In the early 1980s, when my son, Bo, played football and wrestled at East Wake High School near Raleigh, N.C., he asked if it would be OK to invite one of his teammates, who was black, to go with us to Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina.
I said sure.
We usually ate and bought supplies in Robbinsville, a small mountain town and 35 years ago it had few, if any, black residents.
I told Bo I’d call the restaurant in Robbinsville where we usually ate and get the lay of the land. If they wouldn’t serve all of us, we’d skip Robbinsville altogether and eat — and buy gas and supplies — in some other town.
So I called the owner and I asked, “Is there going to be a problem if my son brings a friend of his who is black?”
And the owner responded, “Boy or girl?”
NOTE: He had no objection if my son’s friend was male, which he was.
Coming Friday: The Best Lead I Ever Saw