Author: Ernie McCray

The other night I sat with other writers, in a workshop, to consider how the rules that guide one person might contrast with rules somebody else lives by.

Looking through words about California history, my mind wanders momentarily, and a tall timeless man with reddish brown skin and long braids ala Russell Means, appears in the periphery of my daydreams. He says:
They, these conquering men, stepped from their boats
wearing more clothes than was necessary,
shiny metal hats and vests,
heavy leather foot wear,
bearing swords and knives,
boasting of braveries
and discoveries
and some day living in the memories
of civilizations yet to be
and when they gazed our way
they never looked us in the eye
with any deep sense
of wonder
or human curiosity.

One day I checked into facebook and found the question:

“What if when we die the light at the end of the tunnel we see is just us being pushed out of another vagina.”

My first thought was “Oh, God, I hope not.”

I mean if I were on Let’s Make a Deal and had in my hand a certificate guaranteeing me a rebirth in a new body, I’m going with whatever is behind curtain number one. Because when I depart I will have left it all in the Milky Way just like leaving all I had on the court in my basketball days.

So, I don’t care if Wayne Brady says “Oh, Ernie, you could have had another life but you’re going home with a one day supply of Alpo!” After jumping around like I had won the lottery I’d run off and rent a dog for a day.

One vagina exit is enough for me, thank you very much. The mere thought of reincarnation tires me.

I was asked by a friend to write something about Ezell Singleton who passed away this past September. I said I would put some words together, basically, because I’m not one to say “No.”

But I don’t know Ezell. And I love to tell a story well. So I tried to do a little research and ended up mistakenly deleting what little information I found. There was something in it, though, about Ezell being the first African American to do something or another, I don’t know, but it was sports related which leads me to this: when I say I don’t know Ezell, I mean I’ve never met him in the flesh but his name surely isn’t new to me as he’s nestled comfortably in San Diego sports history.

The first time I heard about him was at my barber shop soon after I had come to town in 1962. His name came up in an animated conversation about “Who Was the Baddest Athlete to Ever Come out of San Diego.”

This past Thursday was a mellow day for me, mainly due to a visit I made to a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the Veterans Service Center at San Diego City College.

But I was already feeling pretty good before I got there, starting with being picked up by my girlfriend, if that’s what a 74 year old has. Anyway the ride, with that beautiful woman, on such a nice warm sparkling soothing easy San Diego day, had me ready for a good time.

Not to mention that it was nice to just cruise into a reserved parking place awaiting our arrival, the only space open, seemingly, for miles. That, in keeping with my upbeat mood, made me smile, because such a perk is not part of my lifestyle. Well, maybe every once in a while.

Hope on my mind

Hope comes easy for me. It can rise from the words in a kindergarten girl’s poem where everybody lives happily forever and ever, or it could come out of the energy of thousands of San Diegans standing in the middle of Broadway singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

I didn’t realize, though, how hopeful a human being I am until I found myself one day holding out hope that the San Diego Union-Tribune, a rag that, on good days, over the years, has made me gag, could change and become a factor in helping San Diego become all it can be.

I didn’t see this hopeful moment coming. I was leaving the Union-Tribune Building one day when it dawned on me that I had a smile on my face. And that had never been the case when I look back on all the times I’ve walked away from the place.

Some people go on and on about labor unions as if they’re some kind of STD, so un-hip to the reality that the Labor Movement is us, We the People.

Who else labors?

As far as my relations with unions is concerned, if it hadn’t been for the San Diego Teachers Union I wouldn’t have enjoyed the time of a lifetime, a period of three years where I put work aside and took a “Parental Leave,” the first such leave taken by a man in the school district.

I don’t know how that wonderful opportunity made it through all the stancing and dancing required to get a contract signed. I think it must have happened as kind of an after thought, something put on the table as part of a tooth fairy like wish to mess with management’s mind, and the district must have gone along with it in a “Whatever, if it sails your boat” frame of mind, knowing they weren’t going to give up much more. That’s how negotiations go in the labor movement sometimes.

I shakily tried to take a picture with my AT&T 3G cell phone of a cactus painted by Mario Chacon. I acquired it from him a while back in Chicano Park. I had to shade the painting from the glare of a blue sky with the sun shining high and bright and far and wide and finally I got about as good a picture as I was going to get no matter how hard I had tried.

Trite as it may seem my persistence in getting this snapshot was based on Mario telling me that the protrusions reaching out from the cactus spoke to the persistence of the indigenous people.

Home from a roadtrip. One which was just that, a journey, a moving on, to another phase in my life.

We got going at a nice pace as I’m not fascinated with speed. It got a little slow through L.A. but, indeed, it wasn’t too bad. I approached it with a “low rider” attitude, set my own mood. Hey, my novia’s at my side so I couldn’t help but low ride as she rubbed her sexy little hands on my knee. Made me go “Good googily wooglily” like back in my teens wearing white t-shirts and levi blue jeans.

Next think I know we’re in Carpinteria and when I looked around I couldn’t help but swoon and sway as I stood there in view of an almost criminally beautiful day. It was like the sun was showing off.

Early on in my life, as a child, as far as religion goes, HELL plagued me like a recurring nightmarish dream. The first time I heard of that infernal place my heart sank in fear. “You burn forever?” I asked, followed by “forever forever?” And since the answer was always in the affirmative, HELL weighed heavily in the farthest corners and deepest canyons of my imagination, fueling my apprehensions pretty much on a daily basis and one Sunday morning, a few days before my 9th birthday, I became “saved” – somewhat in the manner of a soldier with bombs dropping all around him waving a white flag.

I can still see myself sitting in the pews, waiting like I did every Sunday for Reverend Kendricks to entertain with the cadence and rituals of Black Baptist Ministers, the play with words, the rhythmic prancing, the blotting of handkerchiefs against a sweaty brow.
That morning Reverend Kendricks began slowly with

“Let me tell y’all somethin’ this mornin’, brothers and sisters. And it is par ti cu lar ly important that you sinners sittin’ out there listen to what I, in the name of the Lawd God Hisself, have to say. Now, I didn’t say in the name of Joe Louis, did I? Naw, sho nuff didn’t. Uh uh. I ain’t talkin’ about the Brown Bomber because the Lawd would knock him out in a second and keep on steppin’. The Lawd ain’t due to be messed with. I wonder if y’all know what I’m talkin’ about this mornin’?

Both candidates for Mayor of San Diego are viewed as fighters, but only one has repeatedly and habitually demonstrated a genuine concern for the people he is elected to serve.

Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner have both been described as “snarly.” Maybe they are but Bob has got a lot of snarling to do to match Carl.

I mean Bob pretty much, from what I’ve seen personally, as a friend of his over the years, only snarls at the likes of the promoters of injustices in our society like the fat cats in high positions and places who spend their lives conniving how to deny us “regular” folks a nice slice of the American Pie, not caring whether we live or die.

The other day
I was kind of lowriding down the street,
feeling about as cool as a 74 year old
could ever hope to be,
listening to some sounds
on Radio Jazz 88.3.
Ramsey Lewis, more specifically,
running his fingers over a keyboard,
…