I remember the conversation very well. We’d been in the new house for a little over a month. I was in fourth grade. Dad was still installing light fixtures in the upstairs hallway. I was watching the news; it was Walter Cronkite and I was in the living room watching our little 19-inch Zenith. It was the family’s first color television set. I remember the conversation very well.
“Mom, why did that man hit that woman in the face with a pie?”
My mother replied, “She’s not a nice woman. She’s not nice to everybody”.
I was nine years old at the time. I think Mom handled it well.
I learned that day that people aren’t always what they appear, as the woman with pie in her face looked like a pleasant person. But, as we all know, she wasn’t very pleasant, especially to gay and lesbian people.
Today I learned Anita Bryant was still alive except she isn’t anymore.
