Parting Shot

By Thomas Harper Jr

Its time that people on the street have more access to truth about things that directly affect them. Some of you may think that this is a novel, to be burnt after reading. I strongly differ with you on that point; Marvin Gaye had it right years ago, when he asked the question Whats Going On? For those of us on the streets we need to know, if we are going to survive in this world. No, dont burn the novel, go find out whats going on in your community, city, county, state, and country. Know who you are sleeping with, whats happening to your children, and will you have any grand children, and what kind of life will they have? Truth is, often stranger than fiction!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469137803

Thomas Harper Jr

He is a survivor, a family man; he has one biological son, one grandson but has many sons and daughters who perceive him as a father figure. He has escaped most of the entrapments of this culture for a man of color. Yes he has marched in numerous events, he has aided many in our society, he has traveled around the world, he has earned several college degrees, both at the university level, and at the street level, he now says it’s time for more than the talented tenth to step forward and assume responsibility for our village

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Copyright © 2012 by Thomas Harper Jr.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011962763

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-3779-7

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                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-3780-3

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1  The Gathering

Chapter 2  Where you came from?

Chapter 3  The Early Years

Chapter 4  Those Beautiful School Days

Chapter 5  Periods of Enlightenment

Chapter 6  Proud of the Skin You’re In

Chapter 7  Count Your Blessings

Chapter 8  Who or What Can We Trust?

Chapter 9  Are They Our Most Precious Possessions?

Chapter 10  We Educate But Do We Elevate?

Chapter 11  The Parting Shot

Author Biography

Author Cover Biography

Book Summary

End Notes For A Parting Shot

DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated to all persons who love and respect this country, who seek truth, who value the morals that this country was founded upon. It’s especially dedicated to the people on Main Street.

This novel is also dedicated to all parents-to-be, my wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson, as well as offsprings to come, may they all be truth seekers and proud parents. They must ensure that truth and honesty prevails.

Finally I must salute those dedicated teachers and others who mentored me, who assisted and enabled me from the beginning to the present. They gave so much and received so little.

We trained hard… but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. 1

PREFACE

This novel is written about a character named Smooth and others in his life. The story deals with life at the street level or Main Street, as some of you prefer to call it, not from a gated-community point of view. It’s about and for the everyday man; it’s for the Main Street types and not necessarily for the Wall Street types, although it wouldn’t hurt them to be more knowledgeable about life at the street level where there is so much pain at this time. You might ask guys like the former senator Brooke, former president Clinton, former number one golfer Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, etc., about what really goes on on Main Street. This novel is certainly inspired by real-life experiences. Main Street people are in a psychological storm. There is little togetherness on Main Street. There are so many people crying for peace and harmony; how long must they cry? Yeah, those persons at the top and in the gated communities don’t have a clue as to what’s going on Main Street, and you know what, those of us on Main Street definitely don’t know what’s going on behind the gates. All the characters who are sitting around and participating in the discussions at the 20 Grand Night Club are living on Main Street. Some had to come from deep in the country to get to Main Street; most have managed to earn a college degree. They all moved up to Main Street, but most never got away from the delta and what the delta stands for. They transitioned. However, the movement didn’t necessarily mean elevation. Yes, they all are veterans, so to speak, of life on Main Street America.

Smooth is a character, kinda like an Iceberg Slim of sorts. You could say his word was his bond; he’s dependable. He loves his nation, his family, and his institutions. He is quiet while at work and generally rather serious about his endeavors. He can handle difficulty. He communicates a message of stability and seldom gets bent out of shape about anything. Yeah, Smooth had distrust for fancy shit in speech, in dress, or whatever. When he has done his best, he moves on to relax with the best, knowing that he had given his best, in whatever endeavor he has undertaken.

Our main character is not perfect but very honest in his outlook on life in the good old USA. As far as he is concerned, America is the greatest country in the world. But there is much work to be done in order for America to remain one of the greatest civilizations ever. As I write I suspect now that many people have declared that America is no longer the model country of this world.

