THIS IS MY LIFE 2

 

 

THIS IS MY LIFE.2

 

 

 

There was a time in my life, where I seemed to be the go-to guy. Now, What does that mean? I was the guy that had the wisdom. Now whether that was true or not, I can’t say. I can say that people always came to me for advice. Don’t ask me why. When I was in Highschool, or for that matter in Junior High, (which they now call middle school), and even in public school. I could talk my way out of situations. In the fourth grade, there was a guy that for some reason always met me at the end of the day with a baseball bat. He would tell me how much he hated blacks while swinging the bat at me. One day while he swung his bat with no intention.

 I timed his swing and stepped in. He was shocked and surprised. 

After weeks of him tormenting me, I told him, “Now it stops”. In Junior high, (or middle school), I met a guy smoking a joint. He wanted to share it with me. I refused like an idiot. In middle school, there were white guys, who didn’t go to the school and were unemployed morons. There was a small park across the street with a hotdog stand. The white guys wouldn’t allow blacks to enter the park. They wouldn’t even let us out of the schoolyard. Someone called the NAACP.

They sent one representative who the principal didn’t even bother seeing. He sent the vice principal. The representative never spoke to the black students.

 Funny thing was the white guy with the joint joined the racist group, which for some reason would only talk to me. They never even talked to the NAACP. I was their go-to guy. They thought that they had an informant, but I informed them of nothing. There was nothing to inform them about, but for this reason, they thought that the blacks were planning a revolt. At times, I felt like a dead man, thinking that I would be but put down for either not enough, or no information, but noticed that these guys were just complete uneducated jerks.

 Now many of us black student had to walk a couple of blocks to the bus stop, which took us to the train. Often this was a spot of attack. White guys would come just out of nowhere and begin to attack. Bus drivers wouldn’t stop and we would be left there to fend for ourselves. The day the NAACP was there. The vice principal walked us to the stop. 

Well Almost. Somewhere along the walk, he disappeared. We stood anxiously at the stop. The bus arrived and we crammed ourselves in. I remember the three people being left to wait on the next bus. There was a supermarket across the street. As the bus pulled off, a bunch of white people with bats, hammers, and whatever else came charging from behind the supermarket and towards the three that were left. It must have been a good thirty of them. Traffic was tight, and we yelled for the driver to open the back door. He looked in his rearview and ignored our pleas. 

One of the brothers broke the glass with the emergency hammer and broke the door open. It was on. I stayed on the bus. It finally got to the train station. Then there was the sound of glass breaking. I looked and saw the uneducated morons, including the guy who had the joint, standing there with evil eyes. I looked directly at him, but he made no eye contact.

 In high school, there was this one white guy that would always sit in the staircase which leads to the various floors. He would stare down the black students.

When I walked by I would stare back at him. This went on for weeks Then one day I was standing in the entrance of my class. The room had a front and backdoor. One day the guy comes walking up the hallway. I see him eyeing me. He wasn’t alone, (these types of people are never alone because they are cowards). As he comes closer, I see from my peripheral vision someone running up behind me. I didn’t move. 

The guy is now standing in my face, “You got a f*****g problem n****r. I see you staring me down all the time!”. I was not frightened.

 I told him that I stared him down, because he stared me down, and if he was looking to hurt me, then I am looking to hurt him. The guy behind me shouted, “Just off him and let’s go!” I gestured and said, “Teach this guy some manners”. I don’t know how, but the situation was defused. The guy simply said, “okay “took his boys and walked away. I never had that problem with him again. In fact. He never sat at the entrance staircase again. I ended up dropping out of high school. That’s when I began sitting at the bus stop. I got the job with Thom McCann shoes, then that went out. Worked shortly for Florsheim shoes which were two 

doors down. I remember catching two brothers just loading shoes into two paper shopping bags.

 I put on my police hat and walked over to them. “Not on my watch”. I told them to stop or either I would have to call my manager, (Who was 70-years-old and couldn’t hit the side of a barn if he stood in front of it). 

The one brother continues filling the bags. The other gave me a, “We have to stick together” speech. I knew then that these brothers were not to be stopped. They walked out, and the boss, who was standing in the front of the store noticed nothing. I was fired a week or so later. That was when I met the mafia. My life was spiraling out of control, and I wasn’t even 18.

 When I was 17, my mom brought me the Army advertisement. Funny how mothers always know things, even when you aren’t saying anything. She had to sign for me, but in June of 1976, I was off to fort Dykes In New Jersey. The military was wild from the beginning. We went to the indoctrination station. We went through a medical, got our hair cut, gave the oath and received our room. I think it was 8 to ten of us. 

When we entered there was a white dude with over the shoulder-length brown hair laying on a top bunk bed in the corner of the room who shouted,” Welcome to the army!”. We looked at him, then at each other. Everyone had the same thought. “Who the f**k is this guy?”. Found out he had gone AWOL four times. He hadn’t even been indoctrinated.

Basic training, on the other hand, was a b***h. Here’s a strange tidbit. The guy who was the son of the funeral parlor owner that buried my gang friend, and cousin, (“Black”. Who taught me judo), was a bunkmate. 

At that funeral reception. Everyone was partying until I walked in. The first day we got “To the hill”. The bus stopped. A drill sergeant peeked in and said simply. “You got three seconds to get off this bus, and you already lost two”. Mayhem ensued. People stumbled and rumbled. I grabbed my bags and realized there were too many. I rolled down, “The Hill”. Here’s a weird thing. I used to work out and did judo, but put under the pressure of basic training. I couldn’t do one push-up. They would make me roll over and do sit-ups for days while calling me names. Fort Jackson was a tough place to have basic training, which was there for only one reason. To break you down and then build you into a soldier.

 Once this takes place you are a soldier forever. Once military, always military.

