Can answers to age-old questions be as simple as a piece of pie and a song on a jukebox?
I don’t know why I pulled her unexpectedly from my memory: “Big Ruth.”
Maybe because my brother’s birthday just passed and I’ve been missing him lately and thinking about who he was and what his life meant. Maybe because it’s approaching the anniversary of a disturbance at my junior high that still resonates. Maybe because it’s been almost a full year since George Floyd drew his last breath under the knee of a cop. Maybe because the images of an old woman with dementia being thrown in the dirt and hogtied by police was so painful.
Maybe because it occurred to me that some lessons take a whole lifetime to learn.
Our family moved to Colorado Springs from Fort Collins when I was in fifth grade and Colorado Springs was in the midst of unprecedented growth (going from 126,000 people in 1963 to 300,000 just 20 years later). To combat the jam-packed hallways in its schools, Colorado Springs’ District 11 tried all sorts of innovations —modular scheduling, split schedules, new schools, big schools, year-round schools. My older brother, Louie, a seventh-grader when we relocated for my dad’s job, went to a school bursting at the seams: Washington Irving Junior High. I joined him there two years later. To address the overcrowding brought on by a growing city and compounded by forced busing, Irving implemented split schedules — half the kids attended classes in the morning, half in the afternoons.
Even so, tension often ran high. It was the 1970s, after all.
Toward the end of the school year, there was what was described in the media — and went down in history — as a riot. I don’t know if it was that, exactly, but it was a sad, memorable event that started out as nothing, escalated when adults made some bad calculations and which, ultimately, hurt a lot of lives.
Here’s what I remember: There were rumors that day (May 14, 1975) that two boys were going to get into a fight. They apparently had scrapped the day before and were seeking a throwdown redux. For whatever reason, school officials in 1975 thought it was a good idea to build freedom into the school days for 12- to 15-year-olds, so students had free periods during which they could leave campus. There were some little strip malls close by, so often the braver among us ventured out. The rest of us whiled away those unstructured moments in the library, the cafeteria, the grassy common areas where sunshine beckoned. That day, kids gathered just steps off campus to wait for the fight.
The wannabe brawlers never showed up, but many, many other students did and pretty soon there was a gathering of hundreds of kids from Irving and the nearby Billy Mitchell High School, just milling around, restless and unfettered. I was one of the kids who showed up, but — being me and not wanting to miss out yet not quite bold enough to enter the fray — I watched from a safe distance, prepared to make a hasty retreat when the bell for the next class sounded.
At some point, some distracted driver turned a corner in the normally quiet neighborhood and drove her car into the crowd. It was a really, really, really terrible mistake. I don’t think anything happened to her, although I can imagine how frightened she must have been to find herself stopped by a mob of unsupervised teens, some of them approaching her vehicle, touching her vehicle, pounding on her vehicle, rocking her vehicle.
Then someone called the police.
And as police often do, they responded with force that was simultaneously understandable and oversized. There were bullhorns and cruisers and billy clubs, mace, some said tear gas. I don’t know firsthand because at the point in the altercation when I heard a frightened declaration that someone “narced” (my first introduction to that ineloquent and somewhat inaccurate term), my friends and I decided retreat was our best option.
As well as nearly 20 officers, the police also dispatched a helicopter to help with communication and crowd control.
The helicopter crashed.
In the street. Near an intersection. Just down the road from the school. Only feet from a house.
The helicopter burst into flames on impact, and the pilot was killed as was his passenger, the regional director of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Reports on the crash said the pilot had radioed that he was leaving the scene and there was no indication of problems. Witnesses said the helicopter ascended, then lost altitude, then pulled up again, clearing the rooftops of nearby homes, and then plummeted to the pavement. As far as I know, investigators were never able to say definitively what caused the crash. Pilot Capt. Bernard L. Carter, a former detective and father of five, is still listed on websites and memorials to fallen heroes.
Seventeen students were arrested that day (because they were minors, charged only with misdemeanors and “juvenile delinquency”). Most of them were released to family members, although five were taken to a juvenile detention facility and one, an 18-year-old male, spent the night in the county jail. Most of them were also suspended from school.
A story in the Golden Transcript said: “Photographs of the police action showed students being pushed and dragged by their hair into police vans,” and Irving principal told the school board that he had reports of police hitting students although no reports of injuries. What I remember is that police used billy clubs to subdue students, hitting 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds across their thighs with nightsticks to force them back to class.
Notably: A young woman who, in the cruel parlance of adolescence, was called “Big Ruth.” I don’t even remember her real name. She was Black, heavy, powerful with a “posse” of friends, and bused to Irving from across town. I knew her only by sight, but she was friends with my brother who moved easily among cliques. She was one of the kids said to be arrested that day. In my memory, she was one of the students hit by police, one of the students forced into a police van, one of the students who didn’t return to school, one of the students whose reputation was defined by that day. “Did you hear?” people said in hushed tones. “Big Ruth was arrested.” “Big Ruth was taken to juvy.” “Well, after all, Big Ruth isn’t from this neighborhood.” “It was just a matter of time …”
I wonder now if Big Ruth was arrested that day simply because she was Black. Or because she was big and, even as a child, mighty in her fullness and because the police were threatened by that, maybe even beyond their own understanding.
