Tag Archives: alcoholism

Thank You

In real time, Happy Thanksgiving, if you are American. Happy Thursday, if you are not. I have some news items to share at the end of this post.

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Day four in Australia. Day four?! It felt like I’d been here forever, in a good way.

We alighted from our bus for sunset viewing of Ularu. I walked around snapping photos of other tourist vehicles. I have spent many hours in these heavy-duty Toyotas in Kenya and Ethiopia.

There was this crazy sardine-mobile, some kind of motel on wheels. I’m all for budget accommodations, but this beat even the bunkhouse for the claustrophobia factor.

There was this dusty, Mad Max BMW motorcycle.

A group of barefoot Aboriginal women sat on the pavement selling paintings. I felt a sharp, uncomfortable contrast as Meg poured sparkling wine.

But then I was distracted by food. “This is kangaroo jerky,” she indicated, “this one’s emu pâté and this here’s croc dip.”

“The kangaroo is delicious!” I commented. “It’s like venison.”

Heidi didn’t touch it. “I can’t eat it. The kangaroo and the emu—they’re our national animals.”

“They’re animals that can only go forward,” explained Heidi. “Like our country, I reckon is the idea?”

“I guess I wouldn’t want to eat a bald eagle,” I replied. Well, all the more emu and kangaroo for me!

The members of our group began introducing ourselves. Trevor and Gwen had immigrated to Australia from Nottingham, England, 20 years ago. They were here with their 14-year-old daughter, Tiffany. Kris and Melanie, a young Swiss couple, never spoke unless spoken to, so I didn’t get to know them at all. Brenden and Stefanie were another young couple, from Canada. Johannes and Sandra were a middle-aged German couple who took elaborate tripod-assisted selfies of themselves jumping for joy in front of every landmark. Mia and Nora were also German; both were around 22 and they were student teachers in a German school in Melbourne. There was a Chinese couple—father and daughter? Lovers? They stood apart and avoided all eye contact. Another couple, Darren and Kylie, were also a May-December pair. They said their names and that they were from Melbourne, then also kept to themselves.

I spoke with James, a 30-something Korean guy who spoke confident but almost-impossible-to-understand English. He was an out-of-work cook from Adelaide, blowing all his savings on a last hurrah in Australia before going home to an uncertain future. He reminded me of Vince. Because he was a cook, but mostly because there was a soulfulness about him.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it doesn’t involve decorating the house inside and out, buying presents, or any Christmas/Hanuka dilemmas. You just eat a lot with your family or friends, then fall asleep in front of the TV watching The Hobbit for the millionth time.

Thanksgiving is about—as the name implies—giving thanks, and I have a lot to be grateful for this year. As I sit here at my writing desk and look out the window at the grey sky and freezing drizzle, I am grateful for a warm home. I am healthy. I have friends and family. I got to spend a month in Australia! I wish I was there now.

And, some big news: I quit my job last week. More on that later, but I already feel 10 years younger.

And another big development: Vince and I started this blog together four years ago. We just published the first year of the blog as an e-book. It chronicles his time in prison, his recovery, and my ride along with him.

Besides providing insight into why people turn out the way they are, we’ve been told by many readers that it’s just a good read, a page turner. So if you’re looking for something to binge read over the weekend, or holidays, consider buying a copy. Only $3.99!

Breaking Free: A Mother And Son Journey From Addiction, To Prison, To Redemption https://www.amazon.com/…/B…/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_AbI9Bb9K1SXQM

Please feel free to share this on social media, and thanks for reading—we know it can be difficult stuff but addiction and all its consequences, including imprisonment, are a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day.

Losing Our Traditions

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In a recent post I wrote about character differences between Americans and Brits. Such subjects are always fraught with peril. Reflecting on it, I may have made it sound like all Englishmen are passively sitting around doing nothing about the problems of daily life, while all Americans are tackling their daily problems head on. That’s not the case, of course. I have a very deep respect for the British people which stems, in part, from how they defended the rest of humanity from the Nazis for two years while being bombed. I admire that they (in general) place a greater emphasis on the common good rather than on individual rights, as we Americans do. That’s why they have the NHS and sensible gun laws and public footpaths.

