A Black Man's Bible

By Luis Glass

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 24, 2006
• ISBN: 9781462809141

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A BLACK MAN’S BIBLE

Luis Glass

Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Luis Glass.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

SUBWAY

RED SCARE

QUADROON

TOURNAMENTS

PUBLIC SCHOOL

LABOR UNION

MUSIC

SCHLEP

SCHOOL

PARK DEPARTMENT TENNIS

CROSSCOURT TENNIS CLUB

CENTRAL PARK

FRIENDS

BEATNIK

BAISLEY POND

MULLALY PARK

KISSENA PARK

FOREST PARK

GREAT NECK COUNTRY CLUB

STERLING TENNIS CLUB

DEERFIELD ACADEMY

1965-19661/2

POLICE BRUTALITY

AIT

CHAPTER TWO

SUPPLY AND SERVICES

GUARD DUTY

PRE-OP

THE VIET MINH

CMS

THE SOFTBALL GAMES

(R AND R) RRREST, RELAXATION AND RECUPERATION

85TH EVAC IN THE SPRING

SEQUEL

BOOK THREE

CHURCH AND STATE AND JUST STATE OVER THERE

COLD WAR

NUKE

To Jim

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INTRODUCTION

I first meet Luis Glass some four years ago while playing tennis at the Balboa Park Tennis Club in Morely Field, San Diego. Initially, I was intrigued by the sheer physics of the situation. Luis is your basic big Black dude; he’s around 6’2 and weighs in the ballpark of 230 lbs. Visually, my first impression was Luis Armstrong", a notable irony, because the more I watched, I realized this huge man was playing the equivalent of jazz tennis. On a good day, Luis Glass has arguably the most amazing hands in tennis anyone has ever seen.

My curiosity was up, and as I investigated further I came to discover a truly remarkable tennis player and a compelling human spirit in Luis. At the time, I was embarking on my second childhood, just out of the shop after my 40 yr. tune up and repair session. I’de just had a hernia operation as well as knee, shoulder and foot surgeries in six months time. I hadn’t touched a tennis racquet in over twenty-three years when I inquired of Luis’ patience to start hitting together. We discovered we only lived about eight blocks from each other, and before I knew it I ended up spending more time in the next four years with Luis Glass than anyone else on the planet.

Luis Glass was a natural-born phenomenon in tennis; a regular child prodigy. Growing up in New York City, he was ranked #1 in his age division on the Eastern Seaboard by the time he was 12 years old. From there, he went on to win consecutive entrance in the U.S. Open at the ages of 16, 17 and 18. At the time, the only other Black player in history to do this in the men’s draw of the Open was Arthur Ashe. This was back when the Open was at the old Forest Hills and was played on grass. In those days, he only experience available on this surface was by invitation from members at private country clubs with grass courts. These amounted to a handful of the most exclusive and racially prejudiced country clubs in America located in the Hamptons on eastern Long Island. So you know when Luis first played at the Open, he was playing on grass for the first time in his life.

The year was 1964, the same year the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The Beatles were singing Help! and the United States had just arrived at ‘ground-zero’ of the Sixties.

THE FOLLOWING YEAR IN 1965, LUIS (17 YEARS OLD) WON THE FORREST HILLS PLATE WHICH IS THE TOURNAMENT OF THE 64 PLAYERS ELIMINATED IN THE FIRST ROUND OF THE OPEN EVENT. LUIS WOULD GO ON TO BECOME A PROTÉGÉ OF ARTHUR ASHE AND IN 1967; HE WAS AWARDED A SCHOLARSHIP TO PLAY AT UCLA WHEN ASHE COACHED THERE. AT UCLA, LUIS WAS ON FIRE PLAYING 3rd singles in his freshman season. He was written up in Sports Illustrated magazine as one of The Three Lou’s at UCLA, together with Lucius Allen and Lou Al Cinder, (AKA: Kareem Abdul Jabbar).

After all this, I was stunned to learn that after his first year at UCLA, Luis dropped out and eventually enlisted (!) in the US Army during the Vietnam War. I never asked him about it, but it sure beat the hell out of me. Then, at some point last summer Luis mentioned to me that he’d written memoirs of his experience in Vietnam.