Even at an age when kids tend to walk with the crowd and give in to peer pressure, my brother always defended that girl. “Ruth’s OK,” he’d say. “She’s nice; I always thought she was fun.” He’d insist, “She didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”
Although I didn’t think about it much at the time, I wonder now if Big Ruth was arrested that day simply because she was Black. Or because she was big and, even as a child, mighty in her fullness and because the police were threatened by that, maybe even beyond their own understanding. Speaking at a news conference following the helicopter crash and quoted in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, Police Division Chief Red Davis said, “There is no indication at all that the disturbance was racial.” It wasn’t, but now — all these years later and in the wake of a long national history of racial unrest and police brutality — I wonder if the response to the disturbance was.
I wonder how many of those arrested that day, like Big Ruth, were Black.
I wonder what path was created that day by a disturbance at a neighborhood school among kids barely even in their teens. I wonder what trajectory Big Ruth’s life took, how the disturbance and the police reaction and the arrest colored her life, who she became after such a beginning. I wonder what she tells her grandchildren about that day in 1975 and how she puts it in context with so many similar days, her own and the days of so many others. I wonder if, locked away from the world this past year by an insidious virus, she fell to her knees when she saw the video of George Floyd’s murder, if she took to the streets when she heard about Breonna Taylor, if she wept for the loss of Elijah McClain. I wonder if she rejoiced when Derek Chauvin was convicted or if it seemed to her merely a comma in a long unsatisfying list.
My brother — like me, like Ruth — was just a kid then, but he was able to see what the adults that day should have seen but didn’t: “Ruth didn’t deserve to be treated like that,” he said that night at the dinner table or the next day or the next. In spite of the riot. In spite of the frightened adults. In spite of the helicopter crash. In spite of the fraught times. In spite of her size or her age or her race. “Ruth didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”
No one does.
Why is that so hard to learn?
The Pie
When my brother was a student at Washington Irving Junior High, he wanted my parents to move to New Mexico because he‘d heard you could get your driver's license at 14 in the Land of Enchantment. My parents, of course, declined, and my brother had to wait until he turned 16 -- like everyone else. He got his license on his 16th birthday and bought a 1950-something blue Chevy pickup. He used to wear a brown felt cowboy hat and western cut shirts and a puka-shell necklace and blast Buck Owens songs from the windows of that beloved blue truck. There was a little diner across town, the Bum Steer, that he used to like. It was tiny, kind of a white cement box with a neon sign, formica tables, and tableside juke boxes at every booth. Three songs for a quarter. And it had Banana Cream Pie on the menu.
I don’t know which he liked better, the music or the pie.
Once, he took our Aunt Helen to the Bum Steer. She was probably in her early 60s then, which seemed kind of ancient at the time but doesn’t seem so old any more. She was visiting from Nebraska. She lived in a nice neighborhood in Lincoln but had grown up on a farm. Yet she insisted it had been a lifetime since she had been in a truck as she climbed into his old rattletrap. She hung on every word he said, almost like they were on a date, and laughed at his jokes with her wide open laugh that endeared her to everyone she met. And she bought him a piece of Banana Cream Pie.
His birthday just passed, and if he was still with us, he would be now about the same age as Helen was then.
So this week when Louie’s son made a post-vaccine visit to Fort Collins, I made Banana Cream Pie. It would have been better if Red Steagall was playing on the juke box, but it was sweet and creamy and rich with nostalgia.
"Pour me another cup of coffee
"For it is the best in the land
"And put another quarter in the jukebox
"And play the song of a truck-drivin' man."
The recipe
BANANA CREAM PIE
WITH A STRAWBERRY CRUST
½ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons packed cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
4 medium egg yolks
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon banana extract, optional
2-3 bananas
1 prebaked strawberry pie crust
Strawberry powder for sprinkling (or brown sugar for sprinkling)
Homemade whipped cream
Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium saucepan with a wire whisk. Add the milk and egg yolks and whisk together until there are no lumps.
Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook, whisking constantly until the mixture comes to a low simmer and begins to thicken, about 9 minutes. Continue cooking, whisking constantly and being sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to prevent scorching, until the mixture begins to boil, about 2 minutes. Still whisking constantly, let it boil for a full minute or until thick, then immediately remove it from the heat. (If the mixture is not thickened on the stove, it will not stand up in the pie, so be sure not to remove it from the heat too quickly.)
Add the butter and banana extract, and whisk until the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth.
Peel the bananas and thinly slice them directly into the cream. Fold gently with a spoon to incorporate.
Pour the banana cream into the prebaked pie shell and, while it is still hot, cover it with plastic wrap to prevent a film from forming on the top. Refrigerate the pie until the cream has set, at least 4 hours.
Before serving, remove the plastic wrap, top with the whipped cream. Slice the pie and then sprinkle each with freeze-dried strawberry powder before serving.
Note: If you don’t want to make the strawberry crust, this pie will also be delicious with a regular pie crust. If you opt for the regular pie crust, sprinkle the slices with brown sugar.
STRAWBERRY PIE DOUGH
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons freeze-dried strawberry powder
1 cup cold, salted butter, cut into small cubes
½ cup ice-cold water
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, making sure the strawberry powder is thoroughly mixed in.
Cut in the cold butter with a pastry cutter until small clumps form.
Add half the water and mix; then add the rest and mix until a ball forms.
Refrigerate for at least one hour before using. (This dough can be frozen if wrapped in plastic wrap and placed in an airtight container.)
Note: This dough is a really pretty pink before it is cooked; but once it is cooked, it becomes a dark brown. It smells delicious though while it is cooking and has a slight berry taste. If you want to ramp up the flavor, you can use more strawberry powder or substitute some or all of the water with strawberry juice. I could not find any freeze-dried strawberry powder in our local grocery stores, so I ended up getting freeze-dried berries and then grinding them into powder in a coffee grinder.
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