(Repost, originally published on the BGP site in Summer, 2007)

NOTE: As of this writing, this blog entry is way over a month late. When I started writing it I knew it wasn’t going to be on time. I knew it had to be right, as well as next in the sequence or I’d regret it. Well, as usual, real life got in the way but it’s finally done. It’s long as hell but there was much to say. Ironically, I finished editing this blog entry just after midnight on 8/8/07, minutes after Barry Bonds hit his 756th career home run, topping the record set by Hank Aaron.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA. SOMETIME AFTER 3AM, JUNE 23RD, 2007 — Juneteenth is one of those unofficial ‘official’ holidays that comes and goes among African-Americans. It’s not on most calendars, nor am I sure it will ever be. The occasion is also called Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, originally commemorating the abolition of slavery in Texas on June 19th but has slowly spread to other states. Here in Virginia it’s usually celebrated in some fashion on the 19th or the closest weekend. I got word from my mother that WICU (Women in Christ United), a local group based out of her church, had put together a day trip to Baltimore for a Black History tour. The ringer about the trip was that most of the passengers were WICU, comprised of ladies well into their 50s and 60s. This wasn’t your granddaddy’s kind of church ladies either. They were a new breed, the generation that grew up in Jim Crow, fought for Civil Rights, and now that many of them are grandmothers and great-grandmothers they have a feisty, sense of not-giving-a-damn that elders seem to be entitled to. The fact that each one of them moved at their own speeds, including slow motion, was going to make the trip even more interesting, especially since a bus trip of this nature couldn’t have happened a little over 40 short years ago. Because of them and the day looked like it was going to be a kinetic time-traveling experience between the past and present, this Juneteenth promised to be one to remember.

Being one of the few adult males on the trip, I was introduced to George, one of my mother’s friends and member of her church. By the time I finished helping him load up the refreshment coolers and was able to get on the bus I had no choice but to take a seat in the back. It seemed ironic for this kind of trip since many of the passengers. The bus ended up with just the right number of passengers. Much to my surprise I had plenty of space and legroom, a rare treat on these Greyhound-style tour buses.

Once everyone was on board, the bus driver, a short, brooding brotha about as old as most of the WICU members, caught everyone’s attention and began his dissertation. Balding on top with the scowl of a seasoned Black Shakespearean actor, after I noted that his first name was Isaiah, I struggle hold back from laughing at the rest of his 20-minute speech. He covered every conceivable rule on his bus right down to instructing passengers how to properly urinate in the bus bathroom — plus standing up at the toilet or taking a dump was strictly prohibited. The only thing he didn’t do was demand DNA samples. I would bet money that Mr. Isaiah had already broken his cherry as far as leaving a passenger on the side of the road for breaking more than one of his bus rules.

It was near sunrise by the time we all said a group prayer and the bus was finally under way. Immediately the music switched from diet jazz to gospel. I said another quick prayer, this time for a few hours of sleep. It’s not that I don’t like listening to the Lord’s message put to music or anything like that. Truth be told, the closest sound to gospel that I feel any spiritual connections to are groups out of Africa like Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I knew it was gonna be a long trip if I didn’t get some sleep. Luckily, after sunrise the music stopped and someone popped in a DVD, Tyler Perry’s “Daddy’s Little Girls”.

Figuring the movie was probably a typical Feel Good movie that bordered on being a Black-Chick-Flick, I scrambled to find a comfortable position — the kind that’s almost impossible for a big guy like me to achieve on a bus. Without giving away the story, aside from a few tear-jerker clichés it turned out to be pretty good, especially for general audiences. As I watched a blue-collar brotha working to hold his family together and make his way in the world, I found myself reflecting on all the scenarios I’d encountered where some sistahs would overlook the “nice” brothas because they either weren’t so-called thugs or ballers flush with bling or they weren’t working in some white-collar field where they could be earning six-figures or more — and then they’d complain after they’ve hooked up with a smooth-talking jerk that ended up doing them wrong. Although the movie had a happy ending, I thought about how it rarely worked out that way for brothas faced with those situations.

Sometime around mid-morning the bus pulled up at the Great Blacks on Wax Museum in Baltimore. After a few minutes I noticed some kind of drama begin to unfurl. I had no idea what was happening but it had both Mrs. Goode and Mr Isaiah outside on their cell phones, furiously pacing back and forth like disgruntled executives. That’s where Greg(?), our tour guide, boarded the bus and we headed out on the tour.

As the bus wheeled through town Greg told us stories about the ‘Then and Now’ of parts of Baltimore. ranging from tales of once-thriving venues where people like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald used to appear on the Chitlin’ Circuit (a loosely-knit route of venues where Black musicians could performed along the east coast) to where the original NAACP building once stood to the projects where HBO’s show “The Wire” were filmed on location. I don’t know about the others, but I found myself amazed at the contrast. I could see it all, then and now, as if I was watching two films recorded at the same places 50-years apart and projected on a screen at the same time. I saw phantoms walking along the streets that were once thriving nightlife scenes and hubs of cultural Black pride amidst more than a few of the spots that were either now something else or the evidence of their existence had been reduced to boarded up buildings or empty lots with historical landmark signs. We might as well have been riding past archaeological digs filled with rare dinosaur bones — except those bones were more likely to be reconstructed to their full glory.

Eventually we pulled up and stopped in front of Orchard Street Church. Built in 1837, rebuilt in 1859 and rebuilt again in 1882, legend has it that this church was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, sometimes headed up Harriet Tubman. I was the last to exit the bus and as I paused beside my mother next the door to get my camera ready for indoor shots, Mr Isaiah began to vent. Apparently the original bus driver’s bus broke down so the tour bus company hired him as a replacement and, due to some communication breakdown, he thought he was going to just drop us off back at the wax museum. Well, not only did this conflict with the plans and the contract, Mrs. Goode wasn’t having it since the group had paid for an entire day trip. Because Mr Isaiah had been up since 3am, this conflicted with some new safety law that drivers had to either have a relief driver or sleep after so many hours on the road. Long story short, he was pissed and had the attitude of a rattlesnake. He was stuck with us and it was the fault of the tour bus company. I’m not sure why he decided to share all this with me but based on his initial speech I had a feeling he wasn’t going to take this turn of events with ease. Any old man named Isaiah with Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies wasn’t prone to bullshit around.

