Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
I’ve been in Alcoholics Anonymous since June of 1988. Spirit stepped in and led me there too. Not just led me and dropped me off at the door, stayed with me throughout. The first months were terrifying; yet I knew I was not alone. For the first time in my life, I knew that Spirit is here with me always. I learned that recovery, like life, is a journey, not a destination. I have learned that more is revealed every moment in life if I am open to the revelation. I always say that both Unity and A.A. were and are the twin bedrocks of my recovery. At Unity, recovery work is encouraged and celebrated. What I found amazing early in my recovery was that Reverend Bean’s sermons and teachings mirrored, clarified and underscored the 12 steps. It was one more wondrous sign from Spirit that I was definitely supposed to be at Unity Fellowship Church.
What attracts me still to Unity is the fact that we are Progressive Christians. I still shy away from describing myself as a Christian because so many people use the label in a loose and trite way, and because so many who characterize themselves as Christians do things that give the label negative connotations. Too many people who name themselves Christians do it, I think, to be part of the crowd, or for the sake of religiosity—just to show off, or to justify their evil ways. Still, in these times, it’s necessary to draw the line in the sand and say that I am not of the Fundamentalist branch of Christianity.
I am a Progressive Christian. That means I embrace a dynamic, ever-expanding concept of God—not bound by an image of a White man with white hair and a white beard dressed in flowing robes. For why should God be a man—or a woman, for that matter, when Spirit is every thing? I embrace a dynamic concept of Spirit not bound by the limited knowledge of people and Biblical authors of the past. Nor am I bound by the text of sixty-six books which comprise a larger book called the Bible which was written, edited, and censored by people—not God. I am a member of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, and that means, among other things, that I am a questioner and an independent thinker. What I read in the Bible—like any other book I read—is subject to my critical scrutiny, interpretation, analysis, and evaluation. I am not a Biblical literalist or fundamentalist. I am a Liberation Theologist. That means I reject religious dogma, philosophy, teachings, and canon (religious principles) that oppress, limit, censor, and seek to have power over and control both people and ideas. That also means I am aware of and respect the many paths to spiritual enlightenment. I do not believe there is only one true religion. I do believe that Spirit is present in all things—to big to box into a single religious category or label with a single name. Spirit is ever expanding, waiting to be discovered anew each moment.
I am an African-American Lesbian and a Progressive Christian. One does not contradict the other. And no one can tell me it does. Because I stand on my life’s experiential journey as testimony that God loves and cares for me, no matter what my sexuality. My life is full of stories and experiences that testify to the truth of that. I thrive and flourish right now under the love and care of Spirit. I have not been crushed under foot because I am a Lesbian. Nor do I expect to be relegated to hell because of it when I make transition. My life is a journey. My experiences allow me to discover Spirit everywhere. God brought me to this place to learn more. And I must go on.
(end)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Testimony- Part 3
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
Eventually, I found Jewel’s Catch One—the premier West Coast bar for Black people who were “in the life”. At the Catch, for the first time, I saw Lesbian women and Gay men, and Transvestites gathered under one roof. And that was an eye-opener. For my experience, thus far, had never incorporated a whole culture of sexually diverse people—and even cultures within that culture. Put plainly, I had never seen groups, crowds, of Black folks like me in a public space who weren’t hiding their sexuality. It was a new and fascinating experience to be in the Catch. Evansville had nothing public like this—nor did Knoxville when I was growing up. In early 1987, it was Henry, a bartender at the Catch, who told me about this church for Gay people and that the minister was a Black, Gay man who was “out”. The name of the church, he said, was Unity Fellowship Church. An “out” Black, Gay minister? How daring could you get? I was intrigued.
And so I went. I went guided there by Spirit at the end of a long, long journey. And for the beginning of another one. When I walked into the Ebony Showcase Theater, I saw 20 or 30 people there seated on old, folding chairs; some I knew from the Catch. The place was bare-bones, tattered and worn. There was a small stage with dark curtains that looked a bit shabby. On the stage was a beaten-up podium. Angie Vaughn, who had been leading a ritual called “Testimony”, asked us to stand and welcome Reverend Carl Bean, the minister. He came out from behind the curtains and that was the first time I laid eyes on the person that Spirit had sent to change my life—and the lives of a whole lot of other people. He was wearing a plain black robe –a rather short man of indeterminate age, with a round face, whose eyes and mouth were smiling.
I can’t recall the details about that first church service, yet I remember the feeling I came away with. It was like coming home. It amazed me. And I went back the next Sunday and kept going back every Sunday because I knew without a doubt I had found a place where I didn’t have to hide who I was. I didn’t feel like an outcast, like an “odd duck”, or like I had to be perfect. An important part of the liturgy of the service was the Affirmation, and every week, Reverend Bean told me, and all of us, that God made us, loved, accepted and wanted us just as we were. That we were Spirit’s divine offspring. That we—whether Homosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or Heterosexual—we were not a mistake—not some monstrous perversion, not some flawed piece of trash. That God is love and love is for everyone—not just a few. That God makes no difference between us and straight folks, or White folks, or rich folks. I found myself weeping silently during the Affirmation. It was like a healing balm to all of us, like a salve that helped to staunch the bleeding and close the wounds we harbored deep inside ourselves.
I was beyond excited. I just had to tell one of my friends back home about Reverend Bean, the church, the sense of belonging and community I had found. I told Judy that we didn’t have to feel shamed anymore because we were Lesbians. I told her that God loved us and we were not mistakes and that we didn’t have to be afraid of what other people thought about our sexuality. And I told her I was coming out to my other friends in Knoxville and my aunts (who were my late uncles’wives). Now that was going to take courage. But I wasn’t afraid anymore. And I didn’t want to hide any longer. When I told the aunts and the friends, they said it didn’t matter to them. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Here I was prepared to be berated and ostracized. I had steeled myself for it. What I got was a lot of love and acceptance. That taught me that you can’t predict outcomes and to trust Spirit’s guidance.
I looked forward to going back every week, not only for the Affirmation and sense of community, but for the sermons! Although I felt let out of the cage, I didn’t grasp, at first, that I had been oppressed through the theology of religion. I knew I was being set free when Reverend Ban challenged us to interpret and think about the ideas in the Bible. He was “teaching” us in his sermons. Really teaching us. That alone threw me into the heights of delight. Here was a preacher who actually taught something—not someone who just expected you to swallow his Sunday morning “lecture” without thought or question. Reverend Bean expected us to actually “read” the Bible verses along with him as he focused on them during the sermon. He exhorted us not to be intimidated by Fundamentalist, literal readings of the Bible, and he preached that we should not to be afraid to consider that the Bible was not inerrant. What’s more, he characterized Jesus as a rebel, a paradigm-shifter, and a radical thinker—and backed it up with evidence from the text. I didn’t know then that Unity was a church of Liberation Theology. I hadn’t a clue what that was; nor did I realize that I was hearing the ideas of Progressive Christianity, but I knew a rebel and a sure-nuff radical when I heard one in the pulpit. I was thrilled and I was smitten. Spirit had finally led me to what I was reaching for all those years ago in Baptism class. You couldn’t have pried me away. I decided to become a member and did so on July 19, 1987.
(end Part 3)
Eventually, I found Jewel’s Catch One—the premier West Coast bar for Black people who were “in the life”. At the Catch, for the first time, I saw Lesbian women and Gay men, and Transvestites gathered under one roof. And that was an eye-opener. For my experience, thus far, had never incorporated a whole culture of sexually diverse people—and even cultures within that culture. Put plainly, I had never seen groups, crowds, of Black folks like me in a public space who weren’t hiding their sexuality. It was a new and fascinating experience to be in the Catch. Evansville had nothing public like this—nor did Knoxville when I was growing up. In early 1987, it was Henry, a bartender at the Catch, who told me about this church for Gay people and that the minister was a Black, Gay man who was “out”. The name of the church, he said, was Unity Fellowship Church. An “out” Black, Gay minister? How daring could you get? I was intrigued.
And so I went. I went guided there by Spirit at the end of a long, long journey. And for the beginning of another one. When I walked into the Ebony Showcase Theater, I saw 20 or 30 people there seated on old, folding chairs; some I knew from the Catch. The place was bare-bones, tattered and worn. There was a small stage with dark curtains that looked a bit shabby. On the stage was a beaten-up podium. Angie Vaughn, who had been leading a ritual called “Testimony”, asked us to stand and welcome Reverend Carl Bean, the minister. He came out from behind the curtains and that was the first time I laid eyes on the person that Spirit had sent to change my life—and the lives of a whole lot of other people. He was wearing a plain black robe –a rather short man of indeterminate age, with a round face, whose eyes and mouth were smiling.
I can’t recall the details about that first church service, yet I remember the feeling I came away with. It was like coming home. It amazed me. And I went back the next Sunday and kept going back every Sunday because I knew without a doubt I had found a place where I didn’t have to hide who I was. I didn’t feel like an outcast, like an “odd duck”, or like I had to be perfect. An important part of the liturgy of the service was the Affirmation, and every week, Reverend Bean told me, and all of us, that God made us, loved, accepted and wanted us just as we were. That we were Spirit’s divine offspring. That we—whether Homosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or Heterosexual—we were not a mistake—not some monstrous perversion, not some flawed piece of trash. That God is love and love is for everyone—not just a few. That God makes no difference between us and straight folks, or White folks, or rich folks. I found myself weeping silently during the Affirmation. It was like a healing balm to all of us, like a salve that helped to staunch the bleeding and close the wounds we harbored deep inside ourselves.
I was beyond excited. I just had to tell one of my friends back home about Reverend Bean, the church, the sense of belonging and community I had found. I told Judy that we didn’t have to feel shamed anymore because we were Lesbians. I told her that God loved us and we were not mistakes and that we didn’t have to be afraid of what other people thought about our sexuality. And I told her I was coming out to my other friends in Knoxville and my aunts (who were my late uncles’wives). Now that was going to take courage. But I wasn’t afraid anymore. And I didn’t want to hide any longer. When I told the aunts and the friends, they said it didn’t matter to them. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Here I was prepared to be berated and ostracized. I had steeled myself for it. What I got was a lot of love and acceptance. That taught me that you can’t predict outcomes and to trust Spirit’s guidance.
