It's progress, maybe, but was it a good thing?

When last I lived in Coral Gables many moons ago, there was this restaurant that was a relic from a Southern past. The name is escaping me, but it was reasonably-priced, and the food was incredible. Good Southern food. It was a sit-down place, but you grabbed a tray, went through a buffet line, and ordered as you went. You got to the cashier, paid, and then - the creepy part - you'd have a person take your tray for you to your table with a glass of water.

Why creepy? The "tray men" - they were not waiters - were all older black men, each and every one, bedecked in a red coat, white shirt, black bow tie. There were a lot of "sirs" involved. The clientele was rarely black. The issue of race was in your face to all with eyes to see.

There was always this internal debate - do I take my own tray, defying the expectations of one and all, or do I have the older black man do something I am perfectly capable of doing on my own, in conformity with the herd?

The herd instinct prevailed. I always went with the tray man. Customarily one tipped a buck. A buck and change were one to feel generous. And these guys hustled with those trays, I tell you. I could not be as pleasant to the world at large as consistently as they were, not at a buck a tray.

The other day I was walking by whatever new luxury goods store is on the Mile to take the place of that diner, and I recalled that discomfort. Was I perpetuating a miserable and racist legacy when I went there? I sure did not get a kick out of having an older black man wait on me obsequiously. It weirded me out. (The food and price trumped the weirdness, though. Greens and mac and cheese and okra with tomatoes. Oh, yeah ...) Or was I simply enjoying some pretty solid food and making too much out of a simple thing? No one made these guys work there. At least there was no overt coercion. The place was jumping, the tips not reported to Uncle Sam, and I imagine on a good day the gig could be relatively lucrative for a few hours' work.

I don't know. I don't have an answer. I don't think I ever will.

But what struck me the other day as I went by that soul-less luxury goods store, with maybe a handful of employees at best, catering to the affluent, I felt a sincere sadness. What happened to those tray men? They sure as hell are not wanted by some store selling couches or chairs that cost an arm and a leg. They were not going to be out there selling bonds or retraining at the community college for the economy of tomorrow. Their hustle and muscle in this mechanized age would be of little utility, and none was a young man even then.

I'd love to know now what they really, truly thought of that job, and what it meant when that work went away. Racial issues be damned, they had a job, and my discomfort at the legacy of segregation probably meant a hell of a lot less to them than that buck in the end. And while I bet there were a lot of folks who look at the Mile and think "progress" - the only color issues there now involve the color green, the almighty greenback dollar - I do wonder for those tray men - was it a good thing, this "progress"?

I don't know, and I don't think I ever will.