DATING DEMI, AGAIN

Every once in a while I feel the need to stretch a little in my writing. For those of you that would rather I stick to the serious side, just skip over this one. I really only write them to try to become a better writer, and besides..it's fun.

*WARNING*

This piece contains sexually explicit material not suitable for young children and some Republicans.

"Oh, my God, that was great!" I said , falling onto my back. "That wonderful day in Washington, Kansas, and Louisiana! Then, just when I thought it couldn't get any better, now a perfect day in Maine. It felt like...,like old times." Demi just stood up, putting her shirt back on first.

"What?" I questioned.

"You know what." she shot back, obviously irritated.

"Oh, come on!" I pleaded. "Can't we just live for the moment here? I thought that was what you were all about." I really don't think I should have said that last part as it looked like it just irritated her more.

"Remember what it was like H.C?" she said as she sat back on the bed, her face suddenly cooling. "Remember how you took me home that first voting day one cold November? Remember how proud your working class parents were? And what about your friends...our friends? Didn't they all like me? Everything was going perfect and then you left. What wasn't I giving you, H.C.?"

"I don't know." I lied.

The truth is, when I first started dating Demi way back when I was 18, everything did seem perfect. She believed in everything that I believed in; legal marijuana, an end to the war, and a soft landing should I lose my job. Back then, nothing else seemed all that important. But as I grew I began to feel her restraints. At times it felt like she didn't want me to achieve, she wanted me to rely on her for food, for work, and for power. In her effort to comfort me I began to feel smothered.

"It's because I started dating minorities isn't it?" she asked.

"No, I understood that they needed us and we needed them." I answered.

"Was it the Gay thing? Because I was only experimenting." she said, her cheeks flushing a little. "No," I said, "I was cool with that, but I didn't understand the need for the whole 'Marrying' thing."

That irritated look suddenly reappeared on her face. "Oh, I see, marriage is only for the privileged few." she said scornfully.

"Look, we both have had our differences." I said, hoping to retreat a little. "Let's focus on the now. The new guy looks good with you and I'm supporting him."

She thought that over for a minute, her face turning to a open window. "You know, I'm committed to someone else." she whispered.

"I know" I replied, putting my hands on her shoulders, "But, you could leave her! You could make up your own mind and give the people who they want. Follow your own principles, be the girl I once loved. We could win this thing together, it would be like it used to be, me and you against the forces of evil."

She continued staring out the window for a long few seconds, her face firmed. "You don't know what your asking," she said. "I've been with her for a very long time and she's not exactly the forgiving type. And by the way, how do I know that this isn't just a trick? We've seen this before. White guy votes for the black guy in the primary and then runs back to the white guy in the main election? No. I have to stay where I am, with her." She stood up and reached down for her pants. Pulling them up, she turned toward me. "Still, it was fun," she said, half smiling. "And I'll be seeing you in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Maybe then, things will be different."

"I hope so." I sighed. She opened the door and stepped halfway into the hallway. Then, stopping as if she remembered something, she turned back towards me.

"I really hope to see you this fall, H.C." she said sweetly.

"It all depends on who you're with," I replied.

MY CHRISTMAS WISH LIST

If I only could, I would wish these blessings on all of you (and me!) for the Holidays;

*Peace*

Peace in all it's forms. Peace of mind, Peace of spirit, Peace among mankind, Peace between ourselves and the Environment, Piece of.......well, you get the idea.

*Clarity of Thought*

This one may sound odd at first, but don't throw it in the "return" pile just yet, clarity of thought is very important. It's so hard to make good decisions if your mind is burdened with stress, emotion, or irrational thought. To truly clear your mind up is to see things as they really are, untainted by prejudice, preconceptions, or outside influence. Of all the gifts I would give you, this is the one I would love for myself.

*Foresight instead of Hindsight*

Wouldn't it be great if we knew how things were going to turn out BEFORE they happened. (like lottery numbers!) If I could only count the number of times that I thought to myself, "If only I knew it was going to turn out like this." Hindsight's only attribute is that it teaches and humbles us. A good thing I suppose, but Foresight, it seems, would make hindsight unnecessary.

*Patience and Conviction*

This is one I've learned from hunting. When your out in the cold woods waiting for something to show up that has no schedules, you begin to doubt. Doubt creeps into your soul and starts eating away at your faith in your decisions. Soon you begin to second guess yourself. "Maybe I should have sat by the corn, or up on the ridge." You tell yourself. Finally, doubt wins and you stand up.........just in time to watch a big buck bound off. Making your best decisions work sometimes requires patience. Without conviction to your idea, patience waits alone.

*Love*

What kind of Wish list would this be without love? Fortunately, I'm very lucky in this department. I have wonderful children, adorable grandchildren, and a wife who love me and supports all my endeavors, no matter how strange (like Professional Bass Fisherman or Writer) I can't imagine a world without love and I believe it's part of the human condition to need it. So as my final wish to all of you, I wish all the love you give to be returned to you double, and that you use that love to make someone else's life here a little better. (Utopian I know, but this is a Wish List )

I hope all of you have the best Christmas, Hanuka, Kwanzaa, or (Enter your choice of Winter Holiday) ever! H.C.

THE DEVIL IN THE LAKE

"If anyone asks, we've been asleep all afternoon." My oldest brother half-whispered at me. Then in a flash, he and my second oldest brother disappeared into their bedroom. I noticed there was a slight hint of burning something or another in the air. The statement by itself was enough to make me wonder, but giving that it was only 5:00 in the afternoon and my brothers rarely took afternoon naps, I was getting very curious as to what was going on. Suddenly I heard a firetruck wailing in the distance. Slowly it grew louder and louder until it became obvious that it could only be going to one place. All the pieces fell together in one fleeting second. "Devil's Lake is on fire!" I raced to the screen door window and peered out at the people running down Bent Drive to Devil's Lake. Great plumes of smoke billowed out over the string of houses that rimmed the swamp that would eventually lead to the lake itself. The swamp was all cattails, and when summer would get dry, all it would take is a dropped match to set it off. And it would go up in a fury.

Devil's Lake was.....I mean is....located in the heart of the north end of Flint, Michigan and can be seen by driving down Pierson Road. It's now a shadow of it's former self. The swamps have been filled in along with the bogs. But there was a time when it was my backyard where I built forts and hunted frogs with my BB gun. Most any summer afternoon you could find me down by "The Drain" with my Zebco 33 fishing for bluegills and bullheads. We weren't really allowed to be down to the lake but since the "Soaps" were on from from noon till 3:00 it was easy to slip away.

Devil's Lake is what the people of Flint call the lake, but don't look for it on any maps. It's real name is Flint Park Lake, named after the Park that was once located on the east side of the lake. It was a nice little park, they tell me. It had a beach on the lake and a Coney Island style park complete with a Roller Coaster. But the Devil lurked down below it. It's form was that of an underground river that was eating up the soft ground on the bottom of the lake until one day it finally broke through. From then on it flowed in one side and out the other. That created buoyancy on one side, but on the other side it created suction and people who had fallen in said you could feel the Devil pulling you down.

The first sign of trouble for the Park was that people started drowning at the beach. Soon rumors of the "Devil in the Lake" started spreading and shortly thereafter, the Park was shut down.

Little by little the river pulled down pete (loose black organic dirt) from the one end of the lake, until trees stared to fall in and a strange bog formed. The roots of cattails and small trees formed enough of a mat to let vegetation grow even though the dirt beneath it was gone. If you weren't careful, you could fall through up to your armpits. Pallets were thrown down to reach the end where all the best fishing was. Looking back.....damn we were crazy. During the course of my youth I saw several kids pulled out of that lake. Each time we would huddle as close to the divers from the rescue squads as we could. We were fascinated by their stories of what it was like down there. Giant carp and catfish, stolen cars, water thick with black pete that seems to just hang in the water. Once one of them was nearly sucked in, and now they were all tied together with rope. Finally, the crowd would become quite and they would float the body up with balloons as we all would stare, horrified. The sound of a mother crying for her child is something that is hard to forget and it always came right as they lifted the body away from The Devil. I could easily live the rest of my life without ever hearing it again.

It seems that would have been enough to keep us away, but in the cattails we had a network of paths carved out, several cool lean-to forts, stashed BB guns, and a constant war going on with the kids on the other side of the lake. To just leave would be to surrender everything, especially our BB guns. None of us were even supposed to have them after Curt got shot in the eye. And a good stash fort, well defended, was our best hope to keep them. Our main fort was the coolest part. It had a roof built of old shed steel, and sticks shoved into the ground for walls. it had secret stash spots for our BB guns, cigarettes, and our prize possession, a playboy book we had successfully stolen from the drug store. In fact, it was so cool, it was it's downfall. My brothers and their friends discovered it and took to skipping school there and hanging out.

Apparently, my brother's friend, Dan, decided to start a "small" fire. My brothers said they were in the fort when they heard Dan start yelling, "IT'S OUT OF CONTROL! IT'S OUT OF CONTROL! They said they stepped out to find Dan waving his coat at the fire screaming RUN! RUN!