I looked forward to going back every week, not only for the Affirmation and sense of community, but for the sermons! Although I felt let out of the cage, I didn’t grasp, at first, that I had been oppressed through the theology of religion. I knew I was being set free when Reverend Ban challenged us to interpret and think about the ideas in the Bible. He was “teaching” us in his sermons. Really teaching us. That alone threw me into the heights of delight. Here was a preacher who actually taught something—not someone who just expected you to swallow his Sunday morning “lecture” without thought or question. Reverend Bean expected us to actually “read” the Bible verses along with him as he focused on them during the sermon. He exhorted us not to be intimidated by Fundamentalist, literal readings of the Bible, and he preached that we should not to be afraid to consider that the Bible was not inerrant. What’s more, he characterized Jesus as a rebel, a paradigm-shifter, and a radical thinker—and backed it up with evidence from the text. I didn’t know then that Unity was a church of Liberation Theology. I hadn’t a clue what that was; nor did I realize that I was hearing the ideas of Progressive Christianity, but I knew a rebel and a sure-nuff radical when I heard one in the pulpit. I was thrilled and I was smitten. Spirit had finally led me to what I was reaching for all those years ago in Baptism class. You couldn’t have pried me away. I decided to become a member and did so on July 19, 1987.
(end Part 3)
Testimony- Part 2
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
I’m not going to say that being closeted and wearing a false face drove me into alcoholism. That leaves out too many pieces of the puzzle. What I do think is that wearing a false face was a big-time contributor to my drinking every day. Even without the drink, hiding who you really are drives up the stress level. I remember the Anita Bryant controversy broke in the news while I was living in Evansville. Everybody—meaning the men—at Allen’s Lounge (my every day water hole) endlessly voiced their sentiment that she was right to castigate gays. They took up the “party line” that gay people were degenerate perverts, and so on, and so on. It was painful to listen to and I weakly tried to put in my two cents worth of counterargument, but I was too scared of being found out. Some speculating rumors about my relationship with my roommate had already circulated in the community when I first moved there. I’d had to work hard to dispel them and I didn’t want them resurfacing. So I didn’t have the courage to defend myself and those like me.
I went on hiding out, playing the role, trying to tell myself that my life was okay, even though I knew it wasn’t. What kind of life is it to pretend every moment that you’re somebody else? What kind of life is it to drink every day to numb yourself? What kind of life is it to sense there’s so much more, but never have the courage to reach for it? I went on like that for 13 years until the spring of 1980 when the man I had been with for 10½ years was murdered and then, a month later, my father died. The double whammy almost did me in. It was a very bad time, but Spirit brought me through.
When these double deaths hit, I joined the Baptist church in Evansville that my late lover’s family belonged to. The minister’s eulogy had comforted me. I went back the following Sunday to hear his sermon. It appealed to me intellectually, but there was some element missing. The fact that his church was near empty every Sunday, and the lack of amens to what he was saying from the few in the audience said that he wasn’t reaching them. But I kept going back because I was searching for some spiritual something. Eventually, I joined even though I knew this was not the church or liturgy that satisfied me, but I figured a little bit of something was better than nothing. I wasn’t looking for the church to help me stop drinking. In fact, I had resigned myself to being a prisoner of the bottle for the rest of my life. I knew, by this time, that I had a “drinking problem”. I just didn’t know what to do about it. At any rate, my membership in the Baptist Church was short-lived because several months after joining, I knew I had to leave Evansville.
There was nothing there for me in a career path. And I had long been struggling to make myself fit into the small town outlook and life. It had always been hard for I was a rebel thinker and Evansville was a sea of conformity. Over the years, it had gotten harder, not easier. Now, since my lover—who was my crutch, as well as my “beard”—was dead, and since there was no more blood family in Knoxville or anywhere else, I was free to go. The idea of freedom scared me; yet, it fascinated me. I decided to go to Los Angeles where my friend, Ron lived. I knew he would help me with the move. When I made the decision to move, I was a full-blown alcoholic, and indecision was my usual state of mind. Generally speaking, the addiction to alcohol wouldn’t let me make decisions with ease or clarity. But I did with this one. In January of 1981, I decided, and by May 5th, I stepped off the plane at LAX. That move, I sincerely believe, was Spirit’s pulling me to Unity Fellowship Church.
It would be five years before Providence walked me through its doors. When I got to L.A., I did try three or four churches—a Presbyterian, a Christian Scientist, and a couple of other Protestant. They left me unmoved and bored. I gave up on church. On Sundays, you could find me drinking at home or at a bar.
(end Part 2)
I’m not going to say that being closeted and wearing a false face drove me into alcoholism. That leaves out too many pieces of the puzzle. What I do think is that wearing a false face was a big-time contributor to my drinking every day. Even without the drink, hiding who you really are drives up the stress level. I remember the Anita Bryant controversy broke in the news while I was living in Evansville. Everybody—meaning the men—at Allen’s Lounge (my every day water hole) endlessly voiced their sentiment that she was right to castigate gays. They took up the “party line” that gay people were degenerate perverts, and so on, and so on. It was painful to listen to and I weakly tried to put in my two cents worth of counterargument, but I was too scared of being found out. Some speculating rumors about my relationship with my roommate had already circulated in the community when I first moved there. I’d had to work hard to dispel them and I didn’t want them resurfacing. So I didn’t have the courage to defend myself and those like me.
I went on hiding out, playing the role, trying to tell myself that my life was okay, even though I knew it wasn’t. What kind of life is it to pretend every moment that you’re somebody else? What kind of life is it to drink every day to numb yourself? What kind of life is it to sense there’s so much more, but never have the courage to reach for it? I went on like that for 13 years until the spring of 1980 when the man I had been with for 10½ years was murdered and then, a month later, my father died. The double whammy almost did me in. It was a very bad time, but Spirit brought me through.
When these double deaths hit, I joined the Baptist church in Evansville that my late lover’s family belonged to. The minister’s eulogy had comforted me. I went back the following Sunday to hear his sermon. It appealed to me intellectually, but there was some element missing. The fact that his church was near empty every Sunday, and the lack of amens to what he was saying from the few in the audience said that he wasn’t reaching them. But I kept going back because I was searching for some spiritual something. Eventually, I joined even though I knew this was not the church or liturgy that satisfied me, but I figured a little bit of something was better than nothing. I wasn’t looking for the church to help me stop drinking. In fact, I had resigned myself to being a prisoner of the bottle for the rest of my life. I knew, by this time, that I had a “drinking problem”. I just didn’t know what to do about it. At any rate, my membership in the Baptist Church was short-lived because several months after joining, I knew I had to leave Evansville.
There was nothing there for me in a career path. And I had long been struggling to make myself fit into the small town outlook and life. It had always been hard for I was a rebel thinker and Evansville was a sea of conformity. Over the years, it had gotten harder, not easier. Now, since my lover—who was my crutch, as well as my “beard”—was dead, and since there was no more blood family in Knoxville or anywhere else, I was free to go. The idea of freedom scared me; yet, it fascinated me. I decided to go to Los Angeles where my friend, Ron lived. I knew he would help me with the move. When I made the decision to move, I was a full-blown alcoholic, and indecision was my usual state of mind. Generally speaking, the addiction to alcohol wouldn’t let me make decisions with ease or clarity. But I did with this one. In January of 1981, I decided, and by May 5th, I stepped off the plane at LAX. That move, I sincerely believe, was Spirit’s pulling me to Unity Fellowship Church.
It would be five years before Providence walked me through its doors. When I got to L.A., I did try three or four churches—a Presbyterian, a Christian Scientist, and a couple of other Protestant. They left me unmoved and bored. I gave up on church. On Sundays, you could find me drinking at home or at a bar.
(end Part 2)
Testimony- Part 1
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
I was raised as a Methodist—not C.M.E., not A.M.E., not United Methodist—just vanilla-plain Methodist. My mother’s adopted father was a Baptist preacher, I’m told, and my father’s father was a Methodist preacher. When they married, my mother joined Vine Avenue Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. When I was born, I was christened at that church and was made a member when I was an adolescent. I didn’t want to join the church, but I was expected to. I registered my protest with my mother but I knew that I was captive to my family’s reputation (my parents were teachers), and to the expectations of the Black community. In that era, the fifties, good little middle-class adolescent girls were taught to conform to and expected to tow the line set by community values. I could see that my protest was in vain, and so I grudgingly went to the baptism preparatory classes that were supposed to teach me about being a church member.
I can’t remember a thing I was supposed to have learned about the Methodist canon or liturgy. The dominant impression I remember of the classes is that they were painfully boring, and you were not to ask any questions. Only occasionally were questions invited, and then only the most insubstantial were welcomed. That was not a situation that I could thrive in because I was a Black girl who always questioned everything. The church adults frowned on this, and probably tried to get my mother to stamp out this annoying characteristic. She didn’t. Frankly, I don’t think anyone could have. I still ask questions today and think that people who don’t ask questions are dangerously conformist, dependent, non-thinkers.
Later, after I had done my duty and joined, I encountered only one adult church member who was willing to listen to and answer my questions, and who actively encouraged us teenagers to ask them. She was Leontyne Kelly, the wife of one of the many ministers who pastored our church. This was, of course, before she became the first woman bishop, I believe, in the Methodist denomination. Unfortunately, the Kellys didn’t stay with us long.
And so, it was back to Sunday school lessons heavy on men I felt no connection with who lived light-years ago in the past—Moses and his tablets, Joseph and his coat of many colors, David besting Goliath with a stone. It was back to Sunday morning sermons preaching dogma which never even mentioned what was happening in Montgomery after Rosa Parks wouldn’t get up—sermons that never characterized Jesus as the radical boat-rocker, and liberator, who came with new messages of love and freedom, messages which mostly didn’t conform with the theology in the Hebrew’s Torah and the letter of their laws. No, we didn’t get any of that.
We also didn’t get any fire and brimstone preaching on Sodom and Gomorrah, the sin of homosexuality, lesbianism, transsexualism, or bisexualism. If we had, I think I would’ve remembered because I knew for sure, by the time the hormones kicked in (around 7th grade)that I didn’t want to be with boys, that I liked girls. That I was "funny, as they used to say in the street vernacular. On that taboo subject, no preaching at my church, and for sure, no questions entertained by anyone in Christendom, as far as I could tell. That kind of sexuality was a grievous sin. Heterosexism reigned. Amen. Case closed. I promptly went into the closet and tried to make myself comfortable.
Through the public school years, I learned to equate not only my Methodist church, but all organized religion with people who conformed unquestioning to the rule of the majority; with people who never walked their Jesus talk; with people who couldn’t explain why I liked girls and why that was supposed to be wrong if God made me; with people who were silent on contradictions in the Bible, and where the story of Adam and Eve came from when there was nobody, at dawn of human beginnings, who was writing down words to convey ideas.
