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That Love May Find You
By David Glenn Cox
Some have criticized my article “The Last Redoubt” as too dark and too cynical. That I painted a picture with too heavy a hand. That I should cover the ugly with a double dose of happy sauce. It was too depressing, it was their own fault after all, that’s the way capitalism works don’t you understand that? Just a left wing defeatist! Just hating Bush, maybe a good nuking is what the Iranians need to wake them up after all they took our people hostage didn’t they?
Is it that simple to ignore our own and kill innocents in retribution? We are all born with a vital spirit inside of us, we can pin names on it if we choose or we can ignore it. Doctors may assign a name to it that ends with cosis and medicate us for it if need be.
But despite the medication we can’t escape who we are, no matter how fast or how hard we run when we look over our shoulders it will still be there. As inescapable as our shadows yet even into middle age some think one more pill or one more drink and fail to realize that it’s more about one less day. The days of your life are short and the days of your powers shorter still.
We are sent to school to learn our lessons but of all the books I’ve ever read I think the most important was a book I read was in first grade called “What if Everybody Did?” What if everyone squeezed the cat? What if everyone left the water running? The book made perfect sense to a six-year-old and taught a sense of social consciousness and the interconnectivity between of us as humans. That the world works when we all work together.
Isn’t that what we are taught in the sandbox? To share and to get along? Isn’t that what all the religions of the world are trying to teach us? Because we are they way we are, we either reach out for one an other or we recoil from one an other. Some live their lives with only two crayons in their hands one black and one white and they spurn the rest of the primary colors and all of their variants as wrong or superfluous.
Then they build sand castles and give them names Capitalism, Communism Socialism, Liberalism, Conservatism to which I’ll add Crayonism, the philosophy that all beliefs are either all black or all white either yes or no. That maybe, is a blasphemy and perhaps we should try, is heresy.
But that damn book won’t let me become a convert to crayonism. All of my travels on Earth tell me that it’s not so, that it is only people that matter and we as a society must treat each other with respect and dignity. I was travelling back to Monmouth Illinois to get my car I had played guitar at a weekend Jamboree and missed my connection in Davenport Iowa. The bus station closed at midnight so as I walked down the street and the only thing open was an all night café. I walked in with suitcase and two guitars in hand and grabbed a booth. The waitress asked musician? I answered “yes,” and explained that “I was stranded until morning and would that be a problem?”
“I don’t think so as long as we don’t get busy” the waitress returned with my coffee and said, “The manger says if you want to stay you have to play three songs but if you suck only one.” I played Roger Miller’s King of the road, this wasn’t a rock and roll crowd. Then Woody Guthrie’s Hobo’s lullaby then Marshall Tuckers Fire on the Mountain then more than I could remember. In an hour I knew everyone in the building the manager bought my breakfast and the waitress gave me her phone number. When I left with the sun in the morning it was with some sadness because I genuinely liked those people. They had treated me so kindly with no ulterior motive only kindness for kindness sake. We had connected as people and parted never to see each other again as friends.
I worked with a Cajun on the railroad, Eleon Melton pronounced mel taun with the accent on taun. If Eleon couldn’t make you laugh you were dead. We were a road gang so we traveled constantly and Eleon loved to tease the waitresses. They waitress would ask, “Do you know what you want?”
“Yesum I do but I probably cain’t have it.”
Falling into the trap she would ask, “Why not?”
“You’re probably married already, ma’am I cain’t read the menu I forgot my readin glasses I’m always forgetin them I’m just forgetful I forget my glasses because I forget I cain’t read no how. I’ll have two eggs scrambled with a side of country ham grits with red eyed gravy.”
“I’m sorry but we don’t have any country ham or grits or red eyed gravy” Eleon would feign shock and surprise then looking around the room and then ask, “Is this a café?” He was a big good-natured man with a full smile full of fun and mischief and never left a room that wasn’t smiling because of his presence. He had his own problems but they were his he smoked too much and worked too much and worried too much.
He was like the sun he radiated joy and fun an never spoke against anyone, growing up in the bayou’s he once said, “poor ain’t got no color.” He carried on the running gag ordering grits every morning until finally the waitress emerged from the kitchen with a box of instant grits.
“We got these just for you!”
“Instant! Ma’am I cain’t eat no instant grits, I’ll get you some grits and I’ll go back there and show you how to cookem myself”
Eleon made good on his word having the grits sent UPS with some other supplies and the home office thought we were nuts. But they knew Eleon as well and asked no questions for fear of what they might fall into.
Eleon brought joy every where he went, the work was never as hard when he was there and the problems were never as large if Eleon was there. He was larger than life and was one of the most entertaining people I have never known and even today I smile when I think of him.
Maybe it's because my mother died so young that I care about people or maybe its because of the strangers who have been so kind to me all through out my life that I care so much about them.
I was seventeen and taking the train back to Chicago from Montgomery I was going to stay with relatives. I had spent all my money on the ticket, I wasn’t homeless but didn’t really have a home either I was at loose ends. But as the hours went by I became acquainted with an older black woman who was taking her Grandchildren back to Chicago. We talked about Alabama and Chicago. The hours rolled by and she fed the two little boys from a knapsack she had with her then as evening came she asked, “The boys won’t eat this sandwich would you please eat it so it won’t go to waste.”
I knew it was a lie, she knew I hadn’t eaten and this women who had spent her life growing up as a second class citizen in the Jim Crow segregated south cared that a teenage white boy got something to eat. I have never forgotten her kindness towards me even they way she asked me as if I were doing her a favor so as to protect my small dignity.
A small act but an act of divinity to show love to those who scorn you to feed the hungry and to love one another. I will remember her and her sandwich all the days of my life, I love her like a grandmother like an angel who appeared to me in a dark hour and showed me not only God’s love but human love.
All of these people make up who I am because I love these people these people who have loved me and there have been hundreds and hundreds them and I’ll never be able to repay them all. So I get angry and cynical when I hear about a plant closings I get angry when I hear about the conditions in Louisiana and think of Eleon’s comment that poor ain’t got no color and how the joy receded with the flood waters.That those in power think only in numbers and percentages and cost effectiveness.
Their wind up minions spout mantras of it can’t be helped or it’s their own fault. Believing that their success is theirs and theirs alone and they owe debts to no one.
Not to the school teachers or to the kindness of strangers that in their crayonism it is Gods will that they be successful so it must be likewise God’s will that wants others to be poor and they are after all good wind up Christians so thy will be done.
But those real people are my people they are me and I am them, I will not forget them and will never forsake them. For they are the ones who gave water to a struggling Christ and wiped his brow when his cross became too heavy. For that is my vital spirit and that is my calling to tell what I see and what I feel. Regardless of how depressing and unpleasant the picture might be and maybe it’s not depressing enough to make them realize that a home foreclosure is a family out in the street and not a picture but a life and far more than a god damned number.
That a fatality in Iraq or any of the chosen global battle fields no matter where they were born or what nationality is a member of someone’s family, a son, a brother, a wife, a child and not a god damned number. It’s not cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers good guys and bad guys but real people and real blood with real lives, living and dying in Technicolor not in black and white. But if you believe that you have all the colors you need that two is sufficient perhaps to color your world. Then go on, you should seek to color your soul first, a vacant white and cold heartless black and hell will welcome you not as an artist but as just another damn number.
For Donald C.
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