(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.

[####]

]]> 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.

> 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.

> Chivalry — pulling out chairs to seat woman, rising when she excuses
> herself to the restroom, the art of clearing the way through a crowd
> with one arm while gently cradling the woman with the other, among
> other things — will go the way of the curtsy, rendered irrelevant by
> men who do not know how to accomplish it and women who do
> not appreciate it.

For what it’s worth, many of those “chivalrous” things men do (or did) for women like pulling out chairs and opening doors and such originally had nothing to do with some higher manhood code of conduct. Most of these originated in Europe and came to the Americas as the result of four words from the 16th through 19th centuries that most of us men have never heard of: Farthingales, Panniers, Crinolines, and Bustles. In plain English, “women were wearing huge frilly hoop dresses supported by undergarments that were often stiff and uncomfortable”.

Back then, the wealthier the woman, the bigger and more elaborate her dresses tended to be, especially when attending social functions. Because of the styles of dresses, women actually needed doors opened for them, assistance taking a seat or standing up from a table, or climbing in or out of stagecoaches. In those social settings, since all the women were dressed this way, it was a man nearby who would provide this assistance. This form of assistance somehow got labeled as a part of “chivalry” because the men in those high social settings had often had been raised with various etiquette protocols, college educated, and had social status and wealth (or they were servants working for such people). The wealth of the man also explains the “man pays for everything” aspect, too. Commoners (working class men and women) often didn’t readily know or do some of these “chivalrous” things for women because the women usually couldn’t afford those elaborate dresses, thus they didn’t need assistance.

Eventually the fashion trends faded away, the traditions continued and the “why” of these actions was lost and replaced with “this is what men are supposed to do”, especially after being adopted by minorities in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The traditions were socially perceived as part of what wealthy (or prosperous), culturally-refined men do. Fast forward to the introduction of social changes like Women’s Lib and current women’s fashions and many of these “chivalrous” activities seem archaic or completely useless, sometimes even a cause of static because some women are fiercely independent and consider it demeaning.

With all that said, I still open doors for women and sometimes for men, too, just to be polite. If I’m driving, I always open the passenger door for a woman that’s riding with me before I get in. I’ll pay for everything on a date only if I offer to do so — and she accepts my offer. And if I’m at a formal event with a woman I’ll pull her chair out once we arrive at the table. The thing I’ve learned is that if you’re a man and you don’t do these things consistently just because you’re a gentleman, don’t do them just to impress a woman you’re dating. Most women will see right through that sooner or later and it’ll make you look bad when you “stop being polite and start being real”. Even Saddam Hussein could look like Prince Charming by opening a door or two for a lady.

Late June, 1994. Virginia Beach.

I’d been invited to a garden party, the kind where everyone seemed to know that Mozzarella goes with a Chianti Riserva, Gouda goes with a Riesling, and anyone that didn’t know at least had the foresight to memorize which wines matched their favorite cheeses. A friend of the family was about to announce her candidacy for City Council. And even though the scene was very diverse, I felt out of my element. I swallowed my pride and did the smiley mingling thing, complete with empty compliments and forgettable small talk, until I encountered a white-haired old man sitting off by himself under a nearby gazebo. He reminded me of a Dick Van Dyke after one too many shots of Jägermeister. I noticed he was wearing a Polo shirt, khakis, sandals, and studying a small plate of chipolata sausages as if they were from Mars. Somehow, I knew this guy wasn’t a typical wine-n-cheese snob.

During our introductions I never caught his real name. At first I thought he was sloppy drunk because of his slurring until he revealed that he was still recovering from a major stroke. When he learned that I had recently graduated with my design degree, the conversation moved onto common ground. He sounded like he had dreams of becoming the next Paul Gauguin if he hadn’t been pulled into the family business. Although he now owned several large hotels at the oceanfront, he talked about them like most people talk about a relative that just got arrested again for being drunk in public. He did most of the talking. Slurred and tangential at best, he always seemed to make a point and, for whatever reason, that point always had a connection to Art.

“Every now and then you meet folks who truly appreciate beauty in the world,” he said as he stared off at some distant, unspoken memory, “but the truth is, most people love junk. Garbage.” Give them a T-bone steak entree, grilled to perfection, and they will add ketchup without tasting it. Give them a cup of fresh brewed Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee and they will dump cream and sugar in it before taking a sip. Make the Perfect Martini and they will claim it’s weak unless it was made with some harsh rotgut vodka. The list goes on…

Over the years and many clients later, rarely has a week gone by that I haven’t been faced with the truth of that conversation. As a professional Graphic Designer, whether you’re doing print, web, or mixed media, you secretly have to determine which type of person you’re dealing with in order to have a chance at making that client happy. The only limits on creativity are the ones we set upon them — project by project, budget by budget, and within the boundaries of what that client will and won’t understand about beauty and function.

– Max Nomad