By the time I finished my undergraduate degree, I had tuned out, turned off, and dropped out of organized religion.(I had also begun, though I didn’t know it then, my twenty-seven year journey into alcoholism.) On the trip home from my Indiana University graduation, I told my parents I wouldn’t be going back to our church. By then it had been relocated and renamed Lennon Memorial after my uncle Frank gave a huge sum to the church with the provision that its name recognize his long-dead son. Moreover, I told them that I would never again—on my own—join another church. I’m sure they were saddened as well as aghast at my announcement for they were very active church members. I’m sorry they didn’t live to see me become a member of Unity Fellowship Church, Los Angeles.
My mother died when I was a first year student in grad school and my father remarried. After I got my Master’s at I.U., I moved to Evansville, Indiana . Those were the days when I was drinking every day, closeted and desperately trying to be heterosexual. Maybe I hadn’t been preached at and damned to hell for being same sex attracted, but I’d gotten the message loud and clear in every other way that I’d better hide my true nature. So I began to play the straight role. While my friends—those straight and those not—got married, I found a way, without really being aware then of what I was doing, of avoiding the marriage trap. I’d find myself “attracted” to men who were already married or about to get married. Then, I could conveniently “fall in love” and be in a relationship that could never go down marriage lane. It worked. But at a price.
(end Part 1)
I was raised as a Methodist—not C.M.E., not A.M.E., not United Methodist—just vanilla-plain Methodist. My mother’s adopted father was a Baptist preacher, I’m told, and my father’s father was a Methodist preacher. When they married, my mother joined Vine Avenue Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. When I was born, I was christened at that church and was made a member when I was an adolescent. I didn’t want to join the church, but I was expected to. I registered my protest with my mother but I knew that I was captive to my family’s reputation (my parents were teachers), and to the expectations of the Black community. In that era, the fifties, good little middle-class adolescent girls were taught to conform to and expected to tow the line set by community values. I could see that my protest was in vain, and so I grudgingly went to the baptism preparatory classes that were supposed to teach me about being a church member.
I can’t remember a thing I was supposed to have learned about the Methodist canon or liturgy. The dominant impression I remember of the classes is that they were painfully boring, and you were not to ask any questions. Only occasionally were questions invited, and then only the most insubstantial were welcomed. That was not a situation that I could thrive in because I was a Black girl who always questioned everything. The church adults frowned on this, and probably tried to get my mother to stamp out this annoying characteristic. She didn’t. Frankly, I don’t think anyone could have. I still ask questions today and think that people who don’t ask questions are dangerously conformist, dependent, non-thinkers.
Later, after I had done my duty and joined, I encountered only one adult church member who was willing to listen to and answer my questions, and who actively encouraged us teenagers to ask them. She was Leontyne Kelly, the wife of one of the many ministers who pastored our church. This was, of course, before she became the first woman bishop, I believe, in the Methodist denomination. Unfortunately, the Kellys didn’t stay with us long.
And so, it was back to Sunday school lessons heavy on men I felt no connection with who lived light-years ago in the past—Moses and his tablets, Joseph and his coat of many colors, David besting Goliath with a stone. It was back to Sunday morning sermons preaching dogma which never even mentioned what was happening in Montgomery after Rosa Parks wouldn’t get up—sermons that never characterized Jesus as the radical boat-rocker, and liberator, who came with new messages of love and freedom, messages which mostly didn’t conform with the theology in the Hebrew’s Torah and the letter of their laws. No, we didn’t get any of that.
We also didn’t get any fire and brimstone preaching on Sodom and Gomorrah, the sin of homosexuality, lesbianism, transsexualism, or bisexualism. If we had, I think I would’ve remembered because I knew for sure, by the time the hormones kicked in (around 7th grade)that I didn’t want to be with boys, that I liked girls. That I was "funny, as they used to say in the street vernacular. On that taboo subject, no preaching at my church, and for sure, no questions entertained by anyone in Christendom, as far as I could tell. That kind of sexuality was a grievous sin. Heterosexism reigned. Amen. Case closed. I promptly went into the closet and tried to make myself comfortable.
Through the public school years, I learned to equate not only my Methodist church, but all organized religion with people who conformed unquestioning to the rule of the majority; with people who never walked their Jesus talk; with people who couldn’t explain why I liked girls and why that was supposed to be wrong if God made me; with people who were silent on contradictions in the Bible, and where the story of Adam and Eve came from when there was nobody, at dawn of human beginnings, who was writing down words to convey ideas.
By the time I finished my undergraduate degree, I had tuned out, turned off, and dropped out of organized religion.(I had also begun, though I didn’t know it then, my twenty-seven year journey into alcoholism.) On the trip home from my Indiana University graduation, I told my parents I wouldn’t be going back to our church. By then it had been relocated and renamed Lennon Memorial after my uncle Frank gave a huge sum to the church with the provision that its name recognize his long-dead son. Moreover, I told them that I would never again—on my own—join another church. I’m sure they were saddened as well as aghast at my announcement for they were very active church members. I’m sorry they didn’t live to see me become a member of Unity Fellowship Church, Los Angeles.
My mother died when I was a first year student in grad school and my father remarried. After I got my Master’s at I.U., I moved to Evansville, Indiana . Those were the days when I was drinking every day, closeted and desperately trying to be heterosexual. Maybe I hadn’t been preached at and damned to hell for being same sex attracted, but I’d gotten the message loud and clear in every other way that I’d better hide my true nature. So I began to play the straight role. While my friends—those straight and those not—got married, I found a way, without really being aware then of what I was doing, of avoiding the marriage trap. I’d find myself “attracted” to men who were already married or about to get married. Then, I could conveniently “fall in love” and be in a relationship that could never go down marriage lane. It worked. But at a price.
(end Part 1)
Monday, April 28, 2008
L.A. Observations Series 4 & 5
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
L.A. Observations 4: Adventures in Downtown Los Angeles
It’s April twenty-fourth and I’m on my way downtown. The day is warm and inviting. Just right for wandering around downtown to shop.
I leave from Los Angeles Trade Tech Community College (where I teach) and head west on Washington Boulevard to get Dash Bus F (the Financial District bus) which will take me north on Figueroa to get to Dash Bus E which will take me to the Fashion District, my destination. The bus comes quickly. The driver gives me the free transfer I ask for after I pay my twenty-five cents and I sit behind him on the long seat that allows me to look back, forward and out the windows.
On the bus, I settle down to observe the sights and people. At one stop, a brother who’s dressed like he’s a "stone playa" from the wilds of Ohio or Indiana gets on. He’s wearing a casual suit, checked pants topped by a matching top and sporting a wide-brimmed black hat with a little feather in the band; he has the requisite cell phone plastered to his ear which identifies him as “urban-cool.” He sits in the back with a couple of other brothers. They begin a conversation about gangbanging.
I tune them out and think about the style of clothing the brother is wearing. It reminds me of the way the guys dressed in Evansville and The Midwest years ago. For some reason, a lot of these brothers like to wear what I call, for lack of a better descriptive term, “the pimp suit.” This style, cut very much like the Zoot Suit of old, requires that the suit pants be very roomy and the coat hit a couple of inches above a man’s thigh. Color and design varies. Striking, bold colors are mostly the rule. Designs range from solid colors to checks, stripes, and pinstripes. I remember that a couple of T.V. celebrity brothers favor this kind of suit. Maybe that’s why it’s popular.
As I glance around at the other riders, I notice the way others are dressed. A Latina of middle age sits just across from me. She has cellophane red streaks in her dark, long hair. In my mind, the color gets labeled Day-Glow Red. She is busy chatting in Spanish with another Latina. I notice her black blouse, short straight skirt, and wedge heels. Her blouse is see-thru black chiffon with shiny black and white sequins in the shape of flowers that give the blouse its peekaboo effect. I glance at the others aned a blonde woman near me catches my eye; she compliments me on my earrings. I smile and thank her.
At 7th and Figueroa, I get off at the Metro station. People in business suits, cutoffs, casual wear bustle and hustle this way and that. I walk a couple of blocks east toward Macy’s where I’ll pick up my next bus. But I’m suddenly hungry and I spy a Coffee Bean on my way. I duck inside and gaze at the baked goodies under glass. Bran and Blueberry and Cinnamon Muffins. Brownies without icing. And there---giant chocolate chip cookies. I order one, pay the tab, and munch down as I walk out. It’s delicious and I munch happily, squelching guilt feelings that try to gather to attack me.
I go in for a quick look around in Macy’s Plaza. It’s so seldom I get downtown. December was the last time I was at Macy’s Plaza. Unlike last time, now, I see summer clothes being hawked in larger-than-life banners on the stops and in the store windows. Inside the plaza, the flower sellers have set out their wares for sale. Along the corridor going toward Macy’s they’ve put giant orange sunflowers, red roses, yellow daffodils, and bunches of purple flowers that I don’t know. My eyes are drawn to the colors, drink them in, wanting to take me in for a close up. But I resist. No buying flowers today. I’m on a mission to buy a hat, belt, and neck purse. The neck purse hangs around my neck. People use neck purses for all kinds of things: to hold cigarettes, money, ID, credit cards, and cell phones. I’ll use mine to hold my eyeglasses.
A store catches my eye. It looks like the kind that would “trap” tourists or people looking for gifts. I decide to browse inside it for a few minutes mainly because I’m intrigued by the toy animals in the window. Among others, there’s a brown chipmunk and a white furry cat. A toy gray dog wags its tail, moves forward and backward, and barks in a cage that resembles the kind that you see in pet stores. I watch the little dog wondering about how it moves. With some mechanical thing inside it, obviously. I go inside. At the back of the store, high up on a shelf, I see a huge lion. It almost looks real, as if it’s lolling on the plain under the African sun. I think about asking how much it is because I have a very good friend whose astrological sign is Leo. It would be a kick to deposit it on her floor as a surprise. As big as it is, the lion would scare the hell out of her. I chuckle at the thought. She wouldn’t chuckle though. No, sir. Besides, she lives in another city and I’d have to ship it to her. It would be an expensive “joke.” So I pass. I can use my coins in a better way. I drift around the store, looking at greeting cards, purses, jewelry, toys for a while. It’s good to let my mind wander, to let myself drift “off the clock.” The clock is a dictator that I’ve let take over my life. Right now, I’m letting myself stop to smell the coffee, pick the roses, and enjoy the day.
