The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

What a beautiful day. The sun is shining, there is a light breeze, we are both feeling healthy and happy. Tarzan and I are loving life. We started our day with a retirement meeting to find out what we need to do to get ready for retirement and other details. It was a good meeting, not a waste of time at all. We are in good shape and happy with our circumstances. Last night we had a wonderful discussion about our plans for the house and we continued that today as we drove around town looking at new construction going on.

We drove by our old home and visited with the new owner and the old neighbors. What a fun day we were having. Then Tarzan remembered he wanted to show me a piece of property for sale that we may want to buy for investment. We drove to the old part of Glendale, the part that is quaint and fun to be in.

We parked the car and got out to walk around the property that was for sale. There were two tri-plexes and a house. As we got out of the car, I said, “Wow, what a beautiful neighborhood. What a fun place to be.” We walked over to the box with the information sheets in it and I took out a sheet and told Tarzan to guess how much they wanted for it. He guessed a million dollars.

Before I could tell him the price was much lower than that, he walked over to a grapefruit tree that was on the corner, and not inside a fence, and tried to get a grapefruit off of it. A woman in one of the apartments knocked on the window and said “Don’t do that to the tree.”

Tarzan, “I was just trying…”
Woman, “I know what you were doing. Don’t do that. This is private property”

Just then a man came out. If I were going to describe him, I would say he was poor white trash. Now, I would not normally describe someone that way, but I am still pretty mad.

He said, “This is private property.” We were standing on the sidewalk now.

I said, “We were looking to buy this property.”

White man to Tarzan, “You have no right to steal fruit from me. This is private property.”

Tarzan, laughs and says, “Okay, I’ll come back tonight and steal it when you aren’t looking.”

White man , “If you come back tonight, I’ll shoot you.” He turns to the woman and says “Call the police.” Granted, it was not a good time for Tarzan to be clever.

Tarzan say, “Go ahead.”

I mumble, “This is ridiculous.”

I said, “What are you calling the police for?”

White man, “You are trying to steal from me.”
Me, “You just threatened to kill him.”

We got in our car to leave. White woman, “Get their license plate.” White man ran to the back of our car to get our license plate. I rolled down my window and gave it to him so he didn’t have to go all the way to the back of the car and said again, “This is ridiculous. We are planning to buy this property and you will be the first tenants we move out.”

White woman, “We own this property and you aren’t buying it from us.”

We have had small instances of prejudice against us, mostly veiled, never so openly and blatantly racist. This was aimed at Tarzan, as a black man, simply because he was black. They could have cared less about me. The man had the word “nigger” nearly exploding from his mouth. He didn’t say it, but it was all over his face.

For the first time in my life, I want to get revenge. I want to cause them to pay for the cruelty they showed to my sweet Tarzan. How dare they? How indignant I am. What humiliation to have someone talk to you that way, treat you like you are less of a person than they for no reason. Tarzan reminded me that this was not the first time he had experienced it and by the time we got home, he was chuckling about it.

I say there are two good things about this (1) they lost a cash sale and (2) they will be up all night looking for a car like ours to stop and steal one of their precious grapefruits.