by R. Passov
Sometimes, you find yourself thinking about why something happened and get nowhere. For example, a year ago this October, my (ex)wife and daughter and I were visiting my son in his second year at a prestigious college where tuition exceeds the average income for a family of four. We had landed in St. Louis with the plan of stopping at a diner that my wife knew from an earlier drive out to Colorado. She and a friend had driven their dogs from our homes in suburban New York out to Telluride. They diner-hopped along the way and one stop was the Goody Goody Diner.
We arrived mid-morning on a Sunday and drove on wide, sparse streets – a seemingly random store or gas station surrounded by empty lots or abandon structures. After many turns and red lights we saw a small white brick building with an upside down neon sign.
After entering we found ourselves in a long line. Sunday brunch is popular. It didn’t take long to notice every diner on that morning was a person of color. I and my family are suburban white.
Maybe we showed concern, hopefully not that we were scared but rather that perhaps we’d stumbled into someone’s party. While silently working our contingencies, the couple in front turned our way. Ron, about 6’4”, built for business and his wife, Tanecia, also taller than me, were dressed in what looked to be their Sunday Church clothes.
Hi, Ron said, you guys visiting? Yes.
We exchanged pleasantries and I mumbled that we were visiting our son at the local, amazingly over-done college which happened to be smack in the middle of Ferguson. We felt so enormously self conscious to be visiting so soon after the riots.
Well, Ron said, I see a table for six opening up. We’ll get seated faster if we dine together. What about it? Feeling both surprised and trapped, I offered a nervous yes.
On the Goody Goody Diner menu two eggs, bacon and hash come with a waffle on the side. If that’s not for you, there’s fried chicken.
Ron sat in a chair at the head of our booth. I sat next to my daughter on one bench and my wife squeezed into the opposite bench, followed by Tanecia. We’re married, Ron offered. Husband and wife for going on twenty-five years. I guessed they were both in their mid-forties.
Just after our plates were in front of us, Ron extended his hands palms up as though he was waiting to start prayer. Which he was. Tanecia settled her hand in the hand of her spouse and I mimicked her, doing the same in the other hand. Then mimicked Tanecia again as she laid out her spare hand for my wife. Soon enough the circle had closed: Tanecia and my hand resting in Ron’s hands, my daughter’s and wife’s resting in mine and Tanecia’s respectively and finally, my daughter and wife reaching across to join hands.
I suppose it was a standard prayer with blessings for both the fortunate and unfortunate. Ron’s voice was deep and quietly confident. Prayer finished, he pulled his hands back and announced: Let’ eat.
We had been brought into a ritual with seemingly no consideration for our religious preferences and yet were made to feel comfortable. I asked Ron if he was in the ministry. No he said, I’m with law enforcement and so is Tanecia. She’s with the canine team.
I used to work the streets but now work for a municipal judge, Ron offered, then added: You see a lot of things in people from this work. Then Tanecia let it be known that before joining the force she worked as a nurse. That wasn’t her favorite job and it didn’t pay well but, she added, teaching and policing pay is worse.
The timing was such that the particulars of what had happened in Ferguson were still to be revealed. Self-conscious about my son’s university smack-in-the-middle of town, I offered something to the effect that what happened is a shame.
We don’t know what happened, Ron said. Yes, it’s looks bad from the outside but that’s often the case with police work. We should all stay quite and calm and let the investigators complete their work. I didn’t take his words as a vote of confidence in the outcome, just an appreciation for the need to let the processes take its course, as though he were saying let’s wait until we get more facts before starting a riot.
Ron told me that he came from a family of nine brothers and five sisters. And that his is a good family of which he’s the youngest.
Tanecia said she’s a ‘glamor grandma’ and that her grandson – LJ – called her at 4:00 AM on his iPad and said ‘gamma its LJ. I need more on my Starbucks card.’ We all fell into laughter.
After the laughter subsided, Tanecia let us know that she enjoyed her work on the K-9 team but it was tough and getting tougher. They’ve managed alright because awhile back Ron had a good idea. Everyone, Tanecia told us, thinks police clean up but they don’t. You either have to do it or get someone to do it. And Ron’s idea was – do it. He created a service that takes care of the aftermath of crime scenes: blood, fluids and, at times, body parts.
They don’t like letting people know they’re police officers but once Tanecia was stopped by someone that she knew she had sent to jail and he thanked her and said she was straight up with him and treated him well. And then Ron said it’s getting tougher; not just being a police officer but also because the violence was getting close. They knew too many parents of the deceased. Each discovery was becoming harder to bear.
We listened politely, through the occasional bites of brunch. When we began to feel as though we were serving a purpose we had yet to understand, Tanecia told us about her auntie and husband and their murder-suicide and how she was off duty and did the clean up and how the clean up didn’t bother her as she was able to look past the details. Then Ron said they’re moving to Atlanta. Yes their kids are there but, he admitted, it’s getting hard to live in St. Louis.
Ron and Tanecia both spoke with uncommon grace. Ron, especially, took his time, reading me, knowing when I was enough in the moment to absorb what he next wanted me to consider.
We stayed in touch right up until they finally moved, then somehow lost contact.
That day Ron was preaching; sharing his learnings, letting me know he was strong enough to carry his burden, more than that even. He was strong enough to share with a stranger; to preach that it takes great strength to endure and he wanted it be known.
I enjoyed my visits to St Louis, learning about its role as the Gateway To The West, riding in the Arc, 300 feet of polished, soaring stainless steel, navigated in small, egg-shaped lifts scaled for a time when the average American was considerably smaller (there’s a note to that effect somewhere near the Arc.)
The year before my son began at Washington University a young women, leaving campus early in an evening was murdered during a botched car-jacking. Like too many American cities, St. Louis can be dangerous. But it’s also filled with a rich history of Italian immigration and Jazz and great steamships and vestiges of the trade that rolled on the mighty Mississippi.
It was clear that Ron and Tanecia did not want to leave; did not want to give up on a place to which they had blood ties. But it was also clear to them that they had done all they could. It was someone else’s turn to take over.
A fire ran through the kitchen of the Goody Goody Diner: