I get reminded of this story from time to time, especially after this past weekend, so I thought I would share. When I was in college, which was about 1500 students in a town the same size, we found out the Ku Kluk Klan was coming to town to stage a public demonstration. It was a buzz topic, but no one really knew the details, since the internet was pretty young (I’m not, if you can’t tell by that sentence). Me and a couple pals had to make a beer run and we saw it firsthand.
I hope you’re sitting down. It was three people. It was pathetic. There was someone in a hood, a teenager and a fat guy with the front face part of the hood flipped up. I remember him well, he was close and had a porn stache and glasses, with stubble on his double chin. I didn’t even know those hoods flipped up, quite frankly. They must have some mad skills in sewing. It appeared they were passing out literature or collecting money; it’s hard to say.
Well, I’m very ashamed to admit this, but my buddy and I contributed to their cause. We grabbed handfuls of change and I yelled, “Have some pennies, fat boy!” and chucked a wad of change at him. He turned sideways and threw his hands up as the copper pelted him. My pals yelled obscenities and we kept driving. There was a vigorous discussion about what else we could throw at them, but we were broke college kids and quite frankly, needed that money back to afford to buy anything else to throw at them from the UDF. We drove back by, but they had moved back off the main road. We lobbed some more comments and they never came back to town the rest of the time I was there.