To grow up in the South in the 1950s was to enjoy all the comforts of segregation, at least if you were white. And so I did. In my suburban neighborhood in Houston (West University), mine was an almost idyllic early childhood of segregated security, segregated good schools, an all-white Little League baseball team.

My acquaintance with black Americans was rather limited, and those I did meet showed me a kind of deference that causes me to wince as I recall it.

Moreover, to travel in the South was to see firsthand the Jim Crow laws that still prevailed: motels that were marked “white only,” the crudest sort of toilet facilities marked “coloreds only,” and the side-by-side water fountains, one with a deluxe water cooler and the other little more than a simple faucet. I need not indicate which was for whom.

Apart from our black maid, a kind of surrogate mother, my only other contact with people of color was limited to our neighborhood yardman, someone we knew simply as “Wallace,” and with his sons.

Wallace (first name? Last name? I never learned) came weekly from across town to do several of the lawns in our area. All his boys save the youngest, who appeared to be about my age, helped with the chores. For at least two summers I saw Wallace’s youngest from a distance as we would stand and stare at each other briefly.

Then came the day — I would have been about 9 — when we bridged the distance.

“Hi, my name is Mark.”

“I’m Rhonda,” he replied. Rhonda? I had heard clearly; it was no nickname. Only later would I consider the name’s oddity, which was never explained, but to my 9-year-old ears, it seemed natural enough, and I didn’t question it.

With little more than that, the play began.

We climbed. We ran. We threw grass cuttings.

But what I recall best was wrestling in the new-mown grass.

Rhonda was slightly shorter, but he was certainly my match. As we rolled back and forth in the grass (a few hours later, I would experience the itch and burn from the St. Augustine. Did he?), I was struck by his strength. Oddly, my sharpest memory was the profuse sweat.

In the ever-humid climate of Houston, the copious perspiration poured from us and mixed together. I kept thinking: The sweat of this black boy is mixing with mine, and it seems so natural.

All too soon, Wallace and the older boys finished the lawns, and Rhonda left.

That night at dinner my parents told me we would need to have a talk. Sitting in the living room with them, even as a 9-year-old I knew something unpleasant was in the air.

“Scooter, Mrs. A. called us. She looked out the window today and she saw you, ah, well, playing with one of Wallace’s sons.”

“That’s my new friend Rhonda,” I said.

“Well .  .  . ” dad began, looking particularly uncomfortable, and on he went, despite my remonstrations.

Thus, a promising friendship only a few hours old was severed.

I saw Rhonda the next week, but he stood at a distance. We didn’t say a word. Apparently, someone had had the talk with him, too.

Was it Wallace? Probably. Had my dad explained the natural ways of segregation to his father? Perhaps. I never saw Rhonda again, and soon enough, we would all feel the cultural plate tectonics.

The ground would shift. Dr. King would go to jail in Birmingham, then preach on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Watts would break out in flames, as would other major cities.

The natural order of segregation would crumble, and none of us would be the same.

What happened then to Rhonda? I have often wondered.

Did he one day go to jail, as a tragic number do, or to college, as I have hoped?

Does he practice law or lawn maintenance today? Is there even a “today” for him? I wish I knew, but I don’t, and having only the names “Wallace” and “Rhonda” means there is no Google path to finding out.

I wish I could talk to him, to learn how my too-brief playmate feels about the presidential election.

But I can’t. So what do I have? I have the present reminders of lingering prejudice: a family member who tells me that my vote for Obama was a vote for the Antichrist, for instance, and reports of racial unrest around Waco.

But I also have a hope that some election in the not-too-distant future will be less about the color of our skin and more about the content of our character, as the great civil rights leader prayed.

Mark Long, is director of Middle East Studies and assistant professor in the Honors College at Baylor University.