 There was one drill Sargent that really got under my skin. I’m five eleven. He was five eight at best but built like a white Mike Tyson. For some reason, he really had it in for me. I don’t know what I did, but every time he had the chance, he would just let me have it. I was doing extra pushups and sit-ups for days, while he would spit out inflammatory and upsetting adjectives.  This guy tormented me for the duration of my time at basic training. 

Twice I wanted to bring it to blows.

 But my funeral parlor friend stood in the way.  He would tell me that it had nothing to do with the size of this guy’s muscles, but by attacking him, would give him reasonable cause to kick my a*s. Even during graduation, this drill Sargent said he would tell my family just what kind of a wimp I was. 

Wimp? I was about to graduate from six weeks of hell. I then went to Fort Gordon in Georgia and did 10 weeks of AIT. Then it would be off to the place where I would spend the next 21 years of my life. Once I could exit the C 141 and get on a bus that took us into Frankfurt Germany.

I knew that I had found a new home. It was a new scene, pretty people, and a new start. I would learn the language and spend two decades enjoying Europe. Germany was a place where I began to explore just who I was. Not eighteen months into my 2 years and eighteen months stay, I would join a band and become a great communications expert. I would also be the worst soldier imaginable. In those days, you had to literary spit shine your shoes and starch iron your fatigues.

 I despised that, and couldn’t make the connection between fighting a war and spit shining my shoes. Of course, they wanted all enlisted men to look sharp, but I just wanted to do my job.

I refused. I would look like a ragtag soldier, but I was the best at what I did. Spy on the Russians. Everyone knew it, but my Capitan hated me for being such a rebel. He even threatened to have me kicked out. Yet there was nothing he could do. The army was the first place where I experienced many drugs. Speed, cocaine, weed, LSD, and heroin. 

I saw many concerts with my comrades. We invented a drink called,” Jungle juice”, which had everything and anything in it. In those days, it was much easier to go to concerts and bring your own booze. We went to an outdoor concert with the likes of the Doobie Brothers, Small faces, Ted Nugent, and Aerosmith. 

We had a fifty-gallon gas canister of Jungle Juice. We got ripped. The army was fun, and in retrospect, it’s true. Once an honorably discharged soldier, always a soldier. After three years the army didn’t want me to reenlist. 

 I was such a dumb rebel. I could have a house right now. I met a bunch of characters. Some of whom ended up in the clink after being busted coming from Amsterdam with drugs. Another died from fake heroin. It was laundry detergent. Another was one drink away from dying.

 In fact, it was said that all he had to do was finish the glass. Another went AWOL after being busted with cocaine. This army was challenging since there were so many misfits.

 I was moving on. The group that I got together with got a record contract. I first returned to the states to finalize my released from the army.  Visited my mom and nieces in Oklahoma. 

They moved there for reasons unknown. The place was a bed of racism.  There was an entire family that lived on the corner across the street and didn’t want blacks to walk by their house. I wasn’t about to listen to that. The entire family once came out and threatened me with a shotgun. Cecelia had to come out and pull me away.

 My family had moved from one place to another and there was a moving company. Two guys. One was about my age at the time, white, with black over the shoulder length hair. Then a guy in his forties, short hair, white, both friendly. So friendly that I bought a case of beer while we were bringing in the furniture. After all the furniture was brought into the house. The guys asked me if I wanted to ride with them. 

Here I was in Oklahoma and two white guys were asking me to hang out.

 I always wanted to ride in a big rig. I got in and we were off. The older guy was a Vietnam vet, and the younger guy was simply good looking. Hey. I was twenty-one at the time. We went driving off, and it was an awesome feeling to be sitting in a big rig. Then things went south. 

I don’t why or how, but an argument ensued between the Vietnam vet and the kid. I didn’t know it then, but the Vietnam vet was having a PTSD attack. That’s when things went from bad to worst.

We were supposed to pick up more furniture from an air force base. The Vietnam guy went off into a tirade. He began driving erratically.  Which included driving up on the sidewalk where people had to leap out of the way of this big rig. He ran red lights and barreled through a gate at the air force base. For the second time in my going through a crazy vehicle ride. 

The police were nowhere to be found. This guy was going bananas. The kid was trying to calm him down, but the vet’s eyes were in another state. He did let us out in the air force base but tried to run us over twice. He ended up crashing on a bridge, almost losing his life. The kid stayed with me and my family until he could get a cab the next morning. Now folks. I never shared any of this with my mom. I was a problem child, but I loved my mom and didn’t want her to put on her worry hat.

 

When I returned to Germany I found that my band, which held my name, hired another singer. I was now reduced to percussion, and backing vocals. I wouldn’t stay long. My musical career would take me through several twists and turns. I toured Europe, made great friends, put out a few records that went nowhere, won the German rock Oscar for best blues singer, and don’t regret a thing. If I wanted to, I could blame people, hate people, but that wouldn’t change my life. 

It is what it is, and it will go on. I’m about to be a fifty-nine-year-old man.

 I’m four credits away from my degree in criminal justice and human services, but now my tuition stopped. I am financial dire straits and can’t pay for the last semester. 

People marvel at my looks, (How do you stay so young) they ask. I watch cartoons. They love my voice, (You should be on the radio) they say. Yet people notice that I am not always receptive. I’m Not anti-social folks, Just tired. I’ve heard most of it, seen much of it, and am simply tired of it. I am an animal advocate and the friends that I do have. I love like family, even if I fail here and there. I am a spiritual deist.

 I am gay, but no longer sexually active, (I know. TMI). I suffer from Bipolar depression. I have good days, and I have very bad days. I like to drink, but keep my senses about. I could have written a book here, but I just wanted to give some insight into the person I am.

 

 

J. ROBINSON.