Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
LIFE WITH VAL - THE WAY IT WAS
(The Party)
(The Party)
by
Eric L. Wattree
.
Eric L. Wattree
.
This is Christmas Day of 2020. It's 49 years to the day that I married the love of my life, my late wife, the former Valdie Lavern Whitmore. Val died during the early morning of April 27, 2005. But to my entire family it seems like she only passed yesterday. She left such an impact on all of our lives that none of us have managed to lay her to rest. I wrote the piece below while Val was still alive and kept me scratching my head, because anyone who knew her would tell you she was a unique piece of work.
.
Valdie was an amazing young woman. I met her when she was 14 and I was 16 years old. But in spite of our youth, the first time I looked in her eyes, she made me feel significant. The only reason I'm even capable of writing this piece is because of her love, encouragement, and determination that I did something worthwhile with my life.
.
Ever since I was a child I loved to jot down my thoughts. Even before I could actually write, I would draw my thoughts using little stickmen. Val recognized that tendency in me when we were kids, and while I simply saw it as doodling, she saw it as something she could build on. After she dragged me in off the street, and she and my mother housebroke me to the point where I was settled enough to be suitable as a husband, she married me on Christmas Day of 1971, and that's when her true campaign began. She was only 19 and I was 21 years old, but looking back on it today, it's clear that Val already had our lives planed out. She helped me to see life through her eyes, and through her eyes I began to see a man that I never knew was there.
.
Val was always a forward-looking thinker. Even when she was 14 years old, she was forward-thinking enough to team up with my mother to gradually coax me off the street. They got together and devised various strategies of getting me to start focusing more on her and my future than on the road dawgs I was running with the street. They accomplished that mission in unique ways that I'll be discussing in much greater detail in later writings. But now, we were married, and the big push was about to really begin, the push to build a man capable of raising her children. Then after my daughter and son were born, she stepped back and allowed me to raise them, while she continued to nurture me from the shadows.
.
One example of how Val pulled that off was, one day after reading something I'd written, she casually said, "Eric, I think you need to take your writing more seriously and really get into it". But being young, macho, and still lacking her focus, I told her, "Sittin' around tryin' write is a White thang. I gotta make a dollar." In response, she said, "Go tell James Baldwin that shit. You obviously like to write, so you should follow your instincts. Instincts are God's way of letting you know the talents he's blessed you with. But you're allowing yourself to be blinded by always having the White man on your mind. You need to start thinking about you. The White man doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you pursue the things you love."
.
Valdie was an amazing young woman. I met her when she was 14 and I was 16 years old. But in spite of our youth, the first time I looked in her eyes, she made me feel significant. The only reason I'm even capable of writing this piece is because of her love, encouragement, and determination that I did something worthwhile with my life.
.
Ever since I was a child I loved to jot down my thoughts. Even before I could actually write, I would draw my thoughts using little stickmen. Val recognized that tendency in me when we were kids, and while I simply saw it as doodling, she saw it as something she could build on. After she dragged me in off the street, and she and my mother housebroke me to the point where I was settled enough to be suitable as a husband, she married me on Christmas Day of 1971, and that's when her true campaign began. She was only 19 and I was 21 years old, but looking back on it today, it's clear that Val already had our lives planed out. She helped me to see life through her eyes, and through her eyes I began to see a man that I never knew was there.
.
Val was always a forward-looking thinker. Even when she was 14 years old, she was forward-thinking enough to team up with my mother to gradually coax me off the street. They got together and devised various strategies of getting me to start focusing more on her and my future than on the road dawgs I was running with the street. They accomplished that mission in unique ways that I'll be discussing in much greater detail in later writings. But now, we were married, and the big push was about to really begin, the push to build a man capable of raising her children. Then after my daughter and son were born, she stepped back and allowed me to raise them, while she continued to nurture me from the shadows.
.
One example of how Val pulled that off was, one day after reading something I'd written, she casually said, "Eric, I think you need to take your writing more seriously and really get into it". But being young, macho, and still lacking her focus, I told her, "Sittin' around tryin' write is a White thang. I gotta make a dollar." In response, she said, "Go tell James Baldwin that shit. You obviously like to write, so you should follow your instincts. Instincts are God's way of letting you know the talents he's blessed you with. But you're allowing yourself to be blinded by always having the White man on your mind. You need to start thinking about you. The White man doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you pursue the things you love."
.
I had already planed to check into school part-time on the GI bill, but after Val's constant harassment I agreed to go full-time. So, I quit my job at the Ortho Mattress Co. and I went back to school. I majored in Psychology and minored in Law. That was the turning point in my life, because it became clear that I had an innate understanding of both psychology and the law that was better than most. One law professor built his entire class on he and I arguing cases before the class. He would give me a case to study, and in the following class we would argue the case before the class while they would take notes on our respective positions. In the next class we would discuss the merits of the case, and in the following class, they'd be tested. That was the pattern that we followed all term. He later told me that if I didn't become an attorney that I would be missing my calling.