It was a pretty cool fire actually. No one got hurt and it burned mostly stuff the people around there wanted filled in anyway. But I remember that next day, sneaking out to look at the burnt remnants of our fort. I picked up a piece of the BB guns we weren't supposed to have and angrily threw it into the blacked forest. The next summer they began filling in the swamp for good. I guess somebody finally had enough of living next to a death trap, a mini-Vietnam, and a dumping ground. I remember them plowing over the fields where the park was and pushing the chunks of concrete into the bogs. Times change. Every once in a while I still drive by Devil's Lake and I wonder if the Devil still lives there. If he still grabs a hold of little boys stupid enough to wade on his slippery rocks. This story doesn't have a moral or really even a solid point. It's just that every once in a while I love to reminisce, to sit back and imagine myself a young boy again, standing on the edge of a pallet, catching my fiftieth bluegill of the day and defying the Devil that lives in the Lake. H.C.

A LETTER TO GOD

Dear God,

I'm sorry that I'm writing to you instead of praying, it's been so long it no longer felt comfortable. I'm sure you can find this if you want to anyway, you are after all, God. I'm not going to ask for anything or question your existence. I just wanted to explain where I've been.You see, the earliest recollection I have of considering you is when my grandfather died. He was the only person in the world who thought I was special. You took him when I was only 4 years and yet, I still believed you were a good God.

Then you put me in a dysfunctional home and I wondered what I had done wrong. But I still trusted you.

And then you put me into a school where I was the clear minority, and you showed me the cruelty of humans to one another. And I grew angry. I had been good, I had done my best. Why did you seem to hate me so much? And some of my faith in you slipped away.

I hid behind drugs to ease the pain of your abandonment, but you found me anyway, and then you took one of my friends. On that day, I decided I had had enough! What kind of God are you? I thought. One who takes children? Who cripples them? Who would leave them to be abused when he has the power to stop it? Who creates a world of riches for some and starvation for others? One who would stand and watch as the world ripped itself apart in war? If that was the kind of God you were, I reasoned, then I would worship you no more.

And I denounced you. I shook my fist at you and I walked away from you.

And things got better.

I found another person who thought I was special. I married her and still appreciate every day I have with her. I know now; people who honestly think your special are rare. And I enjoy every minute I have, because I know none of us are here to stay. I worked hard to give my kids a good stable home, with loving parents, so they never have to wonder where "home" went. I made friends and learned to perform musically and write. I was surprised to find I had an understanding of being alone, of being a minority and of loss. I had learned empathy for people in a bad place, and to be slow to judge.

Then you gave me Cancer, and I began to consider you again.

What was my purpose? Why was I here? Why had you chosen to take me now, when things were finally looking up?

I spent the next 6 weeks getting radiation treatments, 5 days a week. They schedule everyone for the same time everyday, so soon I got to know some of the other patients. Frankly, I've never known people so alive, so appreciative of every day. I guess when you feel the end's presence, you see the world from a whole new point of view. I began to wondered how it could be that people with less time would be more appreciative of it than people with more time. So I promised myself, if I beat this, I would never forget that feeling of limited time, of moments slipping away.

And when I finally felt the danger had passed, I started noticing things in a different light. The joy of my children's laughter, the beauty of an Autumn morning, The ripples growing on a pond all seemed somehow better than before. I had learned to appreciate my own life and the beauty of all you've created. And I started to consider you more.

So now I stand at a crossroads. Uncertain, and yet more certain. Still confused, but thinking clearer than ever. I guess what I really want to tell you God, is simply this;

I understand now.....and thanks. H.C.

BY HIS OWN HAND

The convulsing cough gave way to resignation. With each attempt by my body to expel the water from my lungs, more came in. I now laid flat, face up, as light streamed down through the water in blades all seeming to come from one central point. I felt strangely relaxed, almost euphoric, as life slipped from my body, my eyes dimmed just as two arms reached down toward me.

It could have been construed as a religious experience except that the two arms belonged to my Dad and not God. The next thing I remember I was on shore, the coughing had returned along with a vicious headache. My parents and brothers stood all around me as my body ejected the last of the Silver Lake water from my lungs. It was close, so close that I had shat my swimming shorts. Even at four years old, I was embarrassed. It's the second oldest memory I have, the oldest being watching my Grandfather trying to get up after suffering a heart attack that would soon take his life.

Those memories flashed in my head as I swam down the ten or twelve feet to Bernie's body, laying flat and face up, seemingly lifeless, as air bubbles trickled from his mouth. Despite my experience, I loved the water. Whereas most people would have become terrified of it, I found a weird connection with water. If that was how drowning felt, I reasoned, it really wasn't so bad, and I had became a powerful swimmer.

It's a good thing too, our day of skipping school to enjoy some of Summer's last breaths had taking a bad turn. Squire Lake was nothing but a gravel pit, but with it's secluded position, crystal clear water and sandy beach it was a school-skippers paradise. Bernie had taken a large piece of Styrofoam out towards the deep water and suddenly starting slapping it with flaying arms. His screams of "help" were taken by all of us as an attempt at a joke, he could, after all, swim fairly well. One by one though we became more concerned as he disappeared under the surface and didn't come back up. Mitchel and me were both members of the swim team (Any white kid that could swim was forced to) so we told everyone to stay put as we swam out to where we had last seen him. I found him first, and thankfully, moments later we had him on shore coughing up Squire Lake. He was lucky, he didn't even shit his pants.

Bernie was, in my eyes, everything I wished I could be. He was witty, smart, and had Jim Morrison-esque good looks. He was a hit with every girl we knew when his parents moved into our school district. He hated our school, but then again, we all did. Bernie was also a good friend, when girls would come around with their doe-eyes, Bernie would introduce me as a great person worthy of a second look despite my average appearance. After Mitchel and me pulled him from the water he told everyone we were heroes and he would thank me to a point where it was embarrassing. I started hanging out with him regularly and would walk over to his house on my way to school even though it was out of the way. In the short time we had known each other we had become fast friends.

Unfortunately, as way too many of my personal stories do, this one took a bad turn. As I rounded the corner one day toward Bernie's house, I saw the kaleidoscope of red and blue lights in the early morning haze. Police vehicles and ambulances gathered en mass around his house. One of our mutual friends, Craig, was standing at the edge of the crowd. "What's going on?" I queried. "Don't know." Craig replied, "I think something happened to one of Bernie's parents." That made sense, he had mentioned that his dad drank way too much, he probably fell. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. The side door burst open and a whole entourage of police, paramedics, and crying people spilled onto their driveway. In the middle was a black bag on a gurney, zipped all the way up. Bernie's parents rode alongside, his mother wailing in a way only mothers do. They damn near ran to the ambulance and in a second they were gone. Another mutual friend, Dean, worked his way to me and Craig. "Did you hear?" he gasped, "Bernie shot himself!" My knees went weak. "He took his dad's shotgun and shot himself." he continued, "My mom said he died, she ran over to Bernie's house when she heard his mom screaming." My heart sank to my feet, I looked out at the crowd dispersing. The world seemed suddenly emptier, darker, and every word people were saying seemed to come from a very far away place. We were just kids, How could this happen?

Over the next few days the details started coming in. His arguments with his dad, the condemnation that he wasn't living up to their Mormon beliefs and even his last few moments. His chair sat empty in one of my classes as a reminder that he was no longer with us.

Suicide is the plague of the white male. We kill ourselves at a rate that is higher than any other group. I myself, have had suicidal thoughts, although my optimism that the future will be better and logic always pulled me through. It is introspection that feeds it. If you focus on the people who will be hurt the most by your leaving, or those who have it worse than you, and focus less on yourself, it becomes less likely.

Bernie was, I think, typical of the kind of white males who kill themselves. He kept his problems to himself, hidden behind jokes and a facade that everything is fine. Women share their misery, minorities can blame someone else, but in the white male world we are told we are the fortunate sons. If there is a problem, it is yours to solve and yours alone. If there is blame, it is you. It certainly doesn't help that we hear constantly that we are the bane of mankind, the cause of oppression, imperialism and prejudice. Bernie's death shook me to my soul, I worried constantly for my friends and always tried to look for any warning signs. In our effort to affix blame in this society we seem to care not at all for the children who are born white and male. If they are to commit suicide, so be it. It almost seems that once again we are to blame. If it should happen that one of us should kill himself, who really cares? It will be by their own hand anyway. H.C.

TERRIBLE TOM

Under the Dragon's wings... it can be surprisingly warm

I can't even remember when I first met Tom. It seemed like he was part of my family since the start. I knew his brothers, his sisters, and his mom and dad. At one point I even made a move on his sister Molly, but it was too weird, we were like brother and sister and we both recognized it. My wife also knew the whole family, in fact, I think nearly everyone on the north end of Flint knew them in one way or another. They were great people. Every one of them seemed to have an inherent kindness about them. They were full of fun, laughter, and looking out for each other. To know them was to be part of their family, plain and simple.

But of all the kids that Marge and Will had, it was Tom that stood out. Tom was, simply put, crazy as a loon. Some people used to say he got that way over in Vietnam, where Tom was a Tunnel Rat, but my wife's brother knew Tom since he was a little kid and told me Tom was always crazy. He had stories about Vietnam that were right out of "Platoon". Stories of fragging (killing) superiors, raping villagers, watching people die and cutting ears off of North Vietnamese and trading them for pot. He stated everything like it was going to the store to buy a pop. He once told me, "There were two kinds of people in 'Nam, those that hated it and went crazy, and those that loved it and already were." There was no question in my mind which one Tom was.

