Catskills: Catskills the Revelation

By Kirby Edwards

If you want to C reason for taking the time to read my story, then here they are: A Child who survives a Coma that later Causes him Confusion and Creates a Comma, from Convictions of Crime to a life and a Career with a Car Company that made him a number one Commercial sales professional in the Country and then Conquered the Cancer that Claimed the life of his father, which Created in him a Cause to Convey to his Children that Courage is what Chances are made of and is the only Cord to Contention and a will to Continue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466904736

Kirby Edwards

I’ve always enjoyed writing. Poems, songs, jokes, and short stories were where I placed most of my interest. Then there was a collective amount of life experiences that urged me to write my first book titled Catskills, Catskills the Revelation. It was my autobiography, and it was my first time ever writing a book. So by that, I feel that, while I enjoy writing, I will not yet profess to be a prolific writer. However, during the time (approximately seven years) it took me to write my autobio, the experience was like an institution of learning that was comparable to an acceptable degree. And I value that time and experience more than twice as much. So much that I was encouraged to write another book. And over the last three years, I have committed to doing even more writing, with yet a third book already in its twenty-third chapter. But in the meantime, behold! My book, a fictional story titled Carry Your Name. I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading it.

Book preview

Contents

Foreword

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1… I Came, I Overcame

Chapter 2… The Great Migration

Chapter 3… A Tough Memory

Chapter 4… Here And There

Chapter 5… Moving On Up

Chapter 6… Separated

Chapter 7… B & E, Not My Initials

Chapter 8… Looking Good

Chapter 9… The Get Away

Chapter 10 . . . The Cat is Out of the Bag

Chapter 11… Too Much To Handle

Chapter 12… Just Too Fast

Chapter 13… House Training

Chapter 14… Too Much Wild Child

Chapter 15… On the Prowl

Chapter 16… The Cat’s Meow

Chapter 17… A Cat Walk

Chapter 18… My Greatest Loss

Chapter 19… The Coming of The Cat-alyst

Chapter 20… Separation Anxiety

Chapter 21… No Kitten Around

Chapter 22… Go West

Chapter 23… Out of the Cage

Chapter 24… First Fall

Chapter 25… The Rough Gets Going

Chapter 26… Far More Than A Pen-Pal

Chapter 27… Humbling Experience

Chapter 28… Ring Master

Chapter 29… The Test of Doing Time

Chapter 30… First Family Second Fall

Chapter 31… Manipulation

Chapter 32… Knock Down Round #2

Chapter 33… Feline Free

Chapter 34… Cat-apult

Chapter 35… The Liars Den

Chapter 36… Cat-aclysmicCloseCall

Chapter 37… Home Sick

Chapter 38… A Purr-Furred Mate

Chapter 39… Fitting In

Chapter 40… The New Cat

Chapter 41… Bitter Sweet

Chapter 42… Relocation

Chapter 43… The Review

Chapter 44… Pawing Around

Chapter 45… The Final Capture

Chapter 46… Rise and Surprise

Chapter 47… Defending My Honors

Chapter 48… A Litter Bitter-Courtin

Chapter 49… Pain & Glory

Chapter 50… The Reward

Chapter 51… Spiritual Restraint

Chapter 52… Reiterating

Chapter 53… Cat-Reprieve, From God

Chapter 54… More or Less to Live For

Chapter 55… One Last Draw

Chapter 56… So Hard to Say Goodbye

Chapter 57… Eye of a Tiger

Chapter 58… Images and Mistakes

Chapter 59… Chances are for Champions

Chapter 60… I Just Came to Say

CONCLUSION

SUMMARY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IN MEMORY OF

CAT-NIPS

DEDICATION

PREFACE

Bobby,

I am happy to hear that your book is finally completed.

You have been one of the most inspirational friends I know. Your relentless positive attitude is contagious and is one of the reasons why so many people gravitate toward you. I truly enjoy your friendship and I hope all the best for you and your family.

Congratulations, I am happy to have had you in my life. You are an amazing person.

Your friend

Peter

Peter Burns, PMP

Alcatel-Lucent

#1-CATSKILLS COVER.jpg

Foreword

I worked with Bobby for 13 years, as his General Sales Manager. There were not many days that went buy that I didn’t remind him of how I admired his work ethics and his eagerness to interface with people. Even on the days that his health was forbidding him to work let alone smile, Bobby would give toward the love of his profession. He was a natural at it and he was the very best.

I particularly took to Bobby’s willingness to pull me to the side to share with me, about his bad days. While no one else would be advised on how he really felt in hardship times, he confided in me to share in his downside.

He is a good father for his sons and daughter and he is the ultimate friend to me and the life that he loved, helping people. Just a wonderful man that also happens to love life.