As I started to read it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Luis had a dyslexic pattern of language dissociation. Now that’s something, but here’s the killer: he’s never even known it! It’s well understood today in the field of education that having undiagnosed dyslexia is about like boxing blindfolded when it comes to school. Moreover, it causes anxiety and a basic frustration of confidence amidst the incessant media onslaught of our times. It naturally fosters an antagonism towards any school-type environment; not to mention a daunting assessment of one’s chances in pursuing any activity requiring coursework.

In hindsight, the picture was now pretty clear to me. Luis had crashed into the academic and confidence Guardrails at UCLA. His enthusiastic personality and boyish appreciation for enjoying life most surely added a little grease to the road, considering the host of distractions surrounding a Black collegiate tennis superstar in California during the late sixties. I mean let’s face it people; it staggers the imagination.

Reading his story, it was clear that his contention with the classroom became a factor in his Army career from the very beginning. His defiance resulted in scant concern while taking the basic Army exam which he summarily tanked. So Luis was pegged by the Army as a blockhead from the start; even more to the point at the time on question, a Black blockhead, and summarily sent careening through what you might call the lower GI track of the Army experience. Ironically, this is part of what makes this story so exceptional. These are the intensely real emotions of a genuine American samurai as he gets caught up on a most rueful ride through the US Army and a trip to Vietnam.

During the years Luis and I had been playing together, a simpatico mutual cognitive understanding developed between us. This was the key to my grasp of what he had originally set to paper; which to an uninitiated reader, may as well have been written in Sanskrit. Even Luis himself had to bust out laughing several times during some of our confrontations with the material he wrote so many years ago, as even he couldn’t piece parts of it right off.

Doing it in our spare time, the original manuscript took the better part of a year to systematically unwind the natural err of script, while reconnoitering the trail of Lou’s inimitable style amidst diverse influences ranging from Vietnamese slang to Ebonics. Somewhere along the way, my own indigenous drift was hooked up with the rest in pursuit of the various deliberations set forth in these pages.

The final collaboration, as presented herein, is a book that reaches right inside the panties of the modern American experience. It serves up the undistilled troot from the crosshairs of the turmoil that defined a generation. As seen through the eyes of a Black American superstar, who finds himself suddenly reversed to the role of antihero, this book plunges into some deeper waters we all face in this life at one point or another. This is a truly genuine piece of American writing, and offers appreciable insights on the Vietnam thing, the Black thing, the White thing, the American sixties thing, and that age old being alive thing—just to name a few off the top of my head.

Bob Burke

02/01/2001

Page 1

To tell you, I’de like to spend a little more time telling you. Out in the World and you know my birth date; it wouldn’t give you any more information than what I planned to tell you anyway. Something new though, I’m in the twenty-first century. My birth took place in the last one, the twentieth century. Oh yeah, everybody, back then swore they knew what was and is happening. They swore it! I’ve written a book already and someone said to me you might have experienced prejudice and if you’ve written anything, about it, I’m interested. I said of course and started to try and transcend. Not go back to the last century, I left it behind with every obedience there was to all that had mattered, TIME. Yeah still can’t turn the clock back all the way to then. I probably wished I had known more then like I do now, you know get the sophisticated reports that let you think past the predicament whatever trouble you’ve run into. Anyway, suddenly, I’m amidst life ready to go out into the streets. If you’re with me you were somewhere in the GHETTO after being in Brooklyn, New York. I guess, everybody heard of New York City but, this wasn’t the SOUTH and it was before 1950. Yeah, that’s a long time ago even for me right now, but I’m going, to give it a try. Just over the HORIZON was the SUN like everywhere else but me, about two years old trying to digest the KOREAN WAR and racial conflict would be unfair. Both sounded like gunfire of the worst kind far off, but with repercussions for all of us. My parents had to fit in and family strife now was centered around issues that still didn’t have names. The cure came about somehow in this century. In the next fifty years all the answers eventually manifested themselves, the common cold and FLU some cripplers just to name a few that found cures.