Culture is so complicated. I attended a wedding this weekend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the bride and groom were both Native American. Everyone in my family was excited to attend an Indian wedding. But the bride, my niece, is Ojibway, while the groom is a member of a Pacific Northwest tribe. She is also half Mexican-American, and he is half Scottish-American. So what kind of Indian wedding would it be, and how would the other strains of ancestry be acknowledged?

They did a beautiful job of covering all the bases. The music featured native drumming, a bagpiper, a Mexican-American singer and string orchestra, and a Motown trio. The bride wore a white dress and stilettos and the groom wore a tux—with moccasins and a leather headband with eagle feathers.

At the end of the 10-minute ceremony performed by my cousin under the authority granted him free online as a Universal Life Church Minister, the couple were draped with an Indian blanket. The meal included salmon and huckleberry jam flown in from Portland, Oregon. A scholar read a wedding blessing in Ojibway. An elder from the Pacific Northwest spoke about the sacredness of water, land, and animals. The bride read a list of all the ethnic identities in attendance, including a dozen Native tribes and a dozen European ancestries.

The bar was open for one hour, maybe in recognition of all the alcoholics and recovering alcoholics in attendance—of all ethnicities.

The venue was the fantastic Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by a Spanish architect.

This made me wonder, what culture would my son or my nieces or nephews focus on, if at all, at their weddings? I raised my son in the Jewish faith and community but he has no longer has any belief or affiliation. None of us have any direct connections to our European ancestors. What are we? Americans, of course. But what kind? Who is our tribe? What are our values and traditions? We read the New York Times, listen to National Public Radio, and don’t feel unpatriotic driving Japanese or German cars. I don’t see how any of that would play out at a wedding, but I’m sure my creative younger relatives will think of something.

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Lynn and I arrived in Shaftsbury after circling the wrong roundabout three times, then circling the right one another three times.

“It looks like there’s a wedding here,” I observed as we pulled into the hotel parking lot. There were a lot of dressed-up people milling about. Then I saw the hearse.

“What a strange place to hold a funeral,” Lynn commented.

The Royal Chase Hotel was billed as a historic 18^th Century monastery but it had been stripped of all character and was now just another Best Western hotel. It was basic; it was fine; we wouldn’t be spending much time in it anyway. That’s what you tell yourself when you arrive at a hotel that’s seen better days, right?

But it was true. We loved Shaftsbury and spent most of our two days out and about. It is home to Gold Hill, site of a Hovis Bread commercial every English person of a certain age remembers.

We walked to the hill, and it was really scenic. Pictures don’t do it justice. It was Sunday evening and all the attractions were closed, so sat in silence on a bench at the top of the hill for 20 minutes, enjoying the view.

Elder, Kickin’ It

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This is a series of posts about Belize that starts here.

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In the real world, there is more bad news in addition to all the shenanigans in Washington. Every day there are reports about all the people overdosing on Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid 10,000 times more potent than morphine. The anniversary of Prince’s death just passed; he overdosed on a similar drug, Fentanyl. Carfentanil was developed as a large animal anesthetic. Really? Who takes drugs like that?

Sadly, my dad did. It was his birthday recently; he would have been 81 if he hadn’t overdosed in a Wisconsin motel room nearly 50 years ago, aged 32. He died of a lethal combination of alcohol and Paraldehyde, which used to be prescribed to treat alcoholism. Paraldehyde is classified as a “hypnotic” and has mostly been replaced by safer drugs. Was it an accident or intentional? I’ll never know. What I do notice is how little emotion I feel about it anymore. That’s taken a long time and a lot of work. He loved to travel, so I like to think he would be happy about my adventures.