.
So Val helped me to find the things in my life that I had a natural affinity for, and it resulted in a huge boost to my self-esteem. All of a sudden I went from being a garden variety hood rat, to having something that I specialized in, and that gave me a sense of identity. I fell head-over-heels in love with both writing, and the world of knowledge in general. As a result, I became a self-employed paralegal with a degree in psychology, and they worked together like hand in glove. I was paid by attorneys one third of their legal fees to research and write legal briefs for them. What placed me in demand was my understanding of psychology allowed me to write the briefs in such a way that after the judges read them, they came into court just as upset with our opponent as we were, and in many cases, when the opposing attorney's read the brief, they just wanted to settled. In addition, as a result of all of the research I was doing, I got to know the law better than most attorneys. Sometimes they would call me at home just to discuss their cases.
.
So, at this point in my life, thanks to Val, writing, research, and the dissemination of knowledge consumes my every waking hour. And, and instead of my abilities declining as I age, they're becoming more pronounced. But the best part is, now that Val's gone, exploring knowledge and disseminating what I've found through writing serves as a conduit to her soul. Whenever I write, I feel like she's standing over my shoulder and whispering in my ear. I can here her saying, "That's right, baby, speak on it!"
.
So, Val, this one’s for you, baby. Since you’ve passed, I’ve found that it is indeed possible for life to go on, but not without you in my heart. So, as I promised on the day we were married, and again on your headstone - Until Death Do Us Part - and Beyond.
.
So Val helped me to find the things in my life that I had a natural affinity for, and it resulted in a huge boost to my self-esteem. All of a sudden I went from being a garden variety hood rat, to having something that I specialized in, and that gave me a sense of identity. I fell head-over-heels in love with both writing, and the world of knowledge in general. As a result, I became a self-employed paralegal with a degree in psychology, and they worked together like hand in glove. I was paid by attorneys one third of their legal fees to research and write legal briefs for them. What placed me in demand was my understanding of psychology allowed me to write the briefs in such a way that after the judges read them, they came into court just as upset with our opponent as we were, and in many cases, when the opposing attorney's read the brief, they just wanted to settled. In addition, as a result of all of the research I was doing, I got to know the law better than most attorneys. Sometimes they would call me at home just to discuss their cases.
.
So, at this point in my life, thanks to Val, writing, research, and the dissemination of knowledge consumes my every waking hour. And, and instead of my abilities declining as I age, they're becoming more pronounced. But the best part is, now that Val's gone, exploring knowledge and disseminating what I've found through writing serves as a conduit to her soul. Whenever I write, I feel like she's standing over my shoulder and whispering in my ear. I can here her saying, "That's right, baby, speak on it!"
.
So, Val, this one’s for you, baby. Since you’ve passed, I’ve found that it is indeed possible for life to go on, but not without you in my heart. So, as I promised on the day we were married, and again on your headstone - Until Death Do Us Part - and Beyond.
.
1996
.At this writing, Val and I are 44 and 46 years of age, and we've been married for 25 years. As I pointed out, we were married on a Christmas morning, and she’s been an ongoing gift in my life ever since. We have two kids - a 23 year old daughter, Kai, and a 21-year-old son, Eric, Jr. They both just graduated from college last month (Eric, on my birthday).
.
As I've mentioned previously, ever since I met Val when she was 14, my life hasn't been the same since. I'm sort of a ‘cerebral’, laid-back kind of guy who refuses to make a move without thinking it through. You know the type - the kind of guy who people aren't really sure about until they get to know. Val, on the other hand, is a totally spontaneous, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person that everyone loves at first sight. But she's SO spontaneous that the kids and I have to keep an eye on her to keep her out of trouble.
.
In both high school and college my son was the school basketball star, and before each game countless kids would congregate at my house waiting for Val. Others would go to the gym early to save seats in the bleachers, waiting for her to show up - and when she did, the party was on.
The kids used to call the section where Val sat "The Dog Pound." More than once a player on the other team would miss free throws or plays because they were laughing so hard at something Val might have said about one of the referees or opposing players - and the funny thing was, in spite of that, the referees and the kids on the other teams loved her, and they all called her by her first name - though some of the kids called her "Nani" (baby-talk for mommy).
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Kids who were scheduled to play our team would come by the house and say, "Now, Nani, this is just a game. So don't be doggin' me on the court next week." And she'd say, "I ain’t gon have to, my son's gonna do it for me - and get out of my refrigerator. Don't Ruth feed you?" And sometimes after a game my son would say, "Momma, you know you were a bad girl at the game today, don't you?" And she'd say, "What? That ref's toupee was on crooked! - and don't tell me it ain't a toupee, because real hair don't grow sideways like that". Sometimes I seriously wonder was the Whoopie Goldberg movie, "Eddie," loosely based on Val's Antics.
.
