IRONY in SPADES

The scenario is duplicated daily...here there...in towns and cities across the country.  Devotees of a certain "news" outlet place the blame on the "media."  Such incidents couldn't be happening in 'THEIR" America.  REALLY?  Guess what folks...are we living in the same country?  Because...this is no anomaly in MY America.  It is NOT coincidental that when  citizens get together to talk...every single person (with very few exceptions) can share similar experiences....eerily similar experiences.

Mr. Okie R.  lived in  our "holler" and he was the town cop as well as the father of one of my best childhood friends,  B.J. and her siblings (and I)  would happily run the deer trails above her house laughing with pleasure over the freedom of running in the woods, Many Sunday afternoons (after church) we would run through the woods until we got tired and hungry. Then we would pool our change and head to the neighborhood store to buy hot dogs and bread.....run by my house to pick up the firebucket,  find a suitable spot on my grandparents' pasture field hill. Then we would make a fire in the bucket to roast our hot dogs and drink Koolaid from the mason jar  that  her momma had provided.  Our parents did not worry about our whereabouts...there was no need to. All they needed to do was listen and they could hear us laughing and playing on the hills above.

Such were the carefree (and prejudice free) days of childhood. Our little town only had about 800 people in those days and there were very few people we did not know. Mr. Okie would be busy on Saturday afternoon running between the two beer joints in town controlling the drunks. The rest of the week he would be sitting in his souped up "patrol" car catching speeders on Route 37. Anyone stupid enough to speed through town got caught because everyone in town knew there was no car around that could out run Mr. Okie's car. Many tried...none succeeded.  I remember watching one chase through town and to this day I would swear...Mr, Okie's car would jump off the ground and fly through the air when he was chasing someone.

B.J. and I grew up and left home. I went off to college and she joined the Air Force.  Occasionally I would hear about her but I never really saw my friend again after the early sixties although once or twice..I ran into her little brother...also named Okie. 

I mention Mr. Okie because he formed my impression of what a "cop" should be. What I came to realize much later in life....there were very few men in that profession who could measure up to his standards. He was husband, father, and neighborhood elder and he took all of those  responsibilities very seriously.   Sometimes he would  ride up the holler to talk to "Uncle Grant," otherwise known as my grandpa.  Some days he wanted tomato plants from our "hotbed" and sometimes he wanted to talk..to gain some wisdom...on life... I guess.  

The next person I knew in the profession was Rob S. He was a veteran  and an undergraduate at Howard University. He and his wife and I  lived in the same apartment building in D.C.   I think we became friends    because early on....there were not many black people in the building..so we all soon knew each other.  Rob had a brother in law school and another brother who lived in the building. After school...Rob joined the D.C. police force...as a plain clothes officer. At the risk of life and limb, he and his partner interrupted a bank robbery. Years later I heard of his actions leading to the arrest of a major east coast  drug dealer.  My more memorable recollection of my friend was a night during  the riots after the death of Martin Luther King. Rob and  a couple of other guys who worked part time jobs at a neighborhood liquor store (owned by a Jewish neighbor) decided to sleep at the store. It so happened that the rioters decided to break in the store that night only to be confronted by three angry young  men. The message was simple, "Leave this store, this merchant alone! He works in the neighborhood, he lives in the neighborhood, he employs folks from the neighborhood, and he treats us the right way. Go bother someone else!"  I don't know what else was said but I do know that a cracked window was the only damage the store sustained while the store across the street (owned by a man who had NO ties to anyone in the area) got cleaned out! 

These were/are folk who took the mantra "to protect and serve" seriously. There was Tom S.  who was born and grew up in the town he served. He would put on his uniform and proudly walk the streets of his town talking to his people. Because he treated folk with respect, he was respected as a friend, as a neighbor, and as a police chief.  One of his officers suffered serious injuries and could not work for an extended period of time. Tom reached out to people he knew could help and help was given without further discussion, The injured officer was also part of the community and the community responded in kind. I knew of a female officer who knowing of a young family's need, quietly arranged that the needs were met. I have known of officers who served their churches, who coached little league teams and who took the time to warn children away from potentially bad situations. I have known officers (in a couple of municipalities) who bought  run down houses in the areas they served. fixed up the houses and moved in ....to become an integral part of the neighborhood.