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After our snorkeling day, we were herded onto the van by Mark to attend a Garifuna drumming performance at the Hopkins Cultural Center. It took an hour for us to drive the mile distance as the crow flies. It was a very dark night. Thank goodness there were potholes the size of bathtubs full of water, which reflected the light from the three streetlights in town.

Eventually we were ushered into a large thatched-roof hut where we waited for our supper. A woman about my age was the cook, and she was obviously working her ass off. She had been summoned on five minutes notice to produce food for 20 people, and after an hour her young adult children served up bowls of hudutu and fry bread. Again, it was full of bones, but we were so hungry we had no complaints.

A 30-something man in a dashiki jumped up on the stage and started shouting into the mic. “Let’s give a hand to Elder Elspeth for the wonderful meal!”

Elder? If she was an elder, that made me one too.

The guy, whose name was Myron, launched into a long, disconnected rant about Garifuna culture. I had read about it in the guide books, and he seemed to be making stuff up. Garifuna is a language and a culture brought by mixed-race slaves from the Caribbean to Honduras, Nicaragua, and British Honduras—as Belize was then called—in the early 19^th Century. I asked a question; I don’t recall what it was because he angrily yelled, “No!” at me and resumed his animated monologue. He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. He was very muscular—maybe he had ‘roid rage.

Myron went on for half an hour, then two other men joined him and they began drumming and singing manically in the Garifuna language. It reminded me of a pow wow, where the first song is really cool, the second one is good, and then they all sound alike.

Despite it being ear-splittingly loud, I was trying hard not to nod off, as were the other snorkelers. Mercifully the trio only played five songs. Then they jumped off the stage and started selling CDs and passing a hat for tips. It was clear they couldn’t wait for us to get out of there.

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Midnight. One hundred Fahrenheit with 99% humidity. I lay in my bed in the middle of the room, between Trudy and Emily. Our table and chairs had disappeared while we were gone but we were beyond curious about why things came and went.

My Restless Legs Syndrome is always worse when it’s humid. It sounds like a silly condition, but it’s ruined more nights of sleep than any worry or noise or excess of caffeine or alcohol. Just as I’m falling asleep, I get a creeping feeling around my knees and have an overpowering urge to Move My Legs.

Then music started up in the distance, a low throbbing beat. This would last for hours, I thought, as I kick, kick, kicked to the beat.

Make Mine a Double

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This is a series of posts about Italy, Malta, and Spain that starts here.

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After hitting the gift shop at the Prado and loading up on Hieronymus Bosch refrigerator magnets, bookmarks, and postcards, we crossed the roundabout toward the Thyssen Bornemisa Museum.

But first, some lunch. We walked into the first restaurant we saw and followed the hostess down some stairs, through a hallway, up more stairs, and into a back dining room. It was probably early for lunch in Spain—only 1:00—so we had the room to ourselves.

I don’t remember anything about the food. I know we laughed over some of the Spanish to English translations on the menu, and at the fat German couple seated near us who ordered strudel and beer. I vaguely noticed the place fill with people, then empty again while we ate and drank a bottle of house wine and talked and talked.

This may be the number one thing I love about traveling with a friend. Leisurely meals. At home I gulp down my food while reading a magazine or watching TV. I’m usually in a hurry to get on to the next thing. I barely notice what I’m shoveling in my mouth.

Suddenly we realized it was almost 4:00 so we hurried across the street to try to see everything in the museum in one hour. What a relief—it was open until 7:00.

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The main art museum in Minneapolis, the MIA, has collections—like Decorative Art, Textiles, and Sculpture; or Japanese and Korean Art. The Thyssen Bornemisa reminded me of the Reina Sofia Museum, with one or a few pieces from lots of different artists scattered seemingly at random throughout a somewhat shabbier building. It had one masterpiece each by van Gogh, Chagall, Degas, Cezanne, El Greco, Caravaggio, Monet, Picasso, Gauguin. It reminded me of the “Greatest Hits” compilations music companies used to publish when people still bought CDs.

