We can sit together now, thanks to John Lewis

I shudder to think of what this country would be like today had it not been for Rep John Lewis ( D-Ga ),  2/21/1940-7/17/2020, and the other men and women who shared his vision of racial equality. Rarely does a day go by that I do not recall those horrible times when black people had to sit in the theater balconies and could not eat in many of the restaurants I was allowed to eat in during my childhood. I was eight years old when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but even at that young age I was well aware of its significance. Perhaps I noticed the injustice of that era more than many children my age because my cousin, Mona Kay Green, was black. She was my best friend. Mona’s grandmother and my grandmother were sisters. My family lived in Bowling Green, Ky. Mona’s lived in Louisville. Our families had business connections so we visited one another often. I spent an average of one to two weekends a month at my great-aunt’s house in Louisville: Mona was my constant companion during those formative years.

My mother loved going to the movies. She often took Mona with us. I did not understand why Mona had to sit in the balcony. I used to swivel around in my seat, squint my eyes and try to spot Mona somewhere up there in that dark abyss. My heart ached and wondered why we weren’t allowed to sit together. It wasn’t fair. One night when I felt particularly brave, I snuck up into the balcony and sat with Mona. Within minutes, the manager whisked me away and escorted me back downstairs.

Many times when we ate at a restaurant, we had to take Mona’s food to the car because she wasn’t allowed inside.

My first fight was over Mona. Her family also stayed at our house in Bowling Green, Ky. When I was in the first grade, Mona stood with me one morning while I was waiting for the school bus. When I got on the bus, I was greeted with jeers and a white boy who was older and bigger than me poked my chest with his finger and snarled, “What are you doing standing there with that _______?” I assume I had heard the "n" word before, but I did not realize its meaning until that moment. “Don’t you call Mona a _______,” I shouted and punched him in the face. He lunged at me but the bus driver broke the fight up before another blow could be struck. It’s safe to assume he would’ve beaten the daylights out of me but, from my perspective I won that fight as soon as I stood up for Mona.

That was the America I grew up in. That would still be the America of today had John Lewis and those like him not have had the tenacity to stand up against the bigots and racists that ran roughshod over this country. And now many of the grandchildren of those same bigots and racists are trying to regain the ground they lost to heroes such as John Lewis. But those of us who believe that all Americans are guaranteed freedom, equality and basic human rights must continue to, “get into good trouble,” as John Lewis said, and fight for equal justice for all.

I do not want to go back to those dark days when I could not sit in the movie theater with Mona Kay.

A Clerical Error

“Someone’s beating the front door in,” my wife said frantically, waking me at 5:45 a.m. I grabbed the semi-automatic rifle for me and the .22 for my son, who was sleeping upstairs. I ran to the door. “Who is it?” I asked.

“Open the Goddamn door,” a man shouted, repeatedly kicking the door.

My son heard the commotion and came downstairs. I threw him the .22. I cocked my SKS. When it clicked, all went silent. Then I heard murmured conversation and footsteps shuffling away. I told my son to cover the upstairs window. “If I start shooting,” I whispered. “Open fire and don’t stop until they’re on the ground.”

It seemed like a dream or a movie scene. I’d bought my rifle years before all the l mass shootings and controversy over assault weapons. I’d only shot it once. Like many gun owners, I thought I might need it for protection, but hoped I’d never have to use it.

I glided to my dining room window, peeked through the curtains and saw three men who looked to be in their early twenties. One of them opened the rear door of their van and pulled out a handgun.

I opened the curtains just wide enough for a good shot and positioned my rifle. 

My wife took cover in the back bathroom and called 911.

“Tell ‘em they’ve got a gun,” I said.

“I’m talking to the dispatcher,” she replied in a raspy whisper. “She said they’re on the way.”

“Tell her they’re coming back toward the house. I might have to shoot.”  

The man with the gun started up our sidewalk, the other two followed. I flipped the safety off and took aim. Surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous. I realized I was going to have to kill at least one man, maybe three. I could’ve heard a pin drop. I was not anxious to pull the trigger, but told myself that if he got halfway up our sidewalk, I had no choice. I couldn’t give them a chance to get into the house with that gun. None of the three men noticed the open curtain I hid behind. The man with the gun neared the halfway mark. I whispered to my wife, “Tell the dispatcher I’ve got to shoot.”