Once I caught up to the rest of the group inside the church, we were led down many flights of steps to the basement level. Already packed with people, on one side of this cramped space was the half-bricked up remnants of a huge furnace; the other was an opening to a long dark crawlspace, referred to as ‘tunnels’ by our tour guide. Since the tunnels were pitch black in each direction, I stuck my camera inside and took a few snapshots.

Upon looking at photos of the illuminated crawlspaces I knew I would have died trying make it through. I’d seen coffins with more elbow room. Apparently slaves used to come in from the outside through these small heating ducts and emerged here in the bowels of the church — or this was how they left the sanctuary. Either way, after a bunch of people walked down all those steps only to crowd around down there it was hot. I couldn’t conceive how it must have been with a raging coal-stoked fire that was fierce enough to heat the entire church without the aid of electric blowers, straight out of Dante’s “Inferno” with temperatures well over several hundred degrees. It reminded me of the kinds of sacrifices African-American ancestors made just to survive and be free — and how many Blacks today take it for granted as if it happened a thousand years ago. Admittedly, sometimes I did too.

After seeing the tunnels we were guided back upstairs to the main seating area of the church. A two-story tall brass pipe organ loomed overhead as we slowly entered one by one; with each step even the wooden floors creaked with hollow reverence as if they had their own secrets to tell. With a loud hush to his tone, Greg announced that if we were all quiet enough the Ghost of Harriet Tubman might come out and speak to us — and once everyone settled into their seats, an eerie silence swelled. Just then, a waif of a woman slowly peered in from a dimly-lit entrance near the organ. As she walked toward the open floor it was impossible not to notice her face, gaunt with the pain of ages in every wrinkle except for the steel in her eyes.

As she captivated the audience with her story, I thought about how everything Greg had pointed out there at the church began with “Legend has it that–”. My logical side started to wonder why. Was it because historians lacked proof? Was this some sort of tourist-trap scam? Or was it because of some legal issue, like being liable for false claims? For such an old frail woman, as Harriet Tubman’s ghost gave her speech her presence swelled to that of a Goliath, echoing high into the ceiling as if she was an impending thunderstorm. For those few minutes I forgot that this was an actress. She was Harriet Tubman. The power behind her delivery was intense enough to make me realize something: We were listening to the history of people fighting against oppression, surviving during a time where paper trails could get them killed, Blacks and Whites alike. It didn’t matter that she had on shoes with heels that no one would even consider wearing while running through pitch-black forests. It didn’t matter that the musket gun she held was a souvenir sold at gift shops near Colonial Williamsburg — a cheap child-size version of a musket from a period almost 100 years before the real Harriet Tubman was born. Something about it all reminded of a quote from the movie ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. I realized that it didn’t matter whether or not Harriet Tubman regularly used this church as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The truth was that it happened constantly all around these parts and Tubman was an icon, just one of many helping slaves escape to freedom. Not to take anything away from her amazing courage but when heroes don’t exist, sometimes it’s necessary to invent (or appoint) them just to keep the spirit of a story’s meaning alive to impact future generations. In cases like this, the power of the story and the moral behind such great accomplishments mattered most. The actual details of who did what, where, and when bordered on irrelevant.

Once Harriett Tubman finished addressing our group, Greg made sure to introduce the actress and tell us about her achievements. I didn’t catch her real name or most of her details but she was an 84-year old still delivering her lines with the heart of a Lioness a third of her age. As I took a photo of my mom with her, I had a hunch that somewhere, somehow her work was appreciated.

Shortly after everyone was back on the bus and we were under way, one of the WICU ladies squealed “Ohh Lawd” somewhere up front just as the bus swerved hard to the right. Mr. Isaiah was busy speeding through crosstown traffic, inventing lanes where there were none. He was pissed. At any given instant we were at the mercy of high g-force turns that sent passengers plowing face-first into each other and the backs of seats. Cars that once felt entitled to cutting in front of the bus suddenly honked in terror. Pedestrians scattered like frightened kids. Occasional screams and curses squawked outside as the bus engine revved and streaked onward. All of it seemed to happen at the same time. Watching the church ladies up front endure all the near accidents, suddenly the back of the bus was the place to be. Because of their reactions, I almost felt guilty laughing at every near miss. George and his wife were sitting in the back with me. He seemed completely comfortable with the ride as we discussed the philosophical aspects of dealing with being Black in Corporate America and laughed every time the bus swerved to avoid an accident. Ultimately we arrived at our next destination in record time.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Baltimore, our second stop was Hampton National Park, once one of the biggest plantations of the south, if not America. Owned by the Ridgely family during 1700s and 1800s, by comparison this was the equivalent of the Trump Towers back then. In its heyday the estate covered 25,000 acres, about half the size of modern day Baltimore. Compared to other plantations I’d visited, this place was a resort. The slave quarters were small condominiums. The overseer’s house was bigger than some restaurants I’d visited. Up on a hill about a mile off in the distance was the Hampton Mansion itself, the master’s house. From our vantage point the building was mostly obscured by trees and it still looked bigger than the Governor’s mansion in Virginia.

