Arbrey shooting recalls childhood housing inspections

The senseless February 23rd shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, brought me back seven decades to a fond childhood memory: inspecting nearby housing construction sites. Watching Arbery on tape popping in a home construction site, innocently looking around and then resuming his neighborhood jog, I recalled the long buried memory how my friends and I did the same thing in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood back in the 50’s. Before the porch was up we’d carefully traverse the long six inch board that allowed our entrance to the wonder of an emerging home. We’d rummage around trying to visualize how the house differed from our own. I may have picked up that curiosity from my father who told me he became knowledgeable about household repairs by inspecting homes under construction. Once a man drove up to a site we were inspecting and politely cautioned we had no business in his future home. We quickly skedaddled. He didn’t pull out a shotgun and pump three bullets at us, causing bleed out. Didn’t know it at the time…but that was white privilege.