There was a variation on this famous painting by Holbein of Henry VIII; the original had been destroyed:

We bought the obligatory postcards, bookmarks, and refrigerator magnets. These make nice small gifts, or I think they do. Maybe people hate them.

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We went back to the hotel to freshen up, then back to the square where there were supposed to be loads of tapas restaurants. This time we were determined to find an “authentic” tapas place, as if we knew what that would look like. We found one that looked a little run down, and were soon being served, if you can use that term, by the crabbiest waiter ever.

The tables were covered with old linoleum. Ours had some squeeze bottles of unknown contents and a pile of three thin, miniscule, nonabsorbent paper napkins.

“D’ya want something?” our waiter demanded brusquely in Spanish. His clothes were rumpled and stained.

Lynn, always cheerful to servers, asked for red wine in English. The waiter scowled and I repeated in Spanish, “vino tinto, por favor.” He walked away without a word and returned with two smeary glasses of red wine, which he slammed down before us. This place was authentic, alight.

“Para comer?” he demanded next. To eat? Lynn pointed to menu items and again he walked off without speaking, returned, and threw down some plates. The food was basic but good.

I watched over Lynn’s shoulder as our waiter poured a half pint of beer, dumped in two very large shots of tequila, and poured it all down his throat. Within minutes he was relatively cheerful, even coming to our table to ask if we liked our food. I felt moved, imagining he got by like this hour by hour, night after night.

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As I write this, I’m about to leave for Belize and Guatemala. I’ve front loaded the blog to post throughout this trip, but I never know what kind of condition I’ll be in when I return so no promises about when the next post will be.

I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but I’ve been on enough trips where I come home sick, or to some crazy family or work situation, so I’m cautious about committing to anything too soon after I get back.

Down and Out In Dublin

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In my last post I wrote about the river of “what ifs” going through my head about my upcoming trip. After writing it, I thought back on the worst things that have ever happened to me in my life. All of them have happened at home. The worst things that have happened to me while traveling? Well, they’ve didn’t turn out so bad in the end.

For instance, I accidentally wound up in a brothel in Dubai.

But the story starts in “the other DUB city,” Dublin, where I was working for Oxfam Great Britain on contract for the summer.

Everyone thinks Ireland would be a great place to live, and that’s what I had expected. But I hated it.

This was at the height of the inflationary period they called the Celtic Tiger—right before the Great Recession hit—and everything was colossally expensive.

I stayed in a 12-bed dorm in the Four Courts Hostel until I could find a flat. The other 11 beds were occupied by immigrants from Poland and the Czech Republic who were almost out of money and facing the prospect of going back home as failures. One woman was so depressed she stayed in bed all day with the blanket pulled over her head; I never actually saw her. The only good thing about The Four Courts was the talking elevator that announced, “Turd Floor” in an Irish accent when it reached our floor.

I could go to the Oxfam Ireland office to work, but they didn’t really have space for me, so I worked out of the hostel dining hall while everyone else was out hustling during the day—except for the woman under the covers.

The streets were full of drunks, Irish and otherwise. Lots of Brits and Dutch and Germans came to Dublin for their stag parties. One morning I literally stepped over a drunken man vomiting in the gutter. I don’t know how they afforded it, because a pint of unremarkable beer in a pub cost $8. And maybe because Ireland’s economy was roaring, it seemed like the Irish were over being friendly to travelers. The only friendly overture I had from an Irish person in my first few weeks was a shopkeeper telling me to “Have yourself some crack, now!” That freaked me out until I realized he meant craic—which means “a good time” in Gaelic.

I had pictured myself working away in a cozy pub and making all sorts of new Irish friends, but I was bored and lonely.

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In the UK and Ireland, it is much more common for people to share a flat or a house than it is in the US. Having roommates is not just for young or poor people. I would go to look at a flat and there would be a dozen desperate potential renters crowded around the front door. When the landlord deigned to let us in, we would find a dingy, dirty, little hole with a bedroom featuring a sagging twin bed and a window looking out on a brick wall. The rent for that bedroom and sharing everything else with two or three strangers was $500 a month each, easy.