Me, I didn’t do nothing, just seemedly reaped the rewards, got my information from a BLACK and white TV set common now to almost every household. I wish I’de known what exact name for our economic plateau, just above poor I didn’t know, but at least my parents had jobs. I was fishing for answers and pressure to make it became paramount as I realized I needed MONEY in this one to make it BIG. Savoring my FREEDOM, I’de notice anything but poor. The TENEMENTS were everywhere and it took more explosive than fired in one WAR (just kidding) to demolish, rebuild it and change it to what you see now. Now, we have low-income housing then it was tenements, and people everywhere, were talking about, the SLUM LANDLORDS, you know they could do anything to you even if you had paid the rent. Sometimes, they aired on television for the first time or via the media about how people lived in rat-infested houses with no heat or Hot and Cold running water. No one had heard of the land lord being punished but it was starting to happen because city officials, government people were being complained to about the unfairness of their living conditions. To me, the LANDLORD was a MYTHICAL BOSS only my parents knew about so these changes that were happening didn’t change or alter my WORLD, the world of a child not yet in school.

The courts, judicial system could stem the tide of complaint about poor and unfair living conditions, however, their power, was almost curtailed by reality since everybody sided with, the almighty DOLLAR. There were the ‘HAVES’ and ‘have nots.’ At first it seemed that BLACKS were discriminated against and since the ‘WHITES’ were a dominant force of the LANDLORDS, many people didn’t feel like siding with the underdog BLACK TENANTS who couldn’t afford the new LEGAL AID, taking the landlord to court quite often. They had signed LEASES that guaranteed them certain privileges and when they got to their homes were told by the SLOTHFUL LANDLORD to ‘GO FETCH.’

No, not all the cases then involved me or my BLACK constituents. NEW YORK was called the melting pot and in the GHETTO, you saw firsthand what that meant. There was everybody, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Lithuanians, Asians, and then of course the WHITES called IMMIGRANTS, these are people who’d come to this country from other countries with no more than their belongings in hand to seek their FORTUNE in the UNITED STATES. I couldn’t know all about them but if they crossed my path, I’de have to broaden my vistas of EPISTEMOLOGY. You’re probably wondering why I don’t mention Indians, they, having been in the HISTORY TEXTS EARLY. Well they as everybody else I mentioned were discriminated against although tales of them on TELEVISION did serve to include them vastly, we were all pushed aside, given a place outback and noone BLACK had a store front of any kind. I was walking down the street in New York City noticing what people call STEREOTYPES as though discrimination were rampant. Blacks could only have menial positions and it wasn’t till later that JANITORIAL jobs became known as ‘CUSTODIAL ENGINEERING’. To myself I thought they probably still pay him a measly salary, one that I’de run across mentioned by the media, newspapers, television. I had been taught early that this BLACK MAN had his job shining shoes cause he knew his ‘place’ and BLACKS or ‘boys’ could work out back. Fearless, despite wholesale discrimination, segregation down South, I wondered what forces would and were being sent in motion so that my life would be one of an Equal AMERICAN CITIZEN with EQUAL RIGHTS. At this time there were very few businesses owned exclusively by BLACKS and about now BLACKS were invading the economic strata of some kind of ‘COLOR’ collar which meant lower middle class. You’de had respect for a family if both parents worked since they could probably eventually afford their own house. About ten years later BLACKS had become an enigma of the lower middle class and were finally a different ‘color collar’ better than the last one. You know ‘White collar’ meant you had an office job, BLUE COLLAR means you had a job outside above the common laborer, pick and shovel man, you should be a carpenter, garbage man (sanitation engineer). The ARMED FORCES were opening their ARMS IN OPEN INVITATION PROMISING THE OPTION OF no discrimination. Of course for a child of only a few years this was only a distant possibility but this was encouraging since it meant that there were going to be changes and BIG changes.

Big changes could happen and these people profiting from discrimination could be wrong and called wrong and eventually brought to justice.

Yeah, right now equal rights was being only talked about, it wasn’t in the books, yet as law guaranteeing our people equal voice rights to vote and refusal to be discriminated against. Cases appeared, came up usually about the first, second and third amendments in THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, freedom to speak, freedom to worship, as you please, and read what you want, print whatever you want as long as the government of the UNITED STATES wasn’t threatened. Yeah there was everybody while we’re being discriminated, sometimes even lynched playing on archaic amendments!