She is so out there. She lives in her very own universe. I tell her sometimes, "Val, if WWIII broke-out, you wouldn't even know it until you heard the blast. And it's true. Val is so oblivious to the things that the rest of us worry about that it verges on dangerous. In spite of the fact that she is well known as one of the top Property Administrators at Hughes Aircraft, she manages to leave all of her business acumen in her desk at work. .
One day, for example, she saw a very expensive household item that she wanted to buy. So she came to me and asked if it was alright for us to purchase it. At the time, we were sort of strapped, so I told her that we didn't have the money. She looked at me with deep disappointment and said, with total sincerity, "What do you mean we don't have the money? You have a box full of checks in your desk drawer." So, needless to say, I handle the family finances - and that's in spite of the fact that she makes $37,000 a year more than I do, and I'm a government employee.
.
The last time we went to have our taxes done the tax preparer (one of her friends) looked up at me and said, "I know you shame." But I wasn't. On the contrary, I was proud of my woman because she's the very best at what she does. Hughes aircraft literally stole her from Rockwell International. She's the only Black person I've ever known to have a corporation contact her and make her an offer to come to work for them. Several years later I worked on a project with her and they even offered me a job, but I've always been a political person and I'm a union and EEOC rep for the postal service. I've only lost one case in over a decade, and I thoroughly love kicking them in their ass. But Val wants me to be a "suit," a corporate executive, and she's convinced that I'll shoot right up the ladder. But I pointed out to her that everyone doesn't see me in the same way that she does. So, that's been was one of the biggest fights we've had in our marriage. She says that I lack ambition, and she also suspects that it's a male ego thing. She claims I'm just afraid that they might make me work for her. She never should have brought that up, because I'd never thought of that possibility until she mentioned it. But now that she had . . .
.
It's Val's disarming personality that makes her so successful, and it's also helped us out of a number of uncomfortable situations. About ten years ago when we moved from Los Angeles to Covina, California, we were one of just a few Black families in the area. Not being used to that sort of situation, we - make that I - was more than just a little uncomfortable. And to make things worse, one of the neighbors had a huge Confederate flag spread across one entire inside wall of his garage - and the garage door was always open. So, whenever we drove down the street his blazing Dixie flag hit us right in the face. I felt uncomfortable with it, but hey, that flag was draped across that wall long before we moved into the neighborhood, and besides, the man has every right to be a bigot - the only thing I hate almost as much as I do a bigot is a person who comes into a situation and thinks everyone else should rearrange their lives to accommodate him. So I just learned to ignore it, as I THOUGHT Val had.
About a month or so after we moved in, however, the lady from across the street invited us to a party that she was having. Again, being the laid-back kind of guy I am, I felt uncomfortable about the prospect. I don't like parties as a matter of course. You have to stand around laughing and smiling when you really don't feel it, and discuss issues that you really don't care about like, "How about those Dodgers?" I don't give a damn about the Dodgers - I don't like football.
.
So parties are not my thing - it makes me feel phony - and I had the feeling that this party would be all that multiplied by a thousand - especially, not knowing anyone, and being the only Black couple there - "Hey, Bubba! Guess who’s comin’ to dinner?"
.
But Val immediately lit-up. The lady had said the magic word - PAAAAAR-TAY! Before I could say a word, Val took the ball and ran with it. "I'd love to! Hey, can I be the bartender? I make the best...." The lady ended up at our house all afternoon laughing and talking with Val. By the time she floated back across the street, under the influence of a quart of Val's "sample" Margaritas, Val was up on all the neighborhood gossip, and the two women had forged an unshakable "Most Favorite Neighbor" Treaty.
.
This was going to be more complicated than I thought - it had become serious. We had just moved to the area, and already, life as we were just coming to know it was about to come to a screeching' end. I could just picture this nice, quiet neighborhood under the influence of Val and her notorious mixed drinks. Once the neighbors came down from their hangovers they'd never forgive us. I could just see the headline of the next day’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune now - "BLACK CHICK CORRUPTS COVINA!" - and knowing my woman, there was no doubt in my mind that’s exactly what was about to happen.
.
Val has a real knack for mixing drinks in a way that masked the liquor. She can blend various juices, fruits, and crushed ice with more artistic flair than a Renaissance master. If she could pull-off the same thing with paint and canvas we'd be instant millionaires. She can mix these drinks so well, and make them so pleasing to the taste, that people generally forget about the gallon of liquor that's in them. We'd have parties where I'd here non-drinkers saying, "Ah, Val, can I have another "slush," please?" I'd think, "slush," my ass. The only thing that's going to be slushed is you, in about five minutes." But Val got a real kick out of it, making innocent people drunk - and now she was about to do it to our new, unsuspecting, highly conservative, neighbors, and this was during a time when we used to ride all around town just trying to spot a Black person. Covina was so White back then that I saw a brother walking down our street and even I was peepin' through the blinds. Val saw me peepin' and opened the door to see what I was peepin' at. When she saw the brother she looked at me and said, "Naw you ain't!"
.