Every night I climbed up to my top bunk and hunched over with my head against the moldy ceiling to read, hoping this would be my last night at the Four Courts. Oh, did I mention I had broken my collar bone in a bike accident in Oxford a week before, and my arm was in a sling?

Everyone used a website called Gumtree to look for flats and jobs and probably to sell their bodies to pay rent. I arranged to meet a potential landlord in a pub rather than go to his house alone. It was love at first sight, for him. Eddie was a good 10 years younger than me and at least a foot taller. His teeth were brown from smoking and crooked from not being an American. I wasn’t attracted to him and I knew it would be a bad idea to move in to the room he had for rent, but I agreed to come and see the place the next day.

To be continued …

Justice, Sweet and Sour

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Summer is over, and so is my break from blogging. In my last post, I listed all the things I was going to do with my extra time: sit outside in the morning with my coffee and listen to the birds, plan a fall trip, and figure out how to publish the first year of the blog as an e-book. Oh—and write a novel.

I sat outside with my coffee once. I am planning a fall trip to Italy, Malta, and Spain. I didn’t write a novel, but Vince and I have started working with an editor on the e-book.

Mostly, I’ve tried to live in the moment. Summer is so brief. There were fun moments. At a family weekend at a cabin, someone brought a Donald Trump piñata (Made in Mexico, appropriately). I fostered a litter of seven kittens which drew visits from friends and family. Vince and I went to the State Fair where, at the FabBrow booth, he insisted he wanted a uni-brow. The makeup artists got back at him by making him look like a community theater actor.

I spent a lot of time outdoors. There were hikes and bike rides, and one day a friend and I spend hours making jewelry down at the river. Other times I packed a book and a beverage and biked to some quiet spot at a lake or the river.

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The big local news this summer was of the killing of Philando Castille by a cop. Castille was black. The cop, Jeronimo Yanez, was Latino. Castille was pulled over for a broken taillight. He had a gun in his glove compartment, and believed that the proper procedure when interacting with a cop was to inform: “I’ve got a gun, and I’ve got a permit to carry it.”

I suppose Yanez didn’t hear anything after Castille said “I’ve got a gun.” Blam! Shot point blank five times and left to bleed to death. Castille’s girlfriend live streamed his last moments on Facebook. I have not watched that video, but hundreds of thousands of people have.

I live within walking distance of the Governor’s mansion in St. Paul, where the inevitable protests took place. Traffic was blocked off by the police for a month and I was kept awake a couple nights by helicopter noise. The protestors blocked off the nearby interstate and either police were patrolling with helicopters or it was news media copters, but they were loud. Not that I’m comparing my minor inconvenience to the Castille’s family’s loss.

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This week marked one year since Vince was released from prison. He is doing so well. He just started a new job in catering, and he’s excited. In a month he will go off intensive supervised release, which means he’ll be able to stay out past 10:30 or go to Wisconsin to visit cousins. Best of all, he won’t have ISR agents showing up day and night asking him for urine samples.

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Another event prompted me to write this post.

In 1989, an 11-year-old boy named Jacob Wetterling was abducted by a stranger at gun point in a small town in Minnesota. He was never found.

Vince was the same age as Jacob. Vince became a Bar Mitzvah, got his first job, moved out, turned 20, had a serious girlfriend, had serious drug and alcohol problems, went to jail, got clean, relapsed, turned 30, moved to Lanesboro, went to prison, got out, and has two years of sobriety. In a few months he’ll be 38.

This week, a man confessed to abducting, sexually assaulting, and executing Jacob Wetterling by shooting him in the head, then burying him—and returning a year later to move the remains. Lying handcuffed in the last moments of his life, Jacob asked the man, “What did I do wrong?”