Conrad Bongo

Auto Merchants Inc

INTRODUCTION

This is a story about my life, beginning with how it almost ended even before it began. I will share with you how I lived my entire life heedlessly as a free spirit in a manner that didn’t always seem morally or legally sound. Most of the time I believed that I could live purely by chance, experiencing and surviving every day of my life with no planning. I constantly lived without regard for rules or the so called social standard way of life. I was a solitary soul regardless of any other contact I held with other people. Whether my motives were good or bad, I was steadfast with my lifestyle as if there was some sort of merit or award for aimless-living waiting for me.

Throughout my story I help you to see my life through the eyes of a different type of cat. Through time after time, with a combination of courage, confidence, and foolishness, I was faced with close calls and narrow escapes. The idea of cats having nine lives comes from the multiple advantages that cats have in their structural build. We learn better, we get around better and so we get better opportunities when we are flexible. The big cat’s flexibility helps them to escape death. The further the cat has to fall, the safer his landing will be. The longer man struggles, the better life’s lessons should be. The longer fall gives the cat more time for landing preparation.

Cats have been among humanity since the beginning of time. Our African, Asian and Middle Eastern ancestors lived among lions and leopards and we have always marveled at the gracefulness, the ability to survive and the free spirit of the big cat species. We learned things from cats that could be advantageous to us. Big cats, and particularly the lion, represent a solid symbol of strength for leaders.

Experts and scientist also say it is difficult to compile research on many big cats because they are so mysterious and illusive. Also they are not a safe or recommended choice for pets or long term captivity that may be necessary for any research. There are stories from long ago and recent times where man has been eaten by lions and other big cats. Big cats are extremely good survivors and the only four-footed animal that man has mimicked so closely. Experts also believe that the combination of fear and admiration of big cats is common in humans. Many of the big cat’s natural abilities and killer instincts is what humans have wanted to find or claim within them-selves in a quest to hold un-yielding claim to the title of Top Cat.

The big cats are also one of the best natural teachers on earth. Right from birth, they begin to teach their young how to survive on their own with extra emphasis on keeping mistakes at a minimum. The big cat is very careful to avoid any highly consequential mistakes such as the ones that could cost them their lives. Therefore big cats aren’t as likely to take chances the way humans do. In this book you will see how I followed some characteristics of the cat in avoiding mistakes, but how so unlike the cat, I took many chances. Through all my adversity, failure was not an option for me and I was constantly being reminded to count my blessings.

This story is intended to expose my views and ideas on taking chances. I wanted to share with you, a time when I had a high degree of confidence in the chances I took and the choices I made. I don’t want to represent all chances, good or bad, as evidence of some heightened level of success or failure. As a gambler, my chances came with shortcomings or set-backs as well as with occasional progress and advances. In any case, many times I was forced to take heed to my wins and losses and viewed them as Godly advice. These would be the times when I made choices to redirect my life. I did so by collecting my plus and minuses and taking them, along with some positive thinking, good attitude, humor, tenacity, and clean image to a different venue. One such venue in particular is typically called employment or work force and an occasional visit to church.

It all finally came to me from a message I got from Daddy, just before he died. Daddy had given me orders on how to do certain things his way before, but back then, I listened in the same way a child would tear open a grocery bag only to get to the those things that were good to me and not good for me. This particular message came from Daddy’s eyes. He stared at me in a way that said more than what he had said to me the entire time I had known him.

Without the use of any false pretenses, I needed to use those things that came to me easily and naturally, like charm, a charismatic smile and by always keeping my word. I always wanted to wear a fairly decent reputation, but I also understood that approval in our society is much more probable or sustained when your past is not stained. I know that the way people see you is merely reputation, but also, I needed to know that all these other things came easy to me because they were all actually in my character. I always believed in myself whether I was wrong or right and I always wanted others to believe in me. I valued the lives, the feelings and the opinions of my loved ones, so I kept the will to stay alive and be positive in order to ultimately make a difference in the way people saw me.

I had confidence in what I was and what I was capable of, and so did Daddy. So, with no pretending at all, I was going to be just pure and raw… straight like gin with no juice, coffee with no sugar or singing without music. With no real transformation, just a new location and attitude, for almost twenty six years I kept my jagged-edged past concealed and protected from society’s critical views. I practiced being myself, without the wildness and impatience that I was so apt to when I was growing up. I knew I could do this, but first of all, I knew I had to do it.

After death and destruction shadowed over me from a toddler until I was fifty years of age, I felt it was time for me to reveal this part of me before time has passed me by. Early in the new millennium, I decided to gather up all the good, bad and the ugly that surrounded me from birth, and in 2005 I began to put it into a life story or auto-biography.

