Chronicles:
Chapter Six
A work of fiction? A work of nonfiction? The work of insanity?
You Decide.
There were conversations I had with a good number of important people. Not that I really understood how important or how famous they were at the time, or why they would listen to anything some kid would have to say anyway. But I was slowly becoming more socially conscious, even if it was in my own clueless kind of way. People took time to explain things to me. And I took the time to tell them what I thought about such things. I didn't know if they were all tat interested, or just being polite because I was a kid.
For whatever reason, one night I was talking to the president again, and somehow we started talking about civil rights, something that was on his mind right about then. He explained to me what civil rights were, and why some people were having a hard time just having their civil rights because other people were prejudiced. And then he had to explain to me what all of that meant. He said that one of the problems was that black people couldn't get jobs because they were discriminated against. And after he told me what all that meant, I had an idea.
I told him that maybe it was just like he said, people just didn't really understand each other, and that if he could prove that black people were worth hiring by employing more black people, that because he was the president, people would learn more, and follow his example. That seemed to sort of surprise him, and he said he didn't know how to go about it, and did I have any ideas. So, I thought, well, you're the president. Don't you have policemen that keep you safe all the time? Then he told me that he had Secret Service people around all the time to keep him safe. And I said, well, that would be just perfect, because if people knew that you trusted your safety to a black person, that would be a lot of trust. That seemed to really surprise him. He began to tell me why it wasn't just so simple, how sometimes the bad people got really upset about things like that.
Now, it's not as though I'd put any great deal of thought into any of this, but being a kid there was just right and wrong to think about. And so I told him that, well, if the president couldn't see fit to do something just because it was right, then I guess nobody could. And that was pretty distressing, and how now I had to go and think on that for quite awhile. And that I just didn't want to talk about it anymore. But that's when he said "Wait! Wait! Come back!" and we talked some more. And in my minds eye I saw him in his office with his brother, and both of them seemed surprised and more than just a little amused, but I couldn't have said why. But that's just the way grown ups are with kids anyway, though I never knew why. They always seemed to laugh at us whenever we said anything at all, if it had to do with anything much at all.
So we talked a little bit more about civil rights, which I was learning was a very simple subject that was also somehow so complicated that I couldn't understand it. Partly because it seemed so simple to me. So I said that I should go and find out more about these things, and he referred me to some preacher who he said knew all about these things. And I thought, well, that's good. So I started to learn some things from him, but they were very disturbing things which I never would have thought, and it just seemed to me that the whole world was crazy, and I didn't know how it was that I would ever survive being an adult in such a world. And I wondered why adults taught us kids one thing, but lived to some entirely different standard altogether. Then I had to learn about laws, and all kinds of things that they didn't talk about in elementary school that I knew of.
And it seemed like I was just all wrapped up in such discussions with a good many people for the longest time off and on after that. But it had me thinking all of the time, especially when I was listening to one of the two radio stations available at night, my favorite was a black gospel station. I could do without the preaching, but I loved the music, and during the day all we could get was the elevator music on the other station. I knew all of those songs already.
Then one day I came in from outside to hear that someone had shot the president. I couldn't have imagined such a thing was even possible. I suppose I went into a sort of shock, like the whole world didn't seem real anymore, and I wondered if I had caused it to happen by asking too much of him in a world that I didn't understand. I went straight to my room and cried, and became depressed for quite awhile, even though the alien was trying to comfort me and explain some things about it, which I was just in no condition to hear, or to understand right then. After that, I just didn't want to talk to any voices in my head anymore.
As the years went by I kept learning more and more about the world. My mother's MS, which is why we'd had the house up the hill, had improved and so before I had finished the fourth grade we'd rented the house out on Fox Farm Road to someone else and moved back to Lil' Miss in Downey. By that time I really wasn't talking to aliens or anyone else via telepathy very much anymore, just a little now and then, sometimes about the future. At some point in time I had just decided that it was always too much for me, and I was still worried about it all making me seem too crazy. So we sort of agreed, the alien and I, that they would always be around, and if I ever wanted to talk to them all I had to do was think about them and they'd be there. And sometimes I would, though we didn't talk about aliens very much at all or much else for the longest time. But it had become a habit that whenever things bothered me, or I just had a thought about something that I wondered about, that we would talk about things like music, television and the movies. And it was amazing that they could seem to get those ideas to some people that made things happen, which I could never even hope to explain, and would never have admitted to for fear of seeming, well, just too crazy.
My childhood was pretty typical for that time, I'd guess. The usual things, learning about girls and bullies, having friends, and whatever else school taught a person. It was a good time though. As was typical of the other boys at that time, we were always finding our heroes in the movies or on TV. The spy genre was big when I was in fifth grade, and so I took to dressing all in black, which was a stark contrast to the lime green shirts and lemon yellow pants that my mother had bought for me in fourth grade. The following year my friends and I went Mod, and began to really discover clothes, music, and girls.
For some strange reason, I just had to have a unicycle. And I learned to ride it while listening to even newer kinds of rock and roll music as I tried and tried until I could finally make my way down the driveway and back without falling. All the music seemed really good, and really interesting, but my favorite was a song by Janis Joplin. It was like something I used to wonder. What would it be like if that black gospel music was done like rock and roll. It was like the best of both worlds. And it just seemed so funny to me when that song would come on and she'd sing what sounded to me like, "I'm a hill man when I cry, and baby, I cry all the time..." It made me remember the mountains. And President John Kennedy.
Life for me in the sixth grade was just one wonder after another. Walking down the street one day I even saw the Monkeemobile parked in a driveway, and each flap on the drag chute was signed by one of the Monkees themselves. Later I learned that the guy who designed it lived there. I think that he also designed the Green Hornet's Black Beauty and the Batmobile. I'm pretty sure that I saw the Black Beauty there once. Anyway, except for when my Granny passed away that year, I hadn't a care in the whole wide world.
My Granny had been dirt poor down in Mississippi, meaning that they were so poor that the floor was made of dirt. She was always so kind to me, but she always talked to me in those southern sayings, and never much at all in any other way. "I see said the blind man as he bumped into the wall", "Hambone, hambone, where you been", and then she would just go on writing letters or knitting, or preparing food. She was very religious, but she only took me to church one time when I was about three or four. That's because when they started to sing I didn't want to stand out and not sing just because I didn't know the words, so I thought I'd sing the only lyrics that I knew, which unfortunately was from a beer commercial. "From the land of sky blue waters!" I sang loudly. That was the last time that I went to church for years, and years, and years.
And Laddy and I settled for taking daily walks with him on a leash. He sure loved city smells though, and having so many other dogs around. And we would still just be sitting around bored and wouldn't you know it, we'd exchange those familiar old glances now and again. "I'll wear you out!" "Oh, no you won't!" And start chasing each other and wrestling all over again, just like no matter what else changed about the world, at least we'd always be the same.
End Chapter Six
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