Let me tell you about my neighborhood to our right was the Winters, the
biker family, the Baskings, the hippie family, I mean wicked professional old
school hippie) had a daughter Andrea she had long golden brown hair and a
gentle tan all the time we used to spent afternoons in the vacant lot next to
the Jehovah-witness family who lived on the corner, chasing butterflies as a
kid. I mean you could get all the butterflies, grass hoppers, beetles,
centipedes, and other insects, back then in this little vacant lot was a gold
mine of life in the 70’s. Next to the lot was Miss Tacoma and next to her the
one middle class Afro-American family that was in our neighborhood. Across the
street was Jacquie
Park complete with slide,
swings, sandbox, merry-go-round, baseball diamond where the neighborhood would
gather every Sunday to play softball leading into a vast field bordered by
trees and a covered open air log pavilion. A great deal of my childhood would
be played out in this park. At the other corner of the park was the Ryan
family. Philip Ryan was the youngest of twelve children and I could say my best
friend from the ages of five to twelve. Two doors down from him was Curt and
Cindy Sindilars house.
The block I lived on was large with many a
deep back yard and to the left of our house was the Beaches; Chris was the
elder son, three years ahead of me and, later twins girls were born when I was
eleven. The next house was a big old southern style house where my house was tall
this one was wide and took the whole corner bordering Baltimore Avenue. Across the street was
the Campanulas’ who had a daughter named Lynn;
her best friend Marty who lived down the block was always at her side. Baltimore Avenue
was a steep hill going down for almost two city blocks ending in a small
triangle.
The Mitchell family lived at the top. I was
told to stay away from this family for their father by no means tolerated
“Blacks”. I remember one instance of my father flexing his verbal muscle when Mr.
Mitchell decided to verbally remark that he didn’t want a little nigger
climbing his fence and falling into his yard. Dad could get riled sometimes; it
was something to see. He would start talking with his hands while going back
and forth and reading it to someone. Considering he is a very amiable and
pleasant man on most occasions and not very intimidating to other men Mr.
Mitchell jaw went slack when my Dad fired a volley of “You betters” and “Who do
you think you are talking to” over the fence. It was pure poetry. The Mitchell
boys managed to even the score with me in several ways that weren’t overtly
violent, but still managed to get me hurt on many occasions. Their father had
told them in no uncertain terms not to put hands on me, yet they would often
find some sinister way of getting me to do myself in. My very first bike was a
“Bus” with three speeds. A couple of local kids had set up a bike jump with a
cinder block underneath it for a base. I came to play and thought that it would
be cool to try the jump. Little did I know that the boys were setting up the
ramp with the cinder block turned on its side; as soon as my front tire hit the
ramp the cinder block fell and so did I. I ran home crying not the first time
not the last.
As we go down the steep hill Jared
lived on the right ½ down and next to his house was the “Halloween” house which
got its name by the vast amount of ghosts, ghouls and creepy critters that they
portrayed every year once even making the local news with their two kids who
were a few years older than me. At the bottom of the hill around the triangle
lived several families one of which was the Scott family with several kids who
lived next to the Japanese family who had a son my age. I remember this kid had
so many toys he had a separate room just for them. I was watched by the Scott
family for a short time while my parents were both working one summer. The
Scott family children were also told by their father right in front of me that
racial slurs would not be tolerated. This instance came after a fight with
their Kevin and his friend David Lazon. David had come from another part of
town a half mile away to beat me up. All the kids in this part of the
neighborhood were around us yelling and egging him on and throwing around the
nigger word. After I fought both boys and was beaten up pretty well, again I
went crying home to Dad. I had to wait for him to get home for some time. He
took me back down the street to the Scotts house, and went inside alone. He
came back out and we went home. I went back to the Scotts the next day. I was
brought into the house, and Mr. Scott an x marine who I saw only at night was
waiting for me with all his kids. He had taken the morning off work and he was
mad. He blew his top right there in the living room and told his kids how
allowing racial slurs and out right prejudice was an evil that no respectable
catholic and a Scott would allow, and it was his responsibility to care for me
while in his charge. Mr. Scott and my father were very well respected in the Catholic
community and the neighborhood. This still did not stop the fights. That was
the way of suburbia around Washington
D.C. The Greasers and the Black
gangs still had rumbles, but that to would soon stop.