Tom looked almost exactly like Charles Manson. His black hair was always in need of a comb, his clothes always looked like he slept in them, and his eyes displayed a sort of vacant, wild-eyed emptiness that shouted, "Don't ever, even think, about fucking with me." He stood all of about 5' 7", but I saw him back down people twice his size. To mess with Tom was to enter a duel to the death, and not many people wanted to go there. Once, in a fight, I saw Tom bite a man's finger off and then spit it at him. Tom was as far out there a person as I have ever known.

To know Tom though, was to know both sides of him. He could be extremely protective. No one messed with his friends or his family. He was a great singer, and he could be close to hysterical in his antics. Once, I was sitting with a couple of friends over "Spikehorn's" house drinking beer and watching football when Tom came walking through the door. He walked straight through without saying a word and went right out the back door. We couldn't figure out what the hell was going on until 5 or 6 minutes later when a pounding started on the front door. A Middle-Eastern Cab Driver started swearing at us in broken English demanding his fare for driving Tom across town. That's what life was like around Tom, you never knew what was going on, you just hung on for the ride.

For some strange reason, Tom liked me a lot. He was a lot older than me, so I think he saw me as a little brother. He would come over and pick me up and after lying to my mom or even my brothers about where we were going, he would head to the local liquor store for some Wild Turkey and then out to get whatever drugs we were doing for the night. I've often questioned myself as to why I would go out with Tom. The closest I can get to an answer is that I viewed Tom and myself as similar. Tom was an outcast who had a lot of drama in his life and so was I. I have never been able to think like other people and for a while I thought that maybe I was just crazy too. (I've since discovered that it's the rest of the world that's crazy.) Also, being Tom's friend was empowering. Even my oldest brother (who generally picked on me constantly) had to treat me a little different when I was with Tom. Having Tom for a friend was like having a real protective pet Dragon.

A night on the town with Tom meant that you had stories to tell the next day. Every single time, there was some adventure, most of which I can't even tell you about because I'm not sure the Statute of Limitations has expired. We would get completely trashed and then end up at people's houses that I didn't even know. Hookers, dealers, gay people, homeless people, Tom knew them all. After one night of partying a little too hard, I fell asleep in the back of Tom's car and woke up at The Mission (homeless shelter) with Tom looking down on me. He said," Get up boy, if we don't make morning mass, they won't feed us." We made our way to the chapel and sang religious songs, prayed and ate with the homeless. Tom, by the way, had a great voice. Somewhere between Ray Charles and Joe Cocker, his voice was a gravely gospel that still rattles in the back of my brain. He would sing "Whiskey River" every time he got drunk and made me do the harmonies. Tom taught me how to sing with soul, something I never forgot. It was his one great gift to me.

One day God decided that Tom had roamed the Earth for long enough. He had developed a sore throat that was so bad he went to the hospital where he got into a fight with some of the staff. They restrained Tom on a gurney and locked him in a room. In that room, alone for over 20 minutes, Tom's throat closed and God took him home.

The story of Terrible Tom is, like everything about him, a strange mixture. One part of me laughs at the adventures we had, one part is stunned that I could have been so crazy. At his funeral there was a strange feeling among all of his friends and family that God had simply had enough of Tom antics and took him because it was the only way to stop him. Looking back, I wonder what God would have thought about one of his children that was so obviously mentally ill. Would he have recognized that Tom wasn't in complete control of himself? Would he have forgiven him for his misdeeds? Tom was both kind and cruel, vicious and caring. Tom taught me that there is good and bad in all of us. He never looked down on anyone and loved people with his whole heart. Although I would never want to repeat the adventures I had with Tom, they make me laugh harder than anything I've ever done with anyone else. I can't sing a song without thinking of him, and sometimes, I fondly remember the times, when I had my very own...... pet Dragon. H.C.

TO TEACH IS TO TOUCH A MIND

It must have been about 1976. I was in a class on global politics with my favorite teacher, Mr. Veinheist. Mr Veinheist had a knack for teaching, I clearly remember the very first day in his class. He pulled out an article on Angola, an African country we, the U.S., were getting involved with. He then went into a tirade about how we didn't belong in that country, how we had a lot of nerve thinking we could fix other countries problems and who were we to push our morality on them when we had our own past to answer to. He then finished up by asking for a show of hands as to who all agreed with him. Every hand went up. He then started admonishing us for our opinion, saying how we had an obligation to use our power and wealth to help the oppressed in dictatorships, how allowing genocide to go unanswered was the the most sinful of all policies. He then asked for another show of hands of who agreed. Again every hand went up. Strolling back and forth in front of the blackboard, he again admonished us for not knowing our own opinions, for bending to the whims of the teacher, and told us to pick up one of the stacks of newspapers in front of him, read them and then write down our opinion on Angola. I looked around the room at the stunned faces of the normal suck-ups who now didn't know what the hell to think. I knew right away, I was going to like this guy.

I got along both great and badly with Mr. Veinheist. He would pull me aside after class to praise my opinions. He encouraged me to reach beyond the low expectations that everyone else had for me. He told me I was squandering my intellect, that I could be anything I wanted to be, and it was a crime to allow myself to end up working in the shops, or at the bowling alley, or some mail room. He looked beyond my tattered blue jeans and long hair and stoned friends, and he ripped into me for reeking of weed or coming to his class high on acid, or downers, or whatever else was going around. I hated the way he would glare at me as I walked down the hall after skipping his class or the way he would never let me just slide when I was caught fighting, or kicked out for partying in the parking lot. I hated the way he would keep an eye on me everywhere, all the time, how he always somehow knew when some other teacher had a problem with me. I hated it because I knew he was right and I cared what he thought.

Mr Veinhiest had a little game he liked to play with his classes. He would combine two of them for a semester and then he would break you down into groups of different sizes and assign you names of make-believe countries. Each countries would have different resources, military might, and strategic placing on the map. Two of them had nuclear weapons. You would then elect a leader and guide your country through alliances and crisis and be graded on your participation. He took great glee at watching how the students would run campaigns to be elected leader, and form alliances. I loved the game. I was lucky enough (or maybe chosen) to be in one of the two countries that had nuclear weapons. I fought hard to be elected leader and when elected moved quickly to form alliances with the other leaders. I then ran and was elected the leader of our alliance. I used everything at my disposal, in the class and out. I was determined to create a one world government, a socialist Utopia.

But I had a Nemesis, Paul.

Paul was a friend of mine, and like a lot of southpaws was sometimes called by the nickname Lefty, or sometimes Pauliegirl, which is another story all together. Anyway, Paul was a brilliant young man and an excellent politician and found himself leading the other nuclear armed country, and soon after that the alliance directly opposite of me. His form of government had a lot of the same traits as mine. Ones that you would expect to find in a country formed by students; Pot legal and clothes optional. Drinking age debatable. Unfortunately, Mr. Veinheist had no intention of letting our little Utopia exist without the normal trappings of global politics. So every Monday we were given made up situations to iron out diplomatically, each one getting more and more serious. As it got closer to the end of the semester the tension between me and Paulie was reaching a peak. He had assassinated my Secretary of State and in retaliation I had invaded one of his smaller countries. The war of words had reached a point where we were both starting to take it personal. We even had to be separated from fighting at a party (which I was glad, it turned out Paul had a helluva right hook). On the last Monday of the last week of the game we were given our situation; Paul had sent a nuclear submarine to my coast as a threat against further invasions and it had "accidentally" sunk one of two of my aircraft carriers. My troops had now captured the submarine and were holding it and the crew in Lew of a full apology and compensation.

The whole next week was full of debates and threats. My countries leaders were behind me 100% as were his. Each solution bartered by the other leaders was rejected one by one by the full alliance. We were both determined to win out in the negotiations. As the week closed, me and Paul had even gotten to the point where we were grilling our mutual friends as to each other's thinking. On the table was one ominous solution, First Nuclear Strike. Our Final paper had to be handed in on Friday and I had become obsessed with the notion that Paul was willing to go balls out to win. I was convinced that he had decided and convinced the others in his alliance that a nuclear strike was the only option that would leave his country standing. After an hour long debate, I convinced my alliance that we had no choice. We turned in our paper, it would be a First Strike.

On the following Monday, everyone waited for Mr. Veinheist to give us his assessment of our solution. Had we called it correctly? Did we do the only thing that could be done? Did I make a horrible mistake, convincing my classmates to kill a whole country of people who wanted only to find a peaceful solution? When the door opened after the bell, I barely recognized the man who had filled our lives with such passion, who had umpired our weeks of debate. He looked like a man who had to tell a third grade class that the pet hamster had died. He stood solemn behind his podium, and looked up at us, tears visibly welling up in his eyes, yet an anger filling his face. He spoke these words which I still here ringing in my ears today, "Last Friday, this class did what no other class has done in 10 years. The leaders of both alliances, with the backing of every one of the leaders of every country, decided to kill the entire planet rather than except anything less than winning. For the first time I am scared to leave this world to the next generation. I can't tell you how disappointed I am in all of you."

And then he left.

For the remaining 45 minutes we talked about what had happened. Paul and I congratulated each other on correctly guessing each other. For two people raised in the north end of Flint it was the only accepted solution; death with honor over losing. Mr Veinheist never came back that day and the next day was a half day that didn't include his class so I never saw him again.