My story is about ninety-five per cent accurate. The five per cent that may not be accurate is more through the fault of my inaccurate research and maybe a few miscalculated times or dates from loss of memory. A lot of the names in my story are repetitive, as they may re-occur in the mention of different characters. However, some names are very real and have not been changed to protect any innocence because there are no innocent ones.

With no uncertainties about it, humans are animal-like. No one in the history of mankind has become so superior that he or she has totally advanced from our animalistic or primitive ways. The idea of using cats as a comparison to the way we live was also convenient for me because I was commonly known as Bobcat. It was my father who first referred to me as Bobcat. He saw in me, early on, a wild and care free spirit. He noticed that I was curious and observant. I was hard to tame like a young tiger cub with wings. As I flew through the Catwalk into my territory of life, I would find that many other people would come to know me as the Bobcat Master of Cat Skills.

Chapter 1… I Came, I Overcame

Around the late 1940s, in the city of Sunflower, Sunflower County, Mississippi, a couple of good looking, healthy and hard-working sharecroppers who were also the offspring of tenant farmers and sharecroppers, B.L. Edwards and Priscilla Henderson, met. They were married while on the same plantation. On April 25th, 1951 they gave birth to their third child and first born son. He was a six and a half pound healthy baby boy. They named this third child Robert Earl Edwards.

B.L. and Priscilla were both from large families of brothers and sisters and many cousins. In my family and in many other black families from the south, there were power and strength in numbers just as it is in the wild among some big cats like the lion. Daddy was the youngest of eleven. Mama was the second oldest of six children. One of Mama’s older aunts had twenty-two children. A couple of them had disabilities or impairments in hearing, speech and crippling. These impairments were said to have resulted from malaria. This is another example of where numbers are a key. Even though there are already plenty of healthy farm hands in the pride, those who are with shortcomings are vital to the strength of others. My family members made out fair in comparison, because it wasn’t uncommon to drive down a country road in Mississippi and see a one-armed tractor driver, a blind woman churning butter or someone picking cotton with missing fingers.

Daddy was definitely the lion image because he dominated his territory as a loner with enough courage for ten men. He had variable survival skills and was never willing to give in to illness. I inherited that cat skill for sure from Daddy. Daddy had a very dark sepia complexion and he had really big penny-colored brown eyes. I didn’t get the dark complexion but otherwise, I think Daddy and I look a lot alike. Almost everyone in the family agrees. Mama said Daddy’s looks were the first thing she liked about him. She said when she first saw him her exact words were, (in a southern dialect), Dat show is a handsome MANE! Mama and Daddy were drawn to each other by God and other feline instincts that are common within the two of them. There may be people from other families who have adapted the ways of other animals but in this story, we are a cat family.

Mama was a lioness. The lioness is one cat that shares very little obvious resemblance to her male species (she has no mane). Although the lioness is the designated hunter in the wild, she is so protective of her young that she would often-times reserve or withdraw her predatory skills. Mama wouldn’t leave the house, not even to go to the grocery store if one of us were sick until she was sure her cubs were attended to properly. Mama was really a beautiful young girl. She had curly hair and smooth caramel colored skin. She told us she was in a car that her brother Monty was driving and they had an accident that scarred her face. The scars are vague today and you can hardly see where they were.

Mama is a very private person and so was Daddy. This is more characteristic of the leopard. Leopards are also slower than some big cats and weaker than lions and hyenas, so leopards don’t fight over food. They are however, the best survivors of all the big cats. Their numbers show it because they out populate all other big cats by far and they live respectfully closer to people around the world than any other big cat. Mama and Daddy are the lion and the lioness. I used the leopard traits to describe them in some instances because the leopard is the most common denominator in the big cat world. Many big cats share habits or similarities, including spots. Some big cat’s spots may have been replaced with other coat patterns and methods of camouflage. This is mostly depending on species and surroundings, but the big cats strengths are not camouflaged at all, regardless of the species. The most pronounced and alarming image of a warning is the lion’s mighty roar. This roar is not to be taken lightly. Unlike a dog, which may be more bark than bite, if necessary, the lion will fight to his death in order to pronounce his domain or to protect what is his. In most cases, he will win, therefore his title, King of the Jungle.

Right around my first birthday and after I had just learned to walk, I was exposed to a very bad virus that contained many of the symptoms of malaria, polio and diphtheria. I became so sick that I had to be hospitalized and quarantined for several months. It’s strange and perhaps a little hard to believe, but I still have vague recollection of being held up by strong hands to be seen by visitors. While I was in the hospital, I went into a coma and Mama told me later that at the time, no particular diagnoses could be made and there was no good news in sight. I was in this coma for quite a long time. I was headed for an early death, or what was known then as crib death.

