Race, Religion and Neighbor Games

The turbulent events of the world in the 1960’s were only background noise to my life. In the early part of the decade, I was more concerned with the events immediately surrounding me. But the issues of the times increasingly had an impact so that by the end of the decade, I felt the impact more often and could no longer easily shake off the conflicts.

Many issues of the 1960 were race or religion issues.

I grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood in Seattle. I was not really aware of the differences amongst all the neighborhood families. Until that is the summer of 1961, when I was at one of the Seattle Seafair parades. The Seattle Chinese Community Girls Drill Team marched down the street in the parade in all their glorious red and gold. It was a wonderful site to see and I was totally captivated by them. “Mum,” I asked “may I join this drill team?” “No,” she answered. “You're not Chinese.”

I wasn’t Chinese! What did that mean? I started to look around. People were different but why couldn’t I be Chinese? My skin color was not much different. My eyes were brown and my hair was dark. So what if my eyelids were a bit different and my hair not as straight? Why did this stop my joining the group? I pondered this question for years.

But I was more concerned with other issues. I had gotten old enough to join in the neighborhood games.

The long spring and summer evenings in Seattle encouraged the neighborhood kids to play outside for hours and often after 10:00 pm. Children of all ages joined in the twilight games of Hide and Seek, Kick the Can, Red Rover, Simon Says, Mother May I, and Frozen Tag. As the light of day faded into the dark of night, we tried to push the darkness away as long as we could. We ignored as long as possible the calls from our families to head home for the night.

“Mike, Michael, – it is time to come home." "Darla, DARLA! - 9:30 pm - time to come in.”

But, the world at large intruded.

I'm in the second grade on November 22, 1963, at Highland Park Elementary School in West Seattle. On this day, a special number of school bells rang. This was sometimes a way to signal for some assigned upper grade students to come to the school office. Soon, one these older students dropped off a purple inked mimeograph notice for our teacher, Miss Lynn. We knew the message must be important for it to be delivered in this method and interrupt the class. It was important. After several minutes of silence, Miss Lynn read the news to us in a hushed voice. The notice told us that President Kennedy had been shot and had died in Texas. This was sad and important news. I ran home after school to tell my mother this important news. Mum was not one to watch the television during the day or to listen to the radio. So I thought I would be the one to tell her this. My brother broke the news first. He was a high school student in the 10th grade at Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle and he'd come directly home from school to tell Mum. I was miffed that I wasn't the one who got to tell our mother.

Some people said the President was shot because he was Catholic. At the time I wondered what that meant. Sadly as the 1960’s went along and I grew older I understood what they were saying even if I could not understand the why.

“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Karen right over.”

February 16, 1964, the Beatles are on the Ed Sullivan show. Everyone young and old and anywhere in between had been talking about those boys from England. I like many my age begged, pleaded, bribed or found anyway I could to be allowed to stay up and watch the show. It was the talk of the neighborhood and school for weeks. Many older teenage boys wanted a Beatle haircut; several started to grow out their hair. Several fathers did not want the sons to have this hair style. My father was amongst those who did not like all that long hair and so my brother Dave was not allowed to have this style. Only one guy in his rock band won the family battle to wear long hair.

Some people say a hair style shows people who you are, Huh? How does a hair style show what is in your heart? Or who is good or bad?

“Mother May I take 3 steps?”

August 11, 1965, my family is in Watts, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. We made the long road trip to California, down the winding coast road and the trip home mostly on Hwy 99 since I-5 was not built yet. Stop and go at all the red lights, lots of diners and motels named Flamingo. We stopped off the freeway – California had these new fangled roads – to get gasoline for the car at a Signal Gas Station. There were people milling about, several men were looking at us, a white family from Washington in this black neighborhood. This was before self-service and no one was coming to assist us. There seemed to be tension in the air. A lady ran across the street, there wasn't a lot of traffic out. A man was hammering a board over a window. Finally, one of the men comes a bit closer and then calls out, "Hey, whitey, get your ^$%^### out of here. No gas for you here.” After a minute or two, with a bit of grumbling under his breath, my dad decided it was best we leave. Dad drove us down the highway to another station while my mum intently watched the gas gage on E, Dad filled up at another station, complained about the rudeness of the previous one, and then we went down the road. That night on the television we saw the news about the race riots in Watts. Dad said, “That looks like the station we were at.” After a bit, Dad decided that the rude gas station attendant actually did us a big favor. He got the white family from Washington out of a brewing dangerous situation, and did it in a way that would not make him look like he was being nice to us.

Sadly, race issues were on the rise.

“You’re it.” “Run, run, Larry, run. Kick the Can."

I'm in 8th grade on April 4,1968, the day that Martin Luther King is assassinated. How can this be? Race. I hear rumors of it being in part because of race. I lived in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. The nightly neighborhood games were played by children of many races and religions. Terry, Jerry and Rosemary are Japanese. Darla is German and Bohemian. Dorothy and her brother are African American. Cindy is Italian. Ingrid is Native American. Maria is Mexican. Mary is Catholic. Karen is Lutheran. I am mostly Scandinavian and English. It didn’t matter because we'd learned to play together.

The final days 8th Grade at Denny Jr. High School is drawing near. June 5, 1968. I'm very interested in the upcoming presidential election. After the joy of the Robert F. Kennedy nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate, then there is the sad news on the television. Senator Kennedy has been shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. I am saddened and never again have I had much interest in a political issue.

Violence, assassinations, riots, wars. Yes, the world had gotten my attention. The neighborhood is changing. The kids that I had played all the outdoor games with most summer evenings were getting too old for the games, and the younger kids were not out playing like we had done.

The race, religion, ethnic, image and other differences that people could find were increasing. My group versus your group. The intrusions of the world seemed to be increasing. I asked myself if they were really increasing, or was it that my awareness of them was increasing because I was aging? I’m still not sure.

I wish the world would be more like the neighbor games. Sometimes even today I still hear the voices in my head calling.

“Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” . . . on a long summer’s evening.

Diane Brown
Sno-Isle Libraries


Video credit: Chinese Community Girls Drill Team on Flickr by hey skinny, under Creative Commons license, some rights reserved, http://www.flickr.com/photos/heyskinny/2807832090/.