By Bill
King
With
the horror of Charlottesville fresh in mind - white
nationalists/supremacists on the ground, a resurgence of the KKK, communities
under siege – an open dialogue is beginning to take shape. Words are
still hate-filled and coded, but for the most part, there’s push-back – folks
coming forth and confronting evil. Statues to Confederate war lords are
falling, as are those of slave owners and plantation barons. Those are
positive signs we may be replacing bandages with healing surgery.
With
that in mind, I thought I’d offer a look at our family to better understand the
roots of modern day bigotry and how my brother Wayne and I dealt with it.
All you
should do is turn back the clocks and gather around a kitchen table during the
late fifties and early sixties down south and listen in on adult conversations.
It was the blame game – it was always about the outsider – a face, a name that
either prospered or endured hardship more than you. I’m talking about family.
Family history.
There
was always a family member, aunt or uncle who ripped on those less fortunate
and those who acquired a comfortable amount of wealth. Ours was no different -
the key factor still in play – southern history – one rooted in class,
prejudice, and racism.
Dad’s
side of the family were dirt-poor tobacco farmers who lost everything from
gambling, drinking and the Great Depression. Pops' father was a hard man who
put the farm and family in jeopardy. Pops never spoke kind words about him
other than to remind us he was frequently beaten with a razor strop. I know
from those who knew dad as a boy and maturing man, he was wild as hell. Dad ran
the Kentucky foothills without a care in the world until the Great Depression. He
made it as far as grade ten schooling and then, out of necessity, was sentenced
to picking tobacco – back-breaking work for a child or adult. Once old enough
to drive, dad ran moonshine through the Kentucky/Tennessee back country in an amped-up
Ford.
Family vacations, dad would point out roadside
hideaways. Places where ‘copper stills’ were once hidden from the sight of
revenuers.
Pops
railed against big government; blacks, unions, alcoholics, Catholics, fat
people, liberals, communists; whoever challenged his sense of what America was
meant to be.
Dad loved
history. He’d cram us into his prized Ford Fairlane station wagon and travel to
historic Mt. Vernon N.Y, - George Washington’s home; Hopkinsville, KY to
observe Lincoln’s log cabin, Washington D.C. – colonial Williamsburg, VA. If
there was a statue or symbol of America – the family arrived to witness
and remember.
Across
the river in Louisville, Olympic heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay was
quickly dispensing with opponents and rising in the pro ranks. Pops was there
for every fight pleading for an opponent to smash Clay’s mouth shut. ‘No negro
should ever talk to a white man this way’, he’d say. Pops was a Rocky Marciano
guy. He’d huddle front of his bedside radio - draw curtains and battle Cassius
and fight personal demons.
Dad was
wounded on four different occasions during World War 11, and it wasn’t until he
was well into his ‘70s that he began treatment for PTSD. Recalling the
amphibious landing and assault on Utah Beach, D-Day June 6, 1944 – Normandy, he
suffered sleepless nightmares. Pops would interrogate himself – ask why he
survived and close friends drowned or perished from enemy fire. It
haunted him till death at age 89. War rarely took a day off in our home. Twelve
operations, hundreds of trips to the VA hospital, long bouts of anger, pain and
frustration followed him most hours of the day.
What
gave Pops relief was music. He played rhythm guitar through his late teens and
twenties and travelled the south in minstrel shows with singer Jackie
DeShannon’s(Sharon Meyers) dad, ‘Tink’ Meyers. As told to us – they sang poor-house
songs scripted during the depression. He also worked with magician Harry
Blackstone setting up and packing props. All before war changed him.
As
kids, we tiptoed through the house and sidestepped as if avoiding minefields.
Occasionally, the guitar would come out, and pops would place his trembling
hands on the fret board and shape a chord then strum. This was when he came to
life - loosened up, revealing what he yearned to do with his life. Play like
Oscar Peterson’s guitarist – Herb Ellis!
The
Elvis ‘three-chord wonder’ recitations, those idiot rock n’ rollers
declarations – only jazz musicians had it together in his head. Buddy Rich,
Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman – even country man Roy Clark, honky-tonk pianist Jo
Ann Castle of the Lawrence Welk Show, fared better.
Dad
worked a good thirty years as a security guard at Colgate Palmolive Company
until retirement. The next twenty-five were invested in his passion – fishing.
That fishing habit brought him to the Everglades where he spent nearly every
waking hour trolling for bass. When not in Florida, he could be found at his
campsite on Cumberland Lake, in Kentucky – fishing.
At
Colgate, he battled with the black community which bordered the plant. Poverty
was a ‘fact of life’, and the grounds of the plant were fair game and a small
income for those most in need. There were tubes of discarded toothpaste, bars
of soap, detergent – products tossed aside for one small infraction or another.