Finally, Mama said after she ranted and raved through the hospital pleading for someone to save her son, a particular doctor named Robinson, heard her and decided as a volunteer, to send my poop sample to the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi for tests. The doctor wanted to see if the tested sample could tell what was wrong with me. The test showed evidence of a bad virus (possibly malaria) and I was treated accordingly. Miraculously I eventually recovered, Thank God. I escaped with a young life that was trailed by a couple of impairments like inability to walk and an irregular heart-beat. At the time of the fever no one thought I’d ever live through it. We graciously accepted the miracle and blessings of staying alive in the face of the deadly alternative. For about the next two and a half years I was considered nearly crippled. Mama said I could walk, but not very well because my legs were very weak, so I crawled a lot until my legs were strong again.

Someone who is superstitious may consider my feverish experience bad luck for the illness I had, and good luck for the recovery. The way I see it, my condition wasn’t a case of good or bad luck. Instead it was the timing or the balance of life that just didn’t weigh in my favor until it was time. When someone loses at anything whether or not it is more often than he wins, they shouldn’t consider this un-lucky or in bad luck, no more than they should consider a long winning streak as a good luck streak. It’s just that to win, lose or draw is either on one side or the other side at any given or unpredictable time, and I just don’t think luck, good or bad, has anything to do with it. To a farmer, a drought isn’t bad luck, its God’s work. The balance of nature weighs in just as it would in the case of a flood. Some people can drive a car for a lifetime and never have anyone run into them. I don’t think this is a case of good luck either. I also, do not think its bad luck if the same person finally has two wrecks in the same week. The balances of life may not seem to be an even balance in our eyes and are not always in our hands or in our control. God controls our outcomes no matter how unfair or unevenly distributed they may seem. If you still happen to believe in luck, then that’s alright. We have nicknames for a lot of things, so why not call these un-timely and unbalanced fortunes and misfortunes, luck, huh?

Before me there were two siblings. My oldest sister Tara was born on January 25, 1947. Tara is a tiger in every way. Her reddish hair is very much like a throw back from the tiger. She’s beautiful, self-sufficient, enterprising, fearless and a natural hunter and provider. She is very pride or family oriented, in that she loves to do things that include family. Tara’s strengths are what make her a tiger, but her fearlessness is equal to that of any one of the big cat species. Tara is a dedicated mother but it is her energy level and her healthy image that makes her a true beauty to watch.

My sister Darla came next. She was born March 15, 1950. Darla is like a jaguar with characteristics like her father the lion. She is an opportunist and very particular about habitat and surroundings. Darla is also an excellent provider for her family. The jaguar is more well-round than most cats and especially during predation. She gets what’s hers in a very graceful and efficient manner. Like all my sisters, Darla is also very attractive. She is proud beyond comparison. Darla is a very giving person and her sensitivity is almost as delicate as that of a Lap-Cat. But this is in no way to signify that she is vulnerable or content with lying around on the sofa for anything other than to read a book or take in a movie. Darla’s intelligence and her courage are incomparable.

On June 26, 1952, Mama and Daddy added one more to the litter before leaving Mississippi during the Great Migration. Her name is Minnie. She has fluffy jaws and like Daddy, Minnie has the penny-colored light brown eyes that are more like the eyes of a cougar. Minnie is indeed the cougar. She is physically strong and a very independent type which is reflected in her preferring to be alone like her father the lion. Not so fast on her feet like the cheetah, but she is very graceful in style and fast in survival tactics. Minnie is not bothered by the need to stay grounded, tenacious and patient. Her territory and her prey are variable and so she is a sufficient survivor.

By the time I was almost four years old my legs were strong again and I was running around as good as my sisters and any other child my age. Mama said you couldn’t tell what I had been through as an infant. It was as if I had never been sick at all. That experience was well behind me and long forgotten by our family. Today, I look at that experience as a lesson not on how to walk, but a lesson in cat skills on how to fall. I had just learned to prepare myself for falling, that’s all. Of course I won’t give all the credit to my cat skills or to any sort of good or bad luck. God is actually the provider of my cat skills and I know that for certain.

Around this time, I also learned that I was addicted to cold milk. I just had to have it. There was nothing like a tall glass of cold milk. I know, real cats like warm milk but remember I’m only referencing cats as a story line to show the similarities to human life. I’m not a real cat and I hate warm milk!

