A Steak and A Song

One of the first things Vera ever told me about Booker was how he felt when he opened Booker’s Place in Greenwood, MS in the early 1950’s after working for well over ten years at Lusco’s Restaurant.  She said he felt like he was “his own man.”  It wasn’t until I saw the 1966 film and watched my grandfather play the role that he played at Lusco’s, where he clearly was not his own man, that I was finally able to grasp just how important it must’ve been to him to be his own boss.  At Booker’s Place he could drop the act. 

After appearing in Frank’s film in 1966, Booker’s employment at Lusco’s ended because some of their regular customers no longer wanted him to wait on them. 

I keep going back to the “relationship” Booker had with his white customers at Lusco’s.  At one of my first meetings with them, Raymond and David told me that many of the customers at Lusco’s had “hurt feelings” when Booker spoke out on the news program and that they felt like his statement was a betrayal.  I can remember wanting to throw my hands in the air and laugh, scream, and pull my hair out all at the same time.  It struck me as so idiotic that the oppressors had really come to believe that the one oppressed was happy.

But I can kind of get it now.  Booker was so good at giving them what they most certainly would've been looking for.  A relationship that would save them from being called into account for the sins of their fathers.  They never wanted to truly explain how their grandfathers were able to build their beautiful homes with such cheap labor or explain why they felt disgusted at the thought of sharing a drinking fountain with someone whose skin was a few shades darker than theirs. 

Booker kept them from ever having to explain.  He was their evidence that they were evolved.  They let themselves believe that Booker’s dance was 100% sincere and that he was nothing but delighted to deliver a steak and a song to them every night of the week. 

As painful as it is and as much as I hate to do it, I have to ask myself if they can really be held responsible for not taking the time to consider my grandfather’s happiness or to consider his place in their locked down socioeconomic system.  He seemed so happy being a waiter that it may have never occurred to them that he would ever want to be anything else – he was just a poor black man, after all. 

Did it ever occur to them that maybe he became a waiter because he didn’t want to work those fields and that, when he was originally hired at Lusco’s, those were his only two career options?  It seems to me that they chose to believe that he had happily selected his place in society just like they had chosen to be dentists, car salesmen, politicians, and the like. 

Well, they were wrong. 

In making this film, I’ve had the awkwardly heartwarming experience of meeting many of the men and women Booker waited on during his 25 year stint at Lusco’s.  Their faces light up and glow with the memory of my grandfather singing the menu to them, delighting their children with funny stories, and his ability to remember the orders of five full tables at once. 

Today, when I look into the eyes of some of these people I can see that they truly loved him.  It was a complicated kind of love.  One that I’m sure must’ve included some level of shame and regret.  I think many of them felt helpless about their place in the structure of Southern society in the 1960’s.  They didn’t build it, but they certainly reaped its benefits.  Were they all supposed to become activists?

Some of these very customers embrace me when they meet me.  Their eyes fill with tears.  I embrace them back and listen intently to their memories of my grandfather.  Sometimes these encounters go on and on.  At times, I feel like a priest.  My nodding head and inviting eyes allow them to bask in the good thing they had with my grandfather and to finally bury any guilt that might still be lingering. 

The simple truth is that I can’t help but to love anyone who loved Booker Wright. Their affection for him - their sweet, unchanging, delightful affection for him - has won me over, in spite of myself.