Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
Ferris Wheels and Color
5/20/2026 6:33:49 AM
When I was about six, my folks took me to an amusement park in Alexandria, Virginia, where we’d just moved. I’d spent my first four years in a chateau in France where the people I saw were family and the next door neighbors. I was pretty shy. Anyway, I don’t know where my brothers had gone off to, but I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel. A black girl, about my age, was standing with her folks also staring at the wheel. I have no idea who paid or came up with the idea but the next thing I knew, we were holding hands the way six-year-old kids who’ve never actually met, were doing, chattering and riding that ride. This was the late fifties. (Yeah, I’m old. Sue me.) There were no screams of dismay about children of different “colors” holding hands and sharing a ride. (I later wrote about the incident in Moondance but made it more dramatic since my character, Clansey, was WAY more dramatic than I ever thought about being!)
Today, I was reading through the election results and thinking about the movie “Guess Who’s Comimg to Dinner” (1967). And some things kept hitting me. Like, why on earth, 100 years after a Civil War to defend one of the most egregiously disgusting “practices” the world has ever seen, should a movie about a black man and a white woman falling in love even be considered daring and controversial? Why does it take centuries for the simple concept of “we’re all the same” to enter into the mainstream? Which brought me to elections where far too much of the rhetoric was ethnic. (Someone needs a better term than racial. We’re one race. Human…although there are politicians who should be classified into another species altogether.) Anyway, I’m watching politicians whose big claim to fame is sticking to a con man and making sure the people of color in the area don’t get a fair shake. 2026 and we’re fighting gerrymandering to stop voters…based on color.
Which brought me back to the movie and a comment the fabulous Sidney Poitier makes to his father, who objects to the marriage.
“You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it’s got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs. You understand? You have got to get off my back!”
And all I could think was “there’s an entire class of people in government, living several centuries ago, who need to lay down and die and GET OFF EVERYONE’S BACK!”
I don’t know where that little girl I held hands with atop a Ferris Wheel is now. I hope she had a lovely life. Even a few minutes with her at age six made mine better. I just wish everyone could take even a short journey with someone “different” (another stupid word) and understand how wonderful it is to share something with another human being.
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More Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
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• Pride and the 10 Commandments - Thursday, June 11, 2026
• French Fries and The Full Monty - Wednesday, June 10, 2026
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• I'm so Confused ! - Thursday, April 30, 2026
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