Chapter 2… The Great Migration

After I was literally back on my feet, we made Dayton, Ohio our home. Dayton is called the Gem City. No-one claims to know exactly why they call it the Gem City, but it is said that, Dayton’s wealth, beauty, and enterprise gave it the name. It’s also been said that in the late 1800s there was a popular race horse from Dayton, named Gem. Whatever the real reason, and whether or not my folks even knew what a gem was, Dayton was definitely a gem as compared to where we came from. This Gem City was going to be the city where I was going to discover myself, whatever that may be.

At the time Dayton was home to many huge companies. There were plenty of jobs, at companies like General Motors, Chrysler Corp, NCR, McCall’s Printing, Dayton Tire, Mead Paper, Kimberly Clark, and Standard-Register and there were foundries and aerospace technology companies all over the city. Just over thirty miles up the road in Cincinnati, there were companies like GM-Fisher Body, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric and the United States Playing Card Company. Dayton is part of the 500 mile radius that makes up for sixty percent of the manufacturing of consumer products in North America. I saw online at cityofdayton.org/departments, where the inventions from Dayton run into the thousands. From as early as 1870-1890, Dayton was among the top three cities in the United States from which inventions came. It is un-believable how many inventions are from Dayton. Dayton is credited for thousands of inventions, from the movie camera to the football. The yo-yo, the zip-top can, the digital clock, the artificial heart and the artificial kidney, the back-pack parachute, the filter cigarette, window unit air-conditioners and the step ladder. Charles Kettering, the inventor of the first electronic ignition device for automobiles (self-starter) is from Dayton. Dayton’s biggest claim to fame is being the home of the Wright Brothers who invented the airplane.

There is a common riddle in Ohio that goes; What is round on both ends and HI in the middle? The answer of course is OHIO. Many people have said the answer is a carriage which is indicative of the automobile. Ohio’s blood-line to the auto industry runs deep. John Lambert was an inventor who took ideas from Daimler & Benz and enhanced them with the start of lighter and longer running gasoline engines. He is credited with creating the first real gasoline engine and the first successful automobile. John Stoddard, who is from Dayton, is credited with building one of the first high line sports/luxury cars. He was also the builder of the first car to win the Indianapolis 500 and the very first pace car. His automobiles were just too expensive at the time, and were consequently forced to close production around 1913. The only Packard dealership in the country is here in Dayton. It is still in existence and is operating as a museum now, and is named America’s Packard Museum.

For a short while we lived on Hawthorne Street, the very street that Orville Wright was born on in August of 1867. Orville’s address was 7 Hawthorne Street. I don’t remember our address. I wouldn’t know Orville Wright’s address if I hadn’t stumbled on it while writing this story. Wilbur Wright wasn’t born in Dayton, he was born in Indiana and the family moved there later. I didn’t know if that would mean much either, but at least now you know it. Wilbur did grow up in Dayton and he died in Dayton. I also think that if Dayton was good enough for Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Wilbur Wright to die in, then it should be good enough for me as well.

Dayton is home to the National Museum of the US Air Force and the home of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first renowned black poet. This son of slaves, Dunbar, left his name on schools in black neighborhoods in almost every major city in America. Dayton also produced WDAO, the very first all-black (rhythm & blues) radio format in America. This is an honor that may seem more fitting for much larger cities like Detroit, Atlanta, D.C. or Chicago. The Dayton Art Institute is a great place to see.

The list of stars from Dayton is long. Rob Lowe, Martin Sheen, Erma Bombeck and the Ohio Players are just a few. When you add the stars from within the metro-plex of Dayton-Cincinnati like Roy Rogers, Doris Day, Nipsy Russell and The Isley Brothers, the list is so long it begins to sound boastful. In 1920, Dayton earned a great place in sports history by being the first city to host an NFL football game. The league was then known as the American Professional Football Association. Dayton’s professional team was called the Dayton Triangles. Today, Dayton is currently home to the Dayton Dragons, a Cincinnati Reds minor league baseball team that holds the honor of being the first and only minor league baseball team to sell out an entire season before the season started. If you love baseball, it’s just a cool drive south to see America’s oldest professional Major League Baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds. Over-all, during the great migration, Dayton was a nice city that had a somewhat better economy and a safer place to raise families, in comparison to Cleveland or Chicago. Sitting on the banks of the Great Miami River, Dayton was a very pretty city and it wasn’t a bad place at all. Things are a bit different today, but Dayton is still not a bad place to live.

Daddy was the only Edwards from his family, as far as we knew, to settle in Dayton. Mama’s parents and her brothers and sisters all came to Dayton. All of Daddy’s people had already migrated to Chicago and St. Louis, a decade earlier. My Grandma, Daddy’s mother’s name was Dora Edwards. She came to Dayton to visit us soon after we got there because Daddy was the baby of her eleven children, and she wanted to see us, and how well her baby (Daddy) was doing, and to see me as well, this miracle child. I recall that she used to let us put our balloons under her rocker chair so she could rock over them and burst them. She seemed to like hearing them pop as much as we did. That is absolutely all I remember about Grandma Edwards.

