The MLK holiday was still a new thing when I started my career. The older guys on the trading floor mumbled about it. My first job was a runner in the grain room. In the late 1980’s the markets were still open on MLK, but closed early.
I was handing a broker some orders before the opening bell. One of the other traders in the pit yelled across, “We should shoot four more of them and get the whole fucking week off!”
Laughter erupted in the pit, but not where I was staring. Over the trading pits were desks perched higher. That is where the market reporters worked. Their job was to report the prices trading in the pit so the quotes can be seen across the world.
The market reporter was a black man and he shook his head in disgust. He heard the comment about shooting four more of them, but what he actually heard instead of four more of them was four more n***ers. What he actually saw were a bunch of white men laughing and there I was standing right in the middle.
Guilty by association….
On the King holiday in 1990 or 1991 I was invited to join a group of traders for lunch after the close. They were going to celebrate the King holiday. I couldn’t understand their giddiness until they told me they were going for barbecued ribs and watermelon shots. Walking down the hall in earshot was that same black market reporter.
Guilty by association…..
I’ve had a Time Machine daydream that gives me the opportunity to change history for the better.
The first trip I’d take is back to the nursery room where baby Adolph is sleeping. I’d suffocate the Hitler baby and change the course of World War II and the Holocaust.
The second trip I’d take is to the balcony of The Lorraine Motel. I’d stop Dr. King for that split second to congratulate him on the “Mountain Top” speech. That split second a bullet rang out in the Memphis sky would miss its target. King could have possibly lived to see the new millennium.
The only job that I have for the King legacy is to teach my kids to cringe when they hear the N word. I think that job has been done. Their generation freaks out whenever they hear racist words. This is a great step in building MLK’s dream. We have come a long way from when my generation was saying,
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers, let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
Unfortunately when we were picking teams in the 1970’s we were not saying “Tiger.”
I’ve told the Shepkids about picking kick the can teams and they were horrified.
Guilty by association….