This is usually the part of the story where I tell you all what I learned from that experience. But to tell you the truth, I've been struggling with it my whole life. One obvious lesson you could get from this is never give Ol' H.C. or Paul The Bomb. I can tell you that I owe my fascination with global politics to Mr. Veinheist, after his class I was hopelessly hooked. I never got over the feeling that our world could be destroyed by two egos, unwilling to be the one to concede. I also owe my ability to step outside the normal thinking to him, based on that one, mind-blowing first day. I've always wished that he would have elaborated more on why it was wrong for me to guess right and why he gave me a "C" for it. (Paul would never tell me what he got, his one win.) I can tell you one thing though, of all the teachers that I ever had Mr. Veinheist stands out as my favorite. I'll bet most teachers go through their entire careers never knowing how much they touched their students. Shortly after his class, I quit taking drugs for good and he was a big part of the reason why. I tried to model my parenting after him, hoping that if my kids respected me as much as I respected him, then my looks of disapproval would make them think the way his made me think. I'm convinced that without him in my life, I might not even be here now. Thinking my own opinions, hopefully uninfluenced by outside pressures, thanks to the only real teacher I ever had. H.C.

INFAMOUS VS.UNKNOWN

For those of you that don't know Andre from Inside Andre's Head, let me just gush a little bit about one of my favorite bloggers. Andre is to me, the definition of what hard work and education will get you. I've known Andre for 5 or 6 years and what struck me upon first meeting him was his obvious intellect and his outgoing personality. He's the kind of guy who would say 'hello' even if he barely knew you. But what struck me most after I got to know him better was his determination to get ahead. One by one I watched as he met all his goals, Associates degree, Bachelor's degree, and then on to Grad School, nice home and good job. I guess it's just the father in me, (Andre's quite a bit younger) but when I see younger people with that kind of enthusiasm, I get proud. Proud that I even know them. Proud that they would count me as a friend. And Andre's talented. He plays drums, draws great cartoons, and is the kind of writer who humbles my efforts. Oh, and by the way, he's black and has a stutter. I only mention that as yet one more example of how he doesn't let things stop him from his goals. Andre Louis is truly someone to be admired.

You'll probably never see Andre in the news. I really doubt he'll ever meet Oprah or have legions of reporters following him around. I doubt that the Governors office will take an interest in him and I'm fairly certain that his church won't give him a standing ovation anytime soon. Yet he'll go on doing what he does. Writing his blog, working hard, meeting his goals, trying to help people, propping up his friends and being a good example.

Now for the other side of the coin.

This Sunday at Hartford Memorial Church in Detroit the congregation rose to it's feet in a standing ovation to welcome a celebrity. He stood before them in a conservative blue suit and read a poem about his efforts to get his life back on track. The 21 year old man has had quite a exciting month. He has met Oprah, now has a lawyer/agent who helps him get appearances on radio programs and in churches. He has reporters who follow him everywhere and an education that is being paid for by me and you through our tax dollars, but don't worry, he won't be wasting our money, he has big plans on being a Rap Star. As you may have guessed by now, this young man is Nathaniel Abraham, who at age 11 became the youngest person to ever be charged as an adult for first-degree murder in the 1997 shooting death of Ronnie Greene Jr. formally of Pontiac. Now, let me stress something here. Ronnie Greene Jr. is dead. Dead as in never getting to see his family again. Dead as in never getting to have children and see them grow up. Dead as in gone from this life, gone from his girlfriend and his friends. Yet life seems to have taken a happy turn for Nathaniel Abraham.

This wasn't even an isolated incident for Mr. Abraham, according to the Detroit Free Press, from 9 to 11 years old he had formed quite a rap sheet of 22 incidents, including threatening classmates with a gun and beating a 16 year old with a metal pipe. Ronnie Greene on the other hand had a girlfriend, a steady job, and caring family before Nathaniel put a bullet in his head.

I guess there are some things in this life I will never understand. Why do we glorify someone like Nathaniel Abraham while my friend Andre keeps fighting the good fight with next to no acknowledgement? Why is it such a better thing to turn your life around than it is to have never turned that way to begin with? Why is it Oprah dwells on those who have made bad decisions in their lives instead of those that made good ones? Is it just that we love a story where someone saw the light and turned their life around? I've done O.K. in my efforts to turn my life around from the life that I once lead. But shouldn't we be propping up the people who said no to drugs and crime to begin with? It's embarrassing to me to have people act like I did something great when all I really did was make some real bad choices and then realize it.

I hope that Nathaniel Abraham gets on with his life. I hope that he will be a good example for people who need to turn their lives around. I suspect that he will use his ill-gotten fame to get his Rap published. There will be people who will use his notoriety to make money. I wouldn't even be suprised to see him standing with 50 Cent or Eminem on some program in the future. And I suspect that some young kid will get the wrong message and think that shooting someone is the path to fame, to meeting Oprah, to getting noticed. Meanwhile, a different kid will makes the right choices, do the right things and get no notice, like my friend Andre. So, to even the scale a little, I'm giving my man Andre his props right now. Great job my friend, Oprah's missing a real success story. H.C.

THE ALLIGATOR LADY LESSON

Go on boy," the carnival rat hissed through his yellow teeth, "She won't feel it." I looked down at the object in his dirty, calloused hand. A Cat-of-Nine-Tails. I had seen one in an old Western on T.V. but never in real life. It was braided near the handle, like a little girls hair, and then nine straps of leather hung down singular a foot or so from the braids with a knot at each end. I could feel their eyes on me, the crowd of onlookers who had each paid their dollar to see the "Alligator Lady", a woman who suffered a horrible skin disease. Larry Borden, my brother's friend, nudged me with his elbow, "Do it, man." he half-whispered. The Alligator Lady turned to reassure me, "It's O.K. honey, I won't feel it." I looked around the crowd for someone's eyes that felt like I did, confused, and disgusted, but all I saw were smiles and nods of approval. "No, I can't." I said, suddenly feeling claustrophobic in the crowd. "She won't feel it!" the Rat repeated sternly. "No, but I will" I said as I turned and pushed my way through the crowd, half running to the exit passed the "Wild Man of Borneo"s cage.

I felt nauseous and paranoid. The pot I had smoked earlier seemed amplified for those few minutes and I struggled to regain my composure. My brothers and Larry strolled over to where I was standing. "What a pussy!" Larry laughed, pushing me half-playfully. "No, but I will." he mocked with his best girly voice. "What's that supposed to mean?" My brother Steve, always the one to read me best, interrupted his fun. "Leave him alone, he just didn't want to hit a girl." I felt like a sissy. I had wanted to prove that I was older than my 11 years showed. They had been forced by my Mom to take "Little Brother" along. The pot I had smoked with them earlier and the hits off the passing wine bottle had made me feel accepted, and now, I felt the bond was broken. "Why didn't I just go ahead and do it?" I asked myself. "Well, we're going back for the rest of the show," my oldest brother Mike announced, "You can wait here where it's safe." They all laughed, heading back throught the doorway with it's painted, exaggerated portraits. "The Alligator Lady, The Wild Man of Borneo, The Two-Headed Cow, and The Bearded Lady."

I sat down on a bench, suddenly glad to be alone. "Freak Show" read the big neon sign over the propped up building. I mused over who they were talking about, the freaks, or the crowd. Feeling better, I congratulated myself on standing on my principles. I wouldn't hit a woman, not even one with alligator skin.

It had been a tough month. My Mom and Dad's marriage had been on the rocks for years, and had slowly gotten worse and worse. The beatings had gotten more severe and I had become scared to death that my Dad would kill my Mom on one of his drunken rampages. It all culminated on one horrific day, a flash of memories now like something out of a horror movie. Blood, screaming, begging, pleading, all blended together in away that defies time. Like a day that refused to end.

In a moment of sanity, my mother had decided to make a run for it. This was no small feat, my Dad had grown into a fearsome monster, capable of anything. With hardly more than the clothes on our backs, we made our way to my Aunt Mary's, the Patron Saint of abused mothers and scared children. The plan was to run and hide. She had arranged for us to rent a cabin on Houghton Lake in upper Michigan while my Dad was served the divorce papers. An act that was sure to send him into a fit of rage. The hope was that eventually he would calm down enough for something to be worked out. That, was an optimistic thought.

The cabin turned out to be a real refuge from the storm. Small and rustic, it sat right on the lake with a small boat and motor tethered to the dock. I was thinking of how I had spent the past few mornings and evenings sitting alone on that dock, reflecting on how our lives were changing and how life could be both chaotic and serene, depending only on where you were standing.

The sounds of shouting woke me from my daydream. The Yellow-Toothed Rat was pushing my brother's and Larry out of the Freak Show, a chorus of "Fuck you's" echoed off the passersby. Suddenly the "Wild Man of Borneo" appeared from out of the doorway swinging a chain and cursing in broken English and Spanish. Larry held his ground like a boxer squaring off for the fight, the Rat between them like a referee. After a few more profanities and threats, they made their way toward me laughing and slapping hands.

It seems the "Wild Man", who was in fact a muscular Hispanic guy with freakishly short legs, had a act beyond just jumping around in his cage and biting plastic lizards. After the Rat had lead all the paying customers through the different displays and freak acts, he would walk them pass the 'Wild Man of Borneo" who would swing his chain against the bars of his cage feigning ferociousness. When the crowd got close to the exit, he would suddenly kick his cage door open and chase the scared crowd out the door. Larry, never being one to lose his "cool" persona, turned and kicked the "Wild Man" right in the face, temporarily knocking him out cold. My moment of fame now forgotten, Larry recanted his victory blow by blow as we all roared in laughter at his becoming the "New Wild Man".

