Dear Diary Anyway

Anyway, I can recall being at a park called Frick Park in Edgewood, Pennsylvania. I’m about 6 years old at the time and I get thirsty. There’re two fountains. One for whites only and the others for coloreds only. The white fountain looked as if it was cleaned by Hazel the maid laboring for the Baxter’s or the spinster Alice who happily worked for the Brady Bunch. While the colored fountain looked as if dogs, birds, cats, wildebeests, crocodiles, hippopotamus, elephants, lions, tigers, polar bears, well maybe not polar bears because we all know that they’d never survive in the Serengeti, drunk from that negro only fountain and when no one was looking it was also used for monkeys only to urinate in it as well. I can clearly recall my mother screaming don’t drink from that white only fountain.

 Anyway, as a child I attended church and bible studies up until about 12 years old. One summer while attending church summer school. This black lady slaps me across the face. Someone else had did something and she thought it was me. That was the first time I felt hatred toward another human being.

Anyway, at 14 years old I was placed on house arrest from my father for purposely forgetting to do my Saturday morning house chores before hitting the streets. I was known as some kind of weird scientist back in them days. My mother would tell anyone who would listen that she will take it to her grave for regret buying me my first chemistry set. After about the third day I got bored. We didn’t have x-box or internet or colored tv in them days. My father was so ingenious that he took the old black and white tv apart and placed multicolored cellophane paper on the inside of the tv. The sky was blue, the faces were pink in the middle and the bottom was green. That was the craziest thing I ever seen at that time. Me and my siblings got a lot of jokes about him behind his back. Although sometimes that cellophane matched up pretty good when watching cartoons.

Anyway, I had to get out of that room. I decided to make a stink bomb. I used a sharp pair of scissors and carefully cut the heads off of a book of matches. I placed the match heads inside the empty 20 oz bottle of Dr. Pepper. I added about 2 tablespoons of household ammonia. Sealed the bottle and swirled the contents around. I waited 4 days before uncapping the bottle. I almost killed myself as my mother placed a few towels underneath my door. Jammed a large dresser in front of the door so I couldn’t escape. (with the willing assistance of my two brothers I might add).

Anyway, I’m standing there looking at a herd of African Cape Buffalos at the San Diego Zoo at 15 years old. I see these black bugs flying all around them, but I really don’t pay all that much attention to them. I’m watching how they mate or make buffalo love making. I had a big afro at the time. When I get home my head is itching like crazy. I pay my girlfriend to braid my hair and to grease my scalp. When she parted my hair down the middle. She jumped up from behind me as if she seen a reincarnation of Flip Wilson including the outrageous Geraldine Jones, and the Reverend Leroy (of the Church of What's Happenin' Now), as well as Herbie, the Good Time Ice Cream Man (who had a nasty disposition). She comes running back into the living room holding a can of raid bug killer. I say what you about to kill baby. She points to the top of my scalp and says, you got a nest of then nasty African bugs growing in your head. That was the last time I would ever visit a zoo without wearing a skull cap or motorcycle helmet.  

Anyway, I’m walking because my license got suspended about 2 days after I got them on my 16^th birthday. I had 3 DWI’s. You didn’t need insurance to drive in those days either and there was no photograph of you on your license as well. I used both of my brother’s personal information when I got stopped by the police or in trouble until those pictures on the license were mandatory.  I’m half drunk when I see these two guys pestering this young lady, she appeared to be sick to me. In my drunken opinion them two predators had other ulterior motives. We didn’t have cell phones at the time. So, I picked up a brick and blasted one of them in the head. After that they took off faster than the road runner. I found a phone booth and called the police. There was no 911 at the time. About a few months later that same young lady approach me to thank me for saving her life. I said, beg your pardon. I didn’t even remember until she made me. Anyway, I do remember when I got to the Boom Boom Club as it was known. It was closed because it was a Sunday!

Anyway, one day when I’m about 21 years old I’m waiting on the bus. This young black guy walks up smoking a joint. This older black lady went ballistic. Me, I just walked as far as I could from that nasty good smelling pungent aroma. Anyway, she is ranting on and on about him having no respect. When he finished blowing the skunk smelling weed in the air, he looked directly into her evil eyes and said. Why didn’t you just move away like that dude over there, than running your foul mouth on a person who really doesn’t care. Woman I’m as high as a kite and you can’t blow my high with any of your ill time hypothesis. Then he asked her was she aware of the 4^th and 13^th amendment of the Constitution? I could hardly wait to hear where this conversation was heading. Madame the 4^th amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets out requirements for search warrants based onprobable cause. That lady looked at him as if he was about to steal her monthly bus pass. Then he said it’s people like you that constantly remind me of the 13^th amendment, it abolishes slavery, and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. I was wondering to myself where did he get that Constitutional asinine thought from, as he walked away laughing to himself.

Anyway, I didn’t find my way back to the lord until August 13, 2001. I was 46 years old. The entire day my mind, body and confused soul was being guided by unknown forces. When I got up that morning me and my sister got into a big argument in which even today I can’t tell you what it was about. She demanded that I leave her home. I start walking towards downtown Cleveland not knowing what I was going to do. I realized at that moment went I sat in the bus stop that I was homeless. I looked in the corner and lo and behold there was a whole 5^th bottle of Wild Irish Rose Red wine with the seal still on it. I got to thinking that the devil surely loves me. I’m sitting there now without a care in the world. Shortly after a lady comes and sits down and says the lord loves you. I say if he does then why am I homeless. She goes inside of her huge red purse and hands me a 10 dollar bill. All I know at that moment is I even had enough money to buy a pack of roll up tobacco. Suddenly she disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. I was half drunk by the time she came, but the 10 dollar bill was real as I traveled on to seek some more drink. The sun was up now, and it was getting hot. I get my escape from reality goods and sit at another bus stop closer to downtown. I’m almost finished with the pint of wine I purchased when the police pull up beside me. The one cop gets out of the car and snatches the little bit of wine I had left out of my trembling hands and pours it out. He says dude you need Jesus in your life and pulls off. I know in my mind’s eyes that a miracle had just occurred, because in Cleveland you go to jail or get a ticket to appear in front of a judge. I still got enough money to buy another shorty. Along my walk I meet a guy who was also homeless. He tells me about a place where I can sleep for free. He points in the direction in which the free housing is located and then suddenly disappears. It’s a homeless shelter for men. By the time I get there. I see a line as long as the line I stood in to watch that movie The Exorcist for the first time. The Exorcist presented to me the mystery of faith in its most raw form, the battle of good versus evil. It is an incomparable masterpiece of film, done without the aid of computers and special effects. It relied on story and performances that gave me a marvelous and terrifying piece of mental history. A concerned mother calls upon an ordained Jesuit priests to try to end the demonic possession of her 12-year-old daughter), with my then girlfriend and later on my first wife, in 1973.

Anyway, when I was about 47 years old. The housekeeper Mrs. Margret demanded that I follow her behind my grandfathers red barn. She then cut off a chicken’s head right in front of my shocked eyes. That day and to this day I know what it means to run around like a chicken with no head and even if I never stopped being a non-conformist. I believe that I don’t or can’t remember anymore, anyway epic tales from my past, present and future lives or maybe it’s simply from the fact that my father shot me in the back of my huge afro wearing head point blank at age of 50.

Anyway, maybe I’ll be mysteriously picked up by the Adjustment Bureau after you read this.

Anyway, do we control our destiny or do unseen forces manipulate us?