The Hampton tour guide was a white park ranger, which I found odd and even a little awkward at first. Although I had no problem listening to a white man sharing history of slave life, I could also tell he was probably a genuinely nice man. The plantation was about 18 miles away from Pennsylvania, a Northern free state; it was a little over half a marathon to freedom for any slave that wanted to make a break for it. I had no idea where the Orchard Street Church was in proximity to this plantation but it didn’t matter. Standing out in the midday summer sun, my problem with listening to the ranger describe life on the plantation I couldn’t help but feel the lingering presence of countless slaves that tried to escape — and failed. Just like with the other plantations, I was anxious to leave.

The next stop was a buffet lunch at some hotel where I had the privilege of listening to my mother and Mrs. Goode vent their frustrations about Mr. Isaiah while conspiring to take him down along with the bus company and anything else that was evil in the world. Mr. Isaiah was in earshot but he didn’t seem to care. He felt he was in the right. Mrs. Goode and my mother felt we were in the right. Both sides were at the mercy of the tour bus company’s mistake, albeit I sensed that the company knew exactly what they were doing. As I ate lunch the only thing I hoped for was that tensions didn’t continue to mount. Something about the WICU ladies was the AARP’s equivalent of street gang from ‘West Side Story’; some carried canes. Mr. Isaiah didn’t seem like a man that would back down, either. All I wanted to do was make sure we all got home without incident.

Our final stop, The Great Blacks on Wax Museum, turned out to be both an inspiration and a bit of a letdown at the same time. To clarify, I loved the concept — a non-profit dedicated to teaching African-American history and allowing people to put past lives into perspective by showing people that only existed in books and films for most of us. I found it humbling to stand almost face to face a few feet away from folks like Benjamin Banneker, Bill Pickett, James Baldwin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ida B Wells, and Marcus Garvey — people that either contributed to civilization as a whole or gave their lives to change my life — and I’d never get a chance to thank in person. The person that made me pause was George Washington Carver. Aside from the fact that he reminded me of my late grandfather John Lee (my aunts and uncles called him ‘Judge’, Mr. Carver always appealed to the 8-year old in me, when everything was possible for a Mad Scientist that stayed true to his game plan. Even though I’d heard about Mr. Carver in school, it wasn’t until Judge told me about meeting him one afternoon that the legend came to life. Judge was a porter on the railroad in the South at the time. The train had just pulled out and one of the cooks was bragging about shaking Carver’s hand as he boarded. Judge, apparently awestruck by the possibility of meeting any Negro he’d read about in the papers, wasted no time going to meet the man. “Mr. Carver was reading a book when I walked up; he closed the book, looked up and smiled,” Judge said as he patted my head and wistfully re-lit his cigar then continued, “After some small talk he admitted that in his travels through the south he wasn’t used to seeing too many Negro cabin porters. He said it was good to see me in that position; it meant that times were changing.”

Judge went on to explain how he became a porter. It was sometime in the 1942 when he landed his first job with the railroad; the only reason he knew that was because Grandmomma Jesse was pregnant with Aunt Shirley, about two years before my father was born. Because he had come from the farming world and needed the money to support his wife and four (soon to be five) daughters, he accepted a starting position as a janitor. Eventually, he set his sights on becoming one of the porters, mostly because he needed the raise. When he asked his boss about the position he was told that he wasn’t qualified. By the way his boss responded without a second thought, he could tell they weren’t trying to make the job available to him because he was Black man that barely had an 8th grade education. In order to get that job he had be able to read as well as know all the stops on their route between Shreveport, Louisiana and Kansas City. Determined to get that position, Judge decided to train himself. Night after night, as he cleaned the offices he rummaged through the garbage and collected notes from all the office memos and read through them at home. Soon he learned what tests we required for the porter position so he began studying in secret until the day he got the job. That was how he provided for his family. His wife, Grandmomma Jesse, was a teacher that earned her Masters and eventually became a Reverend, engaged her own things like ghostwriting to support their children — but that’s another story for another time. Although Judge never explained how he learned everything necessary for the position, as I grew older and wiser over the years I came to suspect that he did it by taking manuals home at night and returning them early the next morning. Years after he passed away I ended up employing the same techniques to learn many things that I didn’t know that would enable me to land jobs I wasn’t supposed to win. Chalk it up to a genetic trait. After all, he was my father’s father.

When I returned reality, Mr. Carver’s statue was still staring my way as if lost in thought. Ever since my grandfather told me about meeting the man that took a peanut and used it to change the face of American agriculture forever, I’ve always believed that if I worked toward my dreams and goals I could make things happen, too.

The museum basement was a steamy, cramped parlor of perils dedicated to every conceivable horror Black people have endured in this since we reached these shores. It was a menagerie of brutal lynching photos that was on par with the Hall of Fame for most professional sports teams, surrounded by statistics of body counts that rivaled the total casualties from Hurricane Andrew. Since I’d already learned this aspect of Black History on my own, seeing it again was like a trip back to when I flunked pre-Algebra in 8th-grade and had to take it again in summer school — painfully uncomfortable to relive but necessary in some unseen way. The only thing that bothered me about this museum was that half the exhibits looked like strange mannequins with blank faces with unnatural skin tones and the other half were nothing short of masterpieces. Because the statues in both the slave ship and lynching galleries resembled life-size Negro lawn jockies with the facial expressions of zombies, part of me wanted to see them have the same real sense of identity like the named historical figures. After leaving the museum I figured out a possible artistic reason for these poorly done sculptures: — they weren’t being treated like humans to begin with.

Back on the bus, silence prevailed on the trip back to Virginia Beach; everyone was spent. Even Mr. Isaiah had chilled out with his Road Warrior driving tactics after he got a nap while the rest of us were inside the museum. Two movies were played during the trip back — “Pursuit of Happyness” and “Dream Girls”. “Pursuit” reminded me of my own crazy “all or nothing” business dealings over the years and how I couldn’t have made it to this point without my family. I would have been flat broke and homeless without them. “Dream Girls”, in all its musical glory, struck me as a cautionary tale about how fame and fortune can tear people apart if they’re not well-grounded, almost an extreme parody of what’s happened within the Black community since the Civil Rights movement. Although my grandfather’s story helped me understand that I could achieve the American Dream, both movies reminded me that anything could happen and if my soul wasn’t right with God, it would be easy to fall to the dark side without warning.

