from chapter 12
One Saturday night I decided to stay on base and spend my time practicing on my bass, until one of my friends, Jerry stopped by my room and asked me to take a ride down to the Buzzards Bay Diner. It was getting late and he wanted to get there before the local bars closed. When the bars did close, everybody would head over to the restaurant just to grab a booth and hang out with your friends, and chat about the fun they had at whatever club they had just left. The restaurant was a mere greasy spoon type diner that served breakfasts all the time and other typical dishes. We managed to get there just prior to the crowd of people that traditionally form lines at either end of the dinner. The two doors at each end of the diner could be used to enter or exit the place. The only problem was that the local clubs where most of the minorities frequented were further away from the dinner than the so-called “white “clubs”. So, if you arrived a little late you would have to wait in a line that formed at both ends of the diner. Usually, because of the location and direction of the club, relative to the diner, the minorities would be lined up at one door and the whites would be at the other. Unfortunately the dinner could not seat everyone that came at the same time. There would be a person stationed at each inside door that would allow a number of people in, whenever someone would leave. But the trick was that if you were white you would leave through the door where all the white folks were lined up, and vice versa. While Jerry and I were waiting for our take out order, we noticed that the waitress was making everybody leave through the door where all the white folks were waiting, and subsequently letting in a disproportionate amount of whites to blacks. We decided that when we received our order, we would leave through the door where the black folks were standing. The crowd outside was building fast and I noticed a couple of my local friends waiting at the door. They were waving for me to leave through their side of the diner, so they would be able to get a booth. I signaled to them that we would be leaving through their door when we got the hamburgers that we had driven seven-miles to get.
We got up from the counter and headed straight for the door where our friends were standing, but the waitress tried to re-direct us toward the other door. We tried to explain to her that our car was parked just outside the door that we were trying to exit, but she didn’t want to hear it. All the folks standing at the door we were trying to exit were jumping up and down and cheering me on to ignore the waitress and open the door. I pushed the waitress aside and opened the door so we could leave, and the whole crowd of minorities rushed into the diner and seated themselves wherever they could. Suddenly food started flying, and the whole place turned into a giant food fight. The whole place was ripped apart in an instant. My pal and I were trying to slip through the crowd and get away, but we didn’t make it. About five cop cars pulled up blocking the driveway so we couldn’t get out. The waitress knew that we were probably from the base because we looked differently from the locals, and I’m sure she could recognize my southern accent. I heard her scream, “there he is!” And in a flash one of the cops came over to me and tried to interrogate me. That’s when I looked at him and started eating my hamburger. I knew that I was going to be busted, because they were already throwing people into the paddy wagons. They didn’t say anything to Jerry, but as I tried to explain to the cop that I was just trying to eat my hamburger, he slapped the hamburger up into the air. He was bull-shit because I was so cool in the middle of all the chaos that was still going on when he handcuffed, and put me into the back of a car. It was a short ride to the police station since it was just down the street from the diner. When I told him that I was from the base and I would be filing a complaint against him, he handled me with kid gloves, because he knew I might have been thinking of a way to get my revenge on him. The cops knew that the GIs from the base had access to all kinds of weapons and military devices that could jam them up easily, so they were careful not to go overboard when there were problems with GIs in the community. Everybody knew that I had been arrested and my friend sent a bondsman to get me out, but the cops said that they couldn’t get me out until the next day. Jerry knew that they were lying, but all we could do was wait until the next morning.
I was lucky that it was the month of May, other wise I might have froze to death in the chilly cell with no glass in the window, just bars. It was Sunday morning, and Mother’s Day. The band had a to play a gig at the Blue Flame in Onset, and half of the town already knew I was in the slams. The official charge was “ loitering and inciting a riot”. A couple of my friends from the base came to pick me up, and I made it to the gig on time. Everybody in town was talking about the riot at the Buzzards Bay Diner. They were thanking me for sticking up for them and for opening the door at their end of the diner. Everybody that was arrested was released and was at the Blue Flame for the Mother’s Day celebration, which was an annual tradition in Onset. The next day I appeared in court to answer to the charges the cop had on me. The judge thought that the charges were trumped up and incorrect. He told the cop that since there were no witnesses to the incident in court, he had to drop the charges and the case was thrown out. Two of my boys from the base escorted me out of there, and that was the end of it.