Two cousins wear the uniform (and have for years). My children have friends who wear the uniform (and walk the walk  - to protect and serve).  Because of those I have known and those I know, it is so difficult to comprehend the mindset of others I see. These are the antagonistic, bullying, power hungry "cops" who operate more (to me) from an organized gang mentality.  They think their misdeeds will never come to life (in this age of internet social media...they have GOT to be kidding)! In  this age of instant communication (cell phone cameras and social media) the "village that raised the child"  has taken over the world!   The fact is...my phone has a better camera than my first professional camera (an Argus C-3 stolen from my car many years ago).  My phone also takes great videos and so does everyone else's!   Not only does the "village" see and hear what you are doing, they are recording it!  There is on the market today a professional video camera that is smaller than my phone!  Just saying....if I know this (in my seventh decade on this earth) why don't these miscreants know this?  Most peculiar.

Ghosts?

Do you believe in GHOSTS? I will probably chuckle and never really answer that question. In my own way,in my own time, in my own words, if you listen carefully, there is an answer to that question...somewhere out THERE. My grandmother once told my sister that there was a room in her house that I refused to enter,as a baby. She said I would scream and yell until they took me out of that room. Of course I don't remember that but what I do remember is that, to me that room was always cold, even on the hottest of summer days...until the summer I turned 17.



That summer was just before my senior year in high school. It was a fairly typical summer except....my grandmother had been dead for a year and both my uncles...who lived at home with Grandpa and who were significant adults in my life were unknown to me...battling cancer. One rainy day....I was nosing around in the drawer of an antique dresser and a thought entered my mind....LOOK IN THE BOTTOM DRAWER! Finally I looked and there...was a significant stash of unused sewing fabrics. I flew through the house to the Chinese elm tree in the front yard...to ask my grandfather if I could have the fabric. "Of course," he answered, "your grandmother saved it for you."



Until that summer...my "school clothes" had consisted of four cotton blouses and two cotton skirts....for three years. My stepmother saw no necessity to spend my father's money on dressing his youngest child....and honestly...by this point in my life, I saw no necessity to spend any more than the minimum amount of time anywhere near her. The fabric was a godsend. That was the summer I sewed...using my grandmother's treadle machine and that school year...I ACTUALLY had some decent clothes that were NOT threadbare, Somewhere in the back of my mind was a voice whispering.."You can take care of yourself!" That room never felt cold to me again.

WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS!

So, the Supreme Court has spoken ...again.....out of the wrong side of its mouth......twice before noon.  Makes me wonder what thinking  evolved into the decision. So now......the owners of Hobby Lobby can force their religious convictions on their   employees and it  is perfectly legal?

    A dear friend of mine pastors a church and has for many, many years. Every Sunday, in their church bulletin there is a list of the members and what  each family put in the collection plate the previous Sunday.  My belief is that what I put in the plate is between me and my God.  Were I to attend his church...the donation would be in CASH or in a sealed envelope and  there would be NO name attached.  I may visit his church but I am not a member of his church or his denomination.  He and I have had that discussion and have agreed to disagree.  An elder down on his luck approached me one day near a fast food restaurant and asked if I could buy him a sandwich. I could, I did  and I would never say what was spent. My children were riding  in the car one day and saw a man standing in the rain with a sign....they rolled down the window and handed their fast food out the window to the homeless man. They saw two men dumpster diving in a major city stopped them and handed out their own fast food meal to the men.  Both incidents are years past and are mentioned  for illustration only.  I raised six children to adulthood....I am not wealthy and I never have been and its not going to happen now.  My church provides the framework for my actions (and those of my offspring) but that's not for public accolade or knowledge....and there is no way I would demand that others (in my employ or in my range of influence.....assuming I have such) should follow my example.

      What  is my point?  My religious convictions govern my behavior...but I have no right to force my beliefs on others and others do not have the right to force their beliefs on me. NO EMPLOYER should have the right to cherry pick the health coverage of his/her employees. Whether a female does or does not use birth control is NOT the employer's business!  Whether the employer does or does not  use birth control is NOT the employee's business. TOO MUCH INFORMATION!