Throughout this novel, Smooth and others are saying, in the magical words of the blues master Tommy Castro, How Long Must I Cry for our people? Something must be done. Amos, Tom, Mamie, Jacque, and others are sharing some life experiences in order to hopefully persuade one parent to take a stand.

CHAPTER 1

The Gathering

Amos, Tom, Mamie, and Smooth, along with Amos’s girlfriend, Grace, and a few other classmates are attending a class reunion in the Motor City. They are sitting around a table at the old 20 Grand show bar talking with other friends while they reminisce and discuss the issues of the day. It’s Main Street against the world.

Amos says, This was once the most industrial city in the world. Now it’s a ghost town.

Tom asks, Did you guys know that it is the fifth most segregated city in the country?

They all say, No, you’ve got to be kidding.

No, I’m not. There is so much information that never gets to the streets. Somehow that must change.

Amos tells Smooth, The new mothers and fathers, and the new mothers and fathers-to-be will need real insight from practitioners like those who labored on the battlefield of life for many years and who came from the bowels of poverty to share and hopefully to help children and families of the future have a positive impact on society, our nation, and this world. You know it’s not really how high you climb, but it’s how far you have come.

Smooth replies, You know, Amos, it’s hard to inspire those around you, in order to help make this a better world because of me and not in spite of me, but I don’t believe that it is ever too late to make a difference.

Smooth tells Amos, We lost our reason to be, particularly in the black community, and our resolve to excel in America in general. We used to make our values more important than things. We are what we tolerate. I know it’s been said some place before, ‘people without vision perish.’

In our rush for the gold, we lost our souls. If we are to survive, Smooth feels, every child has got to find one parent who is willing to take a stand. "You know Amos, you get out of life just what you tolerate. It’s imperative that we find that one parent who will listen.

"Some say we are confused people of color because basically we may be of color, but we are different in many respects. We have the color in common, but our tribal origins are different. Is this why we can’t unify at this late date in time about anything?

Somewhere in our society, somewhere in our city, somewhere in our community, somewhere in our state, somewhere in this country, there must be a cartoon character, or something in that vein, that will cause us to take a stand and fight together for a great value system so that we may value people as we once did.

Amos says to Tom, Smooth is looking for that one parent who will believe as he does. But he’s right. We can no longer allow ‘anything goes’ in our house. We are what we tolerate.

Tom interjects that some of this stuff that they are talking about here is the same stuff he has talked about with other people in airport waiting rooms, the barbershops—with white, black, Hispanic, and others on the street. We know about our conditions, but the powers that be don’t know and don’t care.

The measure of a man is not how high he climbs but from what depths he has come.

Smooth calls the waitress and asks her to bring another round of Remy Martin XOs. Because we are going to be here for a while. She says, Yes, sir! And off she went to get the drinks, shaking her sexy butt. Mamie remarks, Shit, it’s early yet. It’s only 7:30 p.m.

Smooth smiles to himself and thinks about that time he walked into Faces and saw the Vurna sitting at the table with nine of her buddies. He thought he was cool when he sent over one cognac to the Vurna, and that was it—nothing for her friends. Man, later that night when he crawled into bed with her big fine tail, she chewed his ass out about embarrassing her in front of her friends by just sending over one fucking drink. However, that didn’t stop her from loving him thoroughly. He has learned a lot since those days.

Anyway Amos’s lady friend chimed in, I bet you guys had some interesting friends and acquaintances through the years. Bet you guys knew or know a lot of people.

She was right in believing that the story of their lives was like a Machiavellian tale of them moving through the asphalt jungle five hundred years after Nicolai wrote his book. All that afternoon and evening, they would talk about the personalities and the personas of the many people that had affected their lives.

Yeah, their journeys started in the early thirties before television, computers, and instant communication dominated conversations. They talked about this shit because, like what Buddy Guy says, It’s a Jungle Out There. They don’t know it, but they are talking about shit that might be used to save some families, by any means necessary.

Well, Amos, Tom, and Smitty decided to talk about Smooth for a minute. Amos said that Smooth’s mom was born in Mississippi. She hailed from the north central part of Leflore County, Mississippi, up around the Swiftown, Doddsville, Ruleville, Leland, and the Tunica area. She’s one of seven children.