Back in Virginia Beach at the parking lot we departed from, everyone slowed filed off the bus and went their separate ways. Aside from being happy that we all made it back safe without incident, I felt bad because no one wanted to take up a tip collection for Mr. Isaiah. When I brought up the fact that short-changing on his tip was a very un-Christian-like thing to do, several of the WICU ladies begrudgingly began to reconsider. I took the initiative to give him a tip. He said thanks and turned it down. When I pushed the issue he said something to the effect that he’d be alright and that if the customer wasn’t satisfied he didn’t deserve a tip. Although his name would live in infamy among the WICU ladies, I have to admit I had to respect the man — he was a brotha that lived by a code and stuck to it.

A little later I went to my favorite watering hole to begin my late night writing ritual and organize my thoughts for this blog entry. The first thing I glanced at was my backpack as I dug out my PDA and sketchbook as I glanced around the bar — it was wrapped with with chatty people of all races but still sparse, mostly filled employees that just got off work from nearby restaurants. Bob Marley’s “Redemption” song eased its way into the music mix, something that prompted me to dedicate my first drink to those ancestors that got us here. I miss my grandparents but I won’t get into that now. This blog is already long as hell and I didn’t want to get misty-eyed while sitting in a bar.

After watching Harriet Tubman’s ghost speak at a church along the Underground Railroad and see tunnels slaves probably had to crawl through to get in and out, walking through the remains of one of the biggest slave plantations in the South, seeing images of past lynchings, perils endured by escaped slaves, the various tools of inhumane punishment and revisiting my late grandfather and George Washington Carver, I felt a renewed sense of pride. When visions of my grandparents — Ford and Essie, Judge and Jesse — came to mind, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of invincibility. Somehow my family lines survived it all to raise me and my younger brothers — and based on our mindsets, had we been born just a few generations earlier I was pretty sure we would have lived very different lives — nowhere near the comparatively easy lives we enjoy today. Even in the worst way, this was a reminder to be proud of my bittersweet heritage AND the life here in America. Today I’m free, or as Sly Stone once said in a song, at least in my mind if I want to be.

On my backpack I always keep an antique skeleton key hanging from one of the zippers. An older computer hacker associate gave it to me 20 years ago, shortly before he vanished without a trace. Since then it has always served as a reminder that I can always retain my personal freedom no matter what the circumstances are. All I had to do is put my mind and heart into it.

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]]> http://www.bgpublishing.com/bgp/juneteenth-judges-story-and-mr-isaiahs-immaculate-bus-a-strange-trip-back-into-my-black-experience/feed/ 0 http://www.bgpublishing.com/bgp/memorial-day-reflections-and-thoughts-of-the-missing-bell/ http://www.bgpublishing.com/bgp/memorial-day-reflections-and-thoughts-of-the-missing-bell/#comments Mon, 28 May 2007 22:36:26 +0000 Max Nomad http://www.bgpublishing.com/bgp/?p=104

It’s a balmy 77 degrees this morning, expected to rocket into the 90s within a few hours. There’s alot going on in the area but chances are I’ll skip most of it. The heat, the crowds, and the hoopla seem to have much less appeal with each passing year. There’s a Sopranos marathon being shown on A&E and something tells me I’ll probably be watching it off and on and reading up on writing screenplays until after sunset.

Memorial Day to me, for whatever reason, always comes with a combination of optimistic Summer expectations and a hint of reflective melancholy for simpler times and those who couldn’t be here. Of course there are marches here and there to honor the fallen vets but what I never hear about are the other casualties of war — some of the vets who returned psychologically and emotionally scarred from putting their lives on the line and their families and marriages that ultimately paid the price.

I think back to Memorial Day weekend, 1975. My father was a Chief Petty Officer on the USS Belknap at the time. He was in his early 30s and most of the guys under his command were in their late teens to early 20s. That weekend he decided to have a cookout and invite all his friends, my adopted uncles and aunts, and his guys. Everyone partied like, well, like sailors. Blow-out afros, women wearing shorts and skirts with pretty legs, and dudes with open-chest shirts with most of the buttons undone. Funk, Jazz and Soul music seemed to be everywhere I went, inside and out. Beer and booze was flowing. Anything that ever had feathers, fins or hooves ended up on the grill.  There were even a few people smoking joints here and there, including enlisted men and a couple of people I’d swear were officers at the time. As some of the guys got nice and wasted, they began to relive sea stories about their collective adventures while on shore leave in different countries. I remember that in more than a few of the tales there was a drunken brawl of some sort and my father would end up jumping into it to pull his guys out of the fire, get them safely back to the ship, or in some other way scramble to pull one of them out of trouble. By that time they didn’t care that I was a 6-year old kid hanging out listening to the unadulterated mayhem of grown folks, although anytime my mother or father walked up on a conversation they’d send me to my room. Once they were gone I would sneak back in to listen to their stories, and they had no problem telling them with me around, almost as if I was a little brother in some strange way out of respect for my father. The next morning I remember walking downstairs to watch PBS, the only pre-cable TV source of children’s shows on a Sunday, and discovered that most of his guys had just passed out wherever they found a spot — on the floor, on the couches, in chairs, in doorways, and even on the patio.

