Meet John Potts

John Potts was my new landlord in Rolla.  John was born and raised in the area and apparently had inherited some land and money from his father.  John (and perhaps his father) had built small cabin like duplexes and triplexes on the forested hillsides and then rented them out as apartments.  The small complex was north of downtown Rolla and could only be reach by one pass-through dirt/gravel road which intersected with a looping main paved road much the way a diameter of a circle cuts through and interests with two sides of a circle.  The apartments were rather isolated and provided little more that basic necessities.

Shortly after I moved into an apartment, I had the opportunity to talk with John as we walked down the dirt road.  Suddenly John said "I want to show you something.  It is just a little ways off the road here in the woods."

Given my situation I was a little reluctant to go, but I followed him as we walked about 20 yards into the woods.  There we came upon a headstone of what was obviously a grave.

"This is a grave of a black man (he used the n... word).  He did some work for my father and then got into an altercation with my father because he claimed my father didn't pay him for work he had done."  Imagine a slave expecting to be paid!  Apparently the confrontation became violent, so some of the locals lynched the black man and buried him at that grave site.

John proudly went on the explain,  "A black person may come into Rolla, but they never leave."

My first thoughts was the John was just an isolated wacko, but as I was to learn, John's attitude toward blacks was the prevailing opinion of blacks in the Rolla area.  I will give you another real-life, what was then a present day example in my next post.

Of course John hated the government and all the liberal things it was doing to ruin the country.  Finally, after listening to one of John's rants I said to him,  "And how you any different from those in power.? It seems to me what really bothers you is that "they" have the power and you don't.  You don't offer anything different; you just want their power."

John really didn't have an answer for that.