Vince was sentenced to over four years in prison for drug possession. Because the statute of limitations has expired, Jacob’s killer will get 20 years on a child porn charge. He’ll be a cho-mo—the most loathed prisoner among prisoners. According to Vince, they are also considered a “protected class,” by officials, perhaps to prevent prison vigilantes from meting out real justice.

As the Wheel Turns

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Sunday was Father’s Day in the U.S. Vince texted me at 8:00 am and asked if he could stop by. He had already invited me for brunch, in recognition that I was/am both a mother and father to him. But when he showed up he had a Roku stick for my T.V., and even better, he set it up for me!

And so I was able to watch the new season of Orange is the New Black on my T.V. How ironic, that a year ago he was in prison, and now I am watching a show about prison thanks to him. This coming weekend he will mark two years of sobriety with a barbecue.

So people can be redeemed and restored to sanity. No situation is ever hopeless. Never lose hope, even when it’s all you’ve got.

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I’m going to take a break from blogging for a while. I’ve been posting 700 words every other day since September 2014. The first year, half of the posts were written by Vince, although I did spend a fair amount of time typing and actually posting them.

Now I devote every Saturday and Sunday morning to writing, and each post takes about an hour and a half from blank page to Pending Publication.

Writing, editing, finding photos, researching things like the State of Missouri’s motto—I get into the zone, aka, in the now, and that’s great.

But it’s summer! I’d really like to sit out on my deck with a cup of coffee, read the (real) newspaper, and listen to the birds.

And since I am terrible at just sitting and doing “nothing,” here’s my to-do list of projects I’ve got queued up. I’d like to publish the first year of this blog—the posts focused on Vince’s and my prison experience—as an e-book. That feels like it could be a contribution to reform of mass incarceration, or at least a good read. That’ll take some time. If anyone out there has any advice for me, I’m all ears.

Then, and this may sound grandiose, but I’d like to try my hand at writing a novel. The big, sprawling, character-packed type like Dickens or Tolstoy. Not that I’m comparing myself to them or would even expect to get published. I don’t have a master’s in Creative Writing from Yale, I’ve never been to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, I don’t live on the east coast and I don’t have any connections in the publishing world.

But I think it would be fun. About a year and a half ago, my uncle died. He was a retired English professor and I carted home some bags of classic novels and have been ploughing through them. They’re like crossword puzzles composed of intersecting people and events. These are the old style books that people would collect and display proudly on their living room bookshelf. They are “lavishly illustrated” and have beautiful leather bindings that are, sadly, disintegrating.

So I’ll just publish and e-book and write a novel this summer. Ha ha! Then there’s travel. I’ve been stockpiling my paid time off, and I could take as much as five weeks off at the end of the year. It also looks like I’ll be going to east Africa for work. So where could I go from, say—Ethiopia? India? South Africa? Japan, Myanmar, Australia…so many choices! Trips take a lot of planning, so I need time for that too.

I don’t know how long my break from blogging will be, but the next post may be a report from afar. Have a wonderful summer, or winter, depending on which hemisphere you’re in.

Me, Mom

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Before I continue to the exciting conclusion of the road trip, I am sharing this post from Vince’s blog he wrote for Mother’s Day.

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Mom, I know I’ve let you down. Over, and over again I’ve made a mess of my life and brought both of us shame. There were years where you were unable to explain my whereabouts to family and friends, and times where you yourself didn’t know where I was. I’ve put you through more pain and distress than I care to recall. I’ve not been a son to you for many years, and I have lost your trust far too many times.

But for some reason, you still love me. It’s an unconditional love that I’ve felt nowhere else. Even recently when we didn’t see eye to eye when we lived together, there was never any doubt that you loved me. I wish I could promise that I will never be lead astray again by the temptation and allure of alcohol and the world of drugs, but I cannot because it’s the nature of the disease that I am always at risk of going back. Tomorrow, when we go out on our secret trip to an unknown location for Mother’s Day lunch, I will be repairing some of the damage I have caused. I will be repairing the bond that had been broken for so long as a result of my actions. I have nobody to blame but myself, which leaves only me to clean up the mess. And so far, I think it’s working.