It is alleged that Tunica County is the poorest county in the poorest state in the USA. This is that part of Mississippi where Morgan Freeman, the award-winning actor, lives at least part of the time.

Tom chimed in and said, Man, ya’ll don’t know Mississippi. For black people, Mississippi in the twentieth century was famed for its retrograde brutality. It was the earnest and general feeling that any Negro who entered the hellhole called the state of Mississippi for any reason other than to attend the funeral of a very close relative… was well on the way to losing his mentality or had already lost it.

What Mississippi was to the rest of the country, the Delta was to Mississippi. Though it makes up less than one-sixth of the state’s area, the Delta accounted for over one-third of the lynchings reported between 1900-1930 and was legendary for towns with signposts warning black people not to be caught within their borders after sundown.

By the 1920s the region was ruled by a sharecropping system that tied black farmers to the land in a form of economic bondage that at times seemed a little different from slavery. The plantations were vast, transportation was difficult, and workers had little choice but to buy all their goods at company stores that would sell to them on credit at inflated prices, creating a form of debt servitude.

Once in debt, they could be bound to work off the money owed, and the system often functioned as an adjunct to the labor system. There are numerous reports of valued workers who could kill someone and never go to prison, because their boss man would arrange for them to remain in his fields.

Likewise, a man who seemed likely to cause trouble for the boss could be transferred to a prison farm for a couple of years to settle him down, then be paroled back to his home plantation, where he would go on doing the same sort of work he had done inside.

And that is not to mention all the labor done by convicts, who built much of the levee and railroad system and were also sometimes leased out to plantations as unpaid farmhands. It is often suggested that it was this vicious oppression, and the misery that went along with it, that fueled the deep emotional power of the area’s great blues singers." 2

Whew, that’s some shit for us to have come out of, Tom, says Smooth.

You know what, some motherfuckers are still killing black men in Mississippi and bragging about it. You know we are what we tolerate!

"Well, it is what it is… the heart of the Mississippi Delta area, the home of the Delta blues, and it’s where the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and others were truly motivated to develop their musical talents after playing and studying with some of the originators. We are talking about Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Son House, Muddy Waters, BB King, John Lee Hooker, Howling Wolf just to name a few legends and creators of the Delta blues.

Those English guys ventured to the Delta to study and play with the creators and legends of the blues world. They then shared it with the world. It is also where some of the most renowned blues clubs are located such as Ground Zero. I think it’s still there in Clarksdale, says Amos.

Smooth’s mother’s parents were Louis and Mary. Mary eventually came to live in the Motor City and eventually moved in with her daughter, Lois, in Motown. But before that his grandma, Mary, lived by herself for a while and eventually married a gentleman named Tom from Roanoke, Virginia. Smooth’s grandfather, Louis, died before he was born.

He doesn’t have a clue as to who Grandpa Louis was or anything. He doesn’t even remember ever seeing any kind of image of him. For that matter, he heard very little talk of his maternal grandfather. However, his grandma Mary lived with her second husband until he passed, and then she moved in with his aunt Lois.

His mom was the youngest of six or seven children. She was about five feet three or four inches tall, had a medium brown complexion with a pear-shaped and relatively short hair and nice, shapely legs. By the way, her daddy only stood about five feet one inch tall.

Mary tended not to do a lot of mixing and getting involved socially. Most of her social interactions were with immediate family members or close, close neighbors.

She also didn’t do a lot of working outside of the house. From what Smooth overheard, she didn’t pick much cotton. She picked enough to know that certain things in Mississippi would not do for her children.

Dipping snuff wasn’t her thing either, and she smoked very little. She had very little schooling, probably stopped going to school around the third grade. Neither of her parents had gone to anybody’s school, and this was true for just about everybody in her family.

But Mae, as his father called her, was bright in her own way; she managed to survive sixty-one years, raised two boys, and maintained her marriage. Smooth remembers her as a no-nonsense person whose senses regarding life were uncommonly sharp.

