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Oct 17th, 2017
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  1. I look around these days and see the calamity that as landed in our laps. Colored folks, white folks, and any other shade of folks really, well, they still fighting like cats and dogs. Now I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s struggles, and I understand that maybe folks, even good folks, might not have the best judgement sometimes. What are these young kids fighting about though? Growing up in rural Alabama was some of the best times in my life. You see growing up in Greenbrier, was simple enough. When you wanted money for soda pop, there were always chores to be done, and when you wanted to go fishing, there was always a creek to walk. Nothing too complicated about that. I grew up with all sorts of people. My mama used to have folks dropping by all the time for her pickled eggs. They say hers was always the best because she put just a little more love in them than other folks. I remember all of these people stopping in, but it hadn’t ever occurred to me we was any different than any of them other folks.
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  3. I grew up about a mile down the road from my best friend Robert. He was colored boy, but I never paid that no mind. I didn’t think there was anything all that different. His was a member of the Whitaker family. Far as I know, his Pa grew up in these parts, and his Pa before him, and his Pa before him. They always treated me real good. Like family. Oh me and ole’ Robert, we got into all sorts of trouble as kids. I remember when we used to always find a way to distract poor Mr. Edson the ice cream man. Boy we’d go in causing such a rucus and the moment we seen Mr. Edson wasn’t watching, well, we’d just grab up whatever ice cream treat we could get our paws on. Looking back, I think Mr. Edson always knew what we were doing, but he loved kids, and I think that was just his way of being nice.
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  5. One day, I remember Robert came to me real upset. He told me someone had beat up his Pa real bad. This was the first time I ever seen some form of racism. Me and Ma went to the county hospital to see Mr. Whitaker, but he didn’t wanna see us. I didn’t know why. Eventually when Robert told me he got out, Ma and me went to go visit the Whitakers. She even brought some of her famous pickled eggs. Robert greeted us at the door, but something was wrong. He told me they didn’t wanna see us. He told me, we weren’t allowed to be friends anymore. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me by a mule. My Ma knew a little something about how I felt I imagine, because she grabbed my hand tight and smiled at me, and told me it was going to be alright. Robert’s family would eventually move away a few months later. I remember it was some of the most lonely times.
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  7. In nineteen sixty one, I started high school. Everything seemed a lot bigger than my little school. I remember the first time I went to the drinking fountain, I seen they had two different ones. One for the white folks, and one for the colored folks. That didn’t make a damn lick of sense to me. Seemed like kind of a waste of a good water fountain. They could have put that extra one somewhere else for people to enjoy. I tried not to think too much about though. Classes were tough, but they were fun. I noticed though in all of my classes, the ones with the other colored kids often had us sitting in separated sides of the room. Mrs. Greenly, she was nice enough. I think she didn’t like the seating arrangements much none, but I get the feeling she didn’t have much of a choice.
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  9. One day during lunch, I went on over to the drinking fountains. I had just lowered my head down to take a sip when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a colored boy just sitting there staring. I didn’t understand, but then I decided to push the button on the colored fountain. It wasn’t working, and I’d gather there weren’t gonna be anyone in a rush to fix it. I looked at him and told him to come on and grab a drink from this other fountain. I seen fear creep into that young man’s eyes. I told him that it wasn’t no big deal. So he walked over slowly, crept in, and took a drink, and then the whole cafeteria fell silent. I looked back and yelled at them “What you all looking at!” The boy quickly ran away, and as it turns out, my Ma was called in to the school. Apparently letting that colored boy drink from the other fountain was a serious deal, and they suspended me. My Ma nodded her head at the principal, but she ever once stopped smiling at me. That was all I needed to see to know I was doing the right thing. God didn’t discriminate, why should we?
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  17. It was so damn hot outside! Why is it every single solitary time my lawn mower breaks down, it is always on the hottest day of the year! “I’m cursed!” I thought. I had decided to have the bright idea, that I would let the grass grow out a little bit. A week would go by, and each time it did, I would ask myself the same question. “Do I really need to mow it today?” Well each weekend the answer was always the same, nope, not today! This was until I started looking around at all of the other fresh cut lawns. You know the type. The Mr. I gotta cut my grass every 3 days type of lawn. So after one too many rude stares from the neighborhood, I decided this would be the weekend I finally did something about this.
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  19. Oh boy, my intentions were good. I tussled out to the shed wading through what seemed like waist high grass. There was the old rust monster, sitting idle, ready to teach this grass a lesson. The old beauty was getting on up there in age. It was my Dad’s old mower. I’m pretty sure this thing has seen more presidents than I have. So I cleared the way, dragged the mower on out and fired her up. “Come on now, don’t me shy” I thought as my arms grew more and more heavy with each failed attempt to start the mower. After about ten minutes I realized something was wrong. I’m a guy though, so I figure I know what a spark plug is! I can fix this. So I turn the old orange grass whacker on its side and do a little diagnosing.