     The only choice left to me is to vote with my feet and me purse. I will NOT set foot in Hobby Lobby ever again.  In my belief...they have gone  TOO FAR. Two of my historical relatives came to this country for FREEDOM of  RELIGION. One set were Quaker....one set were Catholic. One set didn't (supposedly) practice WAR...the other set (supposedly) didn't practice Birth Control.  There were probably lots of differences in beliefs....but the singular agreement  between the two sets was the right to select and practice their chosen religion....without interference.

MOMENTS IN TIME, INNOCENCE LOST

It was November 22, 1963. I was a 20 year-old college junior working as a reporter for a central Kentucky weekly newspaper. My working hours were scheduled around the times of my college classes so on that particular day, I was alone in the news office  working on an assignment during the lunch hour. The rest of the staff had scattered to wherever they  chose to eat...home...the lunch counter at the drug store or the bus station or the college cafeteria. The phone by the editor's desk  rang, I answered it , and with that  one act......lost  the innocence and naivete of childhood. I no longer remember who called...male....female....known or unknown. The name...the voice...have faded into the nothingness of obscurity. The question I was asked will never fade...."Is it true, my God, is it true? They're saying on the radio that someone shot the  PRESIDENT!   In Dallas! Is it true?"

There was no radio in the office and the closest wire service was not accessible.  I called the dorm where I lived and asked for my roommate.  She had a class soon...in the same direction (across campus) as the newspaper office.  I wanted my radio.....I needed some way to check this frightening information.  Finally (after some back and forth conversation) she agreed to bring it on her way to class.  By the time the radio was operational....I think every one was back from lunch and in  the office listening  in shocked silence, What could we think? Presidents didn't get assassinated in the 20th Century....did they?  This couldn't possibly be true....could it?   I honestly don't remember the reaction of the older folk. I do remember that students gathered together in clumps of friends..maybe hoping for security in numbers...I don't know.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first President I ever saw  in real life.and I remember his campaign coming through the mountains of West Virginia....stopping in Fort Gay...visiting the high school...talking to teachers...talking to students...knocking on neighbor's doors. I remember John Kennedy. his brother, Robert...and his mother, Rose.  They seemed like real people which is what I told my grandfather and my uncles later that day. ..By the time I graduated high school..some one my family knew sent me a picture of President Kennedy...a picture that was a cherished possession for many years to come  An event and a person that to my (as then unborn)  children would be only a footnote in a history book...became real life.

Was the death of the President a shock?  I don't think the word, "shock"  adequately describes the emotional bomb that whipped across our campus. No event in the personal lives of young adults  (in 1963) could have prepared us for the news on that day.  Multiply the shock of the totally unforeseen, sudden, unprepared for death of a close family member and maybe...just maybe if that upheaval was multiplied by  100...there would be some approximation of our feelings.   Many of us walked to class in groups instead of singly...probably feeling  there was a nebulous "safety in numbers".  Little did were really know  other than....we were scared...not overtly...but down deep in the pit of our stomachs deep...in a winter afternoon....thousands of miles from where we lived, our sense of quasi safety had been torn from our psyche and we would never again see the world in the same way.

Many faculty and staff reached out to the students with a phone call....a strongly worded "invitation" to "come to the house.: The college dentist was from  Fort Gay and sensing the distress in our very souls...gathered a group at his house...a five minute walk from the dorm. There we sat huddling together in front of his television set...not talking much...just watching history unfold..the aftermath of Kennedy's death...the swearing in of Lyndon B.  Johnson....the death of Lee Harvey Oswald...the state funeral of President Kennedy.  The numbness slowly began to ebb away. We stashed newspapers which covered the events....we went to class....we moved on as the country  moved on...never expecting...never dreaming that we would see   two more assassinations before the end of the decade.

NEVER SHARED MEMORIES

ThomasWolfe's final novel  (title) is one of the most misquoted phrases in American English..."You can't go home again!"  Physically..... the words are probably a profound truth but emotionally...that single phrase is the biggest lie perpetrated on generations of  readers.  How so?

Home, for me, is the holler (hollow to you non Appalachian language purists) in a small western  West Virginia town, the same town my great-grandparents settled in  nearly 150 years ago , the head  of the  holler once exclusively owned by family members...a place where many family now sleep in eternal rest.  I grew up in that holler...running the surrounding hills accompanied by the beagles  that my father raised and the black collie that my uncle brought home one day. For almost the first two decades of my life, I waded the creeks to catch crawdads, picked buckets of wild strawberries, blackberries and dewberries to carry  home to my grandmother, cut and picked flowers to lay on my mother's grave, watched  the turn in the road for visiting relatives, and daydreamed about the world outside...a world I knew only from books and my father's collection of National Geographic magazine. 