In the course of our lives, only a few of the thousands of days we live will really ever be remembered. Even fewer will stand out as a real life changing day, an epiphany moment. Because of that day, in a strange twist of events, I owe a good part of who I am to a sad women who God had chosen to curse with skin that was thick and discolored. Who had to live her life as a "freak" to be tormented and stared at. Inside of that propped-up building, I found pity inside myself while others found a reason to laugh. But most importantly, I found out something about myself that anyone who's parents aren't the best example needs to know. That while I can't escape the fact that I am my father's son, I don't have to be my father. Thank you "Alligator Lady" for that lesson. H.C.

THE SHORT LIFE OF MIKE "SPIKEHORN" TRENCH

"A friend is the gift we give ourselves"

Once again fall has taken the leaves from the trees, the nights have grown colder and I’m spending a lot of time in my hunting stands reflecting on times gone by. More and more as I’ve grown older, I find myself thinking about the friends that I’ve lost. It’s now almost a year to the day since I lost my “Accidental Friend” Brian. I’m not really sure why it is, but for my relatively young age I’ve lost nearly every friend I ever had. Of the dozen of so people that I used to walk to Emerson Jr. High with every morning, only me and one other friend are left. Drugs killed a lot of them, the rest died of accidents related to drugs or diseases that are linked to that sort of lifestyle. Make no mistake about it, if you chose that lifestyle, your life will be much shorter. So it was with Michael “Spikehorn” Trench.

I met Mike in my first year at Emerson. (For more info on what that was like, read my column “Black and White”). Mike was the brother of one of my older brother’s friends so I sort of knew who he was, but I had never actually met him. To say Mike was a character would be an understatement, he was one of the funniest people I have ever known. Mike was small built, short in stature, and almost feminine in appearance. He had hair so straight that he used to stick his head out a car window at my urging and then shake it to demonstrate how it would fall right back into place, a fascinating feat to someone like me with frizzy hair that would turn into a rat’s nest at the slightest wind. He was horrible at any sport he played, but what he lacked in ability, he made up for in sheer guts. Once, in a pick-up game of football, Mike played for over an hour with a broken collarbone, and he was getting creamed by everybody. Mike was always picked dead last by anyone but me. I would always pick Mike early. The smile that would come over his face as he would trot over to my side was always worth more to me than winning. He was my best friend and I like to think I was his. Once, after I received a particularly bad beating at the hands of about 30 local hoods, Mike came running to my aid. After viewing the damage to my face, Mike doubled up his fists and ran down my perpetrators. He got the living shit kicked out of him. It was the stupidest and the most amazing thing anyone had ever done for me. Through whatever we faced, Mike covered my back and I covered his.

Mike loved drugs. For whatever reason, God had put into Mike that need to escape and the inability to stop. My inclination was more toward Marijuana or alcohol and I was never cursed with having an addiction. While I was content to be “buzzed”, Mike always wanted to be a little higher, almost as if he wanted to see if there was a plain where the troubles of living could not reach him.

Every fall, me, Mike, and several of our friends would make our way to Northern Michigan (referred to by us Lower Michiganders as “up north”) to hunt deer. We stayed at my Step-Father’s deer camp which was nothing more than a shack made out of quarter-rounds (the part left over from a log when you square it up) and whatever wood they could scrounge. It had no running water, so we had to get our water from a well pump that produced water so cold it was surprising that it wasn’t froze solid. Needless to say, washing up produced screams that are probably still confused with Bigfoot. Heat came from an old wood burner that took forever to start and then would cook you out of there. Animals lived in every part of the cabin and it wasn’t uncommon to wake up and see chipmunks running for cover when you turned on the lights. As primitive as it was, this old city boy loved going “up north” every chance he got and Mike was my constant sidekick.

The adventures we had up there would fill a book, but one thing stood out more than all my other memories, the day Mike shot a buck. As you might suspect, since we went on our yearly hunting trip more to party than to actually get a deer, deer were rare on our buck pole. In fact, in the six or seven years that we went up to my step father’s cabin we had collected only two legal bucks excluding Mike’s. I had shot one barely legal buck that was so close to the 3" antler limit we hid it our trunk rather than risk a fine (it turned out it was in fact legal) and my mom had hit one with her car. It would be accurate to say that we weren’t much of a threat to the deer population. I always pictured the deer up there in a thicket laughing at us as we wandered into the woods way passed daylight, hung-over and making more noise than bus load of elementary school kids on a day hike. Despite our obvious inabilities, we still made our attempts at bagging a buck, and all of us dreamed of that glorious ride home down I-75 with our buck straddled across the trunk of our car with all the other returning hunters craning their necks to look at what we had got. It seems strange in today’s climate, but back then it was a right of passage, and only “real men” could bag an elusive whitetail. Certainly none of us thought that man would be Mike Trench.

Mike and me would always venture out together into the vast northern woods and hunt within earshot of each other, and so it was on that day. I was nursing a hangover and had almost fallen asleep as the daylight was slowly fading into dark. The sound of Mike’s shot damn near gave me a heart attack, and my first thought was that Mike had somehow shot himself. I gathered myself and ran as fast as I could over the ridge that had separated us, fully expecting to see Mike wounded. What I found instead was Mike standing over a nice spikehorn deer, cleanly killed with a shot through the heart. I couldn’t believe my eyes! We danced and whooped for a good five minutes. When we finally settled down, we set about the task of cleaning the deer and then dragging him out of the woods. Back at camp our other hunting comrades ran out of the cabin at the site of Mike’s deer. We hoisted him up onto the buck pole and began a long night of celebrating. Mike was the star of the show, a man’s man, a hero, and the ride home had us all beaming at the other hunter’s envious looks. Mike was so proud he took the horns and tied them to the front of his car where they remained for years. From that day forward Mike was known as “Spikehorn Trench” to all of us.

Years came and went as they will, I got married and started having kids and Mike’s lifestyle and mine could no longer be the same. I cleaned up my act and Mike slipped further into the world of drugs. I could no longer hang out with my friend and we drifted further and further apart. But I would still bump into him every now and then and always hoped that one day he would save himself and we could be the friends we once were. One day shortly after Mike’s 30th birthday, I saw Spikehorn walking down the street and stopped to chat for a moment. He said he had been reflecting on his life and where he wanted to go with it. His 30th birthday, he said, had made him realize he had wasted his life, so he had quit all drugs and was going to start anew. He gave me his phone number and said to call him, maybe we could even go hunting, like we used to do. I told him I would like that very much. It never happened.

Two weeks later, Mike “Spikehorn” Trench was found in an abandoned house, dead from a drug overdose. His current “friends” had dumped him there when it became obvious he had done too much. When they returned to check on him, he was dead, so they did what any “friends” would do, they emptied his pockets and left him there to rot. At his funeral, I cried harder than I have ever cried in my life.

The lesson here my friends is this, there can only be one end to a life of drugs; death, and a host of “friends” who will turn their backs and leave you when you need them most. I live every day of my life wishing that I could go back and somehow save Mike from his fate, this is my burden. It's a burden I share with his family. For all of you I have this piece of sage advice. Always remember that moderation is the key to living a good life, nothing in excess. If you must do something to escape, smoke pot, or drink a little, but above all else avoid drugs and the lifestyle that surrounds it. There is no wasted life, we all are here for a reason, even if only to show us what not to do. Let Mike’s life be that lesson for you. H.C.