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  21. It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t really know what I was doing wrong. I turned to the internet for advice, and before you judge me, let anyone who doesn’t do that, cast the first stone. So after I jotted down a novel worth of possibilities, it was off to the local parts store. Now mind you, this seemed almost like some proverbial gauntlet had been thrown down, so I spared no expensive. Spark plugs, plug wires, primer switch, etc. anything I thought I could replace. I arrived home to find the mower where I had left it. I assembled my tools and supplies and began trying to save the life of this dear machine.
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  23. I smashed my fingers, cut my hands, and even got oil in my eyes, everything short of doing anything that resembled fixing it. Oh I didn’t give up easy, but after hours of me thinking I could fix it seemed like hubris. So I tried to start it. Nothing. Again I pulled. Nothing. Once more, twice, thrice, until there was nothing left to do. At that point I did what anyone in my position would do, I kicked it, hit it with my wrench, and kicked it some more. I even picked it up and threw it a few feet at once point. It was much heavier than it looked. In the end, the jig was up and it was time to call it quits.
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  25. I had already decided it was time to go in. The sun had already begun to set. I could smell the roast coming from the open window and made peace with the situation. So, I started to drag the lifeless pile of junk back to the shed. When I arrived, I decided what the hell, why not give it one more tug for good measure. So I reared back and got ready to rip the cord. It was sort of like checking under the bed one last time for monsters. You knew nothing was there, but just to be safe. So I pulled, with everything I had one more time. The smoke billowed and hit me in the face like bar lounge. For whatever reason it had come to life! Quickly! I thought. I hit the yard with the seriousness of a pro athlete. I would finish this lawn. I burst into the yard, the grass flying everywhere. I made it through about two laps around the yard and then the mower blew up. Quite literally. I watched the fire burn on the engine block of the mower. In a way it was like saying goodbye. It wanted to go out fighting, and I could respect that.
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  32. When I was little my Dad used to take me fishing sometimes. We didn’t always spend a lot of time together, but when we did, we liked to go fishing. I remember how frustrating it must have been in the beginning when he first started taking me. I always had trouble climbing hills as a little guy. I always got my clothes caught on barbed wire fences we’d cross, and more than anything, I always seemed to get my hook caught on something or my line tangled up. As the years went on, I eventually started picking up the craft, and before I knew it, I could actually call myself a decent fisherman. Now it may seem complicated when you first look at it, and people who are good at it make it look so easy that you feel like you can jump right in. I promise though it takes practice, but anyone can do it.
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  34. The first thing I learned was how to keep a tackle box. Now you see, this tackle box is your life line. You keep your hooks in there, you keep your bait and tackle, you keep your line, and there are a lot of other handy things to have in there like pliers and a knife of some sort. Knowing what you should put into your tackle box can seem difficult, but you have options! You can either figure out what kind of areas you will be fishing most of the time, and with a little research you can stock the right kind of baits. If you are like me though and you aren’t sure where you might fish, then you can stock a large variety of baits in your box so you can be ready anywhere.
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  36. The next thing you gotta know is how to thread your line and how to tie your hook on. You get this thing on the fishing pole called a reel. Now the reel is what helps give you the traction to bring the fish in when you crank the handle. We wind our fishing line up inside of that reel. After that we need to tie the hook. Now my Daddy taught me something called a figure eight twist tie. Basically, you form a loop with your fingers and twist like a bread tie. After 8 twist you can lace the line around and back through the hoop making a knot. This will secure your line and let you add weights and bait.
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  38. Now one of the most important things is knowing how to bait your own hook. Some artificial baits are fine, and a better choice for you squeamish people. Me on the other hand, I think it’s hard to beat good live worms. You take the worm, and hold it firm on one end. Then you can just jab the hook in. Now you don’t want your hook showing, so you gotta push the worm on the hook slowly and carefully so the hook doesn’t burst out of the skin. When you do it right the worm will look almost like the hook is wearing a sweater. It takes some getting used too. The worms like to squirm around, and you do get some worm guts on you, but that is why keeping a rag in your tackle box is a good idea.
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  40. Finally, you get to the fishing. Now you push the button on the reel to release your line. After you cast your line out you want too slowly reel the line in so there isn’t any slack on your line. If you can aim for rocks or brush areas in the water those are great spots, but make sure not to get your line tangled! When you get a bite you make sure the fish takes it a bit and then when you are sure he has it, you yank on back on that fishing pole and reel that sucker in. You follow those easy instructions and you’ll be hosting a fish fry in no time at all.
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  48. For a while I did some work at construction sites cleaning up sheet rock from freshly walled homes and apartments. I worked with a guy named Randy Call. Now Randy knew he was pretty much the only game in town, so the prices he was willing to pay wasn’t extremely high, but it was fair enough I suppose. These houses could be anywhere in the tri-state area and naturally we’d have to drive there on our dime, which just cut into our pay check that much more. Now, our job was important because they couldn’t lay the carpet without us cleaning it out, so we often had to rush.