The 70’s had a very special feeling. The racial
tension was slowly evaporating and a new sharing of cultures and tolerance of
different religions and lifestyles were beginning to remake the American
suburb. I became a catalyst for change and also of strife in this tight nit
community. A community where the white children played together and parents
shared their views over fences and from porches as we all new each other,
whether their religions or beliefs differed. You may think big deal; it was
after two decades of violence and hate the District of Columbia was still recovering
from the riots that tore the city apart. The final rebuilding of the city would
not happen until twenty years hence.
We
had several house keeper whose job it was to watch me during the time both my
parents worked. I remember how proud the African American “Mammies” would be
watching me, for in me they saw their future and hopes. I had all the gifts
that a white professional household could provide many that Black professional
families could not attain even though they had as much money the power of white
parents far superseded that of money or professional status. The racial
equality had been made law that law had not made its mark on the American
people other that in the way of public institutions. The racial communities still gathered
together, in neighborhoods, in churches, and in social surroundings and in
standings among one another. I had chance to read Chaos and Community by Dr.
King. In this book written before the racial integration revolution and civil
rights battles had begun spoke of a community that had within its self a way of
thinking that removed its own self from the American public with its own
internal handicaps and fears. The fact that within twenty years the next
generation that would be the receivers of the social and civil revolutions
fruits made the interim time a place of great hope as the parents and players
of that era looked for their new leaders in the young children who were raised
in select social arenas. I was one of those children.
The problem in my
case was I had no idea about that hope and could be a little stinker. I got one
maid fired because while she had stopped vacuuming to watch her soaps, she had
left the vacuum out and I wanted to see how it worked, so naturally I got my
hands on a screw driver and took it apart. Exit one maid; the next made it for
one day. I had convinced her that my parents let me eat lunch on the roof, just
the porch roof about twenty feet up, yet enough to get her fired toot sweet.
The housekeeper that stuck was Philippe she came from the islands, and did not
put up with any bull from me. I tried her once, just once, she had me sitting
in a chair. I was told, “You sit right there until your father get’s home.” I
was scared and crying. Then just short of my dad getting home Philippe and I
came to an understanding. I whole heartedly agreed to not cause her any
trouble. Case and point don’t cross Latin women. During the summer months I
would have to tell her where I would be playing. It started with reasonably
precise locations like Jacquie
Park, the triangle at the
bottom of Baltimore Street,
or the Ryan’s house. Then I t moved to one side of the house or the other;
Philippi knew my hang outs pretty well and by the end of the summer I would
check in with her, for I still held her in reverence and say both sides of the
house.
Philip Ryan was my
closest friend and the goofiest by far. We would send time playing football
with Brian and Mike who would always team up against Philip and me. There was a
lot of pitching back when it’s two against two, with a permanent quarter back.
Philip ran like a duck with big ears bobbing back and forth on his feet which
kind of swiveled under him as he ran. We had a paper route, The Evening Star,
for a while until we goofed off to much. Philip took over after school when we
were in St. Michaels he was one year a head of me. I would steal one of his
papers almost daily for a while until Mr. Ryan called my dad, and he would
chase me through the park yelling, “You’re being completely unreasonable!” I
would laugh so hard when I looked back I would fall over in convulsions of
hysterical laughter. The Ryan family was the only group of people who would
call me Johnny which I received as a term of endearment. Mrs. Ryan undertook my
overseeing during a few months of my kindergarten year. She would be waiting at
the large dinning room table for me to get off the bus at noon everyday were
she would ask me about my day and then feed me a bowl of tomato soup and a
grilled cheese. I would be instructed to play or do my homework until later
when Philip got home, or go across the street to Jacquie Park.
Kitty the family dog would be wandering around and I would sit pat her for a
while. I always thought went adults said pet the dog they meant “pat” so that’s
what I did. That dog used to roam all over town she would be seen behind the
junior high on Piney Branch, on the streets of Takoma Park, or clicking her
tiny claws along Fenton Avenue in down town Silver Spring. She was a strange
looking dog kind of barrel like body short haired and white with brown and
black spots with little tiny skinny legs ending in long toes with nails that
clicked with every step she took. She began getting tumors at the age of
eighteen and it was one of these that could not be removed that eventually cut
off her wind pipe and began to slowly suffocate her until her death at twenty
two years of age. If you do the math that’s 154 in dog years, by then she was a
pariah of the community and a small article made the paper with a picture of
her walking because that’s what she did. Poor Philip was heart broken for
awhile.
