Detroit, 1943

My bad knee stopped me from going to war, but it sure wasn't going stop me from being a part of the war effort. I decided to leave home and trek to the factories up north in order to help supply FDR's "Arsenal of Democracy." Ma wanted me to stick around and go to school, but there's no way I could do that when my older brother and best friends were out there on the front lines putting their lives on the line. I just couldn't stay home, I couldn't.
But boy, being in Detroit in the spring of 1943 was pretty damn close to what I imagine it felt like to be fighting in France with the boys. I had been mindin' my own business, working in a factory making planes, when all of a sudden BAM! all hell had broken loose. The white folk and the black folk of Detroit just started going at it. Thousands of 'em, it was insane. There was rioting, fighting, looting, stoning, you name it. I'd never seen anything like it coming from the peaceful expanses of Southern California.
There were times when I was legitimately scared for my life. I thought I was going to die on the streets on my way to work. One mornin', I'm taking a trolley trying to get the factory when all of a sudden a wave of people starts running toward the trolley lookin' like they're about to eat the damn thing. I had never been so worried. Jesus, I can't even put it into words. Another morning, me and a co-worker of mine, George, a real solid colored kid from down south in Florida, were walkin' to work when another of co-workers follows a group of looters in a shoe store to cop him some free shoes. Well, what do you know when the police show up and put a round in our buddy; they still took him to jail, gunshot wound and all, unbelievable.
Man, I hope our boys out there really appreciate these damn planes we're makin' for them because, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, has this been a wild time.