Marlon’s Snub
Slight But Slicing
aI-GEN photo -
"Russell," Mr. Johansson called to one of the field hands, "show the people here how you watch to make sure the water system is working."
Russell, a slight black man in a floppy straw hat, nervously grinned at the bulky farmer, who beamed with a fist wrapped around each suspender holding his khaki slacks above his broad belly. The seven-foot corn stalks rustled in the hot Rhodesian wind.
"Go up!" Mr. Johansson commanded.
He looked back apologetically at the group of 15 agribusiness and government leaders from Wisconsin. "Russell's a little shy."
Russell shimmied up the 12-foot pole at the edge of the corn field and positioned himself on the crude seat at the top. He removed his hat and awkwardly placed the four fingers of his right hand against his forehead in a salute. He then slowly moved his head from right to left and left to right, as if surveying the irrigation pipes. Marlon nervously watched his group, but he couldn't discern their thoughts.
Russell continued until Mr. Johansson's uproarious laugh shook his pink jowls and deepened the lines around his blue eyes. "You can come down now," he ordered.
Carla, the group's tall, spindly, blonde, British guide, giggled as Russell slid down.
"Six more weeks, and it'll be ripe," Mr. Johansson estimated, referring to his corn. "It usually gets dry in August, so we have to irrigate."
Marlon pushed the red soil with his wing-tipped shoe. It was dry, unlike the fertile loam back home. As he walked to the bus, he kicked up more red dust, coating his shiny black shoes. Brushing them against the tire didn't help.
The silent bus driver started the engine as Mr. Johansson and Carla boarded. He reversed slowly, beads of sweat forming on his black neck.
He finally reached an opening for a Y-turn, but the bus shimmied and stalled. Restarting, he backed in spurts.
Carla sighed loudly. "I don't know what the problem is," she said sarcastically, shrugging to the group as if the driver couldn't hear. "Some of these drivers they give us ..."
Carla had earned ’s British economics degree, but Marlon noted her lack of understanding of the difficulty of maneuvering a heavy bus without power steering on a dusty field. Mr. Johansson stood silently, swaying with each jerk.
Earlier, outside the white farmhouse, Rod, the group’s leader, introduced his fellow tourists.
"And, finally, this is Marlon Thundercloud, who is in charge of the new Ho-Chunk Nation’s subsistence farming initiative, which focuses on growing food for the community," Rod emphasized.
"Good morning," Marlon greeted Mr. Johansson.
Mr. Johansson's eyes scanned Marlon's shoes but avoided his face and long, black hair. He didn't respond to Marlon but instead described his 1,000-acre farm and hog operation.At the hog operation, they met Willie, a graying black man with a limp and a quick smile, tending the hogs. "Willie's learning how to take care of our hogs," Mr. Johansson said, "Aren't you, Willie?"
"Yes, sir," Willie replied breathlessly, wrestling a boar from the barn to show his prize animal to the group. Sort of like an apprenticeship, Marlon thought. But wasn't that unusual for a man perhaps in his sixties?
"We have our own school," Mr. Johansson pointed out later. “We built it for the children of the workers on our farm. Right here on the corner. We have about 20 kids."
The unpainted frame building was small. It had a half-open door and empty window frames. Sunlight illuminated the bare wood floor. Marlon saw no desks.
The bus passed a road crew of black prisoners. Marlon noted the absence of white men but remembered that in Rhodesia, ruled by a white minority, 90 percent of the population was black.
It was 1973, and Rhodesia was one of Africa's few remaining white-ruled countries.
Stan, a dairy farmer, asked about social unrest.
"There can be attacks by night," Mr. Johansson admitted. "They're communist-inspired uprisings."
Silence from the group. It was seven years before white Rhodesia became black Zimbabwe.
"My grandfather started farming this country in 1880," Mr. Johansson offered. "We know how to farm this land. If the blacks take over, it'll be a terrible thing. They don't have the skills to run it."
Marlon cringed.
Back at the Salisbury hotel, Marlon entered the lobby. The white doorman was short. Carla, towering over him, joined some wives under the chandelier.
"Isn't he cute?" Marlon heard her giggle about the doorman as if he were a pet.
Now, more than 50 years later, Marlon sadly recalls going to his room that night, disappointed by the paternalism he witnessed and experienced. His shoes were red with dust, and brushing them in the bathroom didn't help. They still looked dirty at the dinner party with the Johanssons that night.
Marlon's takeaway: Demand respect for yourself and others.
"Have you ever been snubbed, Atticus? Do you know how it feels? No, don't tell me they're children and don't feel it: I was a child and felt it, so grown children must feel, too. A real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you're too nasty to associate with people. How they're as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they are human. I wonder what kind of miracle we could work with a week's decency." — Harper Lee
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The snubs I've experienced can't be compared to the two pieces you've written about in Rhodesia and the U of Wisconsin. Unfortunately, this piece and your comment are probably happening today in the US and many parts of the world. Maybe, must maybe, the children of today and their children will be able to live in a different world.
Pam, my wife, and I were riding our recumbent trikes through the University of Wisconsin - Madison one fall day when we noticed her right rear tire needed to be pumped up. So, we stopped at a relatively new “air for bikes” alcove along a busy student walkway to add some air to her tire.
Neither of us is mechanically inclined, and we couldn’t figure out how the air pump worked. Besides, we both have cerebral palsy and, at 75, were not particularly limber or handy with a nozzle.
So, we sat there, trying to get the attention of some helpful student passing by who could take a minute or two to pump up Pam’s tire.
“Sir, could you help us …, ” we called out numerous times.
I was surprised about how many people ignored us, pretended not to see our predicament or didn’t hear our attempts to gain attention. It was a relatively busy walkway.
One student, who said he was from Pakistan, did finally stop but admitted he didn’t know how to operate the pump and that it was probably not working.
Pam and I, at that point, decided to take our chances and ride the six blocks home with a low tire. We made it home with a new insight of how we probably come across to the homeless street people we have learned to routinely ignore each day on that same stretch of campus.
* When have you had to work around a snub from others because of your age?