Twenty minutes later, I catch the bus for the Fashion District outside of Macy’s Plaza. As I ride east on 7th, I notice shops and people and buildings. On Grand, there’s a tall building with a rooftop garden, I notice. It startles me when I see the little trees sprouting up from the roof. It startles me because I didn’t think Los Angeles was doing that kind of thing. I knew that in downtown Chicago there were gardens on roofs in an effort to counteract air pollution and other things we’ve done to poison ourselves and the earth. But L. A., I’d thought, keeps missing opportunities to do things to become “green.” The little garden tells me that I’m wrong and I’m glad to be.
Downtown Los Angeles reminds me of Manhattan. Dirty sidewalks. Lots of buildings. Monoliths. Crowded together. Tall, sparkling new buildings. Old buildings---grand dames, sporting Art Deco design. Hotels. Office buildings being constructed. Restaurants, coffee shops, eateries looking like they’ve been shoved into holes in the wall. I see Subway, Starbucks, Corleone’s Pizza. Then, at Los Angeles Street, the bus turns. We’re going south now. You can see the signs that you’re in the Fashion District already. Shops. Everywhere. Dingy, small, cramped. Whatever is being sold inside them is displayed outside to lure us in.
Textile shops lure us first. Outside the shop, top of the line, luxurious fabric—linens, brocades, silks—are displayed next to bottom of the line cheap stuff. “Come on in. I’ll make you a deal,” it beckons to us. I think about my friend, Kellii who loves to sew. She’d be in heaven around all this fabric.
Men’s clothing shops next. In the windows and outside, there are manikins posed with hands in pockets wearing pimp suits in so many colors—gold, green, white, beige—shirts and ties are in coordinating shades. The suited manikins seem to say, “I’m so cool. Wear me and you will be, too.” Salesmen lurk about the entrance, waiting to pounce on whoever passes. I wonder if they’re paid on commission.
I pull the cord and get off at Olympic Boulevard. As I walk east on Olympic, the first thing that catches my eye, of course, are the shops that showcase jewelry and accessories. I have such a weakness for baubles, bangles, and beads. I slip inside a shop filled to bursting with earrings, watches, rings, bracelets, belts—all glitter and no gold, but who cares? Earrings hang in rows on the walls. Small ones. Medium ones. The large ones intrigue me because I love large earrings. Light catches in the prisms of the stones. The false-stoned earrings wink at me seductively—especially the chandelier babes. I lick my lips looking at them, wishing I could buy and wear them all. I resist the temptation. Earrings are not what I’ve come for, I tell myself and march out the door.
On the corner, a pale-skinned goth boy dressed in deep black with orange hair shouts at passersby, “Hey, anybody got a fucking cigarette?”
People pay him no mind. I don’t either as I cross the street, looking for a particular accessories shop that carries the rhinestone baseball caps I want to buy. In a few minutes, I find it and go in, heading straight for the back of the shop. At the back, I see rows and rows of hats—all kinds, baseball, cowboy, sailor. The hats are colorful, made of fabric and straw decorated with appliqués, rhinestones, bands, feathers, etc. I find my preference and try on several rhinestone baseball caps in acqua, rose, lime, dark green, pink. I notice two, older White women that I take to be “Red Hat Ladies.” They are shopping for wide-brimmed hats in red with purple accents. Their arms are filled with other kinds of hats as well. At the counter, I pay for my hats while admiring a huge variety of displayed rhinestone reading glasses. Out I go. On to the next place that wants to relieve me of my money.
I browse on Santee Street until I find another interesting looking accessories shop. It looks to be specializing in belts and handbags. Their merchandize is exotic and unique to me. Shelves and shelves of handbags of every texture, hue and design decorated with stones, beads, lace, and appliquéd flowers. Walls of belts that sparkle, shimmer, and shine. I find the little neck purses that I want and a white belt with big, clear stones. The saleswoman who takes my purchases asks for ID to validate my credit card. When she sees my last name, she asks me if I’m kin to John Lennon. I smile and shake my head, used to the little witticism that I’ve heard most of my life. The only thing that surprises me is that she is Asian and very young, too young to know who John Lennon was, I would think. Guess not, though. He was a celebrity, after all. And if there’s one thing we can be sure of, even if they don’t know history, young people know celebrities.
Pleased with my purchases, I leave the store. Outside, I check my watch and decide to head toward the bus stop. I’ve enjoyed people-watching and bus riding. Plus, it’s been a good afternoon to shop. I’ve found what I wanted and the prices were right.
What more could I woman ask?
(end)
L.A. Observations 5: Paradigm Shift
The world has changed. Global Warming. Energy Crisis. High Gas Prices. This stuff is not going to go away. A paradigm shift is in the driver’s seat.
What's a paradigm shift? A paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another; it’s a revolution, a transformation and it’s driven by agents of change.
Think about it. A paradigm shift introduced the personal computer and the internet. Two things that have made an impact on our personal and business lives in multiple, myriads of ways. Used to be that you’d write letters to be delivered by the post office. Now, you email. Used to be that I’d go to the library to research jobs and find special kinds of information; or I’d use the Yellow Pages to find out what household services were available, where to purchase a mattress for my bed. Now, I do all that via the internet. Which also lets you do your taxes, apply for Social Security, get a college degree, balance your check book, and pay your bills. All via the internet. Foreclosures on Homes. Jobs Disappearing. Wall Street Collapsing. The Economy Crisis. People are pretty scared right now. Times are uncertain. We’re going to have to make adjustments. Learn how to do things in new ways.
Observation: Buses, People and Walking Home. The buses in Los Angeles are crowded nowadays. Very. You’d think that people would be cranky and rude. Not necessarily.
I’ve found that bus people can be polite and considerate. You’d think otherwise when people are smooshed together, standing wherever there’s a smidgen of room, lining the aisles, clutching overhead rails to keep balance. A young, Black woman offered me a seat the other day as I climbed the front steps, thanking God that this sardine-packed bus had stopped to let me on. She motioned to me to take her seat and I took it gratefully. There is, I see, something to be said for graying hair and telltale lines on the face. Other standing bus people made room for mothers with children and folks with walking canes. It was a gratifying sight. I’d all but lost hope when it comes to social graces like politeness and consideration in 21st century urban settings.
Crowded bus have meant that the drivers have taken to passing people up at the bus stops. I can understand why when your passengers are so numerous that when you do pick them up, they’re packed like sardines from front to back, standing right at your shoulder as you drive the city streets.
Not long ago, I stood and waited on Adams Boulevard outside of Mount Saint Mary’s Doheny Campus in 90 degree heat for a bus to take me home. Two of them passed me by. One at 12:30 p.m. and one at 1 p.m. Since buses had been passing me up more or less (mostly more) for most of the month of September, I had begun to follow Plan B in order to get home. Plan B is, simply put, start walking when a bus passes you up. So, by the time the 1 p.m. bus trundled by, I had made it to the Vermont and Adams bus stop—quite a few blocks away from where I’d started out. That day, I never saw another bus going west on Adams the whole time I was walking home. I made it home in 60 minutes.
Now, I’m in pretty good shape. But the heat and the distance were, to say the least, something that I don’t want to have to deal with every time I have to come to work at Mt. Saint Mary’s three times a week. And the bus service is so uncertain that I don’t want to take the chance. So I have started driving to work again after two years.
I hear that the reason the buses are late, crowded and passing people by is because they’ve taken 40 of them off the fleet. Gas prices warrant a cut in services, the reasoning goes. I can understand when a crowded bus passes me up, but right now, I am not a happy camper. The thing is… how are we to go “green,” to cut back on energy use, to change the way we drive if there’s no public transportation for us to substitute our cars for? Why should I vote to yes in November for a proposition that will fund public transportation projects that supposedly will help Angelinos park their cars, save energy, help sustain the environment when the folks in charge of public transportation aren’t taking care of business right now?
It’s frustrating because I want to park my car and take the bus. But who has the time or stamina to walk to destinations that are far apart? So. I’m back in my car. But for how long? Gas prices may go down for a moment, but I know they’ll shoot back up again. Higher than before. Then what?
Observation: Cell Phones, Conversations, Driving. Change permeates our lives. We’re no longer a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society. Now, we’re service-based and information-centered. We’re moving at an accelerated rate of speed. Technology seems to push us to go faster and faster. It’s the monster tsunami that rushes in, grabs hold to pull/push our lives, my life, in directions we/I can’t imagine.
We’re going fast. Very fast. With Cell phones in our hands.
The other day, as I sat in the waiting room at the University of Southern California Dental Hygiene Clinic, a heavy-set white man pulled out his cell phone, pushed a button and proceeded to talk to somebody in a tone of voice loud enough to reach Washington, D.C. I looked up from the book I was reading, an annoyed look on my face, and checked the man out. He seemed oblivious to the attention his loud conversation was drawing from me and other people in the crowded waiting room. He went ahead with his conversation and clicked off when he was through. Oblivious. Clueless.
My question is this. Why do I have to listen to somebody’s loudly intrusive and utterly boring conversation in public? Privacy. Is it a thing of the past?
When things like this happen—and they happen all too frequently—I inevitably wonder why somebody would think I’d want to listen to their personal and/or business conversation? It just puzzles me when people do that. Is it because they feel insignificant, invisible even and wish to make statements that say: Look at me. Listen to me. Whether you want to or not, I demand it. This kind of behavior makes me hate the use of cell phones in public where the user feels obligated to disregard other people and shout out a conversation on the phone.
The other thing about cell phones is that I also fear them…being used behind the steering wheel, I mean. People are already acting/feeling crazy on the road…in too big a hurry… angry and ready to use their cars as weapons…multitasking and defocused. Add a cell phone to the mix and there’s your big trouble. In California, unless both hands are free to drive, it’s against the law to use it. But that doesn’t solve problem of driving while talking on a cell phone.
The problem is that you really can’t focus on talking on the phone and driving at the same time. Driving requires focus, keeping a sharp eye out for: the pedestrian who darts out in the street between cars or after the light has changed… the car that comes tailgating at you out of nowhere… the driver that floors the accelerator to run the yellow-red light at the intersection. Using a cell phones when you’re driving is just dangerous. Period.
(end)
L.A. Observations 4: Adventures in Downtown Los Angeles
It’s April twenty-fourth and I’m on my way downtown. The day is warm and inviting. Just right for wandering around downtown to shop.
I leave from Los Angeles Trade Tech Community College (where I teach) and head west on Washington Boulevard to get Dash Bus F (the Financial District bus) which will take me north on Figueroa to get to Dash Bus E which will take me to the Fashion District, my destination. The bus comes quickly. The driver gives me the free transfer I ask for after I pay my twenty-five cents and I sit behind him on the long seat that allows me to look back, forward and out the windows.