It’s hard work, searching inside myself to figure out what’s been broken for so long. But through writing this blog, attending A.A., and working with a sponsor, I’m starting to change my life. I no longer do these things to avoid going back to prison, I do them because I want to be out here living life and being with my family as much as I can.

Although you had help from some family members raising me for a small portion of my childhood, I know that you were solely responsible for bringing me up and I know that you not only did the best you could without a father present, you truly were an amazing Mother, I just didn’t see it until later in life.

You imparted upon me how to be a good, loving person, and it took me about 20 years longer than it should have to recognize that. The things you showed me are the things I strive to emulate now because I know that they are righteous, moral, and honorable.

It doesn’t get any more honest than that. You were instrumental in keeping me sane throughout my prison term. You wrote to me, sent me money, and answered my calls. Not everybody is as lucky, or has a person that loves them no matter what. You moved just to accommodate me living with you when I got out, and I am so grateful for that. I may not have acted like it when I lived there, but that was because I was ashamed of myself, and I shut myself in my room, and my own little world where I felt comfortable. I’m breaking out of that shell slowly, and I won’t forget that it’s because of you that I’m even out here in the first place and had a warm safe place to sleep. Sometimes it takes a while to realize what I have to be grateful for, but eventually it comes.

Tomorrow is your day, and I’m excited that I have the ability to take you out for the day, and the means to make it happen. I think this will be the best Mother’s Day we’ve ever spent together, and I look forward to many more.

Mom, I know I’ve let you down. But I’m going to make it up by becoming a good son, and making up for all the hurt I’ve caused. I love you, Mom.

—

I told Vince, over the sushi feast he had planned, that I appreciated the post. I also told him that by changing his life, he is making amends to me and he never has to apologize for his past actions again.

Jim Crow, Old and New

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This is the latest in a series of posts about a road trip from St. Paul to New Orleans that starts here.

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If you don’t learn something about yourself when you travel … well, that’s okay—I’m not going to sermonize—but I was pleased to learn something important about myself in Memphis.

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In the morning, Lynn and I took a walk along the riverfront, which is beautiful:

We walked back to Beale Street, found a restaurant, and ordered breakfast. We were excited to try southern foods like grits and biscuits. We waited, and waited. You could say this restaurant put the “wait” in waitress. She kept coming by and giving us a dose of another southern treat—calling us “honey”, “sweetie”, and “darlin’” as in: “Your food’ll be up in just a minute, darlins’”

It seemed like half the morning passed away before we got our meals, then we wolfed them down and headed over to the National Civil Rights Museum.

It was difficult to find—there was no signage—but then we turned a corner and there it was, the former Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I recognized it immediately, having seen it a hundred times in iconic photos.

And this was the beginning of learning something about myself, because I got so choked up I had to turn away so no one would see me in tears.

I have been to Holocaust museums in Washington, DC; Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Chicago, and elsewhere, and they’ve been tear-filled experiences too. But then, I’m Jewish. Were my tears only because the story was about my people? That fear—that I only felt empathy for my own kind—was laid to rest in Memphis.

I wiped my tears away but they welled up continually inside the museum, which was one long, sad horror show that traced the abuse of African Americans from slave days up through the assassination in 1968.

There was a large group of school children, mostly African American, going through with docents. I wondered what they felt seeing Africans in chains, the police dogs, the fire hoses? If it was my kid I would want to be on the tour to put my arm around him. There was the usual laughing and fooling around that any group of kids will exhibit, but I wondered if they would have trouble sleeping that night.

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I commented to Lynn, “A coworker of mine at Oxfam used to find every opportunity to mention, ‘the UK never had slavery’ in a superior tone.”

“We may not have had slaves in the country, but we certainly benefited and participated in the system,” Lynn replied as we read a display about how global the slave trade was.

