Upland

The Upland that Robert Finely grew up in was totally different from the one Norman grew up in.  When Norman came to Upland, he was ten years old and Brownsville folks thought it best for him to get away from Tennessee.  They were right.  A family was found for him in Upland, Illinois where he could spend the remainder of his childhood without smelling the smoke of burning flesh.  He went to Horace Mann school.  He was teased, but Norman was big so there were only words, no fights.  His Upland was pretty barren.  The town was so small, you still had to go all the way to St. Louis to find a decent piece of barbeque.  The high school was located about a mile from his house on the southern end of town with the rest of the colored.  He liked it.  Tennessee was segregated.  This place was not.  It didn't matter how you sliced it, it was better.  He got the same books, the same uniforms, the same teachers, and the same type of education.  There was only one burger joint and they served everybody.  He went to the same drive in and ate the same fries.  There were white people who didn't like him, but all they could do was "not" like him.  They couldn't burn his house with his family in it and no one come forward.  Upland saved Norman.  He found Jesus in Upland and a sense of fairness and community.  Norman played football with the mayor's son and their was no repercussion for knocking him into the fences.  He could eat at the burger barn and not get his food from the back.  His foster family kept him protected on Bell street and his church, Shiloh Missionary Baptiste, taught him the social graces of being who he was.  No one penalized him for those green eyes.  His foster mother told him to use whatever he had to open doors for himself because he did not have any other way to get them open.  When Illinois Power started to integrate their services with black workers, Norman moved to Decatur.  They liked his softened black ways.  They liked the fact that his hair was straight enough to never master an Afro and his eyes.  It was like talking to an Irish farmer in the summertime with a glow.  Norman was their kind of black man.  Now all he had to find was a woman and he would make sure she had ........................color.