On the bus, I settle down to observe the sights and people. At one stop, a brother who’s dressed like he’s a "stone playa" from the wilds of Ohio or Indiana gets on. He’s wearing a casual suit, checked pants topped by a matching top and sporting a wide-brimmed black hat with a little feather in the band; he has the requisite cell phone plastered to his ear which identifies him as “urban-cool.” He sits in the back with a couple of other brothers. They begin a conversation about gangbanging.
I tune them out and think about the style of clothing the brother is wearing. It reminds me of the way the guys dressed in Evansville and The Midwest years ago. For some reason, a lot of these brothers like to wear what I call, for lack of a better descriptive term, “the pimp suit.” This style, cut very much like the Zoot Suit of old, requires that the suit pants be very roomy and the coat hit a couple of inches above a man’s thigh. Color and design varies. Striking, bold colors are mostly the rule. Designs range from solid colors to checks, stripes, and pinstripes. I remember that a couple of T.V. celebrity brothers favor this kind of suit. Maybe that’s why it’s popular.
As I glance around at the other riders, I notice the way others are dressed. A Latina of middle age sits just across from me. She has cellophane red streaks in her dark, long hair. In my mind, the color gets labeled Day-Glow Red. She is busy chatting in Spanish with another Latina. I notice her black blouse, short straight skirt, and wedge heels. Her blouse is see-thru black chiffon with shiny black and white sequins in the shape of flowers that give the blouse its peekaboo effect. I glance at the others aned a blonde woman near me catches my eye; she compliments me on my earrings. I smile and thank her.
At 7th and Figueroa, I get off at the Metro station. People in business suits, cutoffs, casual wear bustle and hustle this way and that. I walk a couple of blocks east toward Macy’s where I’ll pick up my next bus. But I’m suddenly hungry and I spy a Coffee Bean on my way. I duck inside and gaze at the baked goodies under glass. Bran and Blueberry and Cinnamon Muffins. Brownies without icing. And there---giant chocolate chip cookies. I order one, pay the tab, and munch down as I walk out. It’s delicious and I munch happily, squelching guilt feelings that try to gather to attack me.
I go in for a quick look around in Macy’s Plaza. It’s so seldom I get downtown. December was the last time I was at Macy’s Plaza. Unlike last time, now, I see summer clothes being hawked in larger-than-life banners on the stops and in the store windows. Inside the plaza, the flower sellers have set out their wares for sale. Along the corridor going toward Macy’s they’ve put giant orange sunflowers, red roses, yellow daffodils, and bunches of purple flowers that I don’t know. My eyes are drawn to the colors, drink them in, wanting to take me in for a close up. But I resist. No buying flowers today. I’m on a mission to buy a hat, belt, and neck purse. The neck purse hangs around my neck. People use neck purses for all kinds of things: to hold cigarettes, money, ID, credit cards, and cell phones. I’ll use mine to hold my eyeglasses.
A store catches my eye. It looks like the kind that would “trap” tourists or people looking for gifts. I decide to browse inside it for a few minutes mainly because I’m intrigued by the toy animals in the window. Among others, there’s a brown chipmunk and a white furry cat. A toy gray dog wags its tail, moves forward and backward, and barks in a cage that resembles the kind that you see in pet stores. I watch the little dog wondering about how it moves. With some mechanical thing inside it, obviously. I go inside. At the back of the store, high up on a shelf, I see a huge lion. It almost looks real, as if it’s lolling on the plain under the African sun. I think about asking how much it is because I have a very good friend whose astrological sign is Leo. It would be a kick to deposit it on her floor as a surprise. As big as it is, the lion would scare the hell out of her. I chuckle at the thought. She wouldn’t chuckle though. No, sir. Besides, she lives in another city and I’d have to ship it to her. It would be an expensive “joke.” So I pass. I can use my coins in a better way. I drift around the store, looking at greeting cards, purses, jewelry, toys for a while. It’s good to let my mind wander, to let myself drift “off the clock.” The clock is a dictator that I’ve let take over my life. Right now, I’m letting myself stop to smell the coffee, pick the roses, and enjoy the day.
Twenty minutes later, I catch the bus for the Fashion District outside of Macy’s Plaza. As I ride east on 7th, I notice shops and people and buildings. On Grand, there’s a tall building with a rooftop garden, I notice. It startles me when I see the little trees sprouting up from the roof. It startles me because I didn’t think Los Angeles was doing that kind of thing. I knew that in downtown Chicago there were gardens on roofs in an effort to counteract air pollution and other things we’ve done to poison ourselves and the earth. But L. A., I’d thought, keeps missing opportunities to do things to become “green.” The little garden tells me that I’m wrong and I’m glad to be.
Downtown Los Angeles reminds me of Manhattan. Dirty sidewalks. Lots of buildings. Monoliths. Crowded together. Tall, sparkling new buildings. Old buildings---grand dames, sporting Art Deco design. Hotels. Office buildings being constructed. Restaurants, coffee shops, eateries looking like they’ve been shoved into holes in the wall. I see Subway, Starbucks, Corleone’s Pizza. Then, at Los Angeles Street, the bus turns. We’re going south now. You can see the signs that you’re in the Fashion District already. Shops. Everywhere. Dingy, small, cramped. Whatever is being sold inside them is displayed outside to lure us in.
Textile shops lure us first. Outside the shop, top of the line, luxurious fabric—linens, brocades, silks—are displayed next to bottom of the line cheap stuff. “Come on in. I’ll make you a deal,” it beckons to us. I think about my friend, Kellii who loves to sew. She’d be in heaven around all this fabric.
Men’s clothing shops next. In the windows and outside, there are manikins posed with hands in pockets wearing pimp suits in so many colors—gold, green, white, beige—shirts and ties are in coordinating shades. The suited manikins seem to say, “I’m so cool. Wear me and you will be, too.” Salesmen lurk about the entrance, waiting to pounce on whoever passes. I wonder if they’re paid on commission.
I pull the cord and get off at Olympic Boulevard. As I walk east on Olympic, the first thing that catches my eye, of course, are the shops that showcase jewelry and accessories. I have such a weakness for baubles, bangles, and beads. I slip inside a shop filled to bursting with earrings, watches, rings, bracelets, belts—all glitter and no gold, but who cares? Earrings hang in rows on the walls. Small ones. Medium ones. The large ones intrigue me because I love large earrings. Light catches in the prisms of the stones. The false-stoned earrings wink at me seductively—especially the chandelier babes. I lick my lips looking at them, wishing I could buy and wear them all. I resist the temptation. Earrings are not what I’ve come for, I tell myself and march out the door.
On the corner, a pale-skinned goth boy dressed in deep black with orange hair shouts at passersby, “Hey, anybody got a fucking cigarette?”
People pay him no mind. I don’t either as I cross the street, looking for a particular accessories shop that carries the rhinestone baseball caps I want to buy. In a few minutes, I find it and go in, heading straight for the back of the shop. At the back, I see rows and rows of hats—all kinds, baseball, cowboy, sailor. The hats are colorful, made of fabric and straw decorated with appliqués, rhinestones, bands, feathers, etc. I find my preference and try on several rhinestone baseball caps in acqua, rose, lime, dark green, pink. I notice two, older White women that I take to be “Red Hat Ladies.” They are shopping for wide-brimmed hats in red with purple accents. Their arms are filled with other kinds of hats as well. At the counter, I pay for my hats while admiring a huge variety of displayed rhinestone reading glasses. Out I go. On to the next place that wants to relieve me of my money.
I browse on Santee Street until I find another interesting looking accessories shop. It looks to be specializing in belts and handbags. Their merchandize is exotic and unique to me. Shelves and shelves of handbags of every texture, hue and design decorated with stones, beads, lace, and appliquéd flowers. Walls of belts that sparkle, shimmer, and shine. I find the little neck purses that I want and a white belt with big, clear stones. The saleswoman who takes my purchases asks for ID to validate my credit card. When she sees my last name, she asks me if I’m kin to John Lennon. I smile and shake my head, used to the little witticism that I’ve heard most of my life. The only thing that surprises me is that she is Asian and very young, too young to know who John Lennon was, I would think. Guess not, though. He was a celebrity, after all. And if there’s one thing we can be sure of, even if they don’t know history, young people know celebrities.
Pleased with my purchases, I leave the store. Outside, I check my watch and decide to head toward the bus stop. I’ve enjoyed people-watching and bus riding. Plus, it’s been a good afternoon to shop. I’ve found what I wanted and the prices were right.
What more could I woman ask?
(end)
L.A. Observations 5: Paradigm Shift
The world has changed. Global Warming. Energy Crisis. High Gas Prices. This stuff is not going to go away. A paradigm shift is in the driver’s seat.
What's a paradigm shift? A paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another; it’s a revolution, a transformation and it’s driven by agents of change.
Think about it. A paradigm shift introduced the personal computer and the internet. Two things that have made an impact on our personal and business lives in multiple, myriads of ways. Used to be that you’d write letters to be delivered by the post office. Now, you email. Used to be that I’d go to the library to research jobs and find special kinds of information; or I’d use the Yellow Pages to find out what household services were available, where to purchase a mattress for my bed. Now, I do all that via the internet. Which also lets you do your taxes, apply for Social Security, get a college degree, balance your check book, and pay your bills. All via the internet. Foreclosures on Homes. Jobs Disappearing. Wall Street Collapsing. The Economy Crisis. People are pretty scared right now. Times are uncertain. We’re going to have to make adjustments. Learn how to do things in new ways.
Observation: Buses, People and Walking Home. The buses in Los Angeles are crowded nowadays. Very. You’d think that people would be cranky and rude. Not necessarily.
I’ve found that bus people can be polite and considerate. You’d think otherwise when people are smooshed together, standing wherever there’s a smidgen of room, lining the aisles, clutching overhead rails to keep balance. A young, Black woman offered me a seat the other day as I climbed the front steps, thanking God that this sardine-packed bus had stopped to let me on. She motioned to me to take her seat and I took it gratefully. There is, I see, something to be said for graying hair and telltale lines on the face. Other standing bus people made room for mothers with children and folks with walking canes. It was a gratifying sight. I’d all but lost hope when it comes to social graces like politeness and consideration in 21st century urban settings.
Crowded bus have meant that the drivers have taken to passing people up at the bus stops. I can understand why when your passengers are so numerous that when you do pick them up, they’re packed like sardines from front to back, standing right at your shoulder as you drive the city streets.