I never knew for sure just what it was that lured my folks to Dayton. It was sort of a boom town then, but there is also rumor that people stopped in Dayton on the way to Detroit or Cleveland during the great migration because they ran out of gas on the way.

The same year we came to Dayton, Mama and Daddy brought to the pride, another very beautiful kitten who they named Elois. I was only about three, but I could see that she was the prettiest little thing anyone could ever imagine. Before Elois was eight-months old she came down with an illness that left her with a serious fever, chills and many of the other symptoms that accompany malaria and diphtheria. Doctors told Mama that Elois had an incurable case of pneumonia and Elois died before she was even close to her first birthday. What was confusing to me was that Mama and Daddy told me that the doctor asked them to take Elois home and bathe her in hot Epsom Salt water. Elois died that night or the following day. I’m not a doctor of course, but the reason I’m so curious about Elois’s death is, the prescribed Epsom Salt bath would better suit a case of Malaria rather than pneumonia. She was about eight-months-old when she passed away. She wasn’t with us long enough to make clear what cat-like nature she would’ve acquired. I just feel real certain that Elois will re-appear in another of her nine lives as the strongest cat ever. I’ll never forget the hysterical emotions Mama showed when Elois passed away. Mama had portraits made of a lot of us, but today, Elois’s portrait is the only portrait that Mama proudly displays in a golden frame on her bedroom wall since that very day.

If you were black in America, and contracted malaria, or you got sick in any sort of way prior to 1955(The Civil Rights Act), and especially in the south, you did not have the rights to mal-practice law suits. You were subject to being misdiagnosed without any further regard. If you were a child and died, the classification of death in the death records would read crib death, and no questions about it. Crib death (currently known as SIDS) was what the so-called authorities called it as a resolve, just for the records. It was like a wool coat in the rain. It was cover, but it didn’t hold water. It was just something to avoid the fundamental process or the cost of proper procedure and attention, and it was total disregard for human lives. Through a miracle, I had escaped this crib death just a couple years earlier. Elois wasn’t so fortunate. The laws weren’t on our side in the south at that time and they were no more in our favor in the north beyond slavery. The Civil Rights Movement changed a lot of that. The existence of a race of people was now being represented because of a small group lead by one man, Reverend. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In his words; It is necessary to understand that black power is a cry of disappointment. The black power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain.

On August 12, 1956, Mama and Daddy blessed me with a little brother. He and my sister Elois were the first born in Dayton. His name is Dee Jay. In the order of astrology, that birth date would make him a Leo. However, Dee Jay is characteristically a puma because of his range. The puma is another name for the cougar or mountain lion, depending on what part of the country you’re in. He can be found on any turf, and his range of interests is broad, like sports, outdoors, fishing and driving. Also his high-energy level and agility made him more physically cat-like than any of us. Daddy called him Biscuit Jay. The name didn’t mean anything in particular. Daddy just liked giving us nick names. The best I can make of it is, when Dee Jay was born, I can recall living near the bakery. It was called Sunshine Biscuit Bakery. I, and a couple other boys in the neighborhood, used to get up on each-other’s shoulders to show our faces to the assembly line workers just so they would toss us packages of graham crackers. When Daddy asked where we got the crackers, I told him Sunshine Biscuit. I remember Daddy asking me not to be greedy, and to share some of these graham crackers with my baby brother, Dee Jay, who was probably just a few months old at the time. This is as close as I can imagine when I try to think about the origin of the name Biscuit Jay.

At the time, there was a white boy at the end of the street named Truman. I can remember one Easter day, Truman and I ran down the street and met on the sidewalk in the middle of his house and mine, just to put our feet together to see which of our new Easter shoes had the sharpest point. Sharp-toed or Pointy-toed shoes were a big thing in those days. It was also very popular to have very large, over-sized heel protectors on your shoes and you clanked loudly when you walked on hard floors or cement. The more popular ones were the horseshoe style. These heel protectors were also known as heel plates or taps and were initially intended for dancers and marching soldiers. What did we know and what did we care? All we cared about was it was real cool to us back then. Something really strange though… is that there were also shoe plates for the toes of the shoe, but no one uses the toe plate these days. As a matter of fact, people don’t wear down the toes of their shoes anymore either do they?