I positioned my finger on the trigger. Just as I started to pull it, the other two men grabbed the man with the gun. They appeared to argue, then rushed back to the van. I breathed a sigh of relief, but kept them in my sights. The man opened the van’s back door. I couldn’t tell if he was putting the gun back or getting guns for the other men. I was still wondering if I should open fire when a police car skidded into our driveway. Several more followed. In seconds our yard was swarming with law enforcement.

The two men must’ve heard the police coming. That’s why they grabbed their buddy.

My son came downstairs. I put the weapons away.  When I opened my front door, I saw officers surrounding the three men. My son came and stood with me. Two deputies met us at the door. I told them what had happened, and how thankful I was that they arrived before I had to shoot. The deputies said the three men were bounty hunters who had come to take my son to jail in South Carolina for leaving the state without permission. My son had been arrested for illegal possession of a prescription drug in South Carolina. He explained to the deputies how a judge had given him permission to return home to Kentucky while awaiting his court date. While my son went to get the court papers, the deputies told me that bounty hunters can enter a fugitive’s home to make an arrest in South Carolina, but bounty hunters were illegal in Kentucky. The deputies did not hide their disdain for the young men, who had apparently tried to argue their case for being there.  

“Do you want to press charges on them?” one of the deputies asked.

“No,” I said. “I just want ‘em out of here.”

As I walked with the two deputies toward the three men still surrounded by officers, I kept thinking how a simple bureaucratic mix up had put my family in danger, and how close I’d come to killing three men because of it. Almost daily, there are news stories about the war on drugs or gun laws. Those stories always seem to apply to somebody else, but on that day, without any warning whatsoever, a minor drug possession charge and a clerical error could’ve possibly caused the death of my wife, my son and myself, or put me in the national headlines for killing three bounty hunters.

Now, whenever I hear the news about how someone was shot in a horrible mishap, I think, “there but for the grace of God, and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, go I.”

                                                     Bernard Mitchell Plumlee

Democracy is doomed

A repairman in his early twenties worked on my house yesterday. He was very polite and very thorough about his work. He spoke about his wife and his five-year old son. I asked if he always worked alone. He said he knew the job at my house was going to be very meticulous so he asked his boss to send his co-worker, who was originally from Honduras, with another crew yesterday. He did not speak ill of his co-worker, but instead talked about how his co-worker often got in a hurry and was not concerned with being precise because he wanted to impress their boss with how fast they could get the job done. But the young man’s attitude was that it was better to do a job right instead of hurried with mistakes that might have to be corrected later. By this time, the young man had introduced himself as Henry.

The TV was on in my living room. The newscasters spoke of the current impeachment  proceedings of President Trump. Henry said he was afraid of Trump. He feared Trump would cause violence if he were put out of office, or even if he loses the next election. “I walked into my boss’ office yesterday and he was reading Breitbart News,” Henry said. “He wants to fire my co-worker but he's afraid he’ll get sued if he does. Most everybody I work with supports Trump. They just want someone to blame for their problems. They don’t want to know the truth. They just want to feed their anger.”

Henry said he feared people like his boss would start killing people, liberals in general, if Trump were put out of office. Even if he's not impeached, Henry doesn't believe Trump will concede if he loses the next election. “It’s really scary,” Henry said. “I’m afraid to tell my boss and most everybody I work with that I’m against Trump. I’ve got a wife and a child. I don’t want to fight. But I really think it’s going to come to that.”

He spoke of patriotism and what it meant. “My boss thinks he’s patriotic because he supports Trump,” Henry said. “But that’s not patriotism. Our forefathers didn’t start this country so that we’d blindly follow a king. And that’s what Trump wants to be. He wants to be a King so no one can question his authority. But America was founded on the idea that all men were created equal. A president is supposed to support that idea. But Trump doesn't. I’m really scared we’re going to have a civil war. I don’t want my child to grow up in a war-torn country.”

And that’s when the sadness of our conversation really hit me. I’m sixty-three. I grew up during the tumultuous sixties and seventies, with all the Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests, but I never really feared, or heard other people speak about being afraid that our president would start a civil war to retain power.

Even if someone thought Henry foolish, even if Trump supporters think Henry’s fears are unfounded, they can’t argue that Henry’s fears are not real, because they are; I heard the quiver in his voice. I listened to him talk about how he was afraid to speak his mind and I thought to myself, this is how democracy dies. The loud voices of the boisterous ride roughshod over anyone and everyone who opposes them; they claim they are the spokespersons of patriotism and bark loud if someone dares to disagree.