We spent untold
hours in the park swinging on the swings. First we had to put our bellies on
the saddle and push ourselves up into the air, for we were too small to get the
big chain swings to swing, and the short ones still had wood boards encased in
steel straps all in all at forty to fifty pounds a kid just can’t rightly build
the momentum needed with knobby knees and spindly arms. Then one day after I
crested fifty pounds and Philip had learned how to swing standing up from his
sister he showed me. Philip and all his goofiness was fearless when it came to
games of play, and therefore could share whart he learned with me which I could
soon master and we would share our new game for hours on end. That’s how I
learned to swing, standing up. You see, you climb up into the swing and start
pumping the swing by crouching and pushing out until you got it going on a good
pendulum then just drop straight down sliding your hands on the chains until
your butt goes slap into the seat. Sounds scary but God sets thing up for
children that often follow the laws of physics, which I’m sure mothers all over
the world appreciate cause the species would have died out long ago. We spent
weeks in those swings, flying our star ships through space naming the planets
hitting the bumps as we passed planets and ran into the meteor belt eventually
reaching the sun and coming back home before the street lights went on. One
clear day we were practicing hitting our ejection seats at low levels and
Philip says, “If you jump from the highest point I’ll give you a whole dollar”
I said, “Really?”
He replied, “A
whole dollar”. Cause a dollar could buy five candy bars back then.
I revved up my
ship and took off just, and just as I left the earths gravity I pulled the
ejection lever. I flew. My feet landed first right next to the big slide. My
legs attempted to work and then said I quit as they buckled. The feet were
holding fast and yelling at the legs the knees replied to the feet and said,
“Abort! Abort!” but it was too late for the rest of the body had caught up and
passed the knees head first. Bam! The
nose said, “What did I do?” The momentum of the flight after ejection had
crumpled my little body beyond the point of my legs and even arms to withhold
the impact and my head still being the heaviest and highest point on my body
decided that the nose was to blame. Philip never paid me the dollar. O yeah and
I ran home crying.
I could run a
theme on that action, running home crying. The boys had beaten me up in the
park again. I ran home crying. A group of black kids came across the bridge and
since I wasn’t white, for they could get in big trouble beating up a white kid
and I was half black living in a white household they could beat me up. I ran
home crying. Brian and Mike knocked me off my bike and began breaking the
spokes out of it, just out of pure maliciousness: I ran home crying. The kids
even got the one Japanese kid in the neighbor hood to beat me up. I was never
the husband in house, not even if we were playing toy cars and the cars had
girl friends, my car always was alone. I didn’t understand hate. My father had
drilled into me that peace and love, friendship and acts of goodness, and the
way of equality that I could be anything I wanted. I saw how strongly he stood
on these principles, and it was reflected in the teachers I learned from, and
the adult friends that saw in me as person not a second class citizen, so the
fact that other parent’s white and black still taught their children prejudice
views and the views were reflected on me was beyond my understanding. Dad said,
“Always walk away from fights” So I did. I just didn’t understand why I was so
hated, and not accepted. It became part of who I was. I told people I was ugly.
I wanted straight hair. I wanted my legs to turn out cause Dad said I walked
pigeon toed and would yell at me for not walking with my feet pointed out. The
media told me I should be white, all the hero’s were white, all the cartoons
were white, even Jesus was white. Most people in any job I saw that was
respected were white and those few blacks Americans that had risen to a place
in community were definitely not half black and white they were just black, and
I never got to see them on my part of town. The Black people I knew were still
fighting for equal placement, and their children were still street urchins.
White was right and might. The names started zebra, Oreo, salt and pepper,
skunk, half bread, zebra that got used that a lot, news paper, passing, high
yellow, red bone and of course the ever popular nigger.
There were a lot
of people who came to the park some were nice others mean and others just evil.
Some people have asked why I never really dated Afro-American women; no disrespect
ladies, it’s the scent. They say memories are locked into scents. Afro-American
people have a very specific scent. I was about six when this black man came to
the park, and became my friend for the day. I was easy pickings for a predator;
for, anyone who watched long enough could tell I just wanted to have friends.
It took him about an hour to take me across the street and into the bushes
between Harriet Tacoma’s house and the vacant field next to Jared’s house. He
made me go down on him, after first pleading then threatening me. I would suck
his dick for a while and then try to stop. Then he would grab me by the waist
and suck mine for a while until he wanted attention for a while. This went on
for a few hours. I have never been able to get the scent, and that mixture of
feeling out of my head. I had dreams about Afro-American men forcing sex on me
I kill them in my dream.
