teacher?” Rex asked.
“I just reckon it’s a better way to help you keep Jason straight,”
I said.
…………………………………………………………………….
We drove on. A “Tour”
indeed. I drove through the streets of
University Park to the west of SMU, then headed over to Lover’s Lane and on to
Abrams Road for a pass-through of Dan D. Rogers and the old family abode on
Lange Circle. We stopped for a
full-belly if not elegant lunch at Pancho’s Mexican Buffet, then I took Rex
back to his house in the projects.
“Wanna come in and meet Mom?” Rex asked.
“Sure.”
We entered to an immaculate living room where we immediately saw Ella
Sampson putting a plate of wieners and baked beans at Jason’s place in the dinette.”
“Mom, this is Gary,”Rex said.
“So pleased to meet you,” came Ella’s reply. “Thanks for takin’ my boy under your wing.”
“He’s taken me under his wing.
I’ve heard so many good things about you. Ms. Sampson.”
“Ms. Sampson? Do I look
fifty-five to you?” she quipped. “And
Rex, why you nevva tell me any of those good things?”
“Ah, Mom,” Rex said, giving Ella a kiss on the cheek. “You know I think you’re the greatest.”
Ella grinned ear to ear. We
talked like old friends. After about
twenty-five minutes had passed, I thanked Rex for another tutorial about life
in West Dallas.
Rex looked at me quizzically and said, “Man, you somethin’ else.”
“No, Rex. You are something
else. See you Monday.”
………………………………………………………………………………..
Rex and I had had a number of such outings, even before Mamie
McKnight assigned the students in the education course that she co-taught with
Jim Buchanan a paper on our experiences visiting schools in Dallas. McKnight was one of the few African American
professors at SMU; she was rather boring
as a lecturer but a nice person and an improvement over Buchanan, who’s main
contribution to the class was to open
each session with a mercurial raising of his hand to spout,
“Sign of the buffalo.”
How his signal represented such a sign and why he thought this
humorous or a way to begin a class at a first-rate university, Dennis and I
never could fathom. But we did get lots
of laughs at Buchanan’s expense.
My work at Pinkston had begun for me as a tutor and coordinator of
tutorial and youth programs for SMU Volunteer Services. So both my school visitations and
observations for the paper fit seamlessly into a routine that I had already
established.
I loved writing the paper as much as I loved working in Pat Rainey’s
class and hanging with Rex on Saturdays.
To the degree that these experiences informed my paper for an
education course, they provided some compensation for having to endure the
likes of Jim Buchanan and all the wasted time in teacher training, so programmatically
unworthy but so typical of otherwise first-rate universities across the United
States.
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