I felt a kinship with Henry and wondered if I’d see him again. Would this nice young man fight for me if violence comes? Yes, I think he will. But I hope he doesn't have to. But most of all I hope that we, as a nation, get back to normality; get back to a time when we can have civil discourse without fear of reprisal; get back to a time where young men don't worry about raising their children in a war-torn country. If we don't, democracy is doomed. 

we always lose

Why break ground? There is nothing new to be built. Nothing new to be done. It's all just repeated mistakes. A vicious circle we can't escape. A circus ride with no end.
The torment was easy at first; we thought it'd ease,
but then came the realization that there was only escalation
we were reaping our sins at breakneck speed,
and we wanted them and invited them in
hoping they would ease us as they once did,
but they beguiled us
oh oh Oh, damn the deceitfull
Those agents of hell
They stare back at us in mirror
but breaking the glass does not send them away
we are the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists
we fight ourselves
we always lose. 

Shadows

There is no escaping the shadows

their strange, shapeless mire

we hide from them in daylight,

forgot them in the busy hours

But they come for us at twilight

and we escape them by sleep

but they wait for us in dreams

to remind us what we cannot keep

Oh, but were we not victims of sleep,

creatures doomed to rest,

then we would not weep,

we would be our best.

trudging headlong into the forest

With no knowledge of the hunt

the kill,

the blood

the thrill

It haunts us

We would wait by streams for fair maidens

with no need to protect their innocence

For they would have no shame

No secrets

No vice

No malice 

No blame

Morning awaits us

But we long for night

Angels bow down in wonder

at our plight

We love the night

The doom

the death

the stench

The foul foolishness of folly is our curse

Curiousness is our slave master

and we bow in homage

But had we no need for want

there would be no boundaries

no doors

no locks

Oh but for the shadows,

we would own the night

                                    Mitchell Plumlee, Jr. © 2018

The King of Limbo Land

I always knew I wasn’t quite right. Off balance, some would say. I have never been able to really fit in or get along with people very well. Oh, I get along just fine with them until they break the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you’d have others do unto you.” And when they do to me what I would not do to them, that’s when they cross my moral border. And when they enter my country illegally I view them as an invader and I do what any sovereign would do, I protect my territory. My normal, or rather, abnormal weapon of defense has always been fits of rage. My anger explodes. I’ve never been able to contain myself when the napalm bombs start blasting. It’s like lighting an entire package of firecrackers: I spew out a rapid-fire blast of obscenities until the last one finally explodes and then I retreat in silence and shame. Those uncontrollable bouts of anger plague me more than anything in life; they’ve been the biggest hindrance to my success. Because to be successful one must network and socialize, but my shame has driven me to retreat from others; I’ve become an isolationist out of necessity and fear that I might have to strike out against an illegal alien.

I’ll always wonder if I’d have been different, more able to handle stress and pressure, if I hadn’t been ran over by a car when I was two years old. I hate to admit to that because it can easily be used as an excuse for every time I blow my top and cuss somebody out. So I don’t admit it. I have never gone back and told anyone after I chewed them a new asshole that I might’ve done it because my head was busted open like a cantaloupe when I was just a kid. But maybe I should have. Maybe I shouldn’t have always tried to act normal. I might’ve been better off if I’d been in the class with the “special needs” children. Back in 1962 when I started to school, some of special needs children rode my bus. When we got to school, they’d sit politely while us “normal” kids got off. Someone would then lead them to a smaller bus, which now carries the stigma known as the “short bus.” I used to watch them board that bus and drive away. I remember asking classmates where they went, but nobody knew. They just disappeared. They weren’t there at the end of the day when we got back on the bus to go home. I assumed they got out of class earlier than us “normal” kids, which made me kind a want to ride their bus.

But as mentioned, I have never felt like I should’ve been with the “normal” kids. It’s a shame that there wasn’t a bus for the “limbo” kids, the ones like me who weren’t quite right but knew how to fake it. I might’ve grown up to be president of Limbo Land. In a way, I suppose I am. I live in sort of a continuous limbo land that borders on the last person I alienated and next person yet to piss me off.  