My first dog met
me at the park his name was Twinkles. I met him while playing in the sand box
at the base of the big slide. We played all day, and I didn’t get sick. You see
when I was young I was allergic to grass, trees, pollen, smoke, rubber tennis
shoes, chocolate, bananas, milk, and the dander and hair off of any shedding
animal. Twinkles was a poodle and just a stray. Bands of roving dogs used to
run in D.C. some were wild and dangerous others just wanted a meal and a place
to be. We played all day he would come to me when the other kids called him. I
still had my bus bike, and tried to get him to follow me home, and then I tried
to drive him home by running my bike at him. He wouldn’t go and I rode my bike
home crying. At eight o’clock there was a scratching at the door. It was
Twinkles he had followed me my scent. My dad opened the door and said, “O my!”
and sort of chuckled. It was his way of being surprised about something that
made me happy. I looked at my dad and asked, “Can I keep him?”
He replied, “We
will see in the morning.” We feed him some bread and milk and shut the door. I
didn’t cry I just went to bed happy. The next morning we opened the door and
Twinkles lifted his head off his paws and looked at me as if to say, “We play?”
His name should have been puddles, for we had to put him in the kitchen at
night and like clock work every morning he would have a big puddle of yellow
pee waiting for my mom.
In third grade you
were considered able to fight, this did not matter whether you wanted to or not
so if you are a kid getting suckered punched or ran away with your hands over
your head crying, “No no!” as you ran in whatever direction that gave the
quickest escape. Yep that was me for the first and second grades, most of the time.
By 1975 a school wide fight for the third and fourth grades was on during the
Spring, and I was on the ticket, everybody was girls and boys, but mostly the
boys fought. All the boys had a fight because somebody had to win. When my turn
to fight came I went in flailing my arms because I had no idea how to fight
what I did know was all the boys who ran away this time were labeled chickens
in front of the whole school. I had enough problems with out that added to the
mix. Bing Bang Bomb the fight was over and I had a fat lip. The two who finally
won were two black kids a short stocky boy who punched from the floor and this
tall lanky girl who was death from above. I remember how distinctly she had her
pinkies out as her fists were raised above her shoulders and her long legs
would help with her long reach as she dropped bombs against her assailant as he
came in. The little black boy didn’t want to fight the girl but she has beaten two
boys to get to this fight, and a girl deserved the title if she passed one more
boy. The yells and cries of the group circled around the two fighters as the
throng of kids of egged each fighter forward. When came in he; he got closer and closer
every time with every forward attack being met with blows upon his head and
arms, until he catches her in a sideways motion and connects with her cheek.
The fighters pause; the kids in a circle now a frenzy of movement and screams.
The boy comes in again, slowly driving his fists and head forward, not allowing
for side ways movement. The girls feigns to one side raining down blows and
keeping herself from the dreaded close encounter, yet he doesn’t back off and
follows through catching her in the temple. She stagers and the crowd went
quiet. One voice then two yell out, “You can take him” the girls egg her on
into one more melee. She changes her tactics and charges forward raining down
blows pinkies tucked. He has been waiting for this, and lays an upper cut into
her jaw. The girl falters, covers her head as he applies a few more punches as
if to say, “Give up.” The fight is over. The rest of the children walk away
some with the two fighters, others in groups chattering about the fight they
have just seen, I was alone and quiet during the fight and that’s how I walked
home.
I remember when I
learned to read in the second grade. It just sort of clicked one day, and the
whole world of books opened up to me. I moved my seat next to the book shelf,
so I could read all day long. I no longer listened to the teacher or followed
the class work. Every once in a while I would pop my hand up into the air. The
teacher would call on me to answer the question posed to the class. I would in
return ask my own question, “What does this word mean?” The teacher would sort
of look at me with a strange curious look and then drop her shoulders in way of
defeat, and come over to answer my question. I would reply, “Okay, Thank you”
and go back to reading. This lasted for two months until my parents were
informed during a parent teacher meeting of my rebellious activity. Again I
have been labeled. My parents thought my reading was cool but, had capitulated
my need to pay attention in class. In way of curbing my chaotic activity I was
taken to the Takoma library and set loose on the children section of books.
