JUST A TYPICAL FATHER

You were born on the Eastern Caribbean Island of St. Kitts and joined the armed forces

of the United States from the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Thomas) and then did your duties in Vietnam. You are one of those veterans who seldom speak about your duties in that theatre, but I have seen your rusted medals. You then joined the boys in blue in Oakland, California, and then saw fit to bring me from abject poverty to these cornucopia shores in 1981. I remembered my brothers and I wanting a swimming pool and you agreed, provided that we get a paper route; we delivered the Oakland Tribune until we could raise the funds for the pool. I remembered being scared to death when we had to deliver over three hundred papers by ourselves because you were unexpectedly called to your real job. I remembered you teaching me to drive a stick shift and taking me down to the dreaded hills of San Francisco and hearing your constant admonition of, “stop with the Jack rabbit starts and don’t burn out my clutch.” I remembered once we had finished painting, and, on our way home, you stopped to have lunch at a McDonald in Martinez, California; when we entered, it seems that because we were Black, the white patrons were laughing and making fun at us. You didn’t panicked, but you exposed your police badge and revolver and proceeded to let your country mile length of credit cards deliberately be seen by said patrons whose giggling stopped abruptly. I remembered you making my brothers and I privy to certain proclivities of certain celebrities long before they came to light. I remembered how you had the ability to explain some philosophical concept, and, at the same time on Saturdays, break down you corvette and put it back together. I’ve always had benign envy for you for being an intellectual and also being mechanically inclined and my having no clue in the latter matters. Because of your well rounded faculties, my brother Louis and I scoured the dictionary to find a word to describe you, which was, “Factotum,” (Jack of all trades). In a past blog, I told those who read this blog how you would excoriate the members of Verily Prime when you don’t agree with us--which is seldom. Alas, you are not perfect because I wished that our blogs would slowly scrape the scales from your eyes, especially when it comes to our secular messiah president, and let you see the light, ala the Apostle Paul’s conversion on his way to Damascus. I know that you read the blog religiously, but whether you are now in Georgia, Greece, or Africa,I wish you a happy birthday dad and longevity in Christ Jesus.

-Verily Prime