The Johnsons

When you are a child, the only other people who really are interesting are other children, aren’t they? Grown-ups try their very best not to talk about anything interesting when you are around, and if you do show an interest in even the more boring topics, they’ll say you’re too young to understand. 

So I wasn’t very interested in Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, because they didn’t have any children. No one for us to play with. Both of them worked. They lived down the block, about six houses away, from the house where I grew up and where my mother had grown up. My parents had bought the house after her mother died, you see. It was a good location, with people she knew all around, and within walking distance of the church and the elementary school. Not a fancy location, but a convenient one, and familiar. 

So when we would go trick-or-treating on Halloween, Mom could tell us which houses we could go to, because they were friends, and they kind of owed us because their kids had come to our house to get candy, and which houses we shouldn’t go and bother the people, because they didn't know us. She even told us to be sure to thank the old widow lady who gave us apples, because Mom had known her for ages and knew she saved the best apples especially, and that she couldn’t afford to buy candy but loved to have the children come by in their costumes. And even if she was an old widow lady, and kind of strange, she wasn’t a witch, and there was no question of them being poisoned or having razor blades hidden in them or anything like that.

But the Johnsons, well, they didn’t have kids, so we usually skipped them. But one year, Mom said we could ring the bell once but even if we knew they were home, we could only ring the bell once, and if they didn’t answer, just go on. We rang the bell once, and they seemed happy to see us, and gave us candy. I think they were glad that some kids in the neighborhood came to their door. So after that, we always went there.

It was about that same time that I remember my mother telling me that if I saw anyone picking on the Johnsons or doing anything strange outside their house, to not join in and to come tell her right away. I didn’t quite know what she meant, or what she would have done, but I agreed. I remember Dad saying that Mr. Johnson was the only man he ever loaned tools to who ever brought them back. So I liked the Johnsons, as little as I knew them, and wondered why anyone would pick on them.

Well, it was the late 1950s, and the Johnsons were black.

I grew up wondering, and I still do, why would anyone pick on them? And all these years later, I need to tell someone if I see it happening. I don't know what else to do.