I probably should have been. I was drinking at my brothers' house, and I had had a couple drinks over a couple hours. Matt made them. Mudslides, which in his recipe consists of milk, Bosco, Kaluha and rum. I'm not sure of the exact measurements, but I was probably somewhere around .05, if not near the .08 blood standard Florida has set for determining drunkenness.
My wife called. Asked me to pick her up (she had just gotten home from work) and take her over to join in the revelry. A reasonable request. She knew I had been drinking. She asked if I was okay. I said sure. I thought I was. For half the drive home a cop followed me. This is not necessarily unusual. I live in the "black" part of town, and due to the crime problem (as it is in St. Pete), lots of cops wander about along the main thoroughfares.
On the way back, I almost missed a turn. Not because I was trashed, but because I usually miss it when I'm completely straight, even during the daytime. A cop happened to be sitting in the Salvador Dali museum parking lot watching me, and he pulled out behind me. I told my wife, "Well, maybe you should have driven." Kinda fatalistic at that point.
But as I pulled across Fourth Street to head back to my brothers' place (about a mile separates our houses), the cop turned left and left me alone. I made it back without incident.
At this point, I might say that I wasn't a danger to anyone. I was quite cognizant of my surroundings and could handle a motor vehicle just fine. In fact, it might be that the cops who followed me surmised just that.
It also could be that they didn't pull me because I'm white.
I don't agonize over this, by the way. If that's the case, then great. I don't need a DUI on my ass, no matter what. But I've never seen the cops pull over a white person in our part of town. I'm sure they do from time to time, but I've never seen it.
There's this impression that neighborhoods improve when white people move in, and that neighborhoods degrade when black folks move in. This isn't just a white perception. The black folks who head up a neighborhood across Fourth Street (gulfside) from ours see things to same way. I know. I've talked to the association's president. The way they see it, if more white people move into their neighborhood, then the city pays more attention to it and more money flows in.
I can't argue with that logic, as much as I would like to do so.
When I was a kid (the particular year was 1979), my parents moved into a "mixed" neighborhood in Kansas City and bought a house for $57,000. In 1994, when the neighborhood was much more white, they moved back and bought a house of similar size (with a bit more land) for $150,000. The increase had little to do with inflation or even the condition of the house (which was much better than the first). It may be racist, but white parts of town are worth more on the real estate market than black parts of town.
Actually, that thinking helped my wife and me out. We bought a house a block and a half away from perhaps the prettiest view of Tampa Bay for $47,500. The same house in a significantly more white (and utterly landlocked) part of town runs $80,000 or more. Our house was in nice shape. We had the floors redone (mainly because the previous owner had installed ceramic tile over the bedrooms' hardwood floors) and added central air, but we haven't done much else. And since even more young white folk have moved into the area, we could probably sell our house now (a year later) for $60,000.
Is this right? In the abstract, no. Our neighbors to the east (bayside) of us are a poor black family. The house is a section 8 rental. Nice folks. The kids are sweet and always well-dressed and most often well-behaved. The house and yard are kept in good shape. But many folks in our neighborhood point to that house as a reason the city should exclude section 8s from our area.
I'm against that, for the same reason I'm against "design review" and other bizarre deed restrictions yuppies seem to want to put on their properties. Our neighborhood is rich precisely because my neighbors are a struggling young family. Like my family was when I was growing up. Color doesn't matter (to me), and wealth doesn't matter, either.
What does matter is that we live together as a family. I don't know who wrote Christopher Reeve's speech at the Democratic convention, but it hit the issues dead on. It takes a village, acting as a family, to raise not only a child, but to take care of everyone. That is indeed the value of the community, or neighborhood, as I see it.
So should the cop have pulled me? I don't know. I probably could've made the field sobriety test, and I certainly would've passed a breathalyzer. Still, I hate the nagging thought that I was passed over merely because of my race. My wife, by the way, figures the cops were just bored and not in the mood to deal with me. She doesn't buy any of this race stuff. Maybe she's right.
And then again, maybe she's not.
Jon Worley is basking in the glow of the Kansas City Chiefs' victory Sunday afternoon. He didn't drink at all while watching the game at Wilsons' Sports Lounge.