A Love Worth Fighting For

When Floyd J.T. Booker married fourteen-year old Regina Jean Jackson on June 4, 1943, Floyd knew from day one that it was not love. To Floyd, Regina was the prettiest little girl in Tulsa, Oklahoma and she got her womanhood years earlier than other girls her age and despite the fact she was the town whore, Floyd knew he had to have Regina Jackson.

Floyd first saw Regina at the intersection of Sheridan Road and Frisco over near the tracks in Dawson in the beautiful city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Floyd J.T. Booker and his friend Earl had been at work for nine hours loading trains for the white man as they did six days a week, when Floyd spotted the pretty girl who would one day be his wife, tongue kissing some star football player from the Tulsa High School football team. The minute Floyd saw her kiss that guy with all that tongue, in Tucker's Alley, he wished it were he. The girl was very young, maybe fourteen or fifteen and Earl told Floyd that girl already had a reputation, but never paid it no mind. His over pious mother Mattie had told him to mind his own business; not that of others and that's what he was trying to do.

Floyd saw that pretty girl again three days later at Walter's liquor store on Peoria Avenue near Apache, not too far from where Pretty Boy Floyd got into that shoot out in 1932 with the Tulsa police department. This was a Friday, and it was a hot day, what they call Indian Summer in January for Tulsa, too hot to lift crates on those high trains, so the white man let Earl and Floyd off work early today. The "pretty girl", as Floyd called her, was standing in the doorway of the store wearing a low cut red, white and blue midriff T-shirt with some butt tight, cut-off blue Levi jeans. Seductively, she was biting into the center of a green Tootsie Roll Pop. To Floyd, Regina was looking cute. He walked around the store pretending he was looking for something more than the beer he came in to buy. He heard the pretty girl tell the store attendant, Mr. Frank, that she was waiting for her cousin, Joe Bullet, who had the money to pay for the sucker she was eating. Having just left the tracks, Floyd was tired, he looked bad and he had only come here to get a beer; not pick up women. He didn't smell good, but he wanted to say hi to the pretty girl anyway, so when he got his nerves, he walked up to her and said hi. At first she acted like she didn't hear him, the way women do sometimes when they know a man is trying to hit on em and they want to pretend they don't know. She was flirting with him and rubbing it in. This girl was good at what she did. Floyd could feel his eyes smile at her as she snapped the rest of her green sucker off the white stick. When she playfully flipped the sucker's white stick onto the floor, Floyd gave her his best smile. Though she was playing along with his game, to Regina, Floyd was just another big ugly greasy looking [man] from the Railroad Company who was out looking for some good young [sex], but she had news for him. Regina, who was still standing at the check out counter coyly said hi back to Floyd while staring back at him with her sexy, green, villainous eyes. Next, Floyd walked up closer to Regina. He then stared directly into her green eyes and offered to buy her another sucker. Regina rolled her green tongue at Floyd in a very grown up womanly manner and said, "No thank you, sir. My mama said not to take candy from strangers." Minutes later in a surprise move, she stuck her telephone number inside Floyd's beer sack. She had written it on the back of a tootsie roll pop wrapper. When the cousin she had been waiting for showed up to get her, his face was so scarred, the boy she called Joe Bullet scared Floyd ten steps back from the girl. Out of the store, the boy with the two-toned face gave Floyd the "don't even try it with her look". He said, "Come on let's go," to Regina. She went. Then he said, " Mama will have a fit if we're out too long." Next, he dragged the pretty girl right past Floyd, who was standing in front of his Plymouth staring at the two of them like he had seen a monster or something. "You too young to be talking to that ugly punk," Joe told his cousin, loud enough for Floyd to get the message. After seeing this boy's face, Floyd knew if that boy didn't have looks, he sure had a lot of nerve.