Rules of '48

by Jack Cady

  And today, it still isn't easy. White hatemongers circle the action, though not so loud, and black hatemongers circle as well. Suspicions between black and white are no longer universal, but too many of them remain in the streets. Perhaps it's as it should be. It gives the city something to work toward.

  It's been a long haul, but today a black man or woman can buy a cup of coffee any place in town, and use the restroom as well. A white man and a black man can be friends, without too many murmurs about them. A black man or woman can go to the bus station and not wait in a separate room. Black ladies and white ladies can shop together, downtown. Black youngsters, and white youngsters, who haven't the foggiest notion of what earlier folks went through, act like most of this has always been.

  And, today freeways crisscross the city, running above asphalt streets where once lay bricks and cobblestones. The best city of the south, like many cities in the south, has become more northerly.

  Yet, magnolia trees still drop heavy perfume into summer nights. Lightning bugs flash tiny beacons. The river still runs, and in springtime rises to threaten the city. Old people still nod in the sun. There remains a southern aristocracy, but these days it is mostly mute.

  On the flip side, the city remains a center of business; and in terms of the south, innovation. And, the city is still alive in at least one of its best traditions. It remains, in spite of true hell, and true high water, a center of culture and art.

  About the Author

  Jack Cady was born in Ohio and raised in Indiana and Kentucky. He worked in a wide variety of jobs throughout the country, including stints as a tree high-climber, an auctioneer, a long-haul truck driver, and in the U. S. Coast Guard. He held teaching positions at the University of Washington, Clarion College, Knox College, the University of Alaska at Sitka, and Pacific Lutheran University.

  Over a more than thirty-year career, the quality and diversity of his fiction was matched only by the quality and diversity of the honors and awards he received, including the Atlantic Monthly "First" Award, the Iowa Prize for short fiction, the National Literary Anthology Award, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award (Special Citation).

  Jack Cady died in January 2004.

  THE END

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