I don’t remember whether it was days or weeks later but the next thing I recall is the Belknap heading back out to sea for what seemed like it would be forever. Unlike today where there’s instant communication through the Internet, I remember we, as in Navy families, were lucky if we could speak to our loved ones once every month or so. Since a 10-minute international phone call was more expensive than some utility bills, letters were the cheapest way to go. The seasons had gone from Summer to Fall. Thanksgiving was a few days away. My mother, little brother Jason and I were over at Aunt Montrose’s house. Jason and I were downstairs playing and watching TV when a news bulletin flashed across the screen, something involving the Belknap. I didn’t fully understand what was being said but it also involved The John F Kennedy and I could tell by the news anchor’s expression that it wasn’t good. When I ran upstairs to tell the adults they thought I had seen one of the “Bicentennial Minutes”, on which the Belknap was supposed to be featured at some point. I kept repeating that it wasn’t one of the Bicentennial Minutes and that something bad had happened. My adamant attempts to get them to take me seriously were brushed off as the mistaken musings of a then 7-year old boy. The problem was that I didn’t catch all of news cast to repeat it verbatim. Had I remembered the word “collision” it would have put everything into perspective.

As it turned out, the U.S.S. Belknap (a guided missile cruiser) and the U.S.S. John F Kennedy (a supercarrier, the largest of the aircraft carriers) had collided just off the coast of Sicily, Italy. A few days had passed before we got confirmation that my father was alive and well. Soon after that all the men were flown back to one of the local Naval bases. I was the first to run up and jump into my father’s arms and, somehow, that was the first time I’d sensed that he wasn’t the same man he was when he left. In the days and months to come I learned that it was my father’s men were on watch that night and were the first to begin fighting the fires when it happened. They also comprised most of the seven casualties on the Belknap side, many of the very same faces that had been partying at the house that past Memorial Day.

These days, the doctors probably would have diagnosed my father and many others from that fateful trip with some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder shortly after they returned home. I’m almost positive of this because my father was never the same after that. Without getting too deep with the family dirty laundry, a few years later my parents separated, the beginning of a long ugly divorce and my brothers and I growing up alienated from our father for years. Echoes of those times constantly remind me that every military casualty has collateral damage, sometimes that carries on for years, the kind that is rarely acknowledged at the parades.

My father rescued the Ship’s Bell from the wreckage, smuggled it back stateside, had it acid-dipped and re-engraved, and placed it inside of a custom-made maple cabinet. Along with the court marshal of Captain Shaffer, the Navy searched high and low for the bell amidst rumors and speculation. As far as I know, the missing Belknap bell is probably among one of the US Navy’s longest running unsolved mysteries. Outside of maybe answering a question or two about the incident itself, my father never talked about the fires or his lost comrades again. Their memories reside in the bell cabinet, beneath the bell in his last Belknap yearbook on a memorial page for the seven Belknap casualties and one on the Kennedy.

So, for this Memorial Day, I also dedicate my thoughts and prayers to the families and friends who were forever affected by loved ones who were lost or wounded in the U.S. military in service to our country.

When it comes to self-publishing, there are proverbially 1,001 rookie mistakes that can make it all the way to the final print run. Once in print, the problem is that they’re all expensive to fix and any of them are enough to get your book declined for review by major book reviewers, declined by the major chain bookstores, declined by distributors, and then some. Why? Because the various strata of the book publishing industry are FULL of elitists. Most of these people are in positions to review your book or cut a deal to sell/distribute it. When they spot one of those 1,001 amateur mistakes (usually visible between the cover and the first 10 pages) they often toss the book aside, not even bothering to read it.

How does a self-publisher reduce their chances of making those mistakes? Research. Expect to spend at least between $75 and $250 dollars on books to learn the basics. Buy these books and keep them in your library because you’re going to need to review them over and over again from manuscript preparation all the way to the marketplace. If you’re not willing to invest this money into preliminary research, do yourself a favor and forget about self-publishing altogether. Professional quality books just don’t happen by themselves — they come about through production experience, whether your own experience or someone else’s. Buying the following books are the cheapest way to get that experience:

• The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (this is a MUST have for anyone that’s serious about writing, editing and/or publishing). Costs about $60 dollars. The CMoS contains almost everything you could conceivably need to know about editing, the manuscript preparation process, and how to format every inch of a standard book.
• The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print, and Sell Your Own Book by Dan Poynter (or some other book on the basics of self-publishing; there are several on the market and there’s no harm in reading more than one).

There are other books you’ll need but these will get you started. After reading the self-publishing stuff you’ll get a better fix on the process and know whether or not it’s truly for you. If after reading those you decide that you still want to pursue publishing your own book, here’s a real rough ballpark of how much you can expect to spend on production:

• Editing: up to $4.00 per page (there are different types of editors and some kinds of books will require more than one editor). Many freelance editors will charge you a flat rate that works out to be roughly $1 or $2 dollars a page. Typically I budget for at least $500 or $600 dollars (including manuscript printing and shipping).
• Cover Design: usually no less than $500 and no more than $3000 for a professional design with custom graphics and photographs and the rights to all of the above.
• Interior Design: around $2.00 per page (more for graphic-heavy pages), can be packaged with the cover design depending on the deal you work out with the graphic designer.
• ISBN numbers: Around $270 dollars. These come in a minimum block of 10. Buying them will also get you into the Bowker’s “Books in Print” database. No ISBN number means your book is not officially published, so don’t even think about skipping this step. Check with R.R. Bowker, the exclusive U.S. ISBN and SAN Agency for current prices.
• Bar code: Around $10 dollars, sometimes free depending on who you know. The bar code will contain the ISBN number and often the price, too. Most bookstores won’t even consider stocking your product without a bar code.
• BISAC Subject Heading: This category designation is usually on the top left of the back of the book or near the price. The official source is the Book Industry Study Group’s “BISAC Subject Heading Package”, sold for $25 dollars from their website. I’ve seen the complete listing online for free so the price is debatable, but you want to have your book’s category noted on the back cover so bookstore clerks know how to stock your title. I’ve had independent bookstore owners tell me if they receive book submission packages that don’t have a BISAC code on the back cover they won’t even open the book.

