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My name is (well, call me G. Why do you think they named it Alcoholics Anonymous?), and I’m a knee-walking, snot-flying, trembling, weepy lush. But not a practicing one. I have thirty-eight years of so-called sobriety. But I’m still not what one might call a solid upstanding citizen. I’m a poet. A writer of fiction. A biker of the motorized variety. An ex-rodeoer. I drive a primered, chopped 1949 cruiser–it’s loud. I’m not. But don’t mistake quiet for passive. Digressive yes. Passive, not so much.
I’m not so good at labeling myself as I am others. Think about it. Have you thrown any labels around lately? It’s become pandemic. If you’re left of center it’s pretty easy to talk about racist xenophobes on the right. If you’re right of the middle, it can be Marxist thugs and deranged libs on the other. But the middle, it’s a whole lot bigger than anyone thinks. Hell, it includes the redneck that B.H. Fairchild talks of who tried to rob a convenience store with a caulking gun, or a Dixiecrat gay whose grandfather was a KKK grand klagoneer or whatever they call them. I, myself, think Ike and Harry were the greatest presidents ever, aside from Lincoln. That puts me square schizoid center. I was enraged when the government killed Kennedy and that dragged me to the left. This was the abrupt end of innocence, of believing what those in power tell us. But that’s a lot of other stories, as you’ll see I’m fond of saying. I was pissed when the DNC sandbagged Bernie. I liked Bernie. I’d followed him for years through a Vermont newsletter titled Seven Days and probably know more about him than most of the people who’d have voted for him. But I digress. Aggressively. Onward.
Back in the heavy drinking days, my (first) wife and I settled in a midwest city where I had accepted a job in an advertising agency. I was good at that kind of thinking and graphics that sold stuff. I got better at it, too. All the way to Los Angeles, a giant agency and the big money car commercials. But that’s a lot of other stories.
This story is one that is painful to recount, even now, forty plus years later. Picture cops gathered handing out riot gear. Martin Luther King has just been assassinated and not by James Earl Ray. But that’s a lot of other stories. Anyway, they had called me at home, said it was an emergency. I knew what it was about, but saw little reason to gear up. There were no riots on our side of the locks and dams of the Mississippi River, nor were there likely to be.
“Just go to where they might congregate, Look around. Take plate numbers. Be aware.” “They” are, of course, blacks. “We” were volunteers. Not wannabe cops, but, well, let me explain.
Several of us guys had horses and we kept them at a local pig farm in a nice barn with stalls and a runway. We shared cleanup and stall-mucking duties. A week per horse owner. We set up one of the guys in a farmhouse on the property as caretaker. Let’s call him Lazy Dan. There were a couple of women, too, there always are with horses, but that’s a lot of other stories.
We’d ride whenever we felt like it, midnight, daytime, drunk, sober. We had cookouts and social gatherings, loud music, plenty of booze, weed, this was the sixties and what held our loose group together was horses. My kids showed locally and it was the one thing my wife at the time and I had in common. None of us had horse trailers but we borrowed them, and I finally bought a one-horse that got plenty of use. Lazy Dan played the guitar and had a hell of a voice: I’d get drunk and make him sing “Early Morning Rain” over and over and over.
Then things got complicated.
A guy showed up. Mil-spec haircut, cop shades, a way of talking that was cop-like. He asked if any of us would be interested in volunteering for the sheriff’s patrol. They could use guys with horses for search patrols, looking for lost kids in the rough country, that sort of thing. It would be as a unit of the sheriff’s mounted patrol.
“Do you guys have horse trailers,” I asked.
“Oh sure,” the laconic answer, toothpick rolling.
“In order to practice, we’d need to borrow one or two every now and then,” I said.
“Can be arranged.” Toothpick. No eyes.
“I’ll talk to the guys,” I said.
One thing led to another and next thing I know, I have a Wallace sticker on my bumper. I did not place it there.
During these things that led to other things we had acquired some trailers among us, so the importance of the sheriff’s mounted patrol was not high. BUT we had become a part of it. The state police were our advisors. We met weekly. At one point a trooper who was giving a talk on law enforcement said, “Before we go on, is there anyone here who might not be interested in continuing to learn about law enforcement?” Pause, during which, I remember, my hands were on my knees under the school desk. We were all seated at school desks, patrolmen and mounted unit alike. I recall starting to raise my hand. Then he went on, “Because if you aren’t, there are n—-rs on the streets of (the city) who could fill your shoes.” Hand back on knee, sweating a bit.
A few nights before, my wife and I had had a black couple over for dinner. The guy was an advertising art director for another agency, and we had met him and his wife at an awards ceremony. We got on well, and we wanted to get to know them better. That was what you did in advertising. Socialize with the people you liked and sometimes that would be advantageous when looking to move up or acquire talent. Like any other business, I guess.
