The rest of the cake

Thom Gossom has had a number of careers. In his memoir, “Walk-On,” he writes about his years at Auburn (1970-74), when he played football on a championship team and struggled with persistent and sometimes overt racism. He was one of 200 black students out of 15,000. After “a few cups of coffee” with the New England Patriots, as Gossom describes it, he founded “Thom Gossom Communications” in Birmingham and, among other things, organized campaigns for the expansion of the airport. Then Gossom was “discovered,” so to speak, in amateur theater productions and had a solid career in Hollywood, with recurring roles in “In the Heat of the Night,” “Boston Legal,” and an award-winning role in “NYPD Blue.” “, among many others.

In recent years, Gossom has turned to the short story. His three volumes of stories: “A Piece of Life,” “Another Piece” and “The Rest of the Cake” are structured roughly chronologically. The first film is set primarily in Rosalind Heights, his childhood neighborhood, and depicts boys growing up in the stress of the ’60s and ’70s. In “Another Slice,” the action moves to LA and the problems become adult problems: drugs and violence, love and interracial dating.

Several of the characters in this third volume are transplants from Birmingham who are coping with big city life. This volume is in many ways the most interesting, with multiple stories plays in the film industry, Stories that only an insider could tell. The title story “Day Player,” for example, takes us to the set with Bill, a black actor in his 60s, in a guest appearance. He plays Reverend Whitehouse, a dark, dignified man – similar to many of Gossom’s other roles – and he hopes that this can somehow become a recurring role. Bill has had good roles in the past, but fame is fleeting. A career in Hollywood is a delicate and unpredictable affair.

Other stories take place at an audition, in a prison cell and at a book festival. Another story I particularly liked, set in Fort Walton Beach, Gossom’s current home, was “The Head Shop,” a black barbershop, and it is surprising that this is not the case with other stories by African American authors . We have long understood that the beauty salon is the center of information and communication for white southern women. We saw this in Welty’s Petrified Man and the movie Steel Magnolias. The Black Barber Shop is all that and more: a safe place where men speak out about race and politics and sometimes indulge in conspiracy theories.

In this article, Freddie explains that Osama bin Laden was friends with George HW Bush, which is why W never found Osama. Freddie goes on to tell the gang that in 911, a US government plane flew Osama’s relatives out of the US. Not all men agree with this theory, but they agree that even though Obama is president, “racism is not dead.”