I made it to the fourth grade at Takoma Middle
School on Maple Ave. Maple Avenue was were the
small amount of apartment buildings that were built in Takoma Park were built. Takoma Park was split by Montgomery
County and Prince Georges
County to the south. Montgomery County
heralding one of the five richest county’s in America
lay in juxta position to Prince Georges County
which was full of vast sweeping projects full of the minority races, whether
they be black, Hispanic, Central American or Porto Rican, or any other European
or Mediterranean descendants they were a rich
conglomerate of poor peoples. The small area on Maple Avenue was the small representation
of those minorities and far from my house as a small boy. It was here that a
boy began to grow up.
We had to switch
classes in Takoma middle school after our homeroom class where we learned the
three “R”s the school even taught Science, Swimming the school had an
underground swimming pool and, Wood Shop run by Mr. Patty who everybody knew by
the Patty Wagon a blue School bus with two eyes and a smile painted on the
lights and grill. One day Mr. Patty was not there and a Substitute took over
the class. Until the class took over the woodshop; I was there that day and can
tell first hand of the wanton and rebellious spirit that griped the Fourth
grade third period class. It stared almost instantly as the bell rang and we
settled into the daily role. There was a stir in the air that bode of
maliciousness a chaotic malevolence of wild thoughts that soon would be turned
loose. Kids can smell fear. That’s how it started off, one of the real wild
boys started pushing the envelope of common decency as in way of testing the boundaries
of acceptable behavior. When no recourse occurred the template was made for the
rest of period three. Saws began tearing into the carefully worked projects,
drills routed out the table, I took a file and pounded my vice sending pieces
of file steel flying across the room in all directions. Other kids were
planning a direct attack on the Substitute by way of getting one of their
fellow conspirators a talk in the hallway. The poor indefensible man, who just
was willing to try anything to reach the kids in his charge, fell hook, line,
and sinker for the bait. As soon as the boy got the Substitute out of the door
he reversed running back into the room and grabbing the door knob and pulling
the door closed behind him. This was a daring deed of rebellion that left the
rest of us boys stunned into non-action. We stood spell bound by the action
unfolding in front of us. Some boys chose their own way of dealing with the
lack of structure for it triggered a deep fear of loss of control and they
attacked their work often with stern words and ridged back. I just watched. I
remember looking around at the different boys and the individual hells that
each of them portrayed. It was a bizarre spectacle. I watched transfixed. The
Substitute finally won the battle with the four boys who struggled to keep the
door shut, and when he got it opened they scattered into the room. He stood there
just inside the door with a look of total shock and defeat on his face. The few
boys who would have been easily controlled by any teacher found this even more
horrifying than the attack by their fellow students and some began to cry. The
bell range and the next class began to filter into the room. The information of
the Substitutes harassment reached their ears and we found out the next day the
fourth period class made the third period class look like choirboys.
The next day all
the fourth and fifth grades were called to a special assembly. We were all sat
down on the floor in the large room. In the front center of the room lay a
large wooden topped desk with steel sides and legs. Mr. Patty came into the
room with a large hammer. He stood behind the desk and looked at the whole
class for a long minuet. He picked up the hammer into his hand. A thick large
fingered hand at the end of a powerful arm. Most kids see their father’s arms
and Mr. Pattie’s arms in contrast had been conditioned and under the skin was a
muscular set of pistons, one of which now held the hammer in this hand. The
hammer was a large weighted hammer with a heavy rubber head. “Bam!” the first
impact on the desk shook the whole room and every student jumped, every student.
The next part was just sheer power, a demonstration of power as the hammer
pounded on the desk. With each pound you could here gasps from around the room
and the cracking of the desk as the hammer attacked it. Mr. Patty’s arm drove
the hammer down on the desk in a fury never seen by any of the horrified
onlookers. The kids up front backed up away from the noise, the violence, Mr.
Patty. The desk too movement broke in half with a huge whole in the center. The
steel legs and side were buckled and the drawers lay partway out in disarray
from the attack.
Then three more
blows with words to match “How!” “Dare!” “You?”
Silence shook the
room with small stirrings of children as they flinched around the room
accompanied. He began his verbal representation of the laws we had broke and
how the whole school was to blame giving a long list of our infractions, and
ending with a punishment. The whole school went on lock down. For an entire
month no group of students was allowed to break lock down rules. No talking to
other students. No, not following directions. No movement unless with a teacher.
