Slim Novel 13 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage
Starts where 12 left off, with Miss Ali, newly pregnant, leaving her Bronx to travel to Winnipeg.
Chapter 1 The Twentieth Century Limited Carrying a Man Named Godfrey
The 20th Century Limited is a world-beater express train with a route between New York City and Chicago in 16 hours, leaving Grand Central early evening and getting into Chicago's Union Station comfortably after breakfast in dining car, watching the shores of Lake Erie rush by from ahead, through the window to your right. One gets it all for less than $100, a very good week's salary in 1945, and, if you have influence or pay more, you may enjoy it in your own private compartment as Mr. Godfrey Lovelace is doing sitting by a train window in early evening while the Limited slows at Croton on Hudson to pick up a passenger, who, Mr. Lovelace notes, is a young blonde woman with only a shoulder bag and a very friendly look.
Something in the way she walks, he is thinking, reminds him of the girl in the motel in North Carolina several years ago.
"It can't be!" He exclaims. "The odds are thousands to one." Being scientific, he decides to see for himself and leaves his compartment to get closer.
Mr Lovelace likes to muse. Now, he is thinking I wonder what a white person like she will think an obviously African-origin person like me is doing in a private travel compartment on the 20th Century Limited?
He is a high school science teacher in an all-Negro North Carolina school and also moonlights as waiter in the motel where he first met Ali and newspaper man Kimura doing their USA 1939 World's Fair trip. (Slim Novel 2, click 2.(69-70) A Story of the South) Now, he is traveling to Chicago for the annual National Conference of Negro High School Science Teachers. His trip started out in an old 2nd class segregated railroad coach but at the change in Washington DC to a northern-based railway, he - by flashing his National Association for the Advancement of Colored People card and letter of approval from the Negro Porter Labor Union big boss, A. Philip Randolph - got, for free, a posh sleeping/sitting private compartment with slavish porter service which got even more slavish after the change at New York City's Grand Central Station to the 20th Century Limited.
His trip already bore fruit because on the run from Washington to New York City he befriended a lonely 13-year-old Jewish boy traveling from a parental vacation in Miami Beach back to the Bronx NY for a week alone before his parents return. And over food in the train's diner, and sodas in the conversation car, Mr Lovelace had been able to fill the young mind with stories of the old slave south that inform how Negroes enriched the American culture. He particularly told about Eli Whitney's learning from his Negro slaves secrets of the later famous cotton gin. And he told about the Negro intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois's great book on American Negro culture, The Souls of Black Folk, and, just before they parted at Penn Station in New York, Mr Lovelace handed the boy his own copy of the book.
Now, with the satisfaction of a teacher, he hopes this white boy has come away from the encountering with new respect and good fellow-feeling that will translate into his becoming as adult the opposite of what white Americans often are - disrespectful of black men and women and thoughtless in dealing with them. The teacher planted a good seed.
His musings are ended by face-to-face encountering the white girl he'd seen from his compartment's window, now walking the red carpet corridor of the 20th Century Limited just as the train starts moving forward.
"Excuse me, but aren't you Miss Ali?"
"Wow! Mr Godfrey Lovelace!"
"I have a private compartment. Will you join me?"
Minutes later they sit facing. A negro porter has just set down coffee and a plate of 10 marshmallows. Godfrey and Ali relax back in the cushion seats and have an enlightening conversation. For it, click 13.2 Conversation on the 20th Century Limited
The 20th Century Limited is a world-beater express train with a route between New York City and Chicago in 16 hours, leaving Grand Central early evening and getting into Chicago's Union Station comfortably after breakfast in dining car, watching the shores of Lake Erie rush by from ahead, through the window to your right. One gets it all for less than $100, a very good week's salary in 1945, and, if you have influence or pay more, you may enjoy it in your own private compartment as Mr. Godfrey Lovelace is doing sitting by a train window in early evening while the Limited slows at Croton on Hudson to pick up a passenger, who, Mr. Lovelace notes, is a young blonde woman with only a shoulder bag and a very friendly look.
Something in the way she walks, he is thinking, reminds him of the girl in the motel in North Carolina several years ago.
"It can't be!" He exclaims. "The odds are thousands to one." Being scientific, he decides to see for himself and leaves his compartment to get closer.
Mr Lovelace likes to muse. Now, he is thinking I wonder what a white person like she will think an obviously African-origin person like me is doing in a private travel compartment on the 20th Century Limited?
He is a high school science teacher in an all-Negro North Carolina school and also moonlights as waiter in the motel where he first met Ali and newspaper man Kimura doing their USA 1939 World's Fair trip. (Slim Novel 2, click 2.(69-70) A Story of the South) Now, he is traveling to Chicago for the annual National Conference of Negro High School Science Teachers. His trip started out in an old 2nd class segregated railroad coach but at the change in Washington DC to a northern-based railway, he - by flashing his National Association for the Advancement of Colored People card and letter of approval from the Negro Porter Labor Union big boss, A. Philip Randolph - got, for free, a posh sleeping/sitting private compartment with slavish porter service which got even more slavish after the change at New York City's Grand Central Station to the 20th Century Limited.
His trip already bore fruit because on the run from Washington to New York City he befriended a lonely 13-year-old Jewish boy traveling from a parental vacation in Miami Beach back to the Bronx NY for a week alone before his parents return. And over food in the train's diner, and sodas in the conversation car, Mr Lovelace had been able to fill the young mind with stories of the old slave south that inform how Negroes enriched the American culture. He particularly told about Eli Whitney's learning from his Negro slaves secrets of the later famous cotton gin. And he told about the Negro intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois's great book on American Negro culture, The Souls of Black Folk, and, just before they parted at Penn Station in New York, Mr Lovelace handed the boy his own copy of the book.
Now, with the satisfaction of a teacher, he hopes this white boy has come away from the encountering with new respect and good fellow-feeling that will translate into his becoming as adult the opposite of what white Americans often are - disrespectful of black men and women and thoughtless in dealing with them. The teacher planted a good seed.
His musings are ended by face-to-face encountering the white girl he'd seen from his compartment's window, now walking the red carpet corridor of the 20th Century Limited just as the train starts moving forward.
"Excuse me, but aren't you Miss Ali?"
"Wow! Mr Godfrey Lovelace!"
"I have a private compartment. Will you join me?"
Minutes later they sit facing. A negro porter has just set down coffee and a plate of 10 marshmallows. Godfrey and Ali relax back in the cushion seats and have an enlightening conversation. For it, click 13.2 Conversation on the 20th Century Limited
No comments:
Post a Comment