She had a sense of humor, but it was not often revealed. Her favorite pastime was the soap operas on the radio, especially Young Widow Brown and Portia Faces Life. Sometimes she would play some funny card games like quarter Tonk or Coon King.

Man, most of us did not know where that Coon King game came from, says Smooth "No one knows whether Rummy originated in Mexico or Asia where it is still played. Some people believe that Rummy originated in Romania. Others connect the origins of Rummy games to the early Spanish communities who moved over to the west.

The Spanish card game of Conquian bares striking resemblance to Rummy and is sometimes considered to be an ancestor of all modern Rummy games. One theory was that Conquian (then known as Coon Can, Coo King, or Conkin) started in Spain hundreds of years ago and was later carried to Mexico before spreading to the American southwest in the late nineteenth century.

Another theory, espoused by John Scarne, suggests almost the opposite i.e., that it started out in America and was later exported to Mexico where it was named Conquian. 3

Amos chimes in, Ain’t that some shit? We thought the brothers on the streets created that game. I guess not.

Smooth’s mother, Mae, had several brothers and sisters, most of whom worked on the Stovall, Eastland’s, and other plantations in that part of the state. Mae had two sisters—Delores and Commiller—and there were two brothers that Smooth remembers—Embee and John.

The other two siblings were unknown to him.

Aunt Commiller and Uncle John, along with Aunt Commiller’s husband, worked on the Eastland’s plantation in the Doddsville, Mississippi, area. This plantation was owned by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi or his close relatives.

Smooth begins the conversation again. "Man, you talking about houses with tins roofs, no running water, no electricity, and no indoor toilet facilities. They had coal oil lamps, and the slops jars, and outhouses, just in case some folks out there can’t remember back-in-the-day conditions in Mississippi.

"Of course since they were sharecroppers, ‘Mr. Charley’ always came out ahead in terms of the profit margin. Regardless of how hard you worked, the sharecropper invariably wound up still owing something. Well, enough about that sharecropping shit. Makes my blood boil to think about it.

That was one of the games in that era. It was the Time Shares, Payday Loans, Gift/Reward cards, C-sections, Burial plots of yesterday. The elixirs have changed, but the game is the same.

Man, you talking about darkness at night. Shit, it was dark, dark, and darker. No wonder people had so many children back then. After eating, there was nothing else left to do but have at it, Smooth says with a smile.

Other members of his family also worked on the Dockery plantation which was also located in the area. Smooth remembers hearing people talk about them having kinfolk that worked on the Stovall plantation when cotton was the major crop in the Delta area. Yes, cotton was king back then.

They worked with and among folks like Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Albert King, and John Lee Hooker just to name a few of the blues legends. This was during the era when cotton truly was king, before catfish ponds and soybean crops and gambling joints took over the Delta.

This was in the black dirt Delta of Mississippi where Reverend Franklin and Smooth’s daddy roamed for a while preaching to people before both eventually migrated to the Motor City.

Smooth says, "Perhaps my daddy could not keep the same rhythm and pace as the outstanding Reverend Franklin, but you know, Amos, while they roamed and preached, they no doubt referred many times to the book of Numbers chapter 33 and verse 52 in the Bible. This verse is especially useful for our people who endured so much in order for us to be here today."

You see, guys, we have not been in the business of eradicating anyone. We have not tried to destroy and eliminate anyone, or destroy their images, pull them from their high places… yes, we have endured. Do you think that’s why some people may fear genetic annihilation?

It’s ironic Reverend Franklin’s son and Smooth were roller-skating buddies on several occasions at one of the roller rinks outside of the Motor City; neither one of them knew the history behind their fathers having known each other in a different life.

Smooth’s uncle Embee decided early on to hobo north, during the great migration which probably started in the twenties. He wound up in the Motor City and eventually got a job at the Ford Motor company. Embee had no idea that this would become a lifetime job which he could not lose.

Smitty interrupted. He says, You know that trend is reversing itself now. Blacks are heading back south now as we speak.