The students who would not follow lockdown rules were quickly put in, in school
detention. The classes were suddenly cut down in size by 25% as kids break the
rules. The final core of the children who remained I was one of. The teaching
continued. If you may wonder where all the other students went all you had to
do was break the rules once and get caught I got caught near the end of week
two for talking. Keeping me quiet for two weeks is a trick. I was shuttled off
to one of the in school detention class rooms. I looked at what the other side
was. It was lockdown with no class, no teaching, and only one thing could
change it the students want to learn again. I didn’t like it one bit, not at
all, and after six hours in lock down I was ready to go back to class. The most
terrifying part of this lockdown status was the help the school enlisted,
parents; students’ parents now walked the halls and ran the detention rooms.
Can you imagine? Getting in trouble and winding up in front of you mom or dad
who had every right to punish you anyway they wanted which included spankings
in front of the whole class. It was amazing the way the whole community stepped
forward to help in the middle school. In one month most of the classes were
full again and things went back to a semi-lockdown condition. The students were
never allowed the freedom that they once held.
The school still
held a heavy penalty for fighting and this I knew, so when David Lazon stated
calling me names in class I returned the insults. I was a bit of a stinker at
times and would push the issue. I did not realize that racial insults were
becoming a taboo I still wanted to be white. Besides being a stinker I was a
full blown clucking around the barnyard chicken so, when it came to fighting
mostly I was the kid going, “No no” “Help” “Help” Today I had been a stinker
and David said he was going to beat me up after school. I was scared and crying
hanging out on the corner hiding behind the crossing guard, and she knew it.
Every time kids would build up on the corner she would get out into traffic on
the next light and cross with the kids. So back and forth I went with David
right with me. Then the crossing guard questioned me for awhile about my
clinging behavior and quickly saw the results of a child who was scared of a
fight, and was using her as a barrier by following her back and forth across
the street. That she wasn’t going to have so when an opportunity came to cross
again she took it and told me to stay on the side she was leaving. David had
been waiting for his opening and now that it presented its self he began to
take off his jacket. After watching the “Happy days” episode where Ritchie had
to fight and learned the dirty trick of attacking while the guy takes off his
jacket. I charged flailing my arms. I agree this is still one of the worst ways
to enter in to a fight, but I didn’t know how to fight. He quickly slipped into
the coat and met my charge. We twisted and turned on the ground and somehow I
got back on my feet. And zoom I was out of there like a chicken flying the
coop.
I wasn’t scared of
everything. I was pretty daring when it came to climbing, and could scale
almost anything once I got my hands on it. Philip Ryan and I once spent all
afternoon getting on top of the brick building at Jacquie Park.
Jared and I made the tricky climb to the top of the log cabin one Saturday. We
decided it would be fun to slide down the green roof, so we climbed to the top
and down we went on our buts. We made three slides before the itching began.
You see we were sliding down a roof made of fiber glass slates and by the third
slide our buts reached a level of itchiness that rivaled any thing imaginable.
We began screaming and jumping up and down on the roofs edge. My mind decided
after a prompt yelling at by the skin surrounding my butt, “No time to be
careful and climb down. Jump you fool. Jump” Jared and I bounded off the roof
and into the grass, and we took off across the field high stepping and crying
holding our butts as we ran scratching like mad monkeys with lice. Jared had
less ground to cover and I saw him shoot into his house screaming and jumping
up and down. The fear of my butt’s reprisals drove me to new speeds and my
knees took it upon them selves to continue my high stepping run down the sidewalk
on Takoma Avenue.
I reached my house and danced in front of my mother while trying to tell her why
I had both my hands down the back of my pants, and tears streaming out of my
eyes. Mom’s eyes got real big when I told her what Jared and I had been up to.
She called Jared’s mom and found he was already heading into an Epsom salt bath
which would pull the shards of fiber glass out of his bum, and soon I was in my
own bath getting my bum worked over by the soothing Epsom salts.