The night of the party I wasn't as uneasy about it as I'd been previously, because by then I'd had a week to get to know both Rose, who seemed to have made Val her closest friend on the block, and her husband, Al, who was really a nice, henpecked, guy. But I still wasn't passionate about the prospect of being paraded about as the new Black guy on the block to a lot of people that I didn't know. So I begged off with a cold that I had made it a point to cultivate three days prior to the event.
.
The night of the party I kissed Val on the cheek and told her to have a good time. But as she was leaving I held on to her hand and reminded her, "but not too good of a time." She promised to be good, and she was off.
.
I then got comfortable and settled into the bedroom to watch television for the night, but I kept the window open and the blinds open so I could keep an eye - and ear - on the party.
.
By 12:30 a.m. the party was going full blast. I could hear the laughter and the faint sound of music playing in the house, but by 2:00 a.m. I began to hear the sounds of Val working her magic. A couple of guys who I recognized as two of my more conservative neighbors were in front of the house arm-wrestling on the hood of a brand new Chrysler, and another guy was calling out to a woman who was struggling down the street barefoot in an evening gown. So I decided I'd better drop in on the party and rescue these people from my recklessly fun-lovin' woman.
.
When I walked in it was clear that Val was in full control of the festivities. It was also clear that I didn't have to worry about uneasy small-talk, because everybody in the house was about as loose as you could get - and still stand up. Val walked up and hugged me, saying, "Hi, honey! Hey everybody! This is my Nu-Nu, Eric." I heard various drunken responses:
.
"Hi, Eric!"
.
"Hey, Nu-Nu!"
.
"What's his name? Nu-NU!!!? What the Hell is that, Swahili?"
.
"Big, ugly rascal, ain't he? Just kiddin', don't beat me up, brother!"
.
Then this one guy walked up and said, "Hi, I'm Stewart. I live down the street. This is quite a lady you've got here."
.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "I hope she's been behaving herself?"
.
"Naw, I can't say that she has," the man said, in a Southern drawl. "First, she done got everybody drunk - but I can't fault her for that, because that's what I came here for - but then, she called me a Commie."
.
I said, "what!?"
.
Then Stewart's wife chimed in. Between the booze and her laughter, she could barely get her words out. She introduced herself as Sue, and said, "No, she asked my husband, 'Are you a communist or something?' And my husband said, 'No, I ain't no damned Commie. What made you ask that?' Then Val said, 'Well, why do you got that Communist flag hangin' in your garage?'" Sue went on, trying to talk through her laughter, "Then Stewart said, 'That ain't no damned communist flag! That's Old Dixie. We from Georgia.'"
.
With that, someone else took up the story. "Then your wife told him, 'Same thing.'" With that, everybody fell out laughing all over again - even me, because I knew Val was serious - as Stewart stood there pretending to be incensed. But everyone knew that while the joke was supposed to be on Stewart, we were actually laughing at the childlike innocence in which Val viewed what should have been a very uncomfortable subject - especially in the current situation. But it turned out that Stewart had been receiving a lot of ribbing over the flag for quite some time, and Val's remark just put the icing on the cake.
.
But it turned out that both Stewart and Sue were really nice people. Stewart is quite an intellectual, and believe it or not, he ended up becoming my closest friend in the neighborhood. We'd get us a 5th of Scotch and spend hours together debating everything - and the more lit-up we got, the more animated the debates became. He'd say, "Okay, I admit it. I’m a Southern bigot - I think we should lynch anybody who roots against Georgia Tech, but you're a radical revolutionary - and you're a bigot too." Then he'd raise his glass and say, "So here's to two jive-ass bigots!" Then we'd laugh and continue getting our heads bad.
.
But by this time both Stewart and I knew better. We had long since agreed on one thing - since the essence of our being is what we think, and physical attributes are purely superficial, it makes more sense to define ourselves according to the way we think, rather than how we looked - and if that is true, then our preoccupation with race was an exercise in stupidity. And Stewart had the last laugh in that regard. The first time he invited me to his house I jokingly asked, "You don't have any Poplar Trees in your backyard, do you?" He laughed and said, "Very funny. But you don't have to worry, I'm fresh out of rope." But when I walked into his den I immediately felt ridiculous, because the first thing that smacked me in the face was two huge portraits, Miles Davis on one wall, and Charlie Parker on the other. So it turned out that I was the one who had prejudged him. He had a larger jazz collection than I did, and I've been collecting jazz albums since I was 14 years old. I had to admire him, because by that time we had been drinking buddies for a couple of months, and even though he knew I played saxophone, he hadn't mentioned a word about being a jazz lover. He'd set me up, and that was the day I learned to never underestimate him. He said, "You thought I was into Merle Haggard, didn't you? So now, who's the presumptuous bigot?"
.
I really liked that guy. He had also quietly taken down his Confederate flag. When I asked him about it he said, "To me it's just a regional symbol, but I can understand how it might be offensive to you, so what the hell?" If it hadn't been for Val I probably never would have met that guy, and I would have been poorer for it, because I learned several lifelong lessons during our friendship.
