At dinner that night, I said to no one in particular, “Charlie’s house burned down.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then my father said, “Yes, we heard about it. Unfortunate for the family.” And that was it. Subject closed.
But it wasn’t closed as far as I was concerned. I needed some real closure and, since no one was going to give it to me, I was going to have to go get it for myself.
My mother often had me run errands for her after school which involved riding my bike downtown. During the week following the fire, she sent me on one of those errands and I came up with a plan. The colored section of town was on the south side of the CRRNJ tracks, only a few blocks from the store where I was going to shop. Assuming in my innocence that that’s where I would find Charlie, I would ride down, look him up and see if he was okay.
With strong misgivings, I rode under the tracks and into that section of town for the first time. I’ll admit that I was afraid; in fact, I was trembling all over. But I was determined to do it. The plan worked well, except that no one had ever heard of Charlie. I stopped several groups of kids and asked if they knew him, but no one did. I was about to leave, with some relief, when one older girl stopped me.
“There was a new boy in school today. I think he’s living with the Grants at #248, down there on the right.”
I had thought I was free to leave after proving to myself that I was brave enough to go down into that neighborhood. But now I would really have to test my resolve. I turned my bike around, took a deep breath and pedaled down to #248. It was a relatively nice looking house with some flowers out front, nothing like Charlie’s old place. I knocked on the door and an older lady answered.
I swallowed and asked, “Does Charlie live here?”
She looked me over, then answered, “Well, yes, he does. Who are you? Are you a friend of his?”
At that, Charlie peeked around her, then sort of jumped back in surprise. “What are you doing here?” It was almost an accusation as though he was unhappy about my appearing at his door.
“Can you come out so we can talk?” I asked.
He edged by the large lady in the door and came down onto the front stoop. He sat on the top step and asked, “Why did you come? You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?” I asked in surprise. “I came to say goodbye and to see how you were.” And then I added, “And to see what happened to your house.”
He snorted. In an almost angry tone, he said, “You should know.”
I shook my head, baffled. “Why should I know? What happened?”
He spit out a sarcastic puff of air and said, “Someone burned us out. They set our house on fire on purpose.”
I was appalled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was bad enough to hear that someone had set the fire, but he was assuming that I knew something about it.
“What!” I shouted. “Who would do that? Why would they do that? I can’t believe it.”
He shook his head, grinning sarcastically. Very deliberately, he said, “They did it because we’re black. They did it because they wanted to get us out. They did it because the town wouldn’t agree to tear our house down.”
I was thunderstruck. He was talking about my father. Terrible thoughts raced around in my head. The shock was so great that I didn’t know what to say. Charlie helped me out. “I don’t think your father set our house on fire, but I bet he knows who did.” I still couldn’t find the words to speak. We sat there in silence a long time.
Finally, I said, “I just wanted to say goodbye. I’ll miss you.”
He snorted again. “Why? You never had much to say to me. You won’t even know I’m gone.” Another long pause. Then he said, “It’s good that you came to say goodbye. You caused my family a lot of trouble. Everything was good until you gave me those shoes.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”
He nodded his head. “Well,” he said slowly, “thanks for coming. Goodbye.” He stood up and disappeared into the house without looking back. I didn’t see him again for many years.
That was 1948. I graduated from high school six years later in 1954. Reading the article in the local newspaper that listed all the high school graduates, I was looking for my name when I noticed that Charles Vander had graduated from a local Catholic high school as the class valedictorian! He was headed for Morehouse University in Atlanta. I wondered at the time where he got the money for college, since his mother didn’t even have $2 to repay my dad. That was the year the Supreme Court ruled on Brown vs. Board of Education. I left for college at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and during my first year there, Rosa Parks made her stand – or rather, her sit-down – and from there the Civil Rights movement took off.
I was in graduate school at Temple University from 1958 to 1961, finishing up my advanced degree in criminal justice. It was one of the fields my father had agreed to pay for. After graduation, I got a job in the lab of the New Jersey State Police in Buena Vista Township. That same year, Dad died suddenly.
On a visit to my old hometown in 1965, I walked by a storefront downtown and was astonished to see emblazoned on its window the name Charles E. Vander, Attorney at Law. It described him as a graduate of Howard University School of Law in Washington, DC.
Going inside, I found an open room simply appointed with two desks, one of which was occupied by an attractive African-American woman. I asked if Charlie was around and she told me he was due back soon. He walked in fifteen minutes later, looked at me, did a double-take and said with a laugh, “Well, here’s trouble! Mark! Are you here to cause me more problems, or because you have a problem from which only I can extricate you?”
I laughed and shook his hand. The seventeen years had done him good. He was taller and had filled out a lot, and he looked mature and self-confident. He was a far different Charlie than the one I had known, stuck in that corner of Miss McKee’s 6th grade classroom.
