The time Tony Bennett "...saw things no human being should ever have to see."

[ExTex]

23. My negligible story on race.

It was in the early 1950s. I was about five years old, sitting quietly on our front porch in one of the Austin, Texas neighborhoods on the edge of the University of Texas campus. It was a hot and sunny summer day and also trash day and a shiny metal can sat in front of every house. The street was empty and remained so until I noticed a young black man, dressed in khaki, wearing a khaki hat, moving quietly from can to can, lifting the lid, then quickly studying the top layer of can contents, sometimes placing items in a khaki knapsack before quietly replacing the lid then gliding to the next can. He didn't see me when he reached our house. He lifted the lid, and studied the top layer of trash before extracting the remains of a tomato which he stuffed and held in his mouth, replaced the lid, then moved on to the next house. I was horrified. My child's mind saw the tomato that I had flippantly rejected at supper the night before. And now this black man was hungrily consuming it. That day has haunted me for more than six decades.