.
But Val brought many other things into my life as well. I discovered my love for the mechanics of writing as a direct result of recognizing that I didn’t write well enough to answer the long love letters she used to write me while I was in the Marine Corps. Prior to that time I always loved jotting down my thoughts, but I only did it one thought, or one paragraph at a time. But when I was faced with having to respond to her letters, it turned out that I had a problem with stringing my thoughts together in an organized fashion. So in order to get around that shortcoming, I would let her letters guide me. I would respond to her letters by writing a response to each paragraph one at a time. Within a year I was doing all the writing for my battalion commander. That became my job.
.
While I was in the Marine Corps Val was working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and in spite of the fact that she was still living with her mother, when I came home she came by my mother's house to greet me and asked me to go for a ride with her. She had rented me a fully furnished apartment a block away from one of the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles. She moved in 3 months later, on Christmas Day after we went to a Justice of the Peace and got married. She was 19, and I was 21. About a year later, and right after Kai's birth, she encouraged me to quit my job and go to college on the G.I. bill.
.
When I went to college I majored in Psychology, and minored in Law, and I raised my two kids Kai and Eric Jr, based on the cognitive development teachings of Jean Piaget. "Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's 1936 theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called 'genetic epistemology' Piaget placed great importance on the education of children." And Piaget was right on the money. Both my daughter and son turned out beautifully, and so have all five of my grandchildren. My granddaughter, Taylor, just graduated from Jackson State University as a Biology major, and my grandson, Eric III, graduated from Oklahoma City University with a degree in Business Finance.
.
Then several years after I'd finished college and had become a published writer for various publications, she came home one day with a newfangled gadget she'd bought me called a Commodore 64 Computer. Before that, I used to write longhand, and Val what take what I'd written to work and type it out. I guess she got tired of being my transcriber. I still have that computer in my garage. I loved that machine. It gave me freedom and independence - and I just loved seeing my words on the screen. It looked so professional, and it made me feel more professional. So, while living with Val can indeed be challenging, I can’t imagine life without her. God knew just what I needed when he sent her to me.
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I could go on and on about this woman, but I'll put it all in a book one day. But I’ve got to go now - it’s time for me to mount a campaign for dinner.
.
"Oh, Sugar Lips!"
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"Sugar Lips, my ass. Hit the microwave, Buddy!"
.
Well, it turned out that I would be forced to live without her after all, and every day of the 15 years since she's been gone has been agony. I've never understood it, the reason she had to go and leave me here alone. Well, not really alone, she left me a daughter, a son, a granddaughter, four grandsons, and now, a great granddaughter. So, I'm far from alone, but without her, a part of me is missing. Men are not prepared to outlive their wives, and it's caused me to walk through life like a zombie, staring out into space. But she left me a rich zombie, because every one of our babies are a different kind of jewel. I just wish she were here with me to enjoy their luster. She'd be thrilled at the formidable young people that every one of them have become.
.
Baby, I know you didn't like me referring to myself in this way, but thanks to you, I'm proud to say it looks like I'm gonna be the last hood rat in this family. Yeah, that's what I am. You just picked me up, dusted me off, and groomed me to be a suitable father. But deep in my heart, all always be a hood rat, and I'm proud of my background. The adversity that I was forced to experience has made me more rather than less, and my knowledge of the street has helped our babies to avoid many of the pitfalls of the Black experience.
I loved that house, because it introduced the soul of a child to the beauty of solitude. I would sit there for hours with paper and pencil trying to bring life to my thoughts. I couldn't write back then, so I would breathe substance into my world by drawing the images of crude little stickmen that I would speak to, then patiently awaited the time when they could speak back.
.
So all these many years later, I still go there, but only in my mind. I return to escape life’s horrors; I also visit to celebrate life’s triumphs. I go there to commune with those who left me behind. My grandparents are there, my mother is there, and my late wife is there to comfort me when I’m lost. But my manhood is also there to reinforce me, and the depth of my intellect resides there to inform me and to give flesh to the stickmen I'd left behind.
.
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
.
The last time we went to have our taxes done the tax preparer (one of her friends) looked up at me and said, "I know you shame." But I wasn't. On the contrary, I was proud of my woman because she's the very best at what she does. Hughes aircraft literally stole her from Rockwell International. She's the only Black person I've ever known to have a corporation contact her and make her an offer to come to work for them. Several years later I worked on a project with her and they even offered me a job, but I've always been a political person and I'm a union and EEOC rep for the postal service. I've only lost one case in over a decade, and I thoroughly love kicking them in their ass. But Val wants me to be a "suit," a corporate executive, and she's convinced that I'll shoot right up the ladder. But I pointed out to her that everyone doesn't see me in the same way that she does. So, that's been was one of the biggest fights we've had in our marriage. She says that I lack ambition, and she also suspects that it's a male ego thing. She claims I'm just afraid that they might make me work for her. She never should have brought that up, because I'd never thought of that possibility until she mentioned it. But now that she had . . .
