{"id":1398,"date":"2018-11-17T15:56:19","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T15:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/?p=1398"},"modified":"2023-08-21T15:44:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T15:44:30","slug":"the-woman-in-the-black-toyota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/2018\/11\/17\/the-woman-in-the-black-toyota\/","title":{"rendered":"The Woman in the Black Toyota"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Woman in the Black Toyota<\/span><\/h6>\n
I wouldn\u2019t have a novel being published about me without the woman in the black Toyota.\u00a0 It took decades for someone to hear me and I don\u2019t know if it was by chance or fate, but through telepathy she was the only one able to hear my plea. \u201cPlease tell my story before it\u2019s too late<\/em>.\u201d<\/h6>\n
In the Spring of 2006, she drove by me looking puzzled, at 8:15 a.m., on the busy Niagara Street on the West Side of Buffalo, New York I call home.\u00a0 When she turned with a lingering look in my direction, I thought maybe a miracle had occurred and hoped it wasn\u2019t my imagination.<\/h6>\n
For the next several years, I saw her black Toyota pass by me and noticed that she always turned her head in my direction. I would see her stop by weekly at Carm and Sal\u2019s Gas Station, directly across the street from me. She would buy gas and visit for five or ten minutes, talking to either the father or the son who pumped her gas. I watched as they all would glance in my direction or point to the changes taking place on the outside of my building.<\/h6>\n
Although I was unable to communicate with her directly, I knew she heard me, and I never gave up hope that she would tell my story. Time was taking its toll and I kept deteriorating a little bit at a time.\u00a0 I was becoming slightly desperate because I wanted to share my rich history with current and future generations before it was too late. \u00a0I wanted people to have the opportunity to honor my tenants who were immigrants, refugees, internal migrants, and descendants of enslaved Peoples of Africa; their tales paying tribute to their struggle for freedom, and their lives proud legacies for current and future generations of Americans.<\/h6>\n
Then it happened and I\u2019ll never, ever forget 2012.\u00a0 This was the year the woman in the black Toyota pulled right up in front of my building and spoke to me.\u00a0 \u201cHere I am FRED.\u00a0 I’m here to learn more about you and begin researching your story.\u00a0 I have to find out why you spoke to me.\u00a0 \u00a0Never in my whole life has a building talked to me.\u201d<\/em>
\n<\/em>
\nEventually, I found out that when she first saw me…heard me\u2026she was shocked and couldn\u2019t believe what had just happened to her. She rushed into her office which was not very far down the road from me, and scribbled down notes on a scrap pieces of paper.\u00a0 As the years passed by, she told everyone she worked with about me, Building #1469 on\u00a0the corner of Niagara Street and Potomac Avenue. That was me before I got a real name.\u00a0 Fred.<\/h6>\n
I\u2019ll tell you more about how her research team emerged next time. I can\u2019t wait.<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Woman in the Black Toyota I wouldn\u2019t have a novel being published about me without the woman in the black Toyota.\u00a0 It took decades for someone to hear me and I don\u2019t know if it was by chance or fate, but through telepathy she was the only one able to hear my plea. \u201cPlease …<\/p>\n

The Woman in the Black Toyota<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3265,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions\/3265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesrschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}