Every Saturday afternoon the NCR auditorium would show movies to all the kids in Dayton and give each one of us a candy bar. From where we lived, at the time, the path we took would be across a park called Edgemont Park. With all the black and white kids that would turn out to go to the NCR, that park would look like the migration of zebras and wilder beast crossing the Serengeti. Kids from all over for miles would head toward the NCR auditorium, which was located just across the bridge over the Great Miami River, to see the movie and get the best tasting candy bar ever. I can’t recall what brand of candy bar we got, but it just seemed so very good. Some of the kids would ride bikes there but they would end up walking back, and vice versa.

One day, while Dee Jay was still little, Mama and Daddy were separated for some reason, for the first time and we moved in with relatives. During the separation Daddy came over to visit us and drove up in a brand new forest green metallic 1956 Ford Victoria. This car actually had seat belts in it. It was my first time ever seeing a seat belt. I guess Daddy was trying to say something in the way of keeping us restrained and safe at the same time during the ride. Safety didn’t seem to be much of a concern to parents or children in those days. After all, safety features were pretty much non-existent in the cars, and especially seat belts. This visit from Daddy was particularly good for us because, at the time, we were pretty much packed in, living together with Aunt Arleta and Uncle Herman, along with their spouses and children.

Daddy took us for a good long ride, and that was all it took to get Daddy back in the house. At least in the eyes of a child, that was all it took. In other words, he and Mama were back together again. This visit meant that I may get to wake up without my baby brother’s foot in my mouth. Aunt Revilla and Uncle A.D. were home owners early on, and I spent a lot of nights at their house. This was supposed to be considered a vacation for me. Instead I looked at it as somewhat a small miracle, because their house was about a 1700 square feet house, with three bedrooms and ten children. Don’t ask me how we all fit into these three bedroom houses. I will say that Uncle A.D. had the attic cleverly remodeled into really smart sleeping quarters.

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Chapter 3… A Tough Memory

The year 1956 was a year that a lot happened in my five year old life that I could remember. Daddy bought a new car, I got my first baby brother, we all moved into a separate, one family house and I was finally enrolled in the kindergarten at Weaver School. Boy was I nervous! Weaver was a tough school, too, and there was always a fight just before school. It turned out that I was pretty well liked by other kids and the teachers, but I was restricted from any sort of physical education as a result of this massive heart murmur as it was called then. Whatever this hindrance was, it may have just been another side effect from the fever I had a few years earlier. This made it so that, right from the start, I would be physically tested by every boy that had male genitals and a few girls too.

I was tough and I never seemed to worry or cry about much. That wasn’t always good, because no one ever took me serious if I ever really needed help or if I was really hurt. When I was just about seven-years-old, I stepped on a plank that had a very large rusty nail sticking up from it. My foot was small and the nail was three times as long as my foot was thick. The nail went all the way through my foot. I played rough so the trail of blood I left all through the house was mixed with mud and a few stems of grass. All my parents said to me was; Boy what’s wrong with your dang foot? Wipe your foot off and clean that mess up off the floor! They would’ve taken me a little more serious if the blood wasn’t so mixed up with mud and grass. It was only because my foot never stopped bleeding that I was finally taken to the hospital. This isn’t to say that my folks were negligent, it’s just that we all had to be very tough in those days, and I was the toughest.

A cat can easily climb to the top of a forty-foot tall tree, but he will almost always take the hard way down. He will either try to climb down backwards, or he will jump. The reason for this is in the way his claws are made. They are curved in-ward and it gives him almost no grip at all in a head first, downward situation. Most people don’t know this, so they assume the cat is alright when he is motion-less in a tree. They also assume the cat is fine when he jumps and hit’s the ground running. Regardless of how flexible the cat is, there is still a chance that he may have a slight to moderately serious injury from the landing, and we may not notice it until we see the cat limping later. This is why many cat owners will call for help to get their cat down from the tree as soon as they discover him there. I sort of see it like this. Perhaps this feature of the cat should translate in human behavior as being a design intended for upward mobility only. Coming down should not be an easy option. People often get too high or too deep into situations that are too hard to handle and then discover it is too hard to escape. Then, if we don’t bail out the hard way, we call on a friend or relative to help bail us out. Another obvious difference in people and cats is that, the cat is a lot more flexible and independent, and would rather apply cat skills, and get down on his own, without help from another cat.

