American Melancholy

       Urban Education    It was a typical teaching rotation.  The halls were packed with teenagers traipsing the halls and gyrating in circles while teachers and campus security prodded them toward their 8 am classes.  Profanity, some quite vulgar, was openly used as if no concerned adults were around.  It was like herding cats.    I stood outside my door waiting for the throng of hooligans to find their way inside.  They swarmed like locusts.  Chants of “We got a sub!!!” echoed through the hall while dreams of salvation were fading fast.  A cadre of ruffians were now in my charge.  Or I in theirs.     As they filed right pass, some of them mouthed hip-hop verses that bounced rhythmically to the beats in their heads.  A few greeted me with the standard “wuddup bro” or “OOH OOH!  You know who you look like??"    Some even quizzed me about my racial identity. "Excuse me, but what are you??"   Whatever background I claimed mattered little.  As far as they were

The memorial for Aunt Catherine's home going was just around the block but I was running behind. Swerving the lanes on MLK blvd,  I ducked into the Dollar Store on 52nd, rambled through the clothing isle, and dashed away with a pair of black athletic socks—six to a pack. By now, it was twenty past the hour; my tardiness as plain as the shiny new hearse in front of the church.  The double doors to the chapel parted gently.  The red-carpeted isle split the auditorium into halves where I walked towards the front not to making a sound. A few dozen mourners had already gathered.  Perched atop the alter was the pastor—a muscular and stately fellow, who looked like he might have played college football back in his day, if not the semi-pro league.  To his right sat members of the choir—a cadre of middle-aged women and gentlemen deacons—no doubt long time members of the church congregation.  Uncle Fred and Aunt Margaret sat up front.  Next to them were Aunt Rose and her

There were many challenges to moving back to America after so many years living abroad.  There was first the question of where to live.  The obvious choice was Los Angeles where I was born and raised, still had family–most significantly my mother–and where I owned rental property next to the family homestead.  But LA was ruled out.  After all, it was scarcely the city I knew whilst growing up.  Congestion had gotten so bad that a leisurely drive around town had become a lost art.  What’s more, illegal immigrants had invaded the Southland in biblical proportions.  LA was now Mexico. The logical choice was my late father’s hometown of Savannah, Georgia– a city known for its solidity of colonial structures, mossy cemeteries, and restless ghosts that wonder the cobblestone pathways at night, or so we are told. As history reminds us, Atlanta was reduced to ashes at wars end. General Sherman, on his infamous scorched-earth campaign across the state, was so smitte