NOTE: These solely relate to production costs and does NOT cover the costs associated with printing or shipping.

So, all in all, to self-publish a professional-quality 224-page novel if you budget for $6000 you’ll probably cover your initial production costs. If you cut a deal with an experienced graphic designer you can easily cut that cost in half, meaning that the $6000 will also cover printing the first few hundred or so. The beauty is, once it’s paid off, it is paid off, and for every print run after that your major overhead is the cost of printing.

And before all the Author Mill and Lulu champions chime in to recommend those services, by self-publishing this way you have a much greater chance of having your title noticed by a major literary agency and possibly picked up by a major publisher. I know this from personal experience since one of the titles I recently published and packaged, NEXT STOP by Ivan Sanchez, was picked up by Levine Greenberg Literary Agency and recently sold to Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Bohemian Griot Publishing LLC and Ivan Sanchez also made the deal happen WITHOUT selling Touchstone the film/TV rights or the audio book rights, both of which they have joint ownership with in two other production companies. So, yeah, trust me when I say if you’re going to self-publish, this is the way to go.

Hope that helps put things into perspective.

As always, best of luck on your path.

– Max

One time back in the day, my girlfriend and I were out spending time together. On a whim we decided to stop in at a Korean Restaurant. Neither of us had ever been to a Korean spot before. The fact that it was also outfitted with a Japanese Sushi bar should have been a hint but, nevertheless, we were feeling adventurous and happy to be there.

As each of us read our menus I recall her saying something to the effect of “Mmmmmm.. This crab dish sounds good,” along with mentioning “I like pickles”. I gave a nod, not really giving any thought to what she said. I was too immersed in the menu, reading and re-reading everything. I don’t eat pork and it seemed like every time an entree caught my eye when I checked it out again there was some form of pork hiding out in the dish. Feeling more hungry than adventurous, I finally just settled on ordering a Korean version of Shrimp-Fried Rice. She ordered one of the most expensive things on the menu, a dish that I couldn’t even begin to pronounce. After repeating the orders with a thick accent, the waitress looked at my girlfriend curious respect and said “Most ‘merican don oda dot.”

When our meals arrived, she received a platter with what looked like three huge bright red crabs garnished with some kind of deep green leafy vegetable. Along with that there were a few other salad plates, each with an unfamiliar type of vegetable. My order was just a big plate of Shrimp Fried Rice. I picked up my chopsticks and started eating. She made a wisecrack about my whimping out, hoping that I enjoyed my “boring little plate of rice”. About a minute after we started eating she managed to get my attention by mumbling something with her hands holding half of one of the crabs in her mouth.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Huuhkuuhisruuh” she tried to whisper, never taking the crab out of her mouth.

“Huh what?”

“Huuhkuuhisruuhhhhh…” her eyes got wider as she repeated herself several times.

“What the… take the crab out of your mouth.”

“Ikann.” she replied. I understood that she meant “I can’t”.

“Why not?”

Her eyes darted between me, her platter and looking around to see if anyone else was watching. “HUUHKUUH-ISSS-RUUHHHH!”

I picked up the other half of the broken crab; it was cold and slimey to the touch. Upon closer inspection I understood what she was saying. “Oh Damn, The Crab is RAW!”

She nodded wildly, too embarrassed to spit it out in front of me. The waitress appeared out of nowhere as if she had been watching the whole time. “Iz evting okay?”

“Ma’am, what’s up with this? Why are they raw?”

She pointed at the menu beneath the entree name. “It seh Pickled Crab. Zhe oda Pickled Crab.”

I nodded, trying not to laugh. The waitress handed my girlfriend a stack of napkins so big she could have spit out a whole Whopper without it being seen.

Slightly embarrassed and annoyed, my girlfriend grumbled about the experience as I sat happily eating my boring little plate of rice. Finally I said something that seemed to put it all into perspective. “Yeah, you like crabs, and you like pickles, but sometimes Pickled Crab means PICKLED CRAB.”

And the moral of the story: Don’t make more out of something than it really is. Sometimes pickled crab really means Pickled Crab.

– Max Nomad

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> What was/is the motivating factor that caused you to begin to write?
(from a question originally posted on BWRC Collective)

There were three main factors that caused me to start writing seriously as a form of expression:

• At the age of 7, I discovered a love for Art and had begun to dabble in comics and cartooning by the age of 9. I loved the concept of telling a story with illustrations. By the age of 10 I had applied for (and received) my first Copyright.
• At the age of 12, my father had brought home one of the early personal computers, an Apple ][+ (circa 1981). This gave birth to my love for Computers and led me off into a world of programming as well as doing rudimentary graphics (programs like Photoshop didn’t hit the market until 1988 while I was in college).
• Sometime before my 14th birthday was the first time I had ever been questioned by the FBI. Because my parents didn’t fully understand what all could be done with that computer, their idea of “parental supervision” was being secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t out running the streets. Instead, my friends and I had become computer hackers and almost all our mischief involved a keyboard and monitor. By the time I was 18, if I had been arrested for all the computer crimes I’d committed I would have been in prison until my late 20s or early 30s.

The stunts my friends and I pulled during our teen years in the 80s were borderline the kind of stuff that most other people only saw in movies. Granted, the computers weren’t as flashy and the closest we ever got to a Pentagon computer as a “SAC” newsline, but the thrill was just the same, especially once I got my first laptop and went mobile. Even a decade before most people had ever heard of the Internet my friends and I were already communicating with other hackers on global computer networks and there seemed to be no end to what exploits awaited us. For me, it was like living in the digital equivalent of the Wild West, and between the stories I lived and the stories I heard, they were better than fiction. During my freshman year, among the books I’d chosen to analyze for English Lit class were “The Price of the Ticket” by James Baldwin and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson. Baldwin spoke to my deep craving to explore and understand all the facets of being Black in America. Thompson spoke to my inner social commentator and the unpredictable, often freewheeling cyber-criminal misadventures I was usually getting into at the time. Together, both authors spoke to my understanding of being an American, an African-American and my Love (sometimes Love-Hate) relationship with this country.