Not long ago, I stood and waited on Adams Boulevard outside of Mount Saint Mary’s Doheny Campus in 90 degree heat for a bus to take me home. Two of them passed me by. One at 12:30 p.m. and one at 1 p.m. Since buses had been passing me up more or less (mostly more) for most of the month of September, I had begun to follow Plan B in order to get home. Plan B is, simply put, start walking when a bus passes you up. So, by the time the 1 p.m. bus trundled by, I had made it to the Vermont and Adams bus stop—quite a few blocks away from where I’d started out. That day, I never saw another bus going west on Adams the whole time I was walking home. I made it home in 60 minutes.
Now, I’m in pretty good shape. But the heat and the distance were, to say the least, something that I don’t want to have to deal with every time I have to come to work at Mt. Saint Mary’s three times a week. And the bus service is so uncertain that I don’t want to take the chance. So I have started driving to work again after two years.
I hear that the reason the buses are late, crowded and passing people by is because they’ve taken 40 of them off the fleet. Gas prices warrant a cut in services, the reasoning goes. I can understand when a crowded bus passes me up, but right now, I am not a happy camper. The thing is… how are we to go “green,” to cut back on energy use, to change the way we drive if there’s no public transportation for us to substitute our cars for? Why should I vote to yes in November for a proposition that will fund public transportation projects that supposedly will help Angelinos park their cars, save energy, help sustain the environment when the folks in charge of public transportation aren’t taking care of business right now?
It’s frustrating because I want to park my car and take the bus. But who has the time or stamina to walk to destinations that are far apart? So. I’m back in my car. But for how long? Gas prices may go down for a moment, but I know they’ll shoot back up again. Higher than before. Then what?
Observation: Cell Phones, Conversations, Driving. Change permeates our lives. We’re no longer a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society. Now, we’re service-based and information-centered. We’re moving at an accelerated rate of speed. Technology seems to push us to go faster and faster. It’s the monster tsunami that rushes in, grabs hold to pull/push our lives, my life, in directions we/I can’t imagine.
We’re going fast. Very fast. With Cell phones in our hands.
The other day, as I sat in the waiting room at the University of Southern California Dental Hygiene Clinic, a heavy-set white man pulled out his cell phone, pushed a button and proceeded to talk to somebody in a tone of voice loud enough to reach Washington, D.C. I looked up from the book I was reading, an annoyed look on my face, and checked the man out. He seemed oblivious to the attention his loud conversation was drawing from me and other people in the crowded waiting room. He went ahead with his conversation and clicked off when he was through. Oblivious. Clueless.
My question is this. Why do I have to listen to somebody’s loudly intrusive and utterly boring conversation in public? Privacy. Is it a thing of the past?
When things like this happen—and they happen all too frequently—I inevitably wonder why somebody would think I’d want to listen to their personal and/or business conversation? It just puzzles me when people do that. Is it because they feel insignificant, invisible even and wish to make statements that say: Look at me. Listen to me. Whether you want to or not, I demand it. This kind of behavior makes me hate the use of cell phones in public where the user feels obligated to disregard other people and shout out a conversation on the phone.
The other thing about cell phones is that I also fear them…being used behind the steering wheel, I mean. People are already acting/feeling crazy on the road…in too big a hurry… angry and ready to use their cars as weapons…multitasking and defocused. Add a cell phone to the mix and there’s your big trouble. In California, unless both hands are free to drive, it’s against the law to use it. But that doesn’t solve problem of driving while talking on a cell phone.
The problem is that you really can’t focus on talking on the phone and driving at the same time. Driving requires focus, keeping a sharp eye out for: the pedestrian who darts out in the street between cars or after the light has changed… the car that comes tailgating at you out of nowhere… the driver that floors the accelerator to run the yellow-red light at the intersection. Using a cell phones when you’re driving is just dangerous. Period.
(end)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Knoxville Remembered Series: Sports or The Curse of the Flying Ball
Copyright 2008-All rights Reserved
When I was growing up, there was one pool in Knoxville where Black people could learn to swim—on the west side at Edward Cothren Pool. In summer, Mama sent me to learn. Janice was usually there too. And Calvin, who eventually became her husband. Easy swimmers, I called those two. They stroked the water like they lived in it. I wasn’t an easy swimmer, but I loved being in the water, and so swimming became something special to me—something I could do well and loved.
One of the reasons I took to the sport of swimming, I think, was I considered it something all my own. Let me explain. Both my parents made their living as gym teachers and when I was growing up, people just expected me to be good at sports. Why? Because they assumed that the whole family would be good at sports. Like it was in the blood, so to speak. It wasn’t. Truth be told, Mama was really an English major in college. The only reason she had this job as a gym teacher because that was the only opening at Austin when she applied, and, thanks to old Jim Crow, Austin was the only high school in Knoxville where you could teach if you were Black. And that was really how sports came to be what she did for a living.
As for me, I was not good at your everyday sports. “Not good” is a kind understatement, “lousy” is a more accurate description. As a kid, I longed to be able to jump rope, my playmates singing chants to keep time while the rope slapped the ground. Didn’t happen. They’d be swinging the rope, I’d jump in, get tangled up, and fall. And forget Jacks. No matter that Evelyne tried to teach me how to play this game where you pick up as jacks as possible before the little ball hit the ground. No way. I could never master it.
I was great at climbing trees, at the swings, and at hand-walking Jungle Gym bars, but those weren’t group games, which I just couldn’t seem to pull off. Swimming, though, that was a different thing. I took to it like a natural. Not like me and softball. Not like me and volleyball. I have to admit that it was a point of pride with me that I could swim fairly well when most Black people in Knoxville didn’t know how to swim.
Even Daddy couldn’t swim. And he was Mr. Sports personified— the revered coach and gym teacher. The reason he’d never learned goes back to his mother who’d dreamed, one night, that he drowned. This scared her so badly that she’d warned him never to go into the water, and he never did. At first, Mama couldn’t swim either; she learned to swim along with me, but I was better at it because I got to spend more time doing it than she did. I can tell you, the best things about swimming, to me: number one, there were no balls that I had to hit or catch; number two, it didn’t require the kind of hand-eye coordination that was my nemesis; and, number three, it wasn’t a team sport.
Unfortunately, at Vine Junior High, I was faced with having to take gym, and those group games I was so bad at playing came back to slap me in the face, reinvented with a new name: team sports. This time, I couldn’t avoid them. Everybody had to take gym every year. And to make the situation even worse, Mama was my teacher.
In autumn, Mama had us playing volleyball. That was unfortunate because when I played volleyball, my feet inevitably tangled up as I looked up, reaching, with both hands, for the volleyball coming my way. My feet would tangle and that’s when I’d fall on the player in front of me, or I’d collide with the player next to me. The other team loved it. My teammates did not.
In winter, Mama had the class playing basketball. She’d point to a couple of girls to be opposing captains, usually somebody like Pansy or Rosalyn or Janice or Judy. Then, the captains called out the names of girls they wanted on their team. Do I need to tell you that I was always one of the last chosen? Always last—after Charlene and Bea. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and I got fed up with it, but I couldn’t really blame them. Who’d want somebody playing guard position who was so scared of fumbling and falling that she hardly ever moved around on the court? That meant girl I was guarding always got to make a lot of baskets when I was on the floor. My teammates, of course, didn’t like that.
Even the other losers in class who couldn’t play well enough to save their souls got disgusted with me. Folk got real savage about winning the game, you see. So, I resolved to do better next time. Next time came and I found myself guarding Juanita who was moving all over the court like a jackrabbit. I gritted my teeth with resolution, determined to do better, and desperately tried to keep up with her. She faked to her left, and darted forward. At that moment, I lunged at her, heavily off balance, tripping myself up and lurching into her.
Of course, Judy, who was refereeing the game, had to call a foul. She sighed and gave me one of her Judy-looks that said: "I want to cut you a break, but all you seem to know how to do is throw a wrench in the works." After Juanita got her free throw, scoring off my foul, we began again with her moving this way and that way, and me lunging around like a lumbering cow. It was beyond frustrating to me to try to guard somebody darting around on the floor. Why didn’t she stop moving so I could do my job?
Finally, in a reckless attempt to do better for my team, I simply snatched the ball away from her. Well, I can tell you that didn’t go over well. Not with Juanita, who started shouting at the referee to do something. Not with Judy, who was blowing the whistle at me in a long, aggravated screech. Not with my groaning teammates. Not with my mother, who looked at me like I was an idiot. In the end, I ended up on the bench for the rest of the period.
Come springtime, it was softball that was my nemesis.
Once more, I’d always be the last one picked for a team since it was widely known among my classmates that catching the ball was simply beyond me. Because it would have been plain foolishness to put me on one of the bases, I was always assigned an obscure outfield position.
One fine day, after they’d put me out there, Pansy made a hit that stopped both teams cold. Everybody watched the ball go up, up, up into the blue, looking as if it would outrace gravity and never come back down again. Eventually, gravity snagged it; and, slowly, it began to curve down to the ground. Down, and down, and down, it sailed, coming into the field area where Judy, Charlene, Beverly, and I were positioned. As I watched the ball, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be expected to do something... to-- Ohmigod!--catch this thing.
At this revelation, I looked to my right. Judy was running, eyes up tracking the ball as fell downward, her hands out to make the catch. I looked to my left, and there was Charlene, who, like me, lacked the athletic prowess to catch anything--there she was, caution thrown to the wind, making tracks for the ball, too. Behind me, deep in the outfield, Beverly was coming up, full steam ahead, legs pumping, dust flying, looking like the Roadrunner. I looked up at the ball again and trembled. What was I to do? This one, I calculated, was coming in like a cannonball—picking up speed as it dropped, so it would hit somebody or something—hard!
Here was my problem. Flying balls terrified me. I had gotten hit so many times when I was little, standing on the sidelines as my parents’ basketball teams played, that now, the moment a flying ball came my way, I froze, not sure whether to run, put my hands over my face and head, or try to catch it.
Staring up at the ball, I decided right then, it wasn’t going to be me trying to catch this thing that could maim me for life. Let the others come and get it. Let them get knocked senseless. There’d be no more flying balls going upside my head. This ball was not going to make me its target. Not today.
And I stepped back and out of Judy’s way. She caught the ball in a fluid, one-handed jump that was a beautiful thing to see. Her catch won us the game. Our team was still cheering as Mama sent me to the showers. And believe me, I was glad to go.