By the time I finally went to school  (at 11 after the Brown vs. Topeka  Supreme Court decision), the mile and a half hike out of the holler was a respite from the  drunken shaving strap wielding rampages of my stepmother because by then I was old enough to take charge of my own well being. The day I emancipated myself was the day she swung the shaving strap at me and I caught it in mid strike with the admonition that she would never in life hit me again...I was taller than she was, weighed more than she did and could outrun her. I walked out of the house and went the 75 yards down the hill to my octogenarian grandparents house......HOME.   I thank GOD every day for that home...a place of peace  and safety..and a place where I could find answers or a path to answers for the questions of my heart.

With the support of my mother's family, the next five and a half years were survivable.  My grandfather "schooled" me on family history  and mountain "smarts". I learned to make a flute from a branch of a pawpaw tree. how to scout out the root of a sassafras tree (to dry for tea in winter) and how to make a "hotbed" for growing tomato plants for planting in May  and how to straw late growing tomato plants (the runts of his hotbed) so we had fresh tomatoes on Thanksgiving day. Through his eyes I learned to watch my  environment for weather changes and what to do for "swimming in the head."   Had my grandmother not been blind...there was much more I could have learned from her. Her important lessons focused on the value of "FAMILY"  and traditions  and maintaining the "ties that bind" families (and communities) together. 

My senior year in high school was challenging in personal ways. My father had a massive heart attack and nearly died,  his best friend (my mother's younger brother) died suddenly of pancreatic cancer and my mother's older brother was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  The family tried to shelter me from the storms that were gathering on the horizon because they wanted my focus on graduation and getting into college. No distractions would be permitted.   For nearly two months I struggled trying to complete my college application. Each version was rejected by my stepmother (my father..who was now retired and at home...trusted her judgement). Finally I voiced my frustration to my grandfather and my uncle because my stepmother refused to mail my application because it "wasn't right.)  Grampa had the solution...get another copy of the application...fill it out and mail it!  His pronouncement finished with "Do it now!"   I  did exactly that and Grampa handed me the application fee. A month later I was headed out of the holler  into town and met my father. he had one question...had I finished the application to my stepmother's satisfaction?  To my NO answer came the question..what was I going to do ?  I looked at him and said..."Nothing" and pulled the acceptance letter from my pocket and handed it to him.  In essence I told him that I had gotten tired of being told that what I wrote was not good enough...so I did it on my own. He folded the letter, put it in his pocket and told me he would give Grampa back his money. He walked home and I went on to town.

Three weeks after my 18th birthday....I left HOME. Unforeseen (to me) many changes  were in the wind.  Home was fast moving from a physical  place to a place I could only visit in my memories.

HISTORY - LOST, IGNORED, or JUST PLAIN HIDDEN

 I came across a message from Henry Louis Gates Jr. regarding his newest PBS project, "The African Americans..Many Rivers to Cross," recently. In the message was a request for input from African American families regarding their interest in our history.  Those  that know me know that many years ago I started researching my personal family history, an interest that was created by my mother's father as he sat in his rocking chair in  front of the fireplace..in our West Virginia home. To me , the child that sat with closed mouth and open ears - the stories he told were simply that .."Grampa's stories." Only later  as an adult, as a parent, as a newly minted  grandparent, would I recognize that these "stories" were the ripe kernel of history as it directly impacts a family and its development over the years.  Those stories were the connecting point which joined the history of these United  States with the individuals who made up my FAMILY. Only in this realization did HISTORY become alive for me...it was no longer the dry facts chronicled (truthfully or untruthfully) in a textbook.

