My dad often tells me this about my childhood. He grew up with alcoholic parents, trying to step in when his dad hit his mother. He doesn’t share more than this so I didn't understand what he saw or appreciate the cycle he broke when he refused to drink or abuse his own wife and kids. As strong as my dad was, there were some things he couldn't protect me from.
Three little girls, none more than seven years old, splashed in the Mobile Bay and sang the verses and chorus of "Fight Song" as loud as they could. After the stories of domestic violence and abuse that I have heard over the last few months, I wanted to hug them, protect them and beg them to hang on to that song.
Last week was filled with meeting people searching for answers to tough questions and doing the best they can around Mobile.
I believe in road trips. The kind with no plan. No destination. Just a bag of shorts and t-shirts, the road and time. The ones that return you home a little changed by lessons learned.
A road trip can change your perception or remind you of the things that are good in our country. There are still people who flag you down because your tire is flat or small town policemen who pull you over to give directions because any out-of-towner must be lost. We sat next to old men fishing on the Ohio River, watching fireworks together on the third of July. They said fireworks on the river was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.
Some of the saddest Souls interviews have been with women who got older, lost their identity as mothers and felt they became invisible to everyone but their friends. No one saw them for themselves anymore. What woman doesn't want to feel sexy or at least attractive no matter how old she is? There has to be a better way to get older.
“My husband wanted a plain Jane. If I wore lipgloss, I was a bitch. If I got my ears pierced, I was a whore. I thought I was in love. I was the one who went for counseling because I wanted to make myself better for him. I didn't want to be like the other people who had babies and weren't married. He started beating me, then he started beating our children. I felt like I was losing my mind because I started plotting for ways to cut his body up and drain his blood in the bathtub. In my head, I heard my mama say the abuse that happened to her was going to happen to me. I knew it was time to go.”
“When It comes from the inside, you are free and don't have to worry about making it look pretty for someone else," Charlie Lucas says. "I polish myself every day and can walk out in the world and be honest with myself. I don't have to worry about anything in the back or the front of me. I am living this day. Tomorrow is icing on the cake.”
Stopping at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma on a road trip through Alabama with my best friend, Kendall, we picked up the pieces of a broken bottle from the brick walkway in front of the church. The clear, big pieces along the steps were easy to get, but the bottle had shattered into a piercing powder close to the monument of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and those who gave their lives to "overcome injustice and secure the right to vote."
Nita was Rod’s neighbor and watched him and his siblings while his mother worked at night. Nita was 18 and married. Rod was 14 and had been the man of the house since he was five years old. Not old enough for first grade, but old enough to help raise two younger brothers and sister after their mother kicked his father out and tossed his clothes out the door.
“His mother told me not to let them go outside, so they came into my apartment and I let them drink and smoke,” Nita said.
Larry works the gate at the Fairhope pier, charging $5 a person or $20 a car for the ones who don’t live in town. He makes every person who drives past his window laugh or smile and says he should be paying the city to let him work that window. The best part of his job is when people give in and play along. The ones who cuss or act insulted because they have to pay get a lesson in respect.
“Hillary is the boss and queen of our house and we do everything on her schedule.”
Farish Street, one of the oldest black business districts in the country, is only blocks away from the Jackson, Mississippi that I grew up around, but I had never been to that side of town. It felt off limits. A place where I couldn't go.
Hillbilly sits under a shade tree at a mall parking lot in Mississippi with coffee, ice water, cigarettes and a small radio playing classic rock. Four days a week he watches the drop off box for a thrift store where the proceeds go to veterans. Being in the Army gave him a bad leg and a few benefits.
She is 16 and wants to be a Senator to prove that the world is not filled with hate. She has worked as a page in the House and Senate in Mississippi. She has seen how politics works and still wants to be a part of it.
"I am just trying to stay above ground and keep the oil well pumping," said a man in a neon yellow shirt buying a Budweiser at Tater's Exxon Food & Grill in New Augusta, Mississippi. A plastic angel kneels in prayer on the dashboard of a car by the front door. Barefoot boys wearing Hangout Music Festival wristbands toss out Miller Lite cans, a little unsteady as they walk into the restroom in the back.
Love, forgiveness and compassion are the ingredients of life for the 76-year-old man who makes some of the best soul food in lower Alabama. Cozy Brown was forced to learn to cook 16 years ago after his seafood market burned. He had no insurance and no other options.
Four years ago today John Oldshue sent me a picture of a dog in a cage at the Mobile County Animal Shelter. The caption said, "Grady. URGENT. Severe skin condition. Please help."
On the day of Zakry Flint's high school graduation, the couch from his living room is next to the curb, waiting to be picked up with the trash. The sofa with the green and pink flowers was moved out of the family's small living room to make room for a hospital bed. Hospice brought his dad, Jason, home from the hospital that day so he could be comfortable at home with his family.