THE VALUE OF A LIFE

Posted in Uncategorized on June 9th, 2006
”Bonnie Elizabeth Dorland was murdered by a coward on Holbrook Ave. in Flint, Michigan on May 31, 2006.” That was the opening line of an obituary I read in the Flint Journal the other day. In it, I felt both the grief and the anger of her family. She was a friend of my kids, and a sweet, small, pixie of a girl. She was only 26. At about the same time I looked down from my desk to see a column in another paper that read, “Search for Jimmy Hoffa’s Body at Milford Farm may exceed $250,000″. My mind raced in anger, for I know that kind of effort will never be spent finding the murderer of a small town girl with no rich parents, no famous last name, and no political ties. Lot of things in this world piss me off by their utter unfairness (maybe you’ve noticed?), but this one has me asking one of the most basic questions we all should ask ourselves. Should we value some lives more than others?
Let’s take a brief walk through some of the more egregious examples I’ve come across.
Probably the best example was Emilia Earhart, the first women to cross the Atlantic solo. When Emilia disappeared somewhere in the Pacific in 1937, the most costly air & search rescue of all time took place. The end cost was 4 million dollars and years of searching that still goes on today. Apparently Emilia’s life was worth a lot.
When J.F.K. jr. crashed his private plane off the coast of Massachusetts along with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren, a massive underwater search was orchestrated that included the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S Navy and NOAA. Also used were helicopters, planes, and $120,000 worth of sonar time. He was then buried at sea using the USS Brisco, A Navy destroyer, at the request of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. All this despite the fact that he was a non-military citizen who’s only claim to fame was being the son of an ex-president. Compare that to the usual loss at sea that entails one or maybe two coast guard planes doing a flyover.
Closer to home for me, Margaret Eby, a Provost at the University of Michigan-Flint was murdered on the Mott Estate grounds (very rich people and local philanthropists). Her 1986 murder investigation cost the city of Flint over 1 million dollars before Jeff Gorton was finally caught and convicted in 2002.
Now let’s compare that to my friend, Joey Arnold. Joey was a young local guitar player here in Flint for a heavy metal band. Joey also would occasionally sell marijuana to make extra money. That apparently was his undoing, as two people that he didn’t know, came to his door and forced their way in to rob him of his wares in broad daylight. In a subdivision where houses are less than 10 yards apart, the pair stabbed Joey repeatedly to death while his screams filled the neighborhood. Despite the fact that the police got good descriptions of the murderers and their car, a knife that was left behind, and even a partial license plate, 6 months later, no arrests had been made. Frustrated, Joey’s parents hired a private detective who delivered both murderers to the police in 2 weeks.
How can all this be, you ask? Well, most police and local government officials have an unofficial policy of D.S.A.F., or “Did Society A Favor”. They take it upon themselves to decide who deserves precious funds for investigations and who we’re better off without anyway. Those people, like my friend Joey, who sell pot, or are on welfare, simply don’t see the kind of funds or effort that their rich well connected counterparts do. Is that fair to their families? Is Joey’s mom’s grief any different than the grief of any other mom? Why is it we spend the most money on people who could most afford to pay for it themselves? Is justice something that should only be for the rich or well connected? Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that the punishment for murder, or rape , or any other capital crime in this country is directly linked to who is killed or raped. Or who did the crime? I’m a true capitalist, but justice should not be a benefit of success.
Unfortunately, I’m also a realist. I know that there is no way to keep politics and money out of justice. Even if you could put lawyers in a pool drawn randomly, the rich could still hire legal advisors, and private detectives to tip the scales in their favor. I also know that political pressure mounts on overburdened police departments to solve high profile cases. But sometimes it feels like no one is even trying to make our system fairer.
My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Bonnie Dorland. I know the odds of her killers being brought to justice are not that good. But I also know that there are people out there who may have seen something that night on Holbrook Ave, or may know something about this case or another case. To those people I plead, stand up, if we’re not going to get justice from the system, we have to create it for ourselves. Next time it may be your loved one killed, or robbed, or raped. Turn your back and someone will follow your lead and turn theirs. We all have to stick together against the madness that is consuming our neighborhoods, or we’ll all continue to suffer from it. Remember, all evil needs to prosper, is for good people to do nothing. R.I.P. Bonnie. H.C.

BLACK AND WHITE

They tried to recruit me again the other day. They are white supremacists, although they never use that term. They usually portray themselves as “white rights” groups, a counterbalance to all the advocates who, they argue, dictate to the 90% of whites who aren’t rich or in power. Using tactics ripped right out of the liberal manual, they stand on the bodies of victims to make their point. The recruiters themselves usually have some “justification” for their hatred, usually a relative who was beaten, killed or raped by someone of a different color or religion. In this case, my recruiter was using a local white girl found dead in a vacant house on the north end of Flint. Although her murderer has yet to be caught, the fact that there is hardly one white person living in that area seemed proof enough to him. He then handed me literature filled with attacks on whites by blacks unreported or underreported by the media, as more proof of how prevalent these acts are. The reason, I think, that they target me, is because of my fairly well known past with blacks. It’s fair to say I’ve had more than my fair share of bad experiences at the hands of black people, and I guess they assume that I must harbor a lot of hatred toward them. They are, as usual, wrong.
So you’ll better understand, let me tell you why they think they have a chance with me, and why they don’t.
I’ll skip right to the part where it all starts going wrong. In the 6th grade at Merrill Elementary on the north end of Flint, I was an Honor Roll student with a future so bright, as they say, I had to wear shades. I was a straight “A” student, a draftee into the Walker School for the Academically Gifted, an accomplished artist ( I’d already won a scholarship) and the youngest person ever to enter the DeWaters Art School. I had stayed home from school that day, although I don’t remember why, when my mother lept to her feet with a muttered “Oh my God!” Ann, our next door neighbor, and my one time babysitter, was walking toward her house naked, but for shreds of clothes, bleeding vaginally. I only caught a glimpse as my mom shut the drapes and demanded that I stay put. But what I saw was horrifying. She was beaten bloody and crying hysterically, her parents were rushing to her aid with a blanket. The next day I found out that she had been beaten by black girls and violated with a stick at Emerson Jr. High, the school I would be attending the following year. Her crime to have deserved such treatment? She wouldn’t go out with a black guy. Their house went up for sale the next day. I never saw Ann again.
The very word “Emerson” made my stomach clench with fear. It still does. It was the worst school in Flint. With a black population that hovered around 90%, every white kid I knew had some horror story they had heard of beatings, rapes, and teachers who either enjoyed watching white people suffer, or were afraid to speak up. Both my older brothers were already there, and from what they told me it was even worse than they had heard. They gave me advice such as; don’t use the bathrooms, hide your money in your shoes, never show fear, and always be aware. All my neighborhood friends were going to Holy Redeemer, a private Catholic school my single mom could not afford. I would be alone.
Walking into Emerson that first day was like walking through Alice’s looking glass into another world. It was way louder than my old school and every face seemed hostile. I damn near threw up. The only bright spot was that 2 black kids from my old school, Leo and Leon would be there too. Leo and Leon were 2 of 5 black kids in my whole school. I had befriended them early on, they played 1st base and catcher on my baseball team (we organized our own) and athough I hadn’t seen them since mid-summer, I was sure they would look out for me. I was wrong.
I bumped into them in the hall but they were distant and seemed mad at me, I totally didn’t understand. I had been to their house, met their family, and defended them on more than one ocassion. What the hell was going on? About the second week, a group of 10 or 12 black kids followed me out of school and began tormenting me, suddenly one of them sucker-punched me in face. I turned and ran as fast as I could with them chasing me, throwing rocks and insults. As I turned to look back, I saw Leo and Leon throwing rocks too. I was stunned. The next day I confronted Leon, he told me bitterly about how he had felt so alone in a white school, that he was with his people now, and we could no longer be friends. I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t now.
For the next 3 years I was called “honky” nearly every single day. I only used the bathroom while everyone else was in class. I hid my lunch money for which I was searched almost every day, sometimes in plain view of facualty and administration. I hung out with a dozen or so white kids that were in the same situation. We walked to and from school together for protection. I lived in fear every minute I was there and started using drugs to escape.
Two incidents stand out in my mind as being above the normal (for us) harrassment. The first one occured in gym class, which was nothing more than an hour of basketball followed by manditory community showering. Basketball was bad enough by itself, you were shoved to the floor, tripped, and sucker-punched. If a fight broke out, you were not allowed to win. If you got on top, someone would kick you off. But it was showering that we white kids feared the most. Towels were twisted and dunked in water to use as whips to snap your backside or front. By the end of showering all of us would have welts covering our bodies. Our gym teacher (who oddly enough was white but talked like he was black) saw this as good fun.
One day two white kids, who I’ll spare the embarrassment of naming, for some reason had red areas around their anus’. Soon one of the black kids noticed, and they began tormenting them as being gay. A couple of the more aggressive black kids grabbed them by their hair and drug them into a isolated part of the locker room while others stood guard. I was told to mind my own business if I didn’t want the same treatment. From my position I could hear their muffled pleas and tears. It gave me nightmares for years.
The second incident occured in my last year at Emerson. By this time I had pretty much established myself. I boxed at Berston Field House for a short time and had gotten quite good at defending myself. I had made some black friends and with my connections in the drug trade, had several customers who had an interest in keeping me safe and them supplied with weed. Life was a little better. Martin Luther King’s assassination day, April 4th, had become a day of racial tension in our school, and most white kids simply didn’t go that day rather than risk problems. This didn’t go unnoticed by our Assistant Principal for the Students, who may have been the most racist person I have ever met. He took great joy in having his white students see “what it feels like.” He would even punish us with what he called “slave for a day.” A day where we would work in his office doing his bidding, such as shining his shoes. (Usually that was the punishment for being caught with drugs, which he would keep). On the day before M.L.K.’s assassination day he called us all into his office one by one and warned us that if we missed April 4th again, we would all be repeating 9th Grade, a fate to us worse than death.
Everthing went pretty uneventful that day and I admit, I was surprised. I fully expected to be harrassed all day. After school, the white kids that showed up, all gathered for the walk home. Black kids would normally be in their own groups walking behind or in front of us. The fact that they were all males wasn’t immediately noticed by us. But, when they didn’t make their normal turn onto Detroit Street, we all knew something was up. When we got about halfway down one block, the front group suddenly turned and started back toward us, at the same time the back group started running up behind us, the noose had closed. By police accounts taken from neighbors who witnessed, there were about 30 to 40 people who decended on the 7 of us. It felt like a wave. I swung and fought valiantly, but there were simply too many of them. Sticks, feet, and fists stuck me everywhere and I fell to the ground and assumed the fetal position. I could feel my strength fading in pain. Luckily, I had fell next to a parked car, and through kicks had managed to crawl under it. This made it hard to get at me. I bit and kicked and punched at anything that touched me, but soon they changed tactics. Picking up chunks of concrete from a rock garden, they hurled their missiles under the car. One struck me in the side, taking my breath away and lowering my arms. The next one struck me in the face, after that I don’t remember anything until one of my friends, Mike, pulled me from under the car. It was over. Apparently, some of the neighbors had come out of their houses to save me, and a police cruiser had scattered my tormentors. Two of us had to be hospitalized. I still wear those scars. I never went back to Emerson after that, even my teachers felt sorry for me and gave me a barely passing grade. I was finally out of that f***ed up excuse of a school. Drug addicted and carrying a “D” average, 9th grade would be the highest grade I completed. To say I was bitter and hated black people would have been an understatement. All my friends felt the same, we blamed all black people. Several of them went on to join white supremacist groups, which is why they know about me.
The truth is, not all black people treated me badly in Emerson. The girls in particular, sympathized with my plight, and would try to keep the black guys at bay, as much as they could without being called a “honky lover”. Some black guys would also stand up for me, at great risk themselves. The more militant blacks had no problem handing out an ass-whooping if they got too sympathetic or turned them in for their misdeeds. It took a long time, but slowly, I started remembering that not all of them participated, or approved of what happened to me.
I don’t write columns to ferment hatred, to show how terrible my life has been, or get sympathy for myself. God knows there’s enough of that. I like to think that the purpose of my pieces is to learn together, debate issues, show right from wrong, and as grandiose as it may sound, to learn to live together without so much hate. This column was written specifically to make one point. After all I’ve been through, I can’t judge all black people by what a few did to me. That’s the same mindless thinking that caused what I suffered. If I blame all of them, I justify that behavior. And that I won’t do! I blame those people who treated me badly individually for their acts, not as a group.
I won’t respond to the white supremacists and their racist logic, nor will I waste my time trying to convince black activists who put white people in a group when it fits their agenda, contrary to how they want to be treated themselves. (Actually, it’s amazing how much the two sides sound alike in their rhetoric, both aware of the others privileges, but not their own.) But I do have a question for all you people who claim to justify your racism by pointing out what a race of people have done to you, instead of what some racists individuals have done. Why is it that I, after all I’ve been through, can see the injustice in your view of the world, but you, with far less to point to individually, can not? Maybe it’s just that it’s easier for you to see the world in Black and White. Too bad, all the good colors are inbetween. H.C.