As a writer, I am NOT primarily a historian The facts of what I write are handed down by my elders and they are not colored by the brush of "propriety."  My brother (the historian) would often omit and or ignore certain occurrences because of :propriety...his or some one else's. Historians are prone to that error...if the fact is not socially or politically correct...ignore it or probably edit  it.  Thus what textbooks tend to say about some of the darker moments in our country's times has been "cleaned up" or sanitized for the sake of "appropriateness."  Journalists (reporters)  retell  what they see or experience, editorialists react to events and most  people don't know the difference.  Historians tend to blend the roles without clearly defining the viewpoint.   As a writer (storyteller)I mix the method of telling the story with the facts because my goal is to provide a hook for my  listener to remember the reality of the occurrence. As I tell my story...the facts are as I heard and or experienced them...the characters may be blended.

The "rivers" are symbolic of many things....rivers, mountains, oceans, time spans, social attitudes and prejudices, religious beliefs and convictions.  The first documented ancestor in my knowledge of family arrived on these shores in the 1700's. He was a Quaker anxious to leave the old World (England) for the freedom to worship as he chose.  Another ancestor (a Catholic)  headed westward to the Greater Ohio Valley again for the freedom to worship as he chose.  Another set of ancestors fled across the mountains for the freedom to marry and raise a family with the person they chose. Over the next 200 years..the lifeblood of all three sets of ancestors merged into one bloodline..a portion of the DNA mix  of .one family.   Am I interested in connecting the ancestral lines further back...to the African motherland. Absolutely! The probabilities/possibilities  are mind boggling and this inquiring mind wants to know!

JUSTICE? HELL NO!

So, the "criminal" trial is over and some person  thinks the "justice" system worked?  That statement is laughable and believe me, there is no laughter in this house or in any other similar house in this country. There is instead, a profound silence, a shared gut wrenching  grief that forces each of us to reach out and embrace our sons, our grandsons and  all the young men of our families. There are those who claim amazement that inner cities did not burn. That amazement alone proves a gross lack of understanding of the minority mindset in the U.S. of A.

As the black mother of six sons, grandmother of one, I have much to communicate, but little to verbalize. It was no shock for Zimmerman to be found "not guilty." Why?  My sons and  my grandson are threatened  daily because they are black men. Their lives, their livelihood, their very existence could be forfeit because they spend their daily lives in a society that culturally fails to recognize its own deepseated and entrenched bigotry as racism. A young man runs out of gas three blocks from his home of 31 years, in front of the elementary school that he and his siblings attended. The cops are called ("Black man on foot in the neighborhood!) and they (the cops) come running.  ( Who called? Don't know and don't really care.)  This particular black man has lived in this neighborhood...in the house his family owns outright for 31 years. He and his family have paid a small fortune in taxes to support this town, this county, this state, in those 31 years.  This black  man can't even jog/run through his own neighborhood  without being accosted by the police ("Black man on foot in the neighborhood!). 

Isolated incidents? I am afraid not. The narrative could go on and on with other incidents added. The illustrative incidents do not matter a much as  the facts that  the incidents themselves are common to the experience of  growing up black in America. That will not change until all people are willing to face the fact that there is something inherently wrong  when a nearly 30 year old man (over 200 lbs.)  carrying a concealed weapon can use that weapon to shoot and kill a not quite 17 year old child (nearly 50 lbs. lighter) and get away with it.  Was the "not guilty" verdict a surprise to black families in America? Unfortunately not. We desperately  wanted to be surprised  and even a watered down "guilty" verdict would have been a surprise.....but reality struck once again....no surprise.

Reminds me of a conversation I engaged in years ago with a man I consider  a friend. We were discussing an incident when a young cop  (mid-twenty age group) had manipulated  situations with the intention of making himself  look competent.  His last "victim" was a member of a black family in the community and the young man stretched the truth (lied)  about the situation.  His stretched truth unraveled rapidly and hit the community grapevine within the hour.  Was the young man an overt racist? Don't know. What I do know is that he thought he had picked a safe "victim" and the so-called "arrest" would enhance his self-view as a "competent" officer of the law.  He assumed (wrongly) prejudice aimed at his "victim" would automatically shift "public opinion"  in his favor. In less than 24 hours...his whole scenario had collapsed and the small  town he  worked in could have been  facing a major lawsuit....which they would have lost. The young man's error was that the racial stereotype that he thought would play in his favor....boomeranged back on him costing him a job.

Playing to  stereotypes might not be an  indicator of overt racism..but when allowed to fester and grow can become the seeds of bigotry. As a nation the seeds of stereotypical assumptions and behaviors  should be targeted for elimination from our collective psyche.