.
It's Val's disarming personality that makes her so successful, and it's also helped us out of a number of uncomfortable situations. About ten years ago when we moved from Los Angeles to Covina, California, we were one of just a few Black families in the area. Not being used to that sort of situation, we - make that I - was more than just a little uncomfortable. And to make things worse, one of the neighbors had a huge Confederate flag spread across one entire inside wall of his garage - and the garage door was always open. So, whenever we drove down the street his blazing Dixie flag hit us right in the face. I felt uncomfortable with it, but hey, that flag was draped across that wall long before we moved into the neighborhood, and besides, the man has every right to be a bigot - the only thing I hate almost as much as I do a bigot is a person who comes into a situation and thinks everyone else should rearrange their lives to accommodate him. So I just learned to ignore it, as I THOUGHT Val had.
About a month or so after we moved in, however, the lady from across the street invited us to a party that she was having. Again, being the laid-back kind of guy I am, I felt uncomfortable about the prospect. I don't like parties as a matter of course. You have to stand around laughing and smiling when you really don't feel it, and discuss issues that you really don't care about like, "How about those Dodgers?" I don't give a damn about the Dodgers - I don't like football.
.
So parties are not my thing - it makes me feel phony - and I had the feeling that this party would be all that multiplied by a thousand - especially, not knowing anyone, and being the only Black couple there - "Hey, Bubba! Guess who’s comin’ to dinner?"
.
But Val immediately lit-up. The lady had said the magic word - PAAAAAR-TAY! Before I could say a word, Val took the ball and ran with it. "I'd love to! Hey, can I be the bartender? I make the best...." The lady ended up at our house all afternoon laughing and talking with Val. By the time she floated back across the street, under the influence of a quart of Val's "sample" Margaritas, Val was up on all the neighborhood gossip, and the two women had forged an unshakable "Most Favorite Neighbor" Treaty.
.
This was going to be more complicated than I thought - it had become serious. We had just moved to the area, and already, life as we were just coming to know it was about to come to a screeching' end. I could just picture this nice, quiet neighborhood under the influence of Val and her notorious mixed drinks. Once the neighbors came down from their hangovers they'd never forgive us. I could just see the headline of the next day’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune now - "BLACK CHICK CORRUPTS COVINA!" - and knowing my woman, there was no doubt in my mind that’s exactly what was about to happen.
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Val has a real knack for mixing drinks in a way that masked the liquor. She can blend various juices, fruits, and crushed ice with more artistic flair than a Renaissance master. If she could pull-off the same thing with paint and canvas we'd be instant millionaires. She can mix these drinks so well, and make them so pleasing to the taste, that people generally forget about the gallon of liquor that's in them. We'd have parties where I'd here non-drinkers saying, "Ah, Val, can I have another "slush," please?" I'd think, "slush," my ass. The only thing that's going to be slushed is you, in about five minutes." But Val got a real kick out of it, making innocent people drunk - and now she was about to do it to our new, unsuspecting, highly conservative, neighbors, and this was during a time when we used to ride all around town just trying to spot a Black person. Covina was so White back then that I saw a brother walking down our street and even I was peepin' through the blinds. Val saw me peepin' and opened the door to see what I was peepin' at. When she saw the brother she looked at me and said, "Naw you ain't!"
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The night of the party I wasn't as uneasy about it as I'd been previously, because by then I'd had a week to get to know both Rose, who seemed to have made Val her closest friend on the block, and her husband, Al, who was really a nice, henpecked, guy. But I still wasn't passionate about the prospect of being paraded about as the new Black guy on the block to a lot of people that I didn't know. So I begged off with a cold that I had made it a point to cultivate three days prior to the event.
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The night of the party I kissed Val on the cheek and told her to have a good time. But as she was leaving I held on to her hand and reminded her, "but not too good of a time." She promised to be good, and she was off.
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I then got comfortable and settled into the bedroom to watch television for the night, but I kept the window open and the blinds open so I could keep an eye - and ear - on the party.
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By 12:30 a.m. the party was going full blast. I could hear the laughter and the faint sound of music playing in the house, but by 2:00 a.m. I began to hear the sounds of Val working her magic. A couple of guys who I recognized as two of my more conservative neighbors were in front of the house arm-wrestling on the hood of a brand new Chrysler, and another guy was calling out to a woman who was struggling down the street barefoot in an evening gown. So I decided I'd better drop in on the party and rescue these people from my recklessly fun-lovin' woman.
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When I walked in it was clear that Val was in full control of the festivities. It was also clear that I didn't have to worry about uneasy small-talk, because everybody in the house was about as loose as you could get - and still stand up. Val walked up and hugged me, saying, "Hi, honey! Hey everybody! This is my Nu-Nu, Eric." I heard various drunken responses:
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"Hi, Eric!"