He invited me to a tavern around the corner where we sat in a booth to catch up. Over drinks, we filled each other in on school, family and our careers. Neither of us was married yet, although we both had special women in our lives. I asked about his family and he said that both his mom and his grandfather had died, but that his sisters were living in town, which is why he set up practice here. He was now in a position to look after them. I asked what his practice consisted of, and he said he was involved in a lot of civil rights litigation and legislation.
We started to talk about the old days, and I mentioned that we were the only two in sixth grade who had straight A’s. “Yes,” he said, “but you were the only one who got credit for it. Everyone else thought I was just a dumb black kid.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, it must have been tough for you back then. And I didn’t make things any easier for you. I always felt responsible for all the trouble you had – the cops, the fire, having to move – all of it.”
He looked at me and started to laugh. I was totally mystified by what was obviously some private joke.
“What’s so funny?” I finally asked. “I always felt guilty about all the trouble I caused you with those damned shoes.”
He finally stopped laughing and wiped at his eyes. Still smiling broadly, he asked, “Did you know back then that I was going to college?”
“Yeah, I saw it in the paper.”
He shot me an amused smile. “Did you ever wonder how a poor black kid got the money to go to college?”
I nodded. “I’ll admit I wondered about it at the time. Where did you get the money?”
“I didn’t think you knew,” he said. “I got a couple of scholarships. But they were small compared to the $1,000 a year that I had to come up with on my own. I worked a couple of jobs while I was taking classes.” He paused. “You really don’t know where most of it came from?”
I looked at him and shrugged. “How would I know that?”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Well,” he said, “your fath
er paid most of my college tuition for all four years.”
I just gaped at him. I was floored. My father? Who in the world was less likely to do such a thing? What could have possessed him to do something like that – guilt, a conversion experience, respect for Charlie’s academic accomplishments, support for the civil rights movement? How could he possibly have had such a radical change of heart?
Charlie laughed as he guessed what was going through my mind. “Yes,” he said, “your dear old dad, rest his soul, put me through college. Without him, I would never have been where I am today.”
As I tried to process this astounding information, he told me something that will stick with me for the rest of my life.
“Mark,” he said, “every good thing that ever happened to me began the day you gave me those damned shoes of yours!”
VI
The Voice
My first car was a 1950 Chevrolet Styleline Two-Door Sedan. It was a crappy tan color, but I loved it. You always love your first car. I bought it in 1954 when I graduated from college and before I started graduate school. I needed it to get to class and to go see my girl.
Back then, the car cost less than $1,500 straight off the showroom floor but, since it was four years old, I paid only $650 for it. I thought I was the happiest guy in the world. My future father-in-law found it for me near the farm he owned in central Pennsylvania. I will never forget the test ride he took with me. Halfway up one of Pennsylvania’s many hills, he said, “Let’s see what this thing will do,” and clamped his big farmer boot down over my foot on the accelerator. The car didn’t actually leap up the hill, but it did make a valiant effort.
I ended up at Penn State on the main campus in State College, Pennsylvania, and was ready to begin my master’s degree in engineering. I made a new friend, another engineering student, who installed the latest model radio in my car, which I had come to call Penny because of its color. The radio worked beautifully, and I found a station which played nothing but jazz and big band music. Since I was a saxophonist and had been in several bands following junior high school, I left the dial tuned there, so that the radio would blast jazz at me whenever I was in the car. My car, my radio, my music, my school – my wonderful world.
Since my girl, Ellen, was at school in Baltimore, 180 miles away, and since it took five hours to get there, I didn’t make the trip very often, especially with my class schedule. She was in nursing school at Johns Hopkins Hospital and got almost no time off. But when we did get a chance to go somewhere together in Penny, we made sure those trips were memorable. If you know what I mean!
Mostly, we were reduced to spending a lot of money on telephone calls in the days before cell phones and calling plans. She loved jazz too, so when I had Penny’s radio blasting Stan Getz or Dizzy Gillespie or Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman at me, I felt closer to her.
I was on my first trip to Baltimore before Christmas in 1954 to get Ellen and take her back to her farm for the holidays. I was getting near Harrisburg when I suddenly lost my radio signal. All I could get was static. I was spinning the dial while I drove, hoping to be able to pick up a strong Harrisburg station, but all I got was more static.
It kept getting louder and louder, and then suddenly I thought I was finding something. Underneath the noise, I could make out a man’s voice. It wasn’t a music program but some sort of an announcement. I strained to make it out, twisting the dial carefully. It began to come in more clearly, even though there was still quite a bit of noise in the background. When I finally understood the announcement, I straightened up in shock! What the voice had said astonished me!
Do not cross the bridge over the Susquehanna River. If you do, you will be involved in a serious traffic accident. There will be fatalities. The traffic will be tied up for three or more hours. Find an alternate route.
Then…static!