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  50. We did some houses up in southern Missouri. The drive felt so much longer than It probably actually was when we drove in that death trap truck. We hauled our own sixteen foot trailer around to store all the sheet rock scraps in. When we arrived, we pulled out the tools we needed. Industrial brooms, metal edging tools, and our wheel barrels. We had gotten pretty good at the jobs at this point.
  51. Inside these houses the sheet rock scrap wasn’t piled up in the central room like we had hoped. Inside it was everywhere. Inside every room, every closet, and even the bathtubs. We’d dealt with this before, but it was always a bit of a hassle. So, we started by taking all of the biggest pieces out first. Anything too big to sweep we loaded on the wheel barrel. We’d often over stack the wheel barrel and tag team it down the wood ramp to the trailer to reduce the number of trips it would take. Once we got all of the biggest stuff out of the way we would carry any whole pieces to the garage as well as any leftover cement mix boxes.
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  53. Once the big pieces were all picked up and all of the cement and whole sheets were hauled out into the garage, we could move on to sweeping. We had what you would call an industrial broom. It was the kind of broom that has the really large width, as opposed to the normal plain brooms you would have at home. We would use these to sweep out every room and closet. Each room we cleared, we would sweep the mess to the garage. That was where we would always pile everything for trash pick-up. After the sweeping was done, we run the metal edging tool along the bottom of the wall to get any loose pieces that might be stuck.
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  55. When houses were finally all clear and clean, we would load our tools back up and secure our trailer. It was a homemade trailer with high walls, but we found we often overpacked it. Once we had the tarp on and everything was locked down, we could go home or we could head on over to the landfill where we dumped our sheet rock scraps. We didn’t go to any public facility. We had made a deal with a man with a backhoe, so he dug out his own large pit on his property and we would pay him a fee each week to let us dump there. I would see other trucks doing the same job as us pulling in to unload. They had those fancy hydraulic lifts on the trailer. Push one button and your trailer was empty. We didn’t have that. For us we had to do it all by hand. On days where it rained and got the sheet rock all wet, those days were miserable. When we finished up though, we could rest easy while we eagerly awaited our next call for work.
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  63. Today was a day like any other. My alarm blasted and assaulted my senses. Five thirty in the morning. Who gets up that early? I guess apparently, I do. I have to wake my kids up in an hour for school. I need to get ready for work. Sure, none of this sounds like much fun, but the one silver lining is getting to sit down with my favorite bowl of cereal. There is this odd type of cereal I get that taste a lot like smores. I loved smores as a kid growing up and so this cereal seemed like a logical choice. Ever since the first time I took the first bite I knew I was hooked. Eventually the thought of having that bowl of cereal each morning became what got me through these early mornings.
  64. “Wake up kids!” as I rushed frantically to ensure I would have enough time to sit down and enjoy my bowl of cereal. Waking my children up was no easy task mind you. Every morning it was a chess match between how hard I was willing to push, and how stubborn they were willing to be. Usually the stalemate ended when I went to get a jug of cold water, but they had started to call my bluff here recently so sometimes I’d have to get more creative. Eventually everyone would get up and I could get ready.
  65. Getting ready for work was simple enough. I’d jump into the shower and for some reason always liked starting by brushing my teeth. I thought maybe I was weird for brushing my teeth in the shower, but as it turns out, quite a few people do that. After I brushed my teeth, I’d wash my hair with this great two in one shampoo and conditioner combo. Every time I use it, I feel like I’m cheating on time somehow. Conditioner always seems to take forever to rinse out, so having this lets me skip that headache. Finally, I quickly lather up and rinse off, springing to my towel. At this point the only thing on my mind is sitting down to enjoy my cereal.
  66. I’ve put on my socks and underpants. My pants are plain enough, just some khaki pants. I usually alternate between different dress shirts to try and keep things fresh. Once I’ve got my clothes picked out and put on, I like to add deodorant as well as body spray. I know that may make me sound like some hipster with the body spray, but I feel more confident when I smell good. Once I’ve put all of my things away, I gently wake my wife, and then make my way into the kitchen to finally claim my prize for being so obedient to the morning.
  67. There it is, my bowl. I have a favorite bowl you see. It is large and has this great handle on it that lets me carry it around like a giant mug. I love this bowl. Quickly I dashed to the pantry. The sounds of delicious flakes, marshmallows, and chocolate pebbles start to cascade into my bowl. The smell is always so pleasing when it wafts for the first time. I take my bowl and get ready to add the final but most important touch, milk! As I make my way to the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye I see my kids both pouring chocolate syrup into glasses full of milk. I’m sure this is nothing to worry about that and smile at them, approving of their own fun breakfast treat. I open the fridge. What is this! Where is the milk? I frantically shift things around until my glance stirs upon the sight in the trash. There sits the empty milk carton. My morning was ruined.
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