Yes, we can cite the Capital City, Washington, D.C. Wait. Let me read you something from today’s newspaper:

"In a city that prides itself on being a hub of black culture and politics, a majority of residents have been black since whites began moving to the suburbs en masse at the end of World War II. By 1970 seven out of 10 Washingtonians were black.

"The loss of blacks comes at a time when the city is experiencing a rebound reversing a sixty-year-long slide in population and adding almost twenty thousand new residents between 2000 and 2010.

"The demographic change is the result of almost fifteen years of gentrification that has transformed large swaths of Washington, especially downtown. As housing prices soared, white professionals priced out of neighborhoods such as DuPont Circle began migrating to predominantly black areas such as Petworth and Brookland.

"The city became a tougher place to live for working class families, who had to contend with rising rents and soaring property taxes. Many of the new jobs created over the past decade have required higher education. The phenomenon exposed the city’s fault lines along income, class and race.

‘Clearly, D.C. is one of the most polarized cities, by income and education, in the country,’ said Rodrick Harrison, a demographer at Howard University who spent ten years with the Census Bureau." 4

Smooth adds, Somebody said if it’s going on there, you can bet it’s going on in other urban areas across this country, so we got a back-to-the-south movement. All of sudden D.C. has become the best place in the country to raise your child and send them to school. Seems like things just changed overnight.

Anyway Embee had indeed earned a lifetime job at Ford due to an on-the-job related accident where hot metal was splashed on him. He, however, was not physically impaired in the least bit.

Smooth smiled as he says, Uncle Embee often said that the only way he could not have a job at Ford was that he would have to die. Man, was he right?

It is this uncle that Smooth’s mother and father moved in with for a short while until they could find a place in Hamtramck to live. Uncle Embee, who was all of five feet six inches tall, was a no-nonsense kind of guy like his sister. It was known that he was not to be messed with. His favorite statement was What I Say.

CHAPTER 2

Where you came from?

While Smooth does not remember exactly how long his family stayed with his uncle Embee, he remembers that he was not allowed to walk around in the house with regular shoes on. He had to wear soft house shoes in order not to make any noise in the house. Other than that exception, everything else seems to have been okay.

But his father wanted his own place, and he soon found a house for them to rent. This probably happened within a year’s time.

His uncle Embee had spent time in the Mississippi State Prison, better known as the Parchman Farm, for cutting several men. Parchman housed generations of convicts on its 100,000 acres of Delta Cotton land. The prisoners took care of all their food needs, built what equipment they needed for the most part, and were guarded by shotgun-toting trustees.

The trustees were often convicted murderers who used their positions of power in the way that prisoners have always used their positions of power—the strap, hung on the walls in the camp buildings, ruled! Smooth’s uncle and daddy told him about the strap being administered to them while they lay facedown on the floor.

Smooth’s face grows serious as he says, One of them once told me about some men being fucked in the asshole by other men. Yeah. Once your asshole had been taken you were required by your man to walk around with your pants hanging down. This indicated that you were already spoken for by one of the major boys. You had been fucked and spoken for.

Smooth continues to reminisce about his family. "You know, Amos, it was uncommon for us to hear any young black men talking about how well they could ‘jail,’ as if it was a badge of honor to become a convict.

But Uncle Embee made it clear to me that being in prison was not something to be proud of. He also told me that the song called the ‘Midnight Special’ was a good description of the late-night train that brought the convicts’ wives and girlfriends up for the weekend conjugal visits. Hell, I didn’t know what the word ‘conjugal’ meant.

"Yeah, Parchman was highly segregated, with separate ‘camps’ for the black and white inmates. I think that the Chinese convicts were with whites, and the Indians were with the blacks.

"When Embee got out he had changed somewhat. He eventually became a deacon at one of the Baptist churches in the Motor City and was leading an upstanding life. He remarried, and out of that union he had two sons who were close to my age.

"Little Ralph and Little Jim—that’s what they were called. Ralph and I became very close through the years. We visited one another often and travel about together more often than not.

"Embee also had a daughter by another mother who had migrated to the Motor City as well. Her name was