Sometimes I would be apprehensive because of Women’s rights becoming the focal point. No, I didn’t know anything and quite rightfully, right now, I don’t dwell on a subject of even greater, sensitivity than what was my fight. LADIES were out in the street carrying signs for a better tomorrow, for the cause of Women’s rights and it might have been discussed but not by us, too young I guess.

Walking the streets and taking the SUBWAY at FOUR. Avoiding BUMS, called BUMS, not TRANSIENTS. Some people kicked at them leading their family around them, drunken BUMS, drunk off cheap wine and they’de show up anywhere asking for a dime to help their drunken habit and had the nerve to tell you, GOD BLESS YOU!

SUBWAY

Back then the subways were my Big adventure leading under the city, a sprawling metropolis of gray buildings, smoke pouring from smokestacks and skyscrapers. The green was found at the parks specifically one Big park in the center of town called CENTRAL PARK. Anything could happen on the subways and there was only an occasional policeman to appear and give a semblance, of order. Rowdy thugs and gangs tried to control the subways as well as the streets. Writing on the walls was everywhere, brags of gangs, identification. You knew to avoid almost everybody and during the RUSH HOUR, (hours of work going to, and, returning from work) you were packed like a sardine in a tin packed up against God knows who, you had to use your WILES to get off at your station and sometimes you had to give the extra push to gain an exit from the sullen, unruly crowds. Vandals were as popular as the thieves who’d grab your purse in a minute and run with usually noone in pursuit. The elderly were victims of the gangs sometimes murdered, or raped, or even beaten, for the change they had in their pockets. Law only prevailed when some capable citizens with help from the authorities arrived early to the scene and yet I’de ride to school somewhere else taking on the guise early of a commuter going to work. So many improvements had to be made. I, as a youngster almost seemed ignorant but I wasn’t. I knew it to be paramount to keep from getting the BAD ONE WAY TICKET.

Early, the pressure was which side you’re on and do you belong to a gang? Teeming, millions of us and most answered by going to work with little time to really belong anywhere else. Beautiful women, girls occasionally walked by and you early sensed who her pimp was. Yeah, I kind of wondered just a little kid. Identification came early with sensationalism and some more of the more rowdy had to get their names in the paper, and they saw a person on TV, he got the IMMORTALITY of the press. I realized, the gangsters carried guns, or had one hid somewhere, and were to be avoided as 2 followed one, kidnapping, rape belonged to their dominion. Nobody wanted to get cut and a BLADE could do it flick out, the culprit be on the run, a bloody mess the only witness. The STILLETO or SWITCHBLADE became the talk and do, item all the way from the street to school. A push of a button doesn’t push anybody’s buttons and a sharpened BLADE of steel would flash out giving the holder all the confidence he and sometimes she might ever need. Pipes, chains, anything a user might be able to pick up. Sometimes GOSSIP could endanger an unwary walker. Hey man, give me five. I replied with my hands in my pockets and the BLACK stranger said, you do it like this, you hold out your hand, and I hit it. I said what good does it do? He replied ‘hey you get to know what’s the happening thing, what everybody, BLACK and HEP does.’ I gave him FIVE and he laughs, says ‘I need TEN!’ The mystique had been established and when school time arrived I wanted to know if everybody knew how to get FIVE. Sometimes we overdid it hitting the other guy hard but because we were young and willing to get into a scrape over anything, it was nescient. Next thing I know I’m bopping, yeah, if you BAD, you got to be able to BOP, or you ain’t with it ain’t BLACK ain’t one of us going to make it BIG someday. It was brave since not one of the other races did it, they had their own gangs. And if they saw you bopping they’de go and accuse you of anything saying you’re ‘hooligan!’ Your heart could be as pure as driven snow, but if you were caught BOPPING you were BAD. You know for us BAD meant good, you know by good, we meant together solid when the BLACK revolution came in the 1970’s. I knew I was going to run into people, and of course heard nothing but manners remember your manners, but how prejudice, to be back in retaliation? You know I was being discriminated upon and nothing was happening that I knew that said I was going to get me some justice! Except for possibly the sister (NUN) who was standing out in the rain, collecting for charity for