It makes for a funny story now, but back then, I wasn’t going to risk life and limb for a flying ball. Not then, and not now. No, sir. Not me. So, you can see what I meant when I say I was lousy at team sports.
But I’m not at lousy at swimming.
In the pool, the green-blue water laps at my arms; the smell of chlorine is strong and clean in my nostrils, and the feel of the water on my legs is like luxurious silk. I’m the only one swimming in the regular lane for lap swimmers.
No team members here. No group games. And no flying balls either.
Thank you, Jesus!
(end)
When I was growing up, there was one pool in Knoxville where Black people could learn to swim—on the west side at Edward Cothren Pool. In summer, Mama sent me to learn. Janice was usually there too. And Calvin, who eventually became her husband. Easy swimmers, I called those two. They stroked the water like they lived in it. I wasn’t an easy swimmer, but I loved being in the water, and so swimming became something special to me—something I could do well and loved.
One of the reasons I took to the sport of swimming, I think, was I considered it something all my own. Let me explain. Both my parents made their living as gym teachers and when I was growing up, people just expected me to be good at sports. Why? Because they assumed that the whole family would be good at sports. Like it was in the blood, so to speak. It wasn’t. Truth be told, Mama was really an English major in college. The only reason she had this job as a gym teacher because that was the only opening at Austin when she applied, and, thanks to old Jim Crow, Austin was the only high school in Knoxville where you could teach if you were Black. And that was really how sports came to be what she did for a living.
As for me, I was not good at your everyday sports. “Not good” is a kind understatement, “lousy” is a more accurate description. As a kid, I longed to be able to jump rope, my playmates singing chants to keep time while the rope slapped the ground. Didn’t happen. They’d be swinging the rope, I’d jump in, get tangled up, and fall. And forget Jacks. No matter that Evelyne tried to teach me how to play this game where you pick up as jacks as possible before the little ball hit the ground. No way. I could never master it.
I was great at climbing trees, at the swings, and at hand-walking Jungle Gym bars, but those weren’t group games, which I just couldn’t seem to pull off. Swimming, though, that was a different thing. I took to it like a natural. Not like me and softball. Not like me and volleyball. I have to admit that it was a point of pride with me that I could swim fairly well when most Black people in Knoxville didn’t know how to swim.
Even Daddy couldn’t swim. And he was Mr. Sports personified— the revered coach and gym teacher. The reason he’d never learned goes back to his mother who’d dreamed, one night, that he drowned. This scared her so badly that she’d warned him never to go into the water, and he never did. At first, Mama couldn’t swim either; she learned to swim along with me, but I was better at it because I got to spend more time doing it than she did. I can tell you, the best things about swimming, to me: number one, there were no balls that I had to hit or catch; number two, it didn’t require the kind of hand-eye coordination that was my nemesis; and, number three, it wasn’t a team sport.
Unfortunately, at Vine Junior High, I was faced with having to take gym, and those group games I was so bad at playing came back to slap me in the face, reinvented with a new name: team sports. This time, I couldn’t avoid them. Everybody had to take gym every year. And to make the situation even worse, Mama was my teacher.
In autumn, Mama had us playing volleyball. That was unfortunate because when I played volleyball, my feet inevitably tangled up as I looked up, reaching, with both hands, for the volleyball coming my way. My feet would tangle and that’s when I’d fall on the player in front of me, or I’d collide with the player next to me. The other team loved it. My teammates did not.
In winter, Mama had the class playing basketball. She’d point to a couple of girls to be opposing captains, usually somebody like Pansy or Rosalyn or Janice or Judy. Then, the captains called out the names of girls they wanted on their team. Do I need to tell you that I was always one of the last chosen? Always last—after Charlene and Bea. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and I got fed up with it, but I couldn’t really blame them. Who’d want somebody playing guard position who was so scared of fumbling and falling that she hardly ever moved around on the court? That meant girl I was guarding always got to make a lot of baskets when I was on the floor. My teammates, of course, didn’t like that.
Even the other losers in class who couldn’t play well enough to save their souls got disgusted with me. Folk got real savage about winning the game, you see. So, I resolved to do better next time. Next time came and I found myself guarding Juanita who was moving all over the court like a jackrabbit. I gritted my teeth with resolution, determined to do better, and desperately tried to keep up with her. She faked to her left, and darted forward. At that moment, I lunged at her, heavily off balance, tripping myself up and lurching into her.
Of course, Judy, who was refereeing the game, had to call a foul. She sighed and gave me one of her Judy-looks that said: "I want to cut you a break, but all you seem to know how to do is throw a wrench in the works." After Juanita got her free throw, scoring off my foul, we began again with her moving this way and that way, and me lunging around like a lumbering cow. It was beyond frustrating to me to try to guard somebody darting around on the floor. Why didn’t she stop moving so I could do my job?
Finally, in a reckless attempt to do better for my team, I simply snatched the ball away from her. Well, I can tell you that didn’t go over well. Not with Juanita, who started shouting at the referee to do something. Not with Judy, who was blowing the whistle at me in a long, aggravated screech. Not with my groaning teammates. Not with my mother, who looked at me like I was an idiot. In the end, I ended up on the bench for the rest of the period.
Come springtime, it was softball that was my nemesis.
Once more, I’d always be the last one picked for a team since it was widely known among my classmates that catching the ball was simply beyond me. Because it would have been plain foolishness to put me on one of the bases, I was always assigned an obscure outfield position.
One fine day, after they’d put me out there, Pansy made a hit that stopped both teams cold. Everybody watched the ball go up, up, up into the blue, looking as if it would outrace gravity and never come back down again. Eventually, gravity snagged it; and, slowly, it began to curve down to the ground. Down, and down, and down, it sailed, coming into the field area where Judy, Charlene, Beverly, and I were positioned. As I watched the ball, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be expected to do something... to-- Ohmigod!--catch this thing.
At this revelation, I looked to my right. Judy was running, eyes up tracking the ball as fell downward, her hands out to make the catch. I looked to my left, and there was Charlene, who, like me, lacked the athletic prowess to catch anything--there she was, caution thrown to the wind, making tracks for the ball, too. Behind me, deep in the outfield, Beverly was coming up, full steam ahead, legs pumping, dust flying, looking like the Roadrunner. I looked up at the ball again and trembled. What was I to do? This one, I calculated, was coming in like a cannonball—picking up speed as it dropped, so it would hit somebody or something—hard!
Here was my problem. Flying balls terrified me. I had gotten hit so many times when I was little, standing on the sidelines as my parents’ basketball teams played, that now, the moment a flying ball came my way, I froze, not sure whether to run, put my hands over my face and head, or try to catch it.
Staring up at the ball, I decided right then, it wasn’t going to be me trying to catch this thing that could maim me for life. Let the others come and get it. Let them get knocked senseless. There’d be no more flying balls going upside my head. This ball was not going to make me its target. Not today.
And I stepped back and out of Judy’s way. She caught the ball in a fluid, one-handed jump that was a beautiful thing to see. Her catch won us the game. Our team was still cheering as Mama sent me to the showers. And believe me, I was glad to go.
It makes for a funny story now, but back then, I wasn’t going to risk life and limb for a flying ball. Not then, and not now. No, sir. Not me. So, you can see what I meant when I say I was lousy at team sports.
But I’m not at lousy at swimming.
In the pool, the green-blue water laps at my arms; the smell of chlorine is strong and clean in my nostrils, and the feel of the water on my legs is like luxurious silk. I’m the only one swimming in the regular lane for lap swimmers.
No team members here. No group games. And no flying balls either.
Thank you, Jesus!
(end)
Knoxville Remembered Series: Old Austin
Copyright 2008 -All Rights Reserved
In my time, Austin High was the only high school that Black kids could attend in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jim Crow ruled as law and lord of the land in the South, and that was the way things were until public school integration in 1964 or thereabouts when the Knoxville had to cave in to the Supreme Court’s decision.
The original Austin was built at 327 Central Street in 1897 by the efforts of Miss Emily Austin who came South during Reconstruction, just as many Whites did, to teach Black people. That Austin was built to educate “coloreds” (the politically correct terminology in that day) from ages six to eighteen and it graduated students who completed the tenth grade; later, in the Roaring Twenties, Austin added the eleventh grade, and, finally, in 1936, the twelfth. By then, the city had constructed the Vine Street Austin, old Austin—the one I still dream about. This was the Austin where I grew up, where I was like a mascot, adopted by faculty, staff, and students. I called this one “old” Austin because by 1952, a new Austin went up right next door; then, old Austin became Vine Junior High.
At both Austins, my daddy—Coach “Dusty” George H. Lennon—was the Physical Education teacher, the Head Coach for football, basketball, and the occasional track and field event. That was his job way before I was born and he kept it until integration. When Daddy was Austin’s football coach, games in Knoxville were nighttime affairs because we had to “borrow” a White school’s playing field at night since we had none of our own.
On the afternoon of Austin’s games, the band paraded through the Black community down Vine Street, and on up—uptown—to Gay Street, majorettes strutting their stuff, drumsticks tapping a snappy beat, the Band Director, Mr. Cobb, dressed to the nines in white shoes, white socks, and a uniform suit of white with gold trim on his hat and epaulettes. Everybody turned out to see the band. Because everybody’s child went to Austin sooner or later, and it was likely that a band member or majorette or cheerleader was a sister or a cousin; and if kin wasn’t a band member or cheerleader, then perhaps one of them was your neighbor’s child, or the child of a fellow church or club member.
When we were very little, Janice Tate and I were the band’s tiny tot mascots, marching just behind the drum majorette. I remember we were still living on Mee Street then, so I hadn’t made it to second grade yet. I must have been in kindergarten, at least. Janice, too because she and I were always in the same class. We were small enough to be “cute” but not big enough to last throughout the entire march. I remember that Daddy would pace us in his car so that from time to time Janice and I could scramble into the front seat and rest for a few blocks before jumping out and marching again. I liked being the band’s mascot—liked marching to the rhythms of the drum line—like showing off my little legs, even though I was convinced that Janice had prettier ones—liked being recognized by the community folks—and I liked the attention the drum majorette gave us.
In a very real way, Austin’s band was our community property; all Black folks owned a piece of it. When they heard the “Street Beat”—a syncopated rhythm beat out by the drum line without accompanying music—they poured out of their houses and watched, beaming with pride, as the band marched by, not a foot out of step. They shouted compliments like—“ Go on, girl! Do yo thang, baby! Y’all know you tuff stuff!”—and sent the band, smiling, on their way to the next block. The community held them high in esteem; we just knew Austin had the baddest band in town.