Believe it or not, we moved again. It wasn’t clear to me why, but moving is otherwise pretty cool. It offered adversity which means a lot to a child. Again, I’m not so vivid on the reasons we moved so much. I was too young at the time to know everything that goes on around me in the way of why. It really would be nice if I had the ability to go back in time and examine the why and how. If I could, I would look back into our minds as children growing up, to see if we were oblivious to the changes around us or were we quite aware of it all and took a lot of notes for future reference. Did these changes really play a substantial role in how we act today, or at some point, was it all tossed to the shredder and a new script with new rules were written in order to role with the new characters and new responsibilities? I would say it definitely had some affects. One thing that did stick is I noticed that Daddy was so protective, so independent and so strong. I can’t ever recall him having help from a friend or relative in moving us around. We would grab a lamp or a sofa pillow, but it was nothing to see Daddy strap a sofa, stove or a fridge to his back and tell us to get clear out of the way.

We were at Jackson Elementary School now, and I still remember my teacher, Ms. Winfield. She really seemed to like me a lot. It was as if she saw something in me that everybody else around me didn’t see. I recall that I had frequent nose bleeds. One day I was rushed to the bath room at school with an un-controllable nose bleed. Ms. Winfield and about three other teachers had my head held over the sink with plenty of ice on my neck trying to stop this nose bleed. I remember Ms. Winfield now saying, Oh I hope little Robert will be alright. She was so determined to stop this nose bleed herself, without alarming my parents. I didn’t actually hear it this way, but she seemed to be saying, Please, not on my watch. It’s just a nose bleed. Please God, don’t let it be more than that and let it stop! By the time the nose bleed stopped, school was over and I went home and can’t remember what other attention was taken to the nose bleed, if any at all.

I only had sisters for my first five years on earth so I had little chance to really get down with boy games aside from recess time at school. I had plenty of experience with Jacks and Bo-Lo Bats which were mostly girl games. I did a lot of this and that with my sisters and it was alright with me because it usually meant that their girlfriends might soon join in. So far I didn’t mind much that I couldn’t take physical-education in school. I had enough fun anyway at recess playing with the fellows. Oh, but there was one girl in my second grade at Jackson School named Katy Morehouse. She was finer than grounded baby powder. While we were saying the Pledge of Allegiance she took her left index finger and tickled my chin. She was appropriately wearing a red white and blue dress and I was so proud to be an American. I’ll never forget it. Chills went through my body like in the Coors Light Love Train commercial.

Daddy was old school and didn’t think a woman should work. So he gambled a lot because wages at the time just weren’t enough to go around. Apparently he won at times because we always seemed to have enough food and we were always dressed really nice. The places where we lived were always decent. Our furniture was always nice and Daddy always had a cool car. The first car I remembered was a black, 1948 Mercury. Then Daddy had a green 1953 Ford, a blue and white 1955 Chevy and then the 1956 Ford. Actually, it was pretty obvious when Daddy lost money because I was awakened many nights by loud arguments that later led to Mama and Daddy being separated again. I would always ask Mama if she would call Daddy and ask if he would pick me up and take me to visit him at his temporary residence. Daddy and I did a lot of that. I was his oldest boy and that says it all.

Chapter 4… Here And There

It sort of seemed that, whenever Daddy would come home, we would move again. I guess we just couldn’t quite find the right Lion’s Den. This next move landed us on a street called Smith Street, and we were now attending Whittier School. My sisters Tara, Darla, Minnie and myself would bundle up together on the way to school as if we were a Siamese Quartet. If someone fought one of us they fought us all. Tara was the bravest of us all. We had very little trouble. We didn’t start anything with anybody but if anybody touched any one of my sisters, I would go straight off in a minute. Tara and Minnie were pretty tough too. Darla was fragile, but she had a mighty defense in the way she looked at you and in her words. She could look at you and talk to you like a snake charmer looks at a snake and your venom would turn into sugar and honey. Tara did suffer a couple of falls to a couple of older and tom boyish type girls, but her over-all record was a winning one because she wouldn’t say no to a battle if she was a snail in a salt fight. There was never a prettier girl, more willing to put on the war paint than Tee, when she thought it was time to represent.

There were fourteen elementary schools when we grew up, that were available to blacks between the West Side and South Side of Dayton. They were Weaver, Whittier, Garfield, Irving, Willard, Wogaman, High View, Louise Troy, Miami Chapel, McFarland, Jackson, Residence Park, Westwood and Jane Adams. I went to seven of them.

On August 20, 1957, Mama and Daddy brought forth yet another blessed kitten to the pride. You see, in the 50s, just like today, a new car will work better than words for getting back with your girl. They named my new kit brother Kirby. Kirby was as adorable as was Elois but in a male version. Solid thick black hair, huge brown eyes and the smoothest beige complexion you could imagine. The most prized kitten of all. He was God’s pick of the litter. We cuddled up to Kirby like a Persian kitten. We seemed to handle Kirby a lot more than we did Dee Jay. We picked him up, swung him around and hugged and talked to him more. We just seemed to gravitate more toward him naturally, as if we were summoned