Fredrick Douglass wrote in his autobiography, “I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily on my heart.” I too was in despair, filled with the thought of being dependent on others for the rest of my life going through disappointments. In 1985, I started growing into manhood. I decided that I wanted a better life. I felt that living in Saint Louis was holding me back from having a better job, apartment, car, and a better lifestyle. I felt that I needed to relocate and start over and escape the depression I gained from worrying about family members like my aunt Olivia, who had developed a bad cough and schizophrenia, and my grandmother who was hording, losing her things, and also had a touch of schizophrenia. I needed to focus on a better life. I needed to leave that which I was emotionally attached to. This was the beginning of my hardest lesson in making the decision to be a self-sufficient young man.
It was 75 degrees in Saint Louis at 5:30 am when I got on the highway that Sunday. Four hours later, forty miles outside of Kansas City, Missouri, I drove into a blizzard bad enough to beat hell back. I made it through without a problem, although I was driving a 1979 Plymouth Horizon. The first part in the hardest lesson to become self-sufficient came when I moved into my brother‘s house. After four months of living with my brother I began working as a welder, just hired and on probation. One morning I was on my way to work when I developed a flat tire. I called my brother and asked him to take me to work, which he did; although; It took him two hours to get me there. The job was 20 minutes away from the highway. Needless to say, I lost that job. This made me realize that my brother could not be depended on during important times. I realized that I needed a backup plan for getting myself to important places on time. The plan, as it turned out was to have more than one mode of transportation: bus, bike, and car.
Kansas City, Kansas, when I first arrived there, in September, 1986, was a bit of a slow moving country-like city, where it seemed that everyone drove around in a pickup truck, blowing their horns on every corner at people they knew. Everything outside looked as though it needed to be washed. The smell of the city was like dust because it hadn’t rained in a while. Public transportation ran though the city once every hour but not on the weekends. In 1987, I took a job as a maintenance man and received a free apartment with furnished utilities. A month later I started a second job as a welder. I was feeling pretty good about myself, until what I call my third and most valuable lesson in becoming self-sufficient. I had met the most attractive woman while I was working as the maintenance man for a company that owned al lot of townhouses located in the rural area of Kansas City, Kansas. Her name was Ruby Washington. She was a 26 year old secretary. Ruby stood 5’9” tall and weighed about 150 lbs. Ruby had very nice curves and a professional look. She spoke like she was raised some of her life in Arkansas and went to school in the mid-west.
Things were going well with us for a year and a half. We moved in to a better townhouse, we were both working for better companies, and we both drove the same model Chevrolet Monte Carlo. She drove the silver with burgundy interior Limited Edition; while I drove a burgundy sport model with 1/3 white leather top, duel chrome tail pipes, chrome wheels, and sport tires with raised white letters. Things were going pretty well until her father started coming around our apartment and saw how nice things were.
Ruby’s father was called “Wash”. Wash had a lot of kids whose ages ranged from seven to forty, and most were very immature. At the time, Wash was 62 years old and a very big guy about 340 pounds at 6’2” tall. He owned a pickup truck and a van he purchased while working at GM for over 25 years, and he always dressed in bib blue jean coveralls. He and his wife, who happened to be his ex-wife’s daughter, and their three children, and her four sisters and brothers, lived in a wooden western-style house.
Wash would come to our apartment to visit his daughter. This gave her the opportunity to act like daddy’s little girl and start practicing her whining skills, which gave her father the opportunity to play the protector and say things like, “what are you with this boy for, what do you want with someone who brings you down, don’t you know you can do bad all by yourself?” Eventually, things started getting bad, as if her father planted a suggestion in her head and it took effect. I don’t know what motivates a person to undermine another’s relationship but it happens as it did to me back then.
The second part of my hardest lesson in becoming self-sufficient came when I lost the 1979 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. I had been making every payment on time. But Ruby was a co-owner also on the purchase agreement, who got mad at me for something silly and stayed mad for no more than fifteen minutes. She called the dealership and told them that she couldn’t guarantee that the next payment would be made on time. She suggested they come get the car immediately, which they did do immediately after they ended the conversation. Soon afterward, I went to get into my car and leave for work, but the car was gone. After questioning Ruby I found out what had happened. I ended up losing over three thousand dollars because Ruby, the co-owner, got angry at me for fifteen minutes. Now whenever I make a purchase it’s in my name only, no co-owner will be involved.
Fredrick Douglass recalled that the pieces of the puzzle that would lead him to accomplish his goals came to him in small and sometimes large amounts of information. “The light broke in on me by degrees… They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there; and that I should be free.” Just as Fredrick Douglass slowly understood what he needed to do, I learned to be self-sufficient; the reason came to me after one disappointment followed another. Of course, over time in my life things have changed from bad to good and continue back and forth until I had learned to develop a strategy to stabilize my life. The most important action in accomplishing this goal was to develop an understanding of what led to the problems I was having. It appeared that I was depending on family and friends as a safety net.
In some cases reading has solved the problem by enhancing my comprehension. When I didn’t have money for food I learned how to fish by reading. When I didn’t have money for an auto mechanic I learned to do preventive maintenance on my car and my bike through reading. Like Fredrick Douglass, reading has enhanced my life by giving me the ability to understand my situation and develop a way to neutralize a problem before I become depressed. Having the ability to read and comprehend has provided me with better opportunities like better paying jobs and a free higher education.
Fredrick Douglass recalled the struggle it took him to accomplish his goal. “Thus after a long tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.” I also struggled through loss, for years learning why I shouldn’t depend on others to have my back in case I couldn’t accomplish something on my own. By 1995, and after many years of determination I am finally self-reliant. I’m earning $60,000 a year. I own a convertible sports car and a large black sport utility vehicle, and I live in a luxury townhouse apartment; all without a co-signer or co-owner.
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