GUNS AND MIRRORS
Posted in Uncategorized on April 25th, 2006
Rap and Hip-Hop, they’ll tell you, is not the problem. The problem is, according to those who enjoy that culture, the streets themselves. Ask them what the problem with the streets is, and you’ll get a variety of theories from bad parenting to not enough money spent on schools. The one thing they’re sure of though, it’s not Hip-Hop culture causing the problems that would make it part their fault. Art, they’ll tell you, only mirrors society.
Those that dislike what they feel is the corruption of youth by Hip-Hop culture, have a different view. They’ll tell you rap stars glorify the criminal life by painting stories of defending honor through guns and violence, that they sexualize women and encourage young minds to play out unhealthy fantasies. In their minds, it is the streets that are mirroring Hip-Hop culture, that the kids are emulating their heroes.
One thing is for sure, everyday, young people, black, white, and brown, are shooting each other for stupid, senseless reasons.
The most recent casualty of this stupidity played itself out in Detroit, Michigan, sometimes referred to as Murder City. A rap star, DeShaun Holton, known as “Proof” and a soldier of the U.S. Army, Keith Bender Jr., both ended up dead.
I’m not going to pretend to know much about Hip-Hop culture, but I do know about guns. I’ve shot guns since I was about 12 years old. I could not wait to turn 12 so I could legally hunt here in Michigan. My family didn’t hunt, being from the north end of Flint, not a big area for hunting, but one of my brother’s friends did. Lloyd was nearly pure Native American and viewed hunting as part of his heritage. So, borrowed gun in hand, Lloyd took me out to a range. From day one, Lloyd explained to me the dangers of a gun. The rules were laid down to me with the threat of an ass-whooping if I violated any of them. #1 Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill. #2 always respect your gun as something that kills. #3 always treat your gun as if it’s loaded.
In the years that followed, I watched a lot of animals die at the end of my gun. I ate every animal I killed, it was the only reason I was taught to use it. The streets I grew up on were as mean as any streets in America, but I never used my guns in anger. Cowards, I was taught, use guns in anger because they’re afraid to fight someone fairly. Twice in my life I used a gun to defend myself, once to stop a man breaking into my house, and once to stop a robbery at the liquor store I worked at. Both times I did not need to shoot, but I could have.
The big difference between Keith Bender and Proof was that Keith, like me, had been taught to respect a gun. Keith was a 15 year Army veteran who had served in Iraq during Desert Storm as a combat medic. He had seen what a gun can do. Proof on the other hand, grew up thinking that a gun was a way to get respect. Hip-Hop culture glorifies people, Like 50 cent, as soldiers of the street who take bullets to prove their street creds. They have no respect for the guns they carry or the lives they take.
The sad part of this whole story is that Keith Bender didn’t carry a gun that night, despite the fact that he could have legally, being military. He was celebrating that he no longer needed a defibrillator for a heart condition that had got him discharged from the Army, and probably could see no reason to carry one. Proof on the hand, did see a reason. Fearing the very culture he glorifies, Proof brought his gun to the C.C.C. Club that night to protect the respect that was so important to him.
No one seems to know what caused the argument that lead to the two men fighting, but this much is known. Proof pistol-whipped and then shot the unarmed Keith Bender in the head. He then stood over him and by all accounts, appeared ready to finish him off when the bouncer of the club, Mario Etheridge, a cousin of Keith’s, shot him three times. Mr. Etheridge claims he shot Proof to prevent further bloodshed. The end result was, Proof lie dead and Keith Bender would die days later.
I’m going to piss a few people off here, but I only feel sympathy for one man here, Keith Bender. DeShaun Holton, know as Proof, was a murderer no matter how you slice it. He showed no respect for the gun he held or the life he took. He fought an unarmed man with an unfair advantage, in my world, that makes him coward. I sympathize with his wife and children, I wish them peace, but this was no act to be justified. Proof robbed a man of his life for no good reason and should be seen for what he was, a murderer and a coward. Keith Bender spent his life caring about others and should be the one respected and mourned. The crowds that are showing up at Proof’s tributes and his funeral should be at Keith’s Benders’.
Keith Bender quietly, without fans, without money, without fame, took care of his wife and step-children and pledged his life to his country. He tried to help people while Proof led young people down the path of more killings, more pain, while filling his wallet and his ego.
This brings me to the heart of the problem. Hip-Hop supporters claim they’re just mirroring society, while they’re detractors claim it’s the other way around. Who’s right here H.C.? Well, when I was a kid, I loved taking our living room mirror into my parent’s room where they had a full length mirror. Facing one mirror at the other, I was fascinated by the seemingly endless cascade of reflections. Maybe both camps are right, and Hip-Hop and society are reflecting each other endlessly. The only solution then would be to set one mirror down. For the sake of Proof’s wife and children, for the sake of Keith Bender Jr.’s wife and children, please Hip-Hop, put down the mirror, we’ve seen enough. H.C.

REAGAN HATERS ANONYMOUS
Posted in political on May 26th, 2006

“Bitterness is a poison pill you swallow, hoping your enemy will die.”