In the fourth
grade I had what could be considered a doppelganger his name was Patrick Ramon
and his skin color was close to mine and so was his hair. His Parents both
black were from France
and he spoke perfect French, yet he was lighter than any of his siblings. We
would often were the same clothes a red and navy blue shirt with a white collar
popular at the time and blue jeans. The teachers would often confuse us, for I
was the only mulloto student in the school. I took great comfort in this for I
found a kindred spirit. We became close and I would visit his house on
weekends. One day I went to his house knowing that I was supposed to go home
first before playing at a friend’s house. We played and I felt a certain
gleeful wild abandon knowing I was breaking the rules, and put the reprisal
from my father out of my mind until.. I had to call home at the direction at
Mrs. Ramon. I called my Dad and told him where I was. I was in big trouble. My
Dad yelled, “Now you come home right now!” I started running home thinking that
my speed could curb the spanking I was heading for, but as in show of the dreaded
admonishment I cried all the way home. As I reached the yard my father was
waiting at the front door. He said, “You’re getting a spanking. Now go to your
room.” This tactic scared the hell out of me and I ascended the stairs and went
to my room plopping face down on my bed crying ever the more harder. My father
would soon arrive and deliver a quick fierce spanking. It was the anticipation
of the spanking that left me in a state of terror not so much the punishment.
Such was the corporal relationship that my father laid upon me, the fear of
fear.
One day a boy has
to fight. My day came in the spring of my eight year in fourth grade. I was
playing soccer with a bunch of neighborhood boys in the park when Jon Patrick a
six grade boy knocks me down while we are playing. He was a bully and I was his
target. I was fast and got the ball again and was heading down the field when
Jon comes up behind me and punches me in the back knocking me down. I got up
and ran home crying. I ran to my father and began to tell the story he had herd
to many times at this point. He yelled at me saying, “I tired of you running
home and crying every time some boy wants to bully you.” You have to fight
sometimes, so you go back to the park and fight that boy.” He had a hold of my
arms and shook the words into me as he gave me the directions that he never
before had spoken. Fight, I had to fight. I would guess in retrospect; Joe
Beckwith an Afro-American man who fell in love with my little sister and became
an extension of our family had a talk with my father, and explained that I had
to fight one day. He understood what it was to be black and when my ingrained
“White Privilege” thinking was getting me beat up all the time; I could see him
telling my father that one day I had to fight. I wish I had lessons before my
first one, but it seems going crazy is some form of fighting ability. I ran
back to the park crying all the way. I jumped into the game and right away Jon
tripped me in a dirty move. Slam I hit the ground. I jumped up and a wild
screeching scream issued forth from my grass and dirt stained face. I went
after Jon and took him down pounding and pounding with my little fists. He
rolled me off easily for he was in 6th grade and out weighed me by
30 pounds, and got to his feet. Then I herd my Dad; he had followed me to the
park, “Fight John, fight”. He yelled. I got up and Jon charged me swinging a
hay maker which totally missed. I was fast and could dodge well, and backed up
several feet. Then my Dad got involved; I saw something I had never seen from
him. Rage pure rage. He grabbed Jon by his shirt and pulled him close. His face
was contorted in furry. I can still see it pure as day. He held Jon in front of
his and yelled; “Now you leave my son alone.” All the other kids stood and
stared in disbelief. No father had ever done what he was doing. This support
was like rocket fuel adrenaline to me and I charged forward tackling Jon and we
rolled down the hill by New York
Avenue and stopped by the bushes. I was on top and
flailed my arms down in attack. By this time a large group of kids had joined
the circle of on lookers. I felt some one jump on my back and start pounding
me. It was Jon’s older sister and she began hitting and scratching my back and
neck. “This needs to be a fair fight” I herd Fritz say as he hauled her off my
back and tossed her into the bushes with one hand. Jon was crying and he had
enough, and Dad yelled down from the top of the hill, “John that’s it let him
go” Another boy ran at me and starting swinging. In my lust and loosing of
years of anger from all the beating from both races I fought him to. That fight
was over quick because some kids just don’t want to fight if they might get
hurt. I was ready to fight anybody. One of the boys who lived behind my house
jumped forward and said, “You want to keep fighting, come one lets fight.” This
kid could fight he had been trained so when I went after him with my hands he
danced to the side and punched me in the face twice. I shook my head because
the power of the blows made me see white, and attacked again. He leveled two
more punches on my head and one in my mouth that made me taste blood for it
broke my lips and check. I was done. I backed up and went towards my Dad who
was now standing up the street towards home. We walked back home for a ways in
silence. He stopped and turned towards me gripping my shoulders so I would look
up at him. He stood there for a minute and gazed down at his son. He said, “You
learned two lessons today. Sometimes you have to fight, but as you found out
you can’t fight everybody.” I looked back at him and silently nodded. He looked
at me for a long second. His hair which was usually neatly combed over lay in
disarray across his face his hands lay on my shoulders; he gave a little
squeeze and we turned and walked home in silence.