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"Hey, Nu-Nu!"
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"What's his name? Nu-NU!!!? What the Hell is that, Swahili?"
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"Big, ugly rascal, ain't he? Just kiddin', don't beat me up, brother!"
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Then this one guy walked up and said, "Hi, I'm Stewart. I live down the street. This is quite a lady you've got here."
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"Yeah, I know," I said. "I hope she's been behaving herself?"
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"Naw, I can't say that she has," the man said, in a Southern drawl. "First, she done got everybody drunk - but I can't fault her for that, because that's what I came here for - but then, she called me a Commie."
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I said, "what!?"
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Then Stewart's wife chimed in. Between the booze and her laughter, she could barely get her words out. She introduced herself as Sue, and said, "No, she asked my husband, 'Are you a communist or something?' And my husband said, 'No, I ain't no damned Commie. What made you ask that?' Then Val said, 'Well, why do you got that Communist flag hangin' in your garage?'" Sue went on, trying to talk through her laughter, "Then Stewart said, 'That ain't no damned communist flag! That's Old Dixie. We from Georgia.'"
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With that, someone else took up the story. "Then your wife told him, 'Same thing.'" With that, everybody fell out laughing all over again - even me, because I knew Val was serious - as Stewart stood there pretending to be incensed. But everyone knew that while the joke was supposed to be on Stewart, we were actually laughing at the childlike innocence in which Val viewed what should have been a very uncomfortable subject - especially in the current situation. But it turned out that Stewart had been receiving a lot of ribbing over the flag for quite some time, and Val's remark just put the icing on the cake.
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But it turned out that both Stewart and Sue were really nice people. Stewart is quite an intellectual, and believe it or not, he ended up becoming my closest friend in the neighborhood. We'd get us a 5th of Scotch and spend hours together debating everything - and the more lit-up we got, the more animated the debates became. He'd say, "Okay, I admit it. I’m a Southern bigot - I think we should lynch anybody who roots against Georgia Tech, but you're a radical revolutionary - and you're a bigot too." Then he'd raise his glass and say, "So here's to two jive-ass bigots!" Then we'd laugh and continue getting our heads bad.
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But by this time both Stewart and I knew better. We had long since agreed on one thing - since the essence of our being is what we think, and physical attributes are purely superficial, it makes more sense to define ourselves according to the way we think, rather than how we looked - and if that is true, then our preoccupation with race was an exercise in stupidity. And Stewart had the last laugh in that regard. The first time he invited me to his house I jokingly asked, "You don't have any Poplar Trees in your backyard, do you?" He laughed and said, "Very funny. But you don't have to worry, I'm fresh out of rope." But when I walked into his den I immediately felt ridiculous, because the first thing that smacked me in the face was two huge portraits, Miles Davis on one wall, and Charlie Parker on the other. So it turned out that I was the one who had prejudged him. He had a larger jazz collection than I did, and I've been collecting jazz albums since I was 14 years old. I had to admire him, because by that time we had been drinking buddies for a couple of months, and even though he knew I played saxophone, he hadn't mentioned a word about being a jazz lover. He'd set me up, and that was the day I learned to never underestimate him. He said, "You thought I was into Merle Haggard, didn't you? So now, who's the presumptuous bigot?"
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I really liked that guy. He had also quietly taken down his Confederate flag. When I asked him about it he said, "To me it's just a regional symbol, but I can understand how it might be offensive to you, so what the hell?" If it hadn't been for Val I probably never would have met that guy, and I would have been poorer for it, because I learned several lifelong lessons during our friendship.
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But Val brought many other things into my life as well. I discovered my love for the mechanics of writing as a direct result of recognizing that I didn’t write well enough to answer the long love letters she used to write me while I was in the Marine Corps. Prior to that time I always loved jotting down my thoughts, but I only did it one thought, or one paragraph at a time. But when I was faced with having to respond to her letters, it turned out that I had a problem with stringing my thoughts together in an organized fashion. So in order to get around that shortcoming, I would let her letters guide me. I would respond to her letters by writing a response to each paragraph one at a time. Within a year I was doing all the writing for my battalion commander. That became my job.
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While I was in the Marine Corps Val was working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and in spite of the fact that she was still living with her mother, when I came home she came by my mother's house to greet me and asked me to go for a ride with her. She had rented me a fully furnished apartment a block away from one of the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles. She moved in 3 months later, on Christmas Day after we went to a Justice of the Peace and got married. She was 19, and I was 21. About a year later, and right after Kai's birth, she encouraged me to quit my job and go to college on the G.I. bill.
.
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Then several years after I'd finished college and had become a published writer for various publications, she came home one day with a newfangled gadget she'd bought me called a Commodore 64 Computer. Before that, I used to write longhand, and Val what take what I'd written to work and type it out. I guess she got tired of being my transcriber. I still have that computer in my garage. I loved that machine. It gave me freedom and independence - and I just loved seeing my words on the screen. It looked so professional, and it made me feel more professional. So, while living with Val can indeed be challenging, I can’t imagine life without her. God knew just what I needed when he sent her to me.