The resurgence of my need to write as an additional creative outlet was born from that — and it has yet to go away. Today, Writing, along with Art and Computers, make up the creative triad that keeps me going, career-wise and on a personal note.

“Highwire Act”

Wide-eyed shadows
tainted with bloodlust,
whispered and watched us
sail through the void;
whimsical puppets in spotlights
flying from strings above.

Ringmasters and clowns
watched from the ground
amidst pissed bulls on parade
as our ropes cried
furious from financial strain
for that million dollar payday.

Onlookers watched us cast fate
swinging in the breeze –
Douglas Fairbanks stunts
on a dreamcatcher’s trapeze –
above a smiling pavement,
laughing without a safety net.

Life on the highwire,
a torn price-tag for riches,
makes easy deceiving
for blind, concrete believing
there’s nothing to lose in flight
amidst corporate vampires.

Somewhere in mid-air,
watching my ass ‘tween flips and flair,
hardened beyond rational fear
I wondered how I got here –
a page out of a comic book
without a place to land.

Faith, Hope, and Love
kept me goin’
as the Circus continued to spin –
striving to make it home,
only to be there by dawn
when the Big-Top opened again.

- Max Nomad

Relationships are a lot like Poker — you’ll have to fold many hands before finding one worth playing, and even then there’s still a little gamble involved if you’re lucky enough to win.

Nah, it’s not really that bleak.

Seriously though, it all depends on what you really want. Do you want to live out your porn star fantasies? Be whisked away by Prince Charming? Seduced by America’s Next Top Model? Or are you seeking a real relationship? A solid relationship is a lot like being on a plot of land covered with trees:

• If you’re in a rush for some temporary shelter, you can make a lean-to just about anywhere — cold, quick-n-dirty, and temporary, it’ll serve its purpose. If you’re thinking a little ahead you might even have a tent and some basic camping gear and forgo the lean-to.
• If you want a hut you can chop down a few trees and make one. If you want it to be fancy you might even be able to fashion a door and have a window. Won’t be much for keeping the bugs out, though.
• If you want a real house, first you’ll have to clear out some space — cut down trees, pull up stumps, maybe even burn away some of the underbrush and level the land. Then you’ll need a blueprint of the house you want to build. All of this time and effort required JUST to lay down the foundation.

No matter how ingenious we think we are or how many shortcuts we think we have in life, every house has to have its foundation in place first before everything else can come together. We can try to build a house from the top down and, in theory, make it work, but all of the pieces are pretty much useless without that foundation. And if the foundation can’t happen, everything else is a waste of time.

– Max

The Bamboo Chronicles, as a book concept, started sometime in late April 1989 while I was in college. That’s when I was first introduced to the members of Verbal Threat, a local Hip-Hop group. It was nearing the end of the semester and I was just shy of my 21st birthday; the rest of the bunch was about the same age or a few years older. Following the advice of some older musicians, the group put together the loose beginnings of a tour that covered parts of Virginia and North Carolina. Over those next few weeks I became part of the group’s management (if it could be called that). Back then I always kept a black bookbag with me that contained a Toshiba 1200f, an early model laptop with dual 3.5″ floppy disk drives as its only form of storage. Along with being brought on as a co-manager and wearing many hats, one of the things I did during my downtime was to start taking notes. Because I was getting a minor in Writing and a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson, I had been experimenting with short stories using a style akin to Gonzo Journalism. My early notes with Verbal turned into a journal of sorts, haphazardly maintained from the Spring of 1989 to the Fall of 1991 with the goal of being the one to document the group’s rise to fame.

During those years my journal entries accumulated on floppy disks and ended up being stored in a makeshift archive in one of my dresser drawers. In 2002, about a year after I started BGP and was working on a book concept dealing with the various concepts of Freedom, I was inspired to dig up those old journal entries. Originally I thought they would work well for being a source of “coming of age” stories for that book. Since those stories grew to be larger than the sum of the book itself, I ended up splitting them off entirely into their own work. Throughout those times, particularly on the summer tours, aside from the music and the shows, the common thread that seemed to tie all the memories together was Marijuana. Among Rock, Rap and Reggae musicians, smoking weed to them is like Coffee and Donuts to Cops — both a bad stereotype and a lingering truth at the same time. Thanks to a heavy New York Jamaican/Rastafarian influence within group, most of the time the guys referred to any kind of rolling papers as “bambu”, thus the choice to package these stories as “The Bamboo Chronicles”.

Originally I wanted to use the word “Bambu” instead of “Bamboo” but the former was also the brand name of a rolling paper. Concerned about possible trademark infringement, I contacted the company and managed to reach the owner on the first try. She was an older lady with a phone demeanor that stoicly pleasant with a hint of suspicion in her tone. I figured she was probably an ex-hippie-turned-businesswoman., prone to be sympathetic enough to give her blessings to a small fish like me working on his first novel. She was okay with it — but her attorneys wasted no time telling her otherwise. The next thing I knew I receive an email saying “No” and an explanation about their releasing some new brand of blunt papers. After that I couldn’t even get a returned call.

(more later as these things come to me)

– Max Nomad

(more thoughts on issues I’ve run into while writing The Bamboo Chronicles)

As anyone that has ever run with musicians knows, there are many unwritten rules and truths but only a few that are somewhere between the two. One is that Crime and certain styles of Music seem to run hand in hand.

