Thanks, Paul Simon! 1.13.2021
America, is definitely still crazy after all these years.
CHAPTER 1: ORIGINS, A BACKSTORY
There is yet something comforting about realizing how crazy it is that our Democratic Republic still stands. Even after four years of an insane clown clan POTUS, our Democratic Republic still stands.
Somewhere out there is a son, abandoned at 13 or 14 to a life of indentured servitude, our hero, a young man whose father exploited him in the best years of his life. The father had paid his way into the scam in the late teens of the early 21st century with the deed to rich and fertile land. He thought he was securing a bright future for his son and the family in that bright, shiny, thing they called Heaven- the United States of America.
Our hero's father had, in the previous century, entered US Army service as a differently-abled farm boy from a "Segregated Southern Strategy State" a.k.a., Alabama. To calm his fears in a terrorist sharecropping situation, he had mastered the fine art of forensics prior to his US Army Infantry service in the Korean Conflict. Mastering skills of argument/ debate was how he developed the skill of selling ice to the Eskimos at the North Pole. It was truly a gift in the hot and humid nether regions of the segregated south.
Sharecropping post-Reconstruction was just the latest politically correct term for chattel slavery. Willie's grandparents, known to him only as his birthparents, had adopted him after their baby daughter AuntieZee had had her own version of immaculate conception and "spring awakening". The family anointed Willie as it's scapegoat and welcomed him as fresh meat to work the land and tend the livestock. Born in a time when birth records for African-Americans- property held by European masters, only existed in Family Holy Bibles ( bitchy-gay St. James Version only, if you please!) Willie Curtis Nickerson of Hartselle, Alabama never had a Birth Certificate. The USA Armed Services created one in order to enlist him for servitude in the unsexy-or-glamourous " Korean Conflict. This simple act gave Willie's mother ( Curtis Willie Nickerson and Florence Bell Nickerson's baby daughter) the freedom to become a private duty Licensed Vocational Nurse to wealthy New York Jews and snare a trophy husband, a talented Negro trumpet player ( Theodore " Uncle Teddy" Pax America) who worked with chronically behavior- disordered young men at a locked psychiatric facility a.k.a. " reform school" in Southern New Jersey; Hightstown, NJ near Princeton, if I recall correctly. They would escape from New York City to purchase a convertible dual- finned Cadillac and a homestead in Matawan, NJ.
According to the official family narrative, nominally- Pentacostal Evangelist Mrs. Zee Pax Americana would go on the adopt a future cornet trumpet player a quiet and whip smart young man baptized as St. Gregory Pax America. She was my age,61, the year St. Gregory was " born into the Pax American wing of the Nickerson clan. He would go on to graduate from world-reknowned HBCU Hampton University and a career as a first-generation tech entrepreneur. He would meet and marry his own trophy bride from the Philippines. Told you he was whip smart AND lucky to have been born heterosexual. His sexual- orientation and marriage fit perfectly into a post-chattel-slavery, diversity-idolizing inclusive-and-greed-is-good-centric USA.
Cousin St. Gregory's wife was welcomed as a person-of-color, so it was only nominally a miscegenous, i.e., taboo/forbidden-by-black-culture match made in Black Heaven. They would produce a male heir before a regrettable divorce.
Auntie Zee Pax America died happy as a latent Cougar-Grandmother and was buried in the midst of a legendary Mid-Atlantic seaboard blizzard. I grieved the transition of AuntieZee on the Left Coast on my way to whichever indentured slavemaster who held my contract at that time. AuntieZee gave me my first transistor AM/ FM radio with monaural ear plug tethered to the faux-leather clad JC Penne radio with its built in carrying handle and my first grown-up watch, at ages 8 and 9 respectively.
We shared a love for gospel music, jazz, and Rev. James Cleveland's Gospel Music Workshop of America. So, a highlight of her life was a chartered bus ride from the Historic Calvary Baptist Church of Paterson, NJ to Madison Square Garden, NY, NY to hear and see her favorite nephew sing in the over 100- voice Mass Choir of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, Incorporated- Live From Madison Square Garden in the summer of 1986.
