I went to breakfast at the cafe this morning for the first time since the inauguration. I was fairly sure I'd hear a nigger joke before my meal was over. It came from an old family friend who is a couple of years older than me, and a staunch conservative. He's an educated man and many people wouldn't think he would reach for such nonsense for humor. A lotta Republicans are livid about the way things have turned out for them in the last couple of elections. They lost a lot of State offices too. North Carolina elected it's first woman Governor.
I haven't been as in touch with this community I partially grew up in as some of my family has. We moved here when i was in the Sixth grade and my natal family has been here since. my younger brothers never lived anywhere else while they were growing up. My youngest brother has traveled like me. Everybody in my family traveled. Both my brothers were born in North Carolina after my mother and father moved here from Mississippi.
I left here when I was eighteen and was mostly living somewhere else for twenty years, when I wasn't bumming around the country. I spent about eight full years off and on living as a homeless bum. It was the only life I knew that actually required me to be as smart as i was told I was. I started piecing together my house here in the mid-Eighties. I worked out of town most of the time, but I finally dried in my house and gradually began to live here year round. I commuted to work over at Fort Bragg on the other side of Fayetteville for the last decade of my public work years.
I guess I moved around too much and worked outta town too much to have any more than a passing acquaintance with some of the people I went to high school with. A lot of people around here know my siblings for various associations. My younger brother ran a popular pizza restaurant for a decade or more. He is a popular figure around town. Many people recognize me by him. They used to recognize me for being my parent's son.
Both my parents taught school here for at least twenty years each. They went through a lot of students, and many people knew me simply as their teacher's oldest son, along with whatever reputation I might have garnered with them along the way. Hardly any of them knew me personally. Many people have approached me and my siblings to tell us one or the other of our parents was their favorite teacher.
Usually, after they might tell a favorite episode of why they appreciated my mother or father they moved on. I've never gotten very close with many of these former students. I didn't know my parents that way. I tried to be polite and smile at the right time. I usually thanked them for saying kind words about my parents. God knows I'm not above raining on their parade, but these people never failed to impress me with their sincerity.
I've felt that way about some of my teachers. Some of them seemed to be able to make me feel they truly felt concerned about preparing to live in the world more comfortably than I might have without their encouragement. One woman who was an old maid, the French teacher, and the school librarian used to side with me against my father. He taught in the same school, and they ate lunch together most every school day. It was a small school.
He ate lunch with all my teachers I ever had except for the Sixth Grade all the way through high school. I really couldn't get away from his knowing about everything that went on while I was at school. Fortunately, my mother never taught at the same school I attended. Neither of them left their work at school. So, me and my brothers and sisters went to school all day and all night.
My family making their their final home was a good move for them. They earned the respect of a lot of people. I have inherited some of that respect without earning any of it, but I'm not here to take advantage of what my family created as much as to take advantage of not being able to be a prophet or a healer here.
The citizenry here know my family well enough that the things that can't happen in one's home town can't happen for me here. That's about the only legitimate standard that I can say actually comes into play for me here. More of a guilt by association thing. I haven't lived here all that much, but the people here extend that tenet to me because my siblings have been around here a lot.
This place is a retreat for me. Otherwise, i'd be up to my old tricks. On the way back from Seattle and my daughter's wedding I sat beside a young engineer for an hour or two. In the time we had together I had almost convinced him to leave his new wife and first actual engineering job to go be a road bum. I can be a dangerous person when left to me own devices, but here, in my adopted home town, nobody believes a damned thing I got to say. No blame.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
