ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080048
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: reporter's notebook
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER
I've had this theory since I was a kid. It has to do with my hometown of Detroit and with space aliens. And sitting in a Giles County Board of Supervisors meeting last week got me thinking about it.
Bear with me.
The Motor City in the mid-1960s - pre-me - was mostly white. By the late '60s - post-me - that changed, though I had nothing to do with it. During a period known as White Flight, what seemed like all the white folks in Detroit - including mine - moved to the suburbs, leaving the inner city for the black folks.
To this day, Detroit is largely black. The suburbs, with a few all-black exceptions, are mostly white. And it's still very segregated. Bizarre stuff.
But I noticed there was one place the segregation seemed to stop: The ballpark. In Detroit this means Tiger Stadium, home of baseball's worst, the Detroit Tigers, of whom I was and am a pretty big fan. I know this sounds sort of hokey, but you could actually see fans black and white talk to each other in the stands and cheer a team on the field that was also interracial. Then we all went home to our monochromatic neighborhoods.
The lesson for the 10-year-old in the Tiger cap? A common goal overrides surface differences.
Now to my theory.
I used to imagine, still do actually, that the day we confirm life on another planet is the day differences such as black and white, Republican and Democrat, gay and straight cease to matter.
The lesson? A common threat overrides surface differences.
Now back to the Giles County Board of Supervisors' meeting.
The common threat there is Wal-Mart.
Real or not, there are persistent rumors that the retail giant is coming to a stretch near Pearisburg that fronts U.S. 460 Business, just west of Giles County High School.
The threat of Wal-Mart was enough to make the owners of a Pearisburg hardware store pause before deciding to go ahead with plans to build a larger, nicer store down the street.
And it was enough for a handful of Giles Countians last month to ask the land's owner, Ted Johnson Jr., to develop with caution.
This is not about what's right or wrong on the matter. That's obviously not for me to say.
It's more about something that will cause 50 or 60 people from all walks of life and from all over Giles County to skip dinner and pack a government meeting room. And not even to speak. Only about six of those in attendance went up to the microphone. The others stood in back or sat in the wooden benches, representing either a quiet show of force or a strong curiosity on the topic.
No word on the outcome. The Board of Supervisors isn't expected to vote until May.
But combine my April night in Pearisburg with many summer nights in a Michigan ballpark, and I'm thinking you've got a theory that's dangerously close to becoming natural law.
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