White folk downtown on Gay street turned out too—bankers, merchants, sales girls, and shoppers alike. They loved the performance: a high-stepping band dressed in spiffy-looking, orange and blue uniforms, playing a toe-tapping-head-nodding-hip-shaking beat, and to top it off, they were led by a drum majorette—always good-looking, tall hat, short, peekaboo skirt, tasseled boots, showing off the kind of legs that White “cheesecake” movie stars of the time, like Betty Grable and Jane Russell, wished they had.
The band was always one of my very favorite things about Austin, where the world was all Black. To me, Austin housed a village—elders, griots, mentors, all of them, extended family. There was gangly Mr. Davis, the principal, and the pigeon-toed, bespeckled Mr. Ford, a musical genius who regularly turned out top-grade Choral Arts choirs. There was dark-haired Madame Stokes, our French teacher, whose eyeglass frames matched her colorful blouses—pink frames today, and tomorrow pastel blue or lavender ones. And, of course, there was Mama, the English major turned girls’ basketball coach and gym teacher. When I had to miss first grade, Mama would take me and my tricycle to school with her and I’d turn Austin’s gym into my own personal race track when no one was around. And when I got bored, I’d run outside and sit in the dust, watching Daddy and his boys at football practice.
That Austin, like that Knoxville exists now in my dream time. Integration marched in and kicked ole Jim Crow segregation out. And other things. For one thing, school integration killed off the jobs of a lot of Black teachers and coaches all over the South. I realize today, to my sorrow, that integration —in education, in public spheres, in the marketplace, to name just a few—killed a great many other things as well—among them our community cohesiveness, our sense of worth, and a lot of idealistic values based on something finer than greed and conspicuous consumption. Back in the day, Black folk championed integration—had high hopes for it, in fact. Who knew that it would backfire in our faces? When school integration came, for example, Daddy had seniority over other White coaches and teachers, but the powers that be swept that aside. Daddy’s track record as the “winning-est” coach in East Tennessee, Black or White, mattered not. The powers put him at the previously all-White Fulton High where he was to serve as assistant to the White coach. But that didn’t happen. Probably because the coach was too intimidated by Daddy’s winning record and experience to let him near the football field or the basketball court; so unhappily, Daddy ended up being study hall monitor all day, every day for the rest of his days until retirement. When Daddy died in 1980, The Knoxville News-Sentinel headlined his death calling him a “Giant Among Area Coaches” and The Knoxville Journal said “he maintained a brilliant winning record in both football and basketball.”
The Knoxville of my growing up—the one where I’d see a “White Only” sign over the water fountain at Kresge’s five and dime—exists no more. That Knoxville, where I only saw white people when I went uptown with Mama to go to the bank and pay bills, is no more. That Knoxville is gone. Gone is that time when we could only go to Chilhowee Park on Thursdays—the day when White kids and their parents stayed away because Black kids and their parents were allowed in to ride the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel. Our place to swim--Edward Cothern Pool, the only place we could go swimming to cool down summer’s heat--is gone. So is The Gem Theater on Vine and Central, serving up second or third run Hollywood B movies to us Black kids who could only see movies there or in the balcony of the Bijou. All of those things have vanished. Time rolled in and rearranged things--as time always does.
Yes, like the old song said: Time brings about a change. Time merged the two Knoxvilles—one White and the other Black—into one. Time changed Knoxville, just as time changed Austin so many times. The 1952 Austin—the one I graduated from—is no more. Now there’s another called Austin-East High School. Which was supposed to school both Blacks and Whites. Supposed to.
Change is not always easy to swallow. But life is change.
The city named the football field at Austin-East for Daddy while he was still alive. And I liked that. I like remembering Old Austin because that memory is part of what defines me. Austin's legacy is still around. And I like knowing that. It's good to know that there’s still an Austin around in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In my time, Austin High was the only high school that Black kids could attend in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jim Crow ruled as law and lord of the land in the South, and that was the way things were until public school integration in 1964 or thereabouts when the Knoxville had to cave in to the Supreme Court’s decision.
The original Austin was built at 327 Central Street in 1897 by the efforts of Miss Emily Austin who came South during Reconstruction, just as many Whites did, to teach Black people. That Austin was built to educate “coloreds” (the politically correct terminology in that day) from ages six to eighteen and it graduated students who completed the tenth grade; later, in the Roaring Twenties, Austin added the eleventh grade, and, finally, in 1936, the twelfth. By then, the city had constructed the Vine Street Austin, old Austin—the one I still dream about. This was the Austin where I grew up, where I was like a mascot, adopted by faculty, staff, and students. I called this one “old” Austin because by 1952, a new Austin went up right next door; then, old Austin became Vine Junior High.
At both Austins, my daddy—Coach “Dusty” George H. Lennon—was the Physical Education teacher, the Head Coach for football, basketball, and the occasional track and field event. That was his job way before I was born and he kept it until integration. When Daddy was Austin’s football coach, games in Knoxville were nighttime affairs because we had to “borrow” a White school’s playing field at night since we had none of our own.
On the afternoon of Austin’s games, the band paraded through the Black community down Vine Street, and on up—uptown—to Gay Street, majorettes strutting their stuff, drumsticks tapping a snappy beat, the Band Director, Mr. Cobb, dressed to the nines in white shoes, white socks, and a uniform suit of white with gold trim on his hat and epaulettes. Everybody turned out to see the band. Because everybody’s child went to Austin sooner or later, and it was likely that a band member or majorette or cheerleader was a sister or a cousin; and if kin wasn’t a band member or cheerleader, then perhaps one of them was your neighbor’s child, or the child of a fellow church or club member.
When we were very little, Janice Tate and I were the band’s tiny tot mascots, marching just behind the drum majorette. I remember we were still living on Mee Street then, so I hadn’t made it to second grade yet. I must have been in kindergarten, at least. Janice, too because she and I were always in the same class. We were small enough to be “cute” but not big enough to last throughout the entire march. I remember that Daddy would pace us in his car so that from time to time Janice and I could scramble into the front seat and rest for a few blocks before jumping out and marching again. I liked being the band’s mascot—liked marching to the rhythms of the drum line—like showing off my little legs, even though I was convinced that Janice had prettier ones—liked being recognized by the community folks—and I liked the attention the drum majorette gave us.
In a very real way, Austin’s band was our community property; all Black folks owned a piece of it. When they heard the “Street Beat”—a syncopated rhythm beat out by the drum line without accompanying music—they poured out of their houses and watched, beaming with pride, as the band marched by, not a foot out of step. They shouted compliments like—“ Go on, girl! Do yo thang, baby! Y’all know you tuff stuff!”—and sent the band, smiling, on their way to the next block. The community held them high in esteem; we just knew Austin had the baddest band in town.
White folk downtown on Gay street turned out too—bankers, merchants, sales girls, and shoppers alike. They loved the performance: a high-stepping band dressed in spiffy-looking, orange and blue uniforms, playing a toe-tapping-head-nodding-hip-shaking beat, and to top it off, they were led by a drum majorette—always good-looking, tall hat, short, peekaboo skirt, tasseled boots, showing off the kind of legs that White “cheesecake” movie stars of the time, like Betty Grable and Jane Russell, wished they had.
The band was always one of my very favorite things about Austin, where the world was all Black. To me, Austin housed a village—elders, griots, mentors, all of them, extended family. There was gangly Mr. Davis, the principal, and the pigeon-toed, bespeckled Mr. Ford, a musical genius who regularly turned out top-grade Choral Arts choirs. There was dark-haired Madame Stokes, our French teacher, whose eyeglass frames matched her colorful blouses—pink frames today, and tomorrow pastel blue or lavender ones. And, of course, there was Mama, the English major turned girls’ basketball coach and gym teacher. When I had to miss first grade, Mama would take me and my tricycle to school with her and I’d turn Austin’s gym into my own personal race track when no one was around. And when I got bored, I’d run outside and sit in the dust, watching Daddy and his boys at football practice.
That Austin, like that Knoxville exists now in my dream time. Integration marched in and kicked ole Jim Crow segregation out. And other things. For one thing, school integration killed off the jobs of a lot of Black teachers and coaches all over the South. I realize today, to my sorrow, that integration —in education, in public spheres, in the marketplace, to name just a few—killed a great many other things as well—among them our community cohesiveness, our sense of worth, and a lot of idealistic values based on something finer than greed and conspicuous consumption. Back in the day, Black folk championed integration—had high hopes for it, in fact. Who knew that it would backfire in our faces? When school integration came, for example, Daddy had seniority over other White coaches and teachers, but the powers that be swept that aside. Daddy’s track record as the “winning-est” coach in East Tennessee, Black or White, mattered not. The powers put him at the previously all-White Fulton High where he was to serve as assistant to the White coach. But that didn’t happen. Probably because the coach was too intimidated by Daddy’s winning record and experience to let him near the football field or the basketball court; so unhappily, Daddy ended up being study hall monitor all day, every day for the rest of his days until retirement. When Daddy died in 1980, The Knoxville News-Sentinel headlined his death calling him a “Giant Among Area Coaches” and The Knoxville Journal said “he maintained a brilliant winning record in both football and basketball.”
The Knoxville of my growing up—the one where I’d see a “White Only” sign over the water fountain at Kresge’s five and dime—exists no more. That Knoxville, where I only saw white people when I went uptown with Mama to go to the bank and pay bills, is no more. That Knoxville is gone. Gone is that time when we could only go to Chilhowee Park on Thursdays—the day when White kids and their parents stayed away because Black kids and their parents were allowed in to ride the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel. Our place to swim--Edward Cothern Pool, the only place we could go swimming to cool down summer’s heat--is gone. So is The Gem Theater on Vine and Central, serving up second or third run Hollywood B movies to us Black kids who could only see movies there or in the balcony of the Bijou. All of those things have vanished. Time rolled in and rearranged things--as time always does.
Yes, like the old song said: Time brings about a change. Time merged the two Knoxvilles—one White and the other Black—into one. Time changed Knoxville, just as time changed Austin so many times. The 1952 Austin—the one I graduated from—is no more. Now there’s another called Austin-East High School. Which was supposed to school both Blacks and Whites. Supposed to.
Change is not always easy to swallow. But life is change.
The city named the football field at Austin-East for Daddy while he was still alive. And I liked that. I like remembering Old Austin because that memory is part of what defines me. Austin's legacy is still around. And I like knowing that. It's good to know that there’s still an Austin around in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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