A sizzling hot summer day in southwestern New York state wouldn’t be an excuse to not do it. Grandmother was busy baking pies, grandfather and dad were out looking over the new brood of chicks in the chicken coop and the time had come.

The scared but determined 10-year-old with a crew cut was about to play out the scenario pictured in his mind for weeks. It might not be easy but it had to be done.

He quietly slipped away and walked the quarter-mile past the old houses, most of them in dire need of a paint job. They nestled up against crumbling sidewalk next to the road with its asphalt bubbling on the surface with the heat of the humid day.

The peaceful calm in the nation after World War II hid the racial divide that like the asphalt occasionally bubbled to the surface. The NAACP soon began arguing against discriminatory practices in the public school system and in 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education overturned segregation polices in schools and lit the fire for the civil rights movement.

For a blonde, blue-eyed boy growing up lily white, this was foreign stuff. He'd never seen a black person until his grandparents, no longer capable of running their farm, moved into an old section of town, occupying a house at the end of a long block that was exclusively black. They were transplanted like half of an Oreo cookie, their whiteness exposed on a bed of black.

Grandmother spewed angry words, blaming her son for making them move from their farm. They’d reached an age that made them incapable of farming, but it’s difficult to uproot someone from all they know, and the grandmother, especially this grandmother, protested the move all the way, all the time.

She was in a home that constantly jabbed at her. A product of her time, she was no more capable of understanding her racist beliefs than those chicks in the chicken coop were of understanding their future role of being an egg factory for the grandparents’ little egg business.

She was what she was. Every incident, no matter how insignificant, blamed on the blankly-blanks who lived with her on the same block. No matter if it was true or not, it was truth to her.

The boy knew different. Nobody told him. He just knew. But all the talk scared him. He didn’t like being scared. He fretted for weeks before finally decided to face his fears and do the unthinkable.

So he waited until nobody was watching and slipped out of the house, down the porch steps, down the driveway, out to the crumbling sidewalk. Inhaling a deep breath of hot New York air, he coolly began to walk past those houses and the black people who played on their front lawns. Slowly, as if to invite the certain death his grandmother seemed to believe possible, he want past one house. Nothing happened. He was still alive. On to the second house, still nothing.

He got stares. People stopped what they were doing and turned to eye him, wondering what this little white boy was up to. Slowly he walked on, house after house, every muscle in his body taut with nervousness, his soul excited about the possibilities.

As he walked, he felt like a superhero, braving danger that certainly lurked, just as his grandmother spoke about so many times in her angry voice, in a tone the little boy often thought would certainly curdle the fresh milk she used to bake those pies.

When he got to the end of the street he suddenly realized to get back to grandmother’s house he would need to repeat his dangerous journey. He had not planned well and started to freeze up in the hot summer night. One time, you can be lucky. Twice, maybe not so lucky.

He thought about walking home, a trip of six miles. That would be easier, his young mind processed. Safer, too. But the inner self, his soul, said, “Go ahead, nothing will happen.”

So with a heart beating a thousand drums, he backtracked right by all those black souls who by now had to be wondering what this crazy white boy could be up to, walking back and forth in front of our houses.

Fifty-eight years later, I can report I made it back to grandmother’s without incident. And I learned that no matter what my grandmother would say from there on out, her black neighbors were not the bad people she blamed for everything.

In fact, except for a different color of skin, they seemed more like me than anything else.

I was thinking of this story – true in all of its elements – while watching Barack Obama get elected as our 44th president. We have come a long way since those days. Not far enough, but a long ways.

In the course of the presidential campaign, in my conversations with very intelligent people – some former teachers – the belief racism still exists among our population unfortunately was reinforced. I was surprised by some of the things I heard, some of which you heard on the campaign trail from the Republican side.

Just because the words they used were more refined than what my uneducated grandmother used, doesn’t mean they are any less hurtful or destructive to the advancement of a more pure and peaceful society.

If you followed the election state by state, you noticed the undercurrent of racism still existing in many states. Some of the states that voted for John McCain are the proof, with most of them below the Mason-Dixon line.

Alabama and Tennessee voted for McCain 60 to 39 percent, and Oklahoma, where I worked for two years, went for the Republican 66-34. Those are just small samples, but you get the picture – whites voted white, just as blacks voted overwhelming for Obama. The difference is there are lot more whites in those states.

Will Barack Obama make a difference in the way we view each other?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

As one local African-American man told me recently, he sees Obama’s election as president not as a race game-changer in America, as some people think, but as an opportunity to build bridges to understanding between the races

Now, whether those bridges will be built, who knows?

I know my grandmother would be turning over in the grave if she could see what America is like now. She came up in a time when racism was openly practiced, most gladly so most of the time, and that is just the way it was, it was the way she was. It wasn’t right, but it was thought right by the white people who governed and most of the white people who grew up in that time.

My little experience walking the block in front of black homes, showed my grandmother was wrong. It showed, as FDR said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

My fear left me that day as I walked that black block. But racism still has not left.

Can Barack Obama save us from ourselves?

I hope so.

Hopefully, unlike Ted Stevens, we won’t be building bridges to nowhere.

Have a great month.

You are loved.