Johnnie Bridges

Shadows and Scars Johnnie Bridges

The night we left Middlesboro, Kentucky, was a cold blue night. As we past by the stock barn where we had been so many times before in the warmth of a beautiful sunny day, I thought to myself, ?Something tells me I will never see this place again.? There was no heat in the car, and the bitter icy cold winds blew up through the back seat where Linda Gail and little Junebug sat holding each other, wrapped in a quilt shivering, but without saying a word. We were so cold, and I was so angry. As I silently wept, I must have dozed off. When I woke, it was daylight, and we were in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I looked out the window and my first thought was, ?The only difference between this place and Hell is?fire and ice.? And if I had thought for one second that Wisconsin was Hell on earth, I was really in for a rude awakening.

We arrived in downtown Detroit on a Greyhound bus in the wee hours of the night, right after the riots. Never in all my life had I ever seen such a wretched place.
Johnnie Sue Bridges