A Testament of the Republic

In 1969, on October 27, I was born in the city of New Orleans the year that Hurricane Camille struck her with gust of over 200 miles per hour winds.  Man had landed on the moon as the late President John F. Kennedy had envisioned, and the Vietnam War was raging on.

When I was four years old, I was taken away from my mother for a reason I did not know.  I was taken to a neighbor’s house, where I cried until I was taken to my aunt’s house in Belle Rose, Louisiana near Baton Rouge.  This is where my mother’s mother had her roots and the three of my aunts lived along the same rural road by Big B’s Supermarket.

When I entered kindergarten and saw all the alphabets on the wall in Mrs. Joseph’s room, I had already known them all.  I had been singing the A-B-B song with my cousin back home in Westwego, Louisiana.  In Westwego, I never got lost in my neighborhood.  I learn to orient myself to signs and buildings at the tender age of four walking with my cousin’s dog named Skip.

When I lived with my aunt Sarah, I was given to mischief and awkwardness, as I felt out-of-place in a rural setting. I liked the country, but was awkward in the absence of my mother, and I had few close friends, even as today.  Even now, I had returned to the awkwardness of my youth.

However, there was one other sign that would be brilliant.  It was the fact that I could tell time as long as I have remembered.  My other aunt, when I was five, asked me to tell her the present time then, and told her to the exact second.  That aunt told me she taught me to tell time at an earlier age, but I do not remember that.

My grades at Belle Rose Primary School were substandard, according to my belief.  I thought I was slow or stupid.  I had received R’s and S’s, which my aunt, who took care of me, did not understand and thought they were like C’s and D’s.  However, one crowning moment was when I was isolated in kindergarten class, I sang, “One little two little, three little Indian…”  etc., while reading the book the song was in.  I assumed that I was still behind the class in my work as my grades were substandard.

My idolization at the age was the pretty Catholic girls in the neighborhood Catholic school.  I knew I could not meet them, but they were a joy to my heart.

One other joy in my life at that age and onward was the game of checkers, which my cousin Kenny taught me at the age of six.  He taught me his secret, and I began to defeat him at least half the time.  He told me he would like to have taught me chess, but he did not. I wish he had.