I’m now seeing a therapist because my explosive temper has driven off many friends and family members in the last couple of years. My counselor is a woman in her early 40s, I assume. She’s very laid-back and uses the word “fuck” often, which puts her in my “cool category.” If this were the Sixties, I’m sure she’d be a hippie. It’s odd that a man who is just a few days away from turning 61 would be seeking guidance from someone twenty years younger, but it is what it is. She never really gives me assignments. She doesn’t tell me to look in the mirror like Stuart Smalley and say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” She’s knows that I’m too much of a matter-of-fact, no-nonsense kind of guy to do that sort of shit, and that those type of assignments would make me roll my eyes, so she just talks to me.

In our last session she pointed out that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that some my relatives and a former friends will no longer have nothing to do with me. Maybe, she said, they were unhealthy relationships I subconsciously sabotaged. Maybe I cussed them out when they crossed my moral border because I never really liked them anyway.

A moment of silence followed her analysis.

I had not considered that I might’ve done what I did on purpose because I have felt so guilt ridden for doing so. I wallowed in the muddy mire of guilt and shame for cussing them out even though my therapist says that in her opinion, they had it coming. She’s from up north, a Yankee. And everybody knows that Yankee’s don’t take any shit. I also spent a great deal of time in the north when I was a child. My mother used to travel to Indianapolis and Louisville every few weeks. I had to fight with cousins who lived in the slums of those cities. They were rough and they didn’t take any shit, either. And they taught me not to. But that’s not acceptable in the south. Southerners are supposed say, “Why bless your heart,” when someone pisses them off. But I can’t do that. And that’s why I live in Limbo Land.

My therapist also pointed that people’s tolerance for bullshit decreases as they age. And as I said, I’m almost 61. So maybe, just maybe, she’s right. Maybe I fucking saw fit to sever ties with those who crossed my moral border. But that doesn’t really explain why I’ve always had such an explosive temper. Maybe I should’ve been on that short bus. That would’ve saved everyone a lot of heartache and grief. People would’ve known that I’ve got special needs and not to infringe upon my fragile soil. And I would’ve had relationships with people who understood me. Or maybe I’m like a bad George Bailey who was just born older. Maybe having my skull fractured front and back, both legs and one arm broke when I was just two years old took years off of my life. I suppose it taught me I had to fight to live. And as any old battle-hardened soldier, I’ve grown weary of war. So I guess my therapist is right, my tolerance for bullshit decreases daily. But you know what? I’m a hell of a lot more content now that I’ve driven the invaders from my land. I might not be “quite right” and a “bit off balance,” but by-god I’m the King of Limbo Land.

disappearing

I feel as though everything in my life is changing. I no longer seem the same even when I stare out a window. The world has changed, but I'm not sure how. It's as if I have entered into someone else's body and seeing the world through their eyes. Maybe someone else has entered my body. Either way, I see me caring less about living, caring less about what happens, caring less about anything.

It is so hard to navigate the paths of life, especially when others drag you into their storms, their drama, their shortcomings, their failures. They sweep you up into them, and if you voice an opposing opinion, then you are thrown overboard, cast out to sea, and they will never throw you a lift raft. They will set their sails for another course and leave you to drown. Whereas I once sought to swim, now I am content to slowly sink beneath waves and watch the last bubbles of my breath rise toward the surface. The light glistens in the bubbles like dancing diamonds across the night sky in the full moonlight. Those who cast me aside did me the greatest favor. My biggest fear now is that guilt will overtake them and they'll come back and find me. But if they do, I will not be found, for the "me" they threw overboard is now gone. That person lives only in their conscience.


I no longer care. But I suppose that could always be argued. I might once again find passion if I were starving in the slums of a great city, etching along, gasping desperately for a crumb to feed my ravaging body. But maybe not, maybe the change that has overtaken me is the first acceptance of death, or perhaps the longing for the struggle to end. And it is struggle. To contend with others, especially family, who want to mold me into their image. Who want me to love them and serve them. I suppose that's why they say it's not easy to live a "Christian" life. Jesus said to, "love your enemies." It's so much easier just to let them be. But make no mistake, it is evil. Yes, evil. Maybe I have become one with life's evils. I've accepted the gratuity for shunning those who have shunned me. And my pockets are full, my cup overfloweth.

Oh, but I digress. I had sought to tell you I have changed. But to tell you, means I must recall and recollection can bring remorse. But I have no need for recall, or remorse, for I have no care anymore. I am disappearing. In a little while, I'll be gone.

Oh, that the shores be long gone
That the waves will still
And that I shall be alone
For solitude cures my ill