Ah, yes, 1986, I remember it well. That was back when the most frightening thing I had experienced was gridlock in Midtown Manhattan. As far as you could see, North, South, East, and West was traffic at a complete standstill. I still contend that they have jammed too many humans on that tiny island- sometimes, size matters! I of course, would go on to live and work in 3 urban America cities famous/ infamous for their traffic: Chicago, IL ( a.k.a. my first hometown), Atlanta, GA, and now, Los Angeles, CA ( since 1981).
And so it is, I am up early doing my favorite thing to do in the hibernation of winter- writing. This is how I keep myself company roughly two-thirds of the way through My First Century of Life on Earth. Every day I awake amazed and grateful for another day in pair-a-dice, the Democratic Republic currently known as the USA. Every day with the ability to get warm and stay dry indoors and safe with food and water and Internet access is a miracle! A damn fine miracle of government... and I do say so myself!
No way any of us are here, now, without some serious and UNCONDITIONAL LOVE that brings to my remembrance immediately upon awakening a perfectly-on-point-lyric to serve as my muse for writing for my life in the throes of a global pandemic.
You see, unlike my great-late-sex-stealing-father with a flair for dressing women and iconoclastic interior design and a lifetime GOP membership card in his wallet, I deeply appreciate my permanent registered voter status and the Democratic Republic "Big Government " which is literally keeping me and millions of Americans housed and fed and connected.
Wow! Another chance to live life along the infinite and diverse spectrum of uniquely American life. Yep, from bat-shite-crazy, passive-aggressive suicidal, homicidal, and delusional well-armed and mostly white domestic terrorists driven mad from the inside out by their irrational fear of retaliation from the people they have persistently, pervasively, and profoundly mistreated, with a premeditated and cruel predictable never-ending-victimizing, discounting, bullying, and exploitative set of psychopathological behavors to the rest of us with common sense and knowing the difference between right and wrong and calmly grounded and centered in the fearlessness of real-life AND an overly dramatized Trumpian script. Here we go, Again!
Ab-so-fucking-lutely amazing! Learning to love ourselves right wherever we are is STILL THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL! Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent Unconditional Love. 💔❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍💯🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈. Living the Berdache La Vida Loca!
To be Continued...
(C) VernonNickersonSchoolcoach 2021
Full citation of seminal work:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JrzmW-zmPl0&feature=share
Still Crazy After All These Years
by Paul Simon
I met my old lover
On the street last night
He/She seemed so glad to see me
I just smiled
And we talked about some old times
And we drank ourselves some beers
Still crazy after all these years
Oh Still crazy after all these years
I’m not the kind of man
Who tends to socialize
I seem to lean on
Old familiar ways
And I ain’t no fool for love songs
That whisper in my ears
Still crazy after all these years
Oh still crazy after all these years
Four in the morning
Crapped out
Yawning
Longing my life away
I’ll never worry
Why should I?
It’s all gonna fade
Now I sit by my window
And I watch the cars/[or new high rise next door]
I fear I’ll do some damage
One fine day
But I would not be convicted
By a jury of my peers
Still crazy after all these years
Oh still crazy
Still crazy
Still crazy after all these years
Source: LyricFind
🌍🌎🌏🌈💯
Stay tuned tomorrow as our hero attempts a comprehensive THANK YOU! LETTER TO THE INFAMOUS INHUMANS he has met on his Journey So Far! Who will make the Director's Final Cut? See his Rogues Gallery of Local Evil Genius Talent! Live! UNCENSORED! and Circumsized!
If you can figure out how to turn Medium.com into a primary income stream for our hero...you will earn a reserved parking slot in Heaven... b.y.o.vehicle!
(C) VernonNickersonSchoolcoach 2021
