Author's note: I had such a good response from my first true story I thought I would write one more. The theme, once again, is about my experiences with a black woman. I would encourage you to read my other story, My First Black Woman to get a feel of who I am and what my interests are. As I stated in my first submission, I am not a professional writer and I am prone to make mistakes so I hope you the readers will be tolerant of my feeble attempts at holding your interest. I also want to remind you that my stories are 100% true. Yes, the years have jaded some of my memories and there are a few things I have to ad lib now as I have forgotton some facts over the years. But everything is none-the-less, true.
In the summer of 1980 I had already completed my active duty time in the Marine Corps and was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve. While I loved being a Marine, I was not sure a career on active duty was what I was meant to do as I had always wanted to be in law enforcement. So I had came back home and was settling in to a career as a police officer.
As most people know, law enforcement officers are not paid that well and many of us have to supplement our income by working off-duty security jobs. I was no exception and contracted my services to a local convenience store chain to work at their "combat stores". These stores were located in areas that had high crime rates or were stores that had had more than their share of incidents. The pay was excellent so I readily accepted one of the high crime area stores.
The neighborhood around my assigned store was a melting pot of races and cultures. There were blacks, white, American Indians, Hispanics and even an Asian or two. It was a lower economic based area to be politically correct, but in those days we just said it was just a plain old poor area. There was only one grocery store in a 5 mile range of the place and it had it's own set of problems due to the clientele and area. Now don't get me wrong. The majority of the customers who came into the store were good, honest people. They were just plain old poor with many living off of food stamps and welfare. But, there were the others. The bums, hookers, drunks, dopers and dealers. They were why the services of guys like me were needed. I dealt with everyone fairly but firmly and had no problem taking the malcontents and trouble makers to jail.
I, of course, wore my police uniform while doing these extra jobs. For weaponry, I carried a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum as my service revolver. I also carried a black, old-fashioned wooden nightstick on my left side. I was trained to use it and must admit I was very skilled in it's use.
I have always been attracted to black women, who I affectionately call "brown girls". I flirted with many who came in, being careful to not step over the line into what today would be called sexual harassment. Most of the ladies enjoyed the attention I gave them and I had a great deal of fun chit-chatting with them. At 6'4" and then weighing in at 225, I cut a pretty lean figure. The ladies especially liked my short dirty blonde hair and blue eyes.
I became the local counselor and attorney to many as it seemed someone always had a "police question" they needed to ask or wanted advise on what they should do about so and so who did this and that. As the area began to calm down due to my and the other security officers presence the store, business began to pick up and the area became much safer. Occasionally, one of the ladies would bring in a plate of chicken or some other food dish for me and the on-duty store clerk to nibble on. One nice older black lady brought me a homemade fried sweet potato pie. I hate sweet potatoes. But I ate it and I know when she left I had made her believe it was the best thing I had ever tasted. I was good at keeping the peace, but I was much better at public relations. I was prayerful though she never brought me another fried sweet potato pie!
One of the women who came in caught my attention from the first time I saw her. Her name was Mary. Oh, she wasn't beautiful like Halle Berry or anything like that. But there was something about her. She carried herself in a dignified, proud manner but not in the way that looked like she was stuck-up or better than anyone else. Her speech style was soft and succinct with a distinctly southern drawl to it. The first time she spoke to me it was as if butter were melting from her lips.
Mary, or "Miss Mary" as I would come to call her (and she called me "Mr. Rick") was then 41 years old. The years had been very kind to her as she did not look her age but more like a woman of 30 or so. She wore her hair in a coiffured fashion, similar to what Jackie Kennedy used to wear when she was in the White House. That style was out of fashion at the time for any woman, especially a black woman. The style though seemed to accentuate and soften her face. She was strikingly beautiful to me, with dark chocolate brown skin. Funny...her skin tone reminded me of the chocolate cocoa gravy my mother used to make for my breakfast when I was growing up. It was a smooth, creamy chocolate color, sinfully sweet and rich and you would pour it over large "cat-head" biscuits with a side of bacon or sausage. Yep, sinfully delicious. Mary's face was too, sinfully delicious. Well, not delicious but sinfully sweet. Her smile was radiant with a set of teeth a movie star would die for! I have met many women in my life but her face was so striking that it is hers I see to this day when I think of natural beauty!
Mary's dark brown eyes were large and an almond shape that she accentuated with black eyeliner that made them almost look oriental. I would later stare into those beautiful eyes as if hypnotized. They had that kind of effect on me and I have never been so enraptured with any woman's eyes since.
Mary's body was a little on the heavy side by most men's shallow standards. Oh, she was not fat or overweight, not by a long-shot! She stood about 5'5" and weighed about 175 to 185 but the girl was solid. She had had two children and there was a small amount of tummy but it was not unattractive. She had a very nice figure and looking back I would guess her measurements were about 40D-30-38 or something pretty darn close. Yeah, she was a "woman size" and not some skinny fashion model. And it was exactly the kind of look I liked on a woman. Especially those big brown breasts. Mercy but they were wonderful to look at!
Mary and I had chatted on several occasions when she would come into the store. I always had to divide my attention between her and keeping a watch on the comings and goings of the other customers at the same time which made an in-depth conversation with her in that environment very difficult. I didn't miss too much that was going on around me and tried to not miss anything she said though I know I did from time to time as I would have to ask her to repeat something she had said. She would just smile that sexy smile of hers followed by a "Never mind. You're busy and I should leave you alone" or something similar to that. I hated it when she would leave. Mary was my "island in a sea of insanity" at that store and I would look for her to come in every day I worked there. But, I usually only saw her once a week, twice at the most.
Oklahoma summers can be quite hot and stifling. July of 1980 was no different. The evenings were very hot and sticky and on nights like that you can almost bet there is going to be trouble of some type in every inner-city/lower income community. Alcohol flows heavy and tempers get short. Because of the stores location in the center of one of these types of neighborhoods, I was primed for a busy night. I had hoped for a quiet evening but by 9:00 PM three people in two separate incidents at the store had already gone to jail. I arrested the first two for attempting to steal a couple cases of Budweiser Beer. The third arrest stemmed from a guy who was reaching into his pocket to draw out some folded up one dollar bills to get himself some cigarettes when he dropped a bindle of cocaine on the floor. I remember he looked at the dope on the floor, looked up at me, looked down at the dope again, mumbled "Aw shit" and then placed his hands on the counter. I almost let him go but drugs was too big of a problem in that area and I had to maintain a tough stand on the matter to keep control. I had worked very hard to run the dealers off of that corner and I could not afford to show a soft side when it came to dope. By 11:00 PM I thought that maybe my excitement for the night was over. The store traffic had slowed down and I stepped to the backroom to grab a quick bite of dinner and drink a Pepsi. I was about halfway through my sandwich when I heard the unmistakable sounds of a drunk in the store. I looked out and saw a man who stood about 6'6" and was pushing 350 pounds and he was very angry about something. He had his back to me and I saw him grab a couple packs of smokes off of a counter display and put them in his pocket and was yelling at the clerk to give him $20.00. Shit! That constitutes strong-arm robbery! While I'm no lightweight myself, I knew this was going to be trouble. I quietly walked out of the backroom and began to creep up behind the guy.
