It all started with a hat.
“You sure remind me of Sam Hall,” said the old-timer in the lobby of the Post Office in The Plains, Virginia. “Did you know him? He was sheriff around here for 22 years. A good man. He wore hats like that.”
I answered that I did not know Hall, that I had first come to Fauquier County in 1994 and so was a relative newcomer to the area. But my curiosity was piqued.
“Sam Hall?” said the 82-year-old black man. “Yes, he was sheriff down in Warrenton.”
“Do I look like him?”
“No, but he wore hats like that.”
“Was he a good man?”
A few seconds passed. “He was fair.”
“That’s about all you can ask for in a police officer.”
“True enough.”
I’ve always been a law-and-order guy inclined to give the police the benefit of the doubt. I agree with Eric Hoffer that “freedom is impossible without authority. The absence of authority is anarchy—and anarchy is a thousand-headed tyrant.” And as a Vietnam veteran, I abhor the idea of putting a man in uniform, having him do your dirty work, and then despising him for it.
That said, YouTube is awash with appalling instances of the police abusing their authority, sometimes tasing or even shooting people for no good reason. In a recent example, a panicky Minnesota policeman has been acquitted in the unjustified shooting death of Philando Castile, who had a permit to carry a concealed handgun and was obeying the officer’s instructions.
Is this a new phenomenon, I asked myself, or has modern technology simply made us more aware of what’s been going on all along? Entering “Sam Hall” and “Fauquier” into a search engine brought me closer to an answer.
This led to a blog titled, “Growing Up Colored: Life in rural Virginia in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.” The author, Stanley Brown, explains: “These stories revolve around the small town of Remington, Virginia, in southern Fauquier County.”
by Louis Marano