Prohibition-era Jazz and Blues bands played at Speakeasies run by mobsters. Crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were buddy-buddy with mafiosi like Chicago boss Sam Giancana. Every major music legend with an addiction from Billie Holiday to Billy Idol always had a connection looming somewhere nearby like one of the many moons orbiting Jupiter. For decades, the tastes of the listening  public were secretly guided by rampant payola to get records on the charts.

The Crime and Music relationship has been such a convenient plot device in so many books and films that I’m not sure if it’s a case of Life imitating Art or vise versa.  While going through some of my journal entries and deciding what to include in The Bamboo Chronicles, I realized that both Crime and the Music had become characters unto themselves, almost sentient because their demands seem to have just as much of an affect on the ensemble as any other characters in the stories. I didn’t want to write a memoir but, instead, tout it as fiction “based on a true story”. I figured that changing some names and places would be enough to allow me to incorporate some events I witnessed without worrying about any repercussions — and then I learned otherwise…

In early 2006, shortly after I decided to take on the Next Stop manuscript as BGP’s second book project to publish, I met with the author, Ivan Sanchez, after work for a few drinks to discuss particulars that were going to affect which editor I paired him up with. My biggest concern was that he had used real names and street names for almost everyone in the book, including  some of the more nefarious characters. It was a toss up because by treating this book as a memoir we would have been within our legal rights to tell the stories as they happened, names and all. The trick would have been to make sure everything was 100% accurate but not disclosing so much that it would invade anyone’s privacy. Even with all that I knew we were still at risk of being sued. My thinking was that if anyone filed a lawsuit I’d simply start cranking out press releases using the shock value of the lawsuits as a means to drum up publicity for the book. On the other hand, there was at least nine months of editing and prepress work ahead of us; I figured we had plenty of time to change the names if necessary. Ivan and Jada (the editor) were so deep into the editing/revision process and I was busy with other design projects that the subject didn’t come up again. After reading the stories over and over again I even had a few nightmares about some of the murder victims, a sign that I might have grown too close to the project to maintain a pragmatic perspective. Against my normal business sense and tendency to avoid liabilities, the idea of changing all the names had become almost sacrilegious — some of the stories also served to memorialize those who were slain. It seemed like the right thing to do and worth the risk.

December 16th, 2006 arrived, the day of the Author’s Release party for Next Stop. The turnout was fantastic, everyone enjoyed themselves and we sold almost half of that first shipment of books, all of which made the event one of the greatest nights of my professional life. Once word of the book spread back to the Bronx, the next 15 days ushered in something neither of us had predicted — over a dozen phone calls with threats on Ivan’s life. The young fledgling gangsters in the stories had grown up. Some of them had been in and out of prison and still running the same criminal hustles they were doing over a decade earlier. Others had grown to become kingpins in their own rights. All were pissed that the book had hit the streets for a variety of reasons, including the fact that one or two of the stories connected some people to certain unsolved crimes with no Statute of Limitations.

The calls weren’t from some anonymous jerks. They were very real. They made sure Ivan knew who they were. We didn’t have to worry so much about the callers. They were all about his age and the ones that weren’t locked up for the next few decades were still on the street, deep in the game with too much to lose. The likelihood of one of them showing up to do a hit was slim. Instead, they would’ve handled it much like the older gangsters back in the day — scope out a couple of 14 year old kids tryin’ to get a rep, slap a wad of cash and a couple of burners in their hands, give them a map to the target and tell them don’t come back till it’s done. The big difference is that the kids today have things like Tom Toms, Mapquest, iPhones and Google; even Jimmy Hoffa could be tracked down with the right keywords.

With the intention of protecting himself and his family, it wasn’t until Ivan attempted to obtain a concealed weapons permit did things take another turn. Apparently there was still a case on his record that had been open for almost 17 years; all charges against him had been dropped but it was still on the books. Since he had recently made contact with the Virginia Beach Gang Unit with the intention of being part of a community outreach program, he mentioned about the need for protection and asked if they could help find out what was going on. Ivan gave a copy of Next Stop to each of the officers. One happened to let his supervisor take a look at it who, in turn, made some calls to the New York Police Department and the NYTF (New York’s equivalent of the DEA) to see if this stuff was real. Suddenly Ivan was under investigation again. Once the word got out that the cops were checking him out, all the death threats ceased. After a few weeks of nerve-wracking waiting and wondering if Ivan (and possibly myself) would end up in legal hot water, nothing came of the inquiries. In a roundabout way the cops proved the authenticity of Ivan’s book.

When I finally got back around to working on Bamboo, I realized that I had some more tough decisions to make.  My dilemma was that I had been privy to some illegal activities that were so outrageous they were better than anything I’d ever seen on television — reality far better than any fictitious spin that I could’ve written. Some of the gangsters I wrote about in my journal entries had been in and out of prison since I last saw them. In one case, when the DEA finally took down the Big Man, all the young guys he had on the street went to war over his territory and some of them became kingpins themselves. In all cases, my biggest concern wasn’t whether or not they would read Bamboo and see themselves. I never saw most with a book in their presence unless it was a ledger or an old family Bible on the table for show. The threat was from someone else reading the book, recognizing one or more gangsters and their crimes, then letting the rumor out about them being in my book. Some of them might have been flattered about being “famous” while others might have been ready to give me a one-way ticket to the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

I finally came to a conclusion: when it comes to a book — whether its a book I’m writing or a book BGP is publishing — Life is much easier as a writer if you treat Reality as a Choice and learn to walk the fine line between Defamation, Disclosure and Distortion. If you play it too safe, you lose the impact. If you play it the other way, the risks may not outweigh the gains. Either way, if you don’t play it smart there’s no telling how it will play out. Reluctantly, I started going back through everything I had already written, marking every illegal act that was harsher than smoking a joint. At times even today I’m still double-checking the liability factor behind some of the most interesting passages. It’s better than being an author whose book forced me to walk around strapped with a gun.

– Max Nomad

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