Reflections

October 6, 2023

Its deer season. I always get a bit melancholy sitting on my ancestors’ land. I am trying to find that rare mature buck and that rarer barren doe. As a result, I have not killed a deer with a bow in four years. But I go anyway on the off chance than one will appear. My mother used to say “You can kill as many deer just sitting watching TV.” Of course, she was right – at least during bow season. 

As I have gotten older I’ve come to appreciate most of the wisdom of my parents. They told us (I had an older brother Charles) many things among them were:

1. Envy is a wasted emotion so
2. Don’t be envious of anyone
3. Make them be envious of you
4. Jealousy is also a wasted emotion
5. Make them be jealous of you
6. I don’t care what you want to be as long as you become the very best that you can be
7. Never make excuses just promise to do better next time
8. Its ok to make a “B” so long as you were trying hard to make an “A”
9. Make an “A” the next time
10. You know what’s right and what’s wrong. Deciding to do wrong will both hurt us and disappoint us (Note: I always asked myself would my parents approve of some action)
11. You are entitled to your own opinion so long as you keep it to yourself and the one I hated the most
12. Your teachers may not always be right but they are your teachers and should be obeyed
13. If you think you were wronged by your teachers then we will discuss it with them and let you know the resolution
14. You do not talk back to adults

Importantly, it being back of the bus days, Dad deliberately moved us from Madison, GA to Atlanta to minimize our contact with whites. He hated the Jim Crow laws (listen to Brenda Russell’s “Against the Law”) and refused to go into places split by race. The mortgage was from a black S&L, the checking accounts at a black bank, the insurance from a black-owned agency. We didn’t go to the downtown theatres because we were confined to the balcony. We didn’t see minor league baseball because of the segregate seating. As a consequence, I never had a conversation with a white person until that awful testy interview with the racist registrar at Georgia. Dad kept telling us that the Jim Crow laws would not be necessary if we were inferior to whites. My brother who was a math genius could not go to Georgia Tech so he went to Purdue, a much better school. Not qualified? When I went to Georgia, Dad said “Show those Crackers who is not qualified”. Hence, we had no sense of inferiority. We knew that the Jim Crow laws existed because whites were scared of us. That is why I had no fear at Georgia. Thanks Dad.

My parents did not drink. Mother made wine from the scuppernongs growing in the backyard and gave them to the folks on the street as Christmas presents. Dad smoked but quit when I was in elementary school. Mom smoked until I was in high school. Neither ever cursed. I never heard them argue. Later I told Mom that it was remarkable that they didn’t argue. She told me that they argued all the time but not in our presence. They would wait until we were asleep and then go into the basement to “discuss” their differences. They did not want us to see anger in the house, only love.

I always chafed at the rules, especially the ones about not questioning adults and not being able to express my opinions. I had a very serious conflict with my father while at Georgia and told him “no” when he told me to apologize to the Air Force ROTC commander who had openly discriminated against me. He told me that if I could not do what he demanded then I was to pack my things because I could not live in his house. He would not pay my way in school and I had to leave. Mother interceded but Dad and I hardly said a word to each other for two the next years. Much later I sat down with him to air out all my pent-up grievances. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t regret a single thing. Rather he said “I was just trying to be a father.” From that point until he died, our relationship warmed. I miss him.