And of course it didn’t end with the abolition of slavery. “Jim Crow” was the system in the southern United States from reconstruction up through the civil rights era in the 60s that kept “negros” in their place. Here are a few of the ridiculous laws from that time:

Really? Checkers!? Who knew checkers could subvert the social order?

Then we marched slowly through exhibits about bus boycotts, lunch counter protests, and strikes. Then there were the cross burnings, lynchings, and bombings by white racists; somewhat counterbalanced by the support of white and other allies (including Jews).

I watched a video about James Meredith, the first black student to be accepted to the University of Mississippi, in Oxford Mississippi. Of course he hadn’t mentioned his race in his application, and when he showed up to enroll all hell broke loose. After weeks of rioting by whites, which resulted in two deaths, he was reluctantly let in, and as Lynn read later, he did graduate and lived a normal life afterwards.

The museum was really well done. There was a second building that explored African American activism post 1968, but after three or four hours in the first building we had to leave.

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Last week Vince and I talked to a group about mass incarceration. One of the audience members referred to it as the New Jim Crow. I agree, although in my opinion it’s about poverty, addiction, mental health, and class as much as racism.

Long Ago in a Land of Spandex

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Greetings from St. Louis. One more day of the road trip, and one more guest post from Vince.

Long Ago, In a Land of Spandex

It’s Friday again, my favorite day of the week. I like my job, but I like weekends more, and at this very moment it’s the longest possible time before more work. This will be the seventh post now on the topic of my career. Or careers. Or lack thereof, uh, yeah. I have no career; I have held many jobs over the years.

At this moment, I’m taking a break from packing my few belongings for the big move. I finally threw away all of my stuff from prison and boot camp. I was never going to use any of it, so I’m happy to toss it out. Alright then, on with it.

After leaving Rochester and finding temporary shelter with a friend of a friend in Fountain, Minnesota, I was given a job as a line cook at Pedal Pusher’s Café in nearby Lanesboro. The owners were a couple with three kids and they all lived upstairs of the restaurant. Looking back, it really sucks to see how things went down. They were kind, generous people who went out of their way to help me when I was down. They even let me sleep in their camper for a while after things went sour in Fountain, and while I waited to find an apartment of my own which they also loaned me the money for.

Lanesboro is a bustling little city full of B&B’s, bike trails, trout fishing, tourists, and spandex, It has a few restaurants too, and they were very busy in the summer. I hadn’t been on a line in some years when I started there, but I picked things back up pretty quickly. Time flew by, I worked hard, and started drinking hard. I also met a new friend that would play a major role in my life for many years to come: gambling.

In the form of pull tabs, I whittled away my pay checks one dollar at a time for months. Eventually, I started taking advances on my pay checks, and very shortly after I started doing that, I started taking advances without their knowledge. This may come as a shock to some people with whom I have not been entirely honest over the years, but I’m letting it all out now. I felt like a lowlife piece of shit, but unfortunately, I just did not care. It didn’t take them long to catch on to me and I was eventually fired for stealing.

Unable to get unemployment benefits, I became withdrawn and moved in with an unenthusiastic friend and his soon to be wife. I sat in that room for a month, maybe two. I wore the same clothes, I ate ramen out of the package, and I cried every day. I was too proud to ask for help. I couldn’t take care of myself, I couldn’t find a job (because I absolutely was not looking), and I was about as close to having a suicidal urge as I’ve ever come. Auspiciously, a very good friend of mine got me out of that trance and back into Fountain where I held a few more jobs.

About two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the owners of Pedal Pusher’s. I told them a lot of what has been going on with me, but more importantly, what was going on with me back then. I asked them to give me a chance to repair the damage I have created, and I included a small token of my sincerity in the form of money. I haven’t heard back from them and I don’t know that I ever will. But I have done my part. At the very least, I have tried to open an avenue of communication with them so that I may fix what has been broken for so long. It was the first of many letters to many people, and with each one, I hope to feel a little more human again.