Hello, my name’s H.C. (Hello H.C.) and I’m a recovering Reagan hater. It all started in the summer of 1980, I was a wet-behind-the-ears Liberal Hippie who honestly believed that Jimmy Carter was the best president we had ever had. Jimmy was honest, cared about the poor, and thought pot should be legal. Everything I thought was important in a president. It was those bastard Republicans and all their Fortune 500 buddies that had screwed up the economy in my eyes. They had all their buddies in the banking industry drive up the interest rates (I didn’t honestly know how that worked) and their friends in Big Oil were pushing the price of oil threw the roof to punish us for being so stupid as to elect an honest man like Jimmy Carter. You could not have convinced me otherwise.
Reagan, from what I could see, was just another tool in a pinstriped suit and burgundy tie. He was an actor for Christsakes, how could he possibly be qualified to be the leader of the free world? If elected, I believed, he would just do what he was told for the benefit of Rich Fat Cats, and we, the poor hard working Americans, would be left to fend for ourselves. Even worse, he quoted the Bible on occasion, a clear (I thought) violation of church and state! I was certain he wanted me and all my dirty hippie friends drafted into another Vietnam just for having long hair and opposing war.
Even worse, for his Vice-President he had George H. W. Bush, an ex-C.I.A. Director. Those were the guys who spied on decent everyday Americans for no good reason except to catch you smoking pot. This, to me was the same as having the K.G.B. next in line to the presidency. This was my birth into the world of politics. I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Reagan and Bush. All the media that would give me the TRUTH, you know, Mother Earth News, The Flint Voice (With Michael Moore) and of course, Rolling Stone and Playboy. Any other media was controlled by Reagan and Bush’s buddies and in my opinion, could not be trusted. My media however, was wholesome and had only one agenda, to give me the unvarnished truth. I preached to anyone that would listen for hours on end about the evils of the Reagan Empire. I did everything in my power to get everyone I could to vote for Jimmy Carter and save our Great Nation from certain Fascism.
When Jimmy lost I fell into a deep depression.
The next 8 years were horrific for me, every day I would curse the news. Any article in any form of media about Reagan had me foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. My friends, even the ones that hated Reagan themselves, would avoid bringing anything up about politics for fear of setting me off in a tirade. I carried articles I had clipped out of newspapers and magazines in my pocket just I case some misinformed idiot dared to challenge by points. I preached about Iran-Contra, the S&L Scandal, the behind the scene dealings and any issue I could find. I gleefully bought a copy of Playboy with the article on Patti Davis, Reagan’s daughter and pointed out as absolute truth her accusations of sexual assault and abuse by Nancy and Ron.
My lowest day came on March 30, 1981, even though it was early in my addiction to hating Reagan. That day, John Hinckley Jr. put a bullet in Ronald Reagan’s body. I could not have been happier. Even though my pacifistic beliefs were contrary to violence, I wallowed in his misery. Like most Liberals I made exceptions to my beliefs to suit myself. I spent the whole day calling my friends to tell them the “happy” news. When he refused to die, I cursed the surgeons who had saved him. It would be 7 more years of Christian right-wing ideological madness and I was certain it would be the death of everything I loved about this country. I seriously considered moving my family to Canada. Even when Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s I commented to my friends how “convenient” that was, how he could now claim to “not remember” facts about Iran-Contra and the S&L Scandal.
It took all the way up to the second term of Bill Clinton before I started to see what a mess I had become. Although all my Liberal friends loved having someone so well versed to defend their views, I had become miserable in my pessimism. With no one left to blame everything wrong in this country on, I slowly emerged into the light. With the help of patient Moderate Sponsors I began to see politics in a new way. Something that had not occurred to me before started to manifest itself in me. What if all my Liberal sources weren’t as clean as I supposed? Why had Michael Moore abandoned Flint like a used condom in almost the same manner that his nemesis General Motors had done? Why was he now hanging out with the Establishment and living in mansions? Why did I not notice before that all the people that I so admired as champions of the poor were lining their pockets with money and then excusing it the same way Republicans did? I needed help.
With the help of R.H.A. I have now turned the corner. I still don’t agree with everything that Reagan did, but I now see that he wasn’t all bad. He did bring pride and optimism back to the U.S. The Wall in Berlin did come down as he had predicted. Even Patti Davis refuted her earlier claims of abuse, claiming now that she was used by Liberals who took advantage of her drug problem to make her do their bidding. I found out that Reagan had grown up poor, that his father was the town drunk and a distant man. That he had started his political career as a Democrat and a union leader. And it turned out he really did have Alzheimer’s and suffered a long slow death. That didn’t bring me the joy I thought it would, to see a man, who once stood so tall, reduced to a mindless shadow of his past. When he died June 5, 2004 I was not as happy as I thought I would be, I fact I was sad to see my nemesis pass, we had a long history together. My own cruelty now exposed, I had to face myself, and I didn’t like what I saw.
I feel better now. It’s been years since I went into a fit over Reagan. Most of the people in my group have now recovered and moved on. I hear there’s a new group forming over a more “current” president, and I have some advice for them. Listen to your Moderate Sponsors; try to take it one day at a time. Start by saying you like his tie or something about his wife. Take deep breaths when listening to your religious conservative friends and try listening without gritting your teeth (it makes it hard to hear). It’s a hard long path, but in the end, you might even find he really wasn’t completely bad. And maybe you were the victim of some finely tuned propaganda yourself. It turns out both sides does it. H.C.

AN ACCIDENTAL FRIEND
Posted in Uncategorized on August 28th, 2006
Dedicated to Pat, Kari, and Nick
I remember distinctly the first time I saw Brian. My wife and I had just moved to a small rental house just outside of Flint, Michigan. Brian, in his usual boisterous style, was yelling at his wife or kids about something or another. With sleave tatoos, a long ponytail and strutting manner, Brian was 100% macho. Not the kind of guy I usually liked to be friends with. I decided then and there that I would keep my distance and limit our interaction to neighborly “hellos”. Time went by and slowly it seemed that I was going to have to “tolerate” him more and more. His wife, Pat, probably the nicest person I have ever met, and my wife had struck up a friendship. Our kids were soon playing together and it looked like I was going to have to interact with him more than I really wanted to. I decided I might as well try to be friends and hope for the best. I didn’t have a clue how it would all turn out.
Brian, once you got past the posturing, turned out to be not so bad. He even had some characteristics I found admirable. Despite his yelling, he was committed to his family, honest to a fault, and very loyal to his friends. You never had to wonder how he really felt, and I found that refreshing. We shared a love of hunting and the outdoors and soon we were swapping stories of mystical bucks like old friends. Brian was a great hunter, probably the best I have ever known. It didn’t matter where we were hunting, Brian would always get whatever he was after. He seemed to have a natural instinct for the woods. And best of all, he shared my respect for the outdoors and the animals we hunted. I never once saw him disrespect any of the animals we killed, or the land we were lucky enough to enjoy. As a hunting partner, he was as good as I could have asked for.
Alone in the woods, surrounded by the majesty of crisp October mornings when everything is so quite field mice seem to wear lead boots, you can’t help but reflect on your life. Through high-five successes, missed chances, early morning coffee, and restful sits, Brian and me chased deer and rabbits and shared thoughts. I soon realized we were more alike than I had thought that one morning long ago. Brian more than once remarked to me, “It’s like we were cut from the same cloth.” I started to believe maybe we were.
Between hunting trips, we both worked hard for our families. We shared a dream of getting away from the city life with its drugs and crime and starting a better life for our kids. Soon I had saved enough to buy a piece of land in the country and a little while later, started building my house. Brian helped me all along the way when he could have easily have found excuses not to. Somehow we still found time to enjoy a little fishing or hunting.
When my house was finished, I had to move away from Brian, Pat and their kids, but we stayed in touch. Brian soon bought a house in a piece of whitetail heaven near Montrose, a small town outside of Flint. I made regular trips out to his place every spring and fall and we always kept in touch by phone, telling each other stories of “bullwinkle” deer that we had seen at a distance but could never quite get. Brian hunted a friend’s place down the road and was soon harvesting nice bucks every year. He had a blind that he had built in a big old maple tree on the corner of the property. He spent so much time in it that we jokingly called it his second home. From my stand a few hundred yards away I could see Brian’s silhouette against the evening sky, rattling horns together to simulate two bucks fighting, and then sitting so stone still that I would lose sight of him until he picked his rattling horns up again. I looked forward to those days very much every year.
Things can go so well that we sometimes forget that they’re not made to last. So it was last spring. The first hint I got that something was wrong came from my usual spring turkey hunting call from Brian. There was a hesitant pause in his tone that I wasn’t used to, and his story about getting a nice Tom (male turkey) included a sidebar about his having to stop and rest afterward. “Guess I’m getting old or something.” he said. But again, something felt wrong. I told him it might not be a bad idea to see a doctor, you know, just in case. We moved to lighter conversation, and after a few friendly pokes at each other, he wished me luck and I congratulated him one more time.
Then one morning I got a call from my brother, he had heard that Brian had a heart attack and did I know anything. I told him “no” but I would find out. I hung up the phone and called Brian. The gruff “hello” on the other end had me breathing a sigh of relief. “Man, you scared me half to death” I said, “My brother heard that you had a heart attack.” A long pause followed and then he said uncharacteristically slow and quiet, “Yea, it’s true.” The story that followed was the last thing I expected to hear. He said that he had felt kinda sick at work and left early, and as it got worse he drove himself to the hospital where he collapsed right outside the emergency entrance. He went on to say that his heart had stopped for several minutes and while he was unconscious he had a religious experience. He told me that he was standing next to his body and a light streamed down from the upper corner of the room. Soon he noticed people moving toward him that he felt he knew but couldn’t identify. At about that time, the doctor who was working on him shocked him with paddles and he was back in his body. He told me ” I know it sounds strange, but I now know for sure there is a heaven.” Coming from someone else I would have thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him in a moment of panic. But Brian was never terribly religious and was now completely convinced. It sent shivers down my spine.
I asked him a few more questions about his experience and then told him I was glad that he was still around and to take care of himself. I called Brian a few more times over the next few months and began to feel that the danger had passed. He said his chest still hurt, but maybe the shock to his chest muscles caused it. Brian did, however, seem changed. He was way more reflective and spent most of his time with his family. “I now see what’s important.” was one of the last things I remember him saying to me.
Then one day I got that awful call. Pat, his wife, told me between sobs, that Brian had died. He went just the way he always said that he wanted to go. After killing a nice 7-pointer and dragging it back to the house, he was celebrating with some friends when he started to not feel well. Pat took him back to their house where his condition worsened. Ten minutes later, In the back of an ambulance, with Pat by his side, Brian suffered the heart attack that ended his life.
It’s now late August in Michigan, the nights are slowly getting colder and hunting season is drawing near. But, for me, things will be different this year. There will be no call asking if I saw a “Bullwinkle”, no playful ribbing, no “good lucks.” And worse of all, no hunt with Brian. I know that there will be times that I’ll be sitting in my stand thinking about hunts past, and maybe even laughing about some of the times we had. But in the back of my mind I’ll be thinking of that little chunk of hardwoods in Montrose, where a stand sits vacant in a big old Maple tree, silhouetted against a darkening October sky, built by my accidental friend, Brian, cloth of my cloth. H.C.