We’d had a pleasant time. Looked forward to more.
This incident I had just taken part in, given my tacit approval to by not responding in the negative, sealed something in my mind. Cowardice by any other name is still cowardice. I look back over the years and this isn’t the only reaction or lack of one that I’m ashamed of. But I would not label myself a coward. Would anyone?
I didn’t like the feeling. And, though a drinker, I somehow knew that a few beers and shots wouldn’t erase this or ameliorate it, as it did so many things.
I went home, told my wife what had happened. We decided, well, I had to get out of this sheriff’s patrol deal, that was for sure, but how? I had already ridden in the town parade on a holiday in full uniform including a .357 magnum on my hip, my horse nervous from the people on both sides of the street. I had been called a pig by a few hippies in the crowd, a bizarro occurrence as I was more like them than what I was impersonating. But the horse guys and I had found there were certain perks to the association with the sheriff’s patrol. A couple of us had already dodged a D.U.I. or two. There was stature involved. There was a good ol’ boys sort of clique-hood and I don’t mind saying that it was appealing.
My out was that if you missed more than two weekly meetings in a row, you were dismissed, out, finished. We decided, okay, I’ll just miss three meetings.
I missed two. I was called by the man who’d first approached us. I made excuses, said I’d had to work late. You know the ad biz, I said. He warned me about the consequences of missing another meeting. I missed it. Breathed a sigh of relief, poured in some bourbon.
He came to the house. I had bundled up the uniform, gloves with powdered lead in the knuckles, helmet, face shield, whatever I had been issued, and answered the door.
He said, “Well I told them boys you were in advertising, and that you had lots of night hours. That you are a good addition. What I’m sayin, don’t worry about it.”
He left.
I did attend some more meetings. At the time I was pretty heavily involved in martial arts, to the point of competition as a green belt, even though I could easily rank as a brown belt, had already performed the necessary codas. This was common among competing dojos. I knew when I competed against other green belts that they were held back as well, just to rack up some points. It was rare that a green belt was actually a green belt in competition.
We also participated in some forms of martial arts with our state mentors. On this particular night, a trooper was demonstrating stick practice. My particular form of martial arts was close to the Korean Taekwondo in that we experienced lots of contact. It was a Japanese version, Shito-Ryu, a less common form that I had just happened into, much as I had happened into the mounted patrol. At any rate, when we took or gave contact we were taught to exhale mightily before the contact occurred, with a shout I can only try to approximate as “Cheeee-oyyytz!”
A foreign sound to any who’d not heard it before, and from very deep within the diaphragm. The air is expelled explosively.
It came automatically. I practiced at the dojo two nights a week, faithfully, and on Saturdays whenever possible. I became, shall we say, immersed. Our instructor sometimes made us sit still and draw circles on watercolor paper with a brush dipped in ink. I will never forget this man. He was an artist, and colorblind. He painted versions of the American flag, Jasper Johns-like, only in grays and black oil on canvas. They were quite striking.
The night we did stick practice, we learned various ways to use the baton with both hands to fend off blows, as a projected device into the gut swordlike, etc. The instructor chose me to show how to use it when someone approaches with a weapon. The details of that night are unclear, but my resentment came up in an unexpected “Cheeee-oyyytz” and the wide-eyed instructor not only lost his baton, he went to the mat, with me over him on one knee performing a truncated and pulled punch and throat claw.
Usually if one beats his instructor there will be extended hell to pay, but this was turned to an advantage somehow, that one of the class was a black belt (untrue) and that one should always expect the unexpected. For some reason, it cemented me as a member of the club. And it did not reflect badly on the trooper. He asked me afterward what the fuck it was that I did there, and I explained it as best I could. Ethos-wise, I was still in the same fix as regards race.
We moved away from there, to another job in advertising, other horseplay, other ways to salve my conscience as a racist by default. Bringing underprivileged kids out to ride gentle horses, for one thing. But that’s a hell of a long way from marching at Selma. And I still tamp down a bit of revulsion for the white guy that didn’t raise his hand to be counted.
In these strange days, my friends are varied; some gay, one transgender, some black men and women, and people of other colors, some rednecks, some libs. Some beautiful blacks in the family now. Humans, all. Flawed, like me. I don’t beat myself up for not being a legendary stalwart. I don’t know (m)any of those. Do you? Are you one? When you’re out there shouting in a crowd of like-minded folks shouting with you, that isn’t what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is raising your hand when you’re the loner. I had my chance and I fucked up. Will you? Truth to power is easy in a crowd. Not so much the other way around. For instance, Liu Xiaobo. who just died in a Chinese jail. Look him up if you don’t know him. Talk about legendary stalwarts and a lone voice to power. We should all have such guts and dignity.
And this: judge not lest ye be judged. We seem to do an awful lot of that these days. These strange, strange days.
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