I wiggled the dial trying to get back to the station on which I had heard the announcement, but by then I had totally lost the dial position and had no idea where I had found that station. I would have given anything to hear the announcement again, just to prove to myself that I hadn’t been falling asleep and imagining things. I scoured my brain, trying to remember the exact wording of the warning. Had he said there was an accident or that there was going to be an accident? He must have said that the accident had already happened, but I was sure he had said it was going to happen. Something like, “You will be in an accident,” not that I would get into a traffic backup because of an accident which had already happened. “The traffic will be tied up.” All the phrases were future tense. I thought the announcement started by saying not to cross the Susquehanna. But how was I supposed to get to Baltimore if I couldn’t cross the river?
Ah, it was just crazy. I was hallucinating. Things like this don’t happen. But I was really confused, so I stopped at a diner and got a cup of coffee. I asked the counter man if he had heard anything about an accident on the main bridge ahead, and he said no. But he assured me that they have fender benders there all the time, and they know how to handle them so as to prevent holdups. “I wouldn’t worry about it, buddy,” he said. “I go over it all the time, and I’ve never seen a traffic jam yet.”
I got back in the car somewhat relieved and headed for the bridge. Turning on the radio a little suspiciously, I looked for a Harrisburg station. Nothing but static. More twirling. More static. Then…the voice. This time only the phrase “there will be fatalities” came through. I could barely hear it, but it let me know that I hadn’t imagined it the first time. And, scariest of all, the voice sounded familiar! Was it some announcer who I had heard before, often enough to recognize? But what was he doing in Harrisburg? This was the first time I’d been here.
That was enough! I didn’t go over the bridge. I stopped, pulled out my map, and looked up an alternate way to cross the river. I found another bridge downriver about ten miles, then had to work my way back onto the main road. My timidity had lost me a half hour, and I swore at myself the whole length of the detour. “You damned fool, this is a waste of time and money. What do you think you’re doing? You’re an engineer. You know how the universe operates. This is insanity.”
When I arrived at Ellen’s dorm, she was waiting in the lobby practically jumping up and down with anxiety. “Where have you been? I was so worried I was almost sick!” When I asked her why she was so upset that I was a little late, she said, “Didn’t you know about it? There was a terrible accident on the Susquehanna Bridge; three people were killed. It was on the radio. It happened around the time I knew you’d be there. I was sure you were caught in the traffic jam. Or worse! The bridge is still closed.”
My heart almost stopped. I had to sit down to clear my head. I couldn’t say anything in response to her questions about my odd behavior, but I told her we’d go to dinner and I’d explain. We went downtown and got a special late edition of the Baltimore Sun. The front page was covered with photos of a massive traffic jam, and shots of several cars in a tangled wreckage. Two men and a woman had been killed, and five more people were seriously injured. I read every detail twice, then looked at Ellen with total mystification and shock.
“How did you avoid seeing that mess?” she asked. “You had to be coming that way. I was sure you’d get caught in it. I was afraid you were one of the people who were…injured.”
After a while, I shook my head and quietly said, “I didn’t go that way.” A long pause. Then I looked her in the eye and said, “I was…warned.”
Ellen was a practical no-nonsense type who thought rationally. She wanted to be a nurse because she was interested in science and in technical knowledge. She studied constantly which had always put her at the head of her class. My interest in music and art was not what attracted her to me, but rather my desire to become an engineer. I knew that what I was going to tell her would not go over well. Neither of us was religious; we didn’t believe in magic or miracles. Or God, for that matter. Spirituality wasn’t scientific. It was not something you coul
d prove.
On the one hand, I wanted to tell her the truth, partly because I wanted to hear myself describe what had happened. That way I might be able to believe it myself. On the other hand, I was reluctant to tell her, not only because she wouldn’t believe me, but because it was so personal and extraordinary that I didn’t want her making fun of me or dismissing it as my imagination. I was having a hard time deciding how to proceed.
“What do you mean you were warned?” she asked. “Were there signs up to avoid the bridge?”
I thought about it. “Sort of.”
She was frowning. “You’re acting funny about this. Just tell me how you avoided the bridge. I was so worried. I want to know how you escaped that mess. How were you warned?”
“It was something on the radio,” I said finally.
She nodded. “So, there was an announcement after it happened that warned you away from the bridge.” I studied her face. She gave me a frustrated look. “That was it, wasn’t it?” Pause. “Why not just say so?”
“Because it wasn’t…quite like that.”
She was getting upset. “What is the matter with you? Why not just give me a straight answer?”
“Because you won’t like the answer.” I said it too loudly and people looked over at our table.
She was silent for a long time, and I recognized her angry mood. In a very tense voice, she said, “It’s a simple question. Why not a simple answer?”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you, and then we’ll drop it.” I took a deep breath. “There was static on the radio as I got near to Harrisburg. Then a voice came on the radio and said, ‘Don’t go on the bridge. There’s going to be an accident and people are going to be killed.’”
She looked at me quizzically, and then tried to suppress a laugh. “Do you know how dumb that sounds? I thought you were trying to hide something, like a woman in the backseat. What really happened?”
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