My wife and I take turns picking movies to watch.

Last night it was her turn so we viewed “The Help.”

Having attended an integrated elementary school in ’68 and ’69 for my first and second primary school years, I have no recollection of racial problems growing up.

Same for my wife.

Therefore, the movie was a bit of nostalgia for those who lived through it personally or by proxy.

The lesson my wife took out of the movie was that an independent woman who attended Ole Miss and who wanted a career in the South in the 1960s had to be hired by an effeminate newspaper man. She was not able to marry a man from her hometown.  Even worse, she could only get a job somewhere in a big city away from all her friends and family.

Amazing, the lessons we learn or teach others.  Is that what they teach in Abu Dhabi, too?

Reminds me of my friends Brenda Craig and Gina Griffin, both Ole Miss attendees.

Takes me back to my youth, when the lady who came to clean our house every week, Mrs. Rutledge, was the grandmother of a schoolmate of mine, both white.  My mother would clean up the house before the cleaning lady arrived to eliminate the possibility of gossip that my mother was a poor housekeeper.

My mother in-law, bless her heart, was the same way, making sure the house was cleaned up after bridge games so there’d be enough to keep Pearl busy all day when she came to clean every two weeks.

Social graces exist no matter the colour of the person cleaning the house.

That’s what I get for growing up in east Tennessee where racial tension might have existed – I don’t know and don’t remember – but a member of the Kingsport city council was black and my fastfood coworkers were a mixture of white, black, Latino and other.

Colour didn’t determine your vocational place in life.

Living in Huntsville, Alabama, home of the first integrated school in Alabama has taught me that human decency is better free than bought.

Just ask those expat Australians, the Murdochs. Kinda feels funny you being the ones gettin’ strung up in the news these days.