Some time in the late 1960s, before even I was born, my dad was living in Marysville, California. If you don’t know Marysville, you’re not missing too much. In the 1850s, due to a gold rush boom, it was one of the biggest cities in California. Now, it’s not much more than dust and walnut shells. My pop, he was a reporter for the local paper, the Appeal Democrat. At the time, he was a real big Cutty Sark man. Big enough that he passed out drunk in bed and burned his house down. Fortunately, his trusty beagle got him up and out of there…a dog he later gave to the pound. Not a bad guy, mind you–just not a real dog lover.

So one day he walks into a bar in Marysville for his early afternoon fill. Problem is, he’d already had his fill at the bar next door. Across the bar he spies his good friend and fellow drunk, Joe Fulcher. Joe was (he’s got to be dead by now, Joe) a good guy. Never sober, always black. Meaning, he was a black man. And still is, if he’s alive (which I doubt, like I said). My dad sees Joe and hollers across the bar, “HEY YOU FUCKING NIGGER!” in the friendliest possible fashion. You see, Joe and my pops were just tight like that. Joe turns at the boisterous entrance line…and it’s not Joe. No, it’s a different black man. A bigger black man. A man who is decidedly NOT my father’s friend and who very much did not appreciate the greeting. Long story short, my dad got his ass kicked that day and learned a big lesson about the appropriateness of the public utterance of racially insensitive descriptors.