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I could go on and on about this woman, but I'll put it all in a book one day. But I’ve got to go now - it’s time for me to mount a campaign for dinner.
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"Oh, Sugar Lips!"
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"Sugar Lips, my ass. Hit the microwave, Buddy!"
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EPILOGUE
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| MY TWO OLDEST GRANDBABIES. ERIC III, A GIFT FROM MY SON, AND TAYLOR, A GIFT FROM MY DAUGHTER. |
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Baby, I know you didn't like me referring to myself in this way, but thanks to you, I'm proud to say it looks like I'm gonna be the last hood rat in this family. Yeah, that's what I am. You just picked me up, dusted me off, and groomed me to be a suitable father. But deep in my heart, all always be a hood rat, and I'm proud of my background. The adversity that I was forced to experience has made me more rather than less, and my knowledge of the street has helped our babies to avoid many of the pitfalls of the Black experience.
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But the down side of that is, in spite of my background in psychology I can't manage to move on after your loss. When I left the street, I dedicated my life to making you happy, but now, there's nowhere to go without you, and no reason to go there. My primary motivation in life was you and by babies, but now, you're gone, and my babies are grown. So I'm now left with no motivating interests other than writing, and I've become fanatical about that because it makes me feel close to you. But other than writing, I'm not interested in anything else. I even get bored watching movies that I used to love.
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To try to give what I'm saying a little focus, Kai went by the house the other day and found thousands of dollars in uncashed checks. And then she took me to the bank and found that the government has failed to deposit $36,000 in my account, and I didn't even notice. That's how that's how out of it I've become these days. Well, out of it implies that I'm too spaced out to handle my business, but that's not the case. I'm just disinterested in the mundane things that most people find important in life. What's important to ne these days is a warm blanket on a chilly night, and a computer keyboard to record my thoughts. Maybe they'll be of value to our babies one day in the future. So, I've just added Kai and Eric to my account so they can keep an eye on things, because I don't want to think about such things anymore.
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Yeah, I know it sounds dysfunctional, but all I want to deal with, or even think about, are those things that have your fingerprints on them. When you first suggested that I take writing more seriously, I remember telling you, "That's a White thang." But you said, "Go tell James Baldwin that shit". Then when my book was published, you threw that big party to celebrate it's publication. I thought that was the beginning of a whole new life for us.
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So I can write without thinking about you. It was your passion for me, so it makes me feel close to you. It makes me feel like you're standing over my shoulder and whispering in my ear. So I wasn't at all prepared when you suddenly just walked out the door - you died just one week before the publisher sent me the first copies of my book. I still have the box . . . unopened.
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Yeah, I know it sounds dysfunctional, but all I want to deal with, or even think about, are those things that have your fingerprints on them. When you first suggested that I take writing more seriously, I remember telling you, "That's a White thang." But you said, "Go tell James Baldwin that shit". Then when my book was published, you threw that big party to celebrate it's publication. I thought that was the beginning of a whole new life for us.
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So I can write without thinking about you. It was your passion for me, so it makes me feel close to you. It makes me feel like you're standing over my shoulder and whispering in my ear. So I wasn't at all prepared when you suddenly just walked out the door - you died just one week before the publisher sent me the first copies of my book. I still have the box . . . unopened.
SOLITUDE
There was a little house in Watts, in the back of my grandparents’ home, that sat totally silent just for me. It sat there in complete obedience to fulfil it’s one and only purpose, to accommodate and give focus to the thoughts of a young and aimless mind.
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Totally vacant accept for a sofa and a table, there was no furniture to warm the air. So as I sat in it’s embrace, and quietly drew the thoughts I couldn't express, I could feel the clean, cool air against my face as it locked the noise and confusion of humanity out of that small niche of the universe that I had claimed as my own.
.I loved that house, because it introduced the soul of a child to the beauty of solitude. I would sit there for hours with paper and pencil trying to bring life to my thoughts. I couldn't write back then, so I would breathe substance into my world by drawing the images of crude little stickmen that I would speak to, then patiently awaited the time when they could speak back.
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So all these many years later, I still go there, but only in my mind. I return to escape life’s horrors; I also visit to celebrate life’s triumphs. I go there to commune with those who left me behind. My grandparents are there, my mother is there, and my late wife is there to comfort me when I’m lost. But my manhood is also there to reinforce me, and the depth of my intellect resides there to inform me and to give flesh to the stickmen I'd left behind.
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So, yes, I loved that little house, and the perfect solitude that it made all mine. I also love the cool, clean air, and the crude little stickmen, it always brings to mind.
.Thus, life has come full circle for me. Once again I sit in solitude drawing stickmen. But this time I sit with sweet memories of Val to warm the cool, clean air.
Merry Christmas
and
Happy Anniversary, Baby.
And thank you for making
my life worthwhile.
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.comEwattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.