At night, folks would jump the fence and dad would give chase. The game played
out until the old man was ambushed and whacked with a shovel, fracturing a leg.
This did little to dissipate the hostility he bore for the opposite race.
Throughout
high school, brother Wayne and I endured his lectures on race and equality. It
was all about class and where you stood on the economic ground. He was sure
blacks would always reside a few steps below whites; that’s just the way it
was. Then along came Martin Luther King and all hell busts loose.
For old
southerner’s, these were racial issues sorted out long ago by whites, and
everyone knew their place. Integration was on the doorstep; sit-ins, civil
rights marches, laws guaranteeing equality were on the books or on the
legislative horizon and dad, like those of his heritage, had no control or say
in these matters.
The
coming years were unpleasant. Us boys saw the future and didn’t buy into the
bigotry and hatred. Music demanded humility, compromise, associations, and
friendships. At nineteen, I left home and never returned as a resident. Dad and
I fought and argued for years – going three to five years without a
conversation between us until we met on common ground at my Italian
grandmother’s farm in Pennsylvania. It was there, after a year’s absent during
a conversation I asked him to take a walk in the woods.
Pops
stood 6’6” – a lanky, at times fierce man, but on this occasion, he was with
his first son. I finally had a chance to speak openly without fear, and ask why
he carried so much animosity for the poor and blacks he’d grown up alongside.
He responded, “it’s all about survival. There are those that have, and the have
nots. It’s the laws of survival. I have, and that’s that – the planet’s
overcrowded and the weak die”. Astounding! I prod him further – he then
explains this is the way he was raised and he can’t change.
I
didn’t buy that.
Through
the next decade, until death, I make an effort to change him; not hate him.
Each month or two, I’d send him a book to read. He was a voracious reader. P.J.
O’Rourke, Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson – music biographies, history, war,
travel - anyone I thought who could expand his horizons and move him away
from those John Birch Society and Jerry Falwell pamphlets.
Visits,
he’d be locked and loaded in his recliner with FOX News blasting on eleven –
wound tight and ready for a fight! We knew to keep him far away from his prized
gun rack. Brother Wayne and I would teas, toy and keep him laughing. Pops did
learn from our long-distance relationship, never speak to me in racist terms or
language. Never demean those less fortunate, - at best, be civil.
During
his last decade, we grew close, speaking every week or so on the phone. It was
always about music and photography and what was in those books. Throughout our
lives, I never asked him for a penny, then in the last three years of life,
$1,000 arrived consecutive Christmases; a check each, addressed to my wife Kris
and I, with instructions scribbled in trembling ink, ‘put this towards the best
digital cameras you can buy’.
Pops
and I looked at the same photo books; Henri Cartier-Bresson, his favourite, war
photographer Robert Capra – my favourite – Eugene Smith. He understood what
made a great image. Dad listened to music and could recognize a finely crafted
solo. Pops savoured the landscape and beauty and time spent hiking and fishing
– he was no ordinary man – far better than the class battles poor southerners
carried as open wounds.
Leading
to my fiftieth high school class reunion, my dear classmate, Jan Stratton
Cooksey, prods me a good year before to attend – saying something special
was occurring. Kris and I make the trip, and I find myself accepting an award
for the work I’d done in music outside our community of Jeffersonville,
Indiana – Commodore of the Port. We
are a shipbuilding community.
The
person driving this – Jimmy Gales, a black man who I shared many a day and
friendship in classes throughout my school years. We hadn’t seen or spoken
through the years, but Jimmy took this upon himself to make happen. I had no
idea how this would play out in that Indiana has a checkered past and
connection to the Klan. It’s a diehard right-wing Republican state, and me – a
well-known war resister who fled to Canada. The night was exceptional and the
past, for most, was the past.
Late
evening, Jimmy and I speak, and he reveals to me something I’d never imagined;
how much he loved my dad. Their fishing adventures and friendship. I was bowled
over. It was like rumours of someone having two families or at least
relationships with a muse.
I
walked away with a smile in my heart. Truthfully, I always suspected dad wasn’t
the shallow man yodeling epitaphs from the recliner. A far better man than the
hurtful words that crippled our relationship. Jimmy spoke the words I needed to
hear.
I
always suspected Pops would have given up all his possessions if he could have
sat five minutes on a coveted bandstand alongside Duke Ellington, Count
Basie, Cannonball Adderley, Lionel Hampton and his super hero, Wes Montgomery -
the giants of jazz, whose artistry and intellect demolished all delusions of
superiority. Pops heard the music, and the music touched him. It was Jimmy, the
family angel, who righted his soul.
