Happy Wife,

I went to the barbershop today. Not because I needed a haircut, I have been shaving my own dome for quite some time. Whenever I need a little bit of encouragement I can go to the barbershop and I am given new life. It’s as if going to this corner of the globe is my muse. Today  an older gentleman was being teased for being henpecked. It reminded me of another story about my Great-Grandfather.

My Papa Red, let me get away with any, and everything. I cussed like a sailor, I smoked Prince Albert cigarettes, and I took my coffee black with a dash of brandy, all before I was 11 years old. Papa Red believed in treating people by their actions, by how much of their worth they had demonstrated to you. I worked as hard as a grown man and he treated me like a grown man.

As I may have told you before my Papa was a man of firm beliefs. He is who taught me that a belief “anit sumpthin ya change wit the breeze.” One of this son of a slave and a Choctaw Indian’s beliefs was that a man should carry himself a certain way when he was conducting business.

To that end, Willie “Red” Cole had two pairs of overalls. One for the back breaking, breath taking, hard work that we performed every day, and one for paying bills, writing checks, ordering feed, or seeds, etc. It was a testament to the amount of respect that he showed me that he would don those business overalls to pay me for cutting his grass.

It validated me and made me realize that the work of my hands had worth.  True Papa’s yard was big and the pay was small. It didn’t matter. The fact that he sat down across from me in his snow white button down, heavily starched and a pair of semi-new “Big Yank” overalls, and counted out my $9 pay for cutting his massive yard with his ancient push lawnmower, made me feel like an adult. As with most children, give me an inch I was gonna take a mile. I saw Papa’s respect for me, I noticed that he treated me as an equal and I pushed it too far.

Two very different situations taught me that respect is a two way street and that the easiest way to receive it, is to give it.

So one day I sat my sweaty eleven or twelve year old butt on my Forbearer’s front porch, and I watched this one eyed giant of a man count my crispy bills out of his antique wallet complete with pocket chain.

As he was counting out my $9 pay my great-grandmother Maude came to the screen door. As usual the pretty petite woman with her serious demeanor had “plug” of “Red Mule” chewing tobacco in her jaw. Granny Maude cracked open the screen door, spat a long glob of tobacco juice and said.

“Red, this a big yard. You know you need to be paying that boy Mo den that.”

Papa, spun faster than I had ever seen him move.  I had never seen him upset with my Great-Grandmother before but, he said.

 “Woman. Men are conducting bidness mind ya place ya hear?”

Papa’s words weren’t harsh, however they were firm and brooked no argument.

Despite the fact that Papa had told Granny to leave Our Men’s business alone, he did give me an extra $3, and right up until the last time I mowed that yard for him, my new pay was $12.

I knew that I was Papa’s favorite. I had seen him make his peers, men 7 and 8 times my age, and even his grandson, my father, talk to me like I was an adult.

  I had never seen him take my side against my granny Maude.

 That’s what I thought he had done. I thought that because he had chastised my Great-Grandmother that I was deserving of the respect that he gave me.

 I also thought that I could talk to my granny the way he had.

It wasn’t the same day. I don’t believe it was even the same week. I do recall that it was a Saturday. I know because Papa and I were watching “Soul Train” and as the women and men would dance down the line Papa would laugh and say “Anit that sump thin!” Just as the show was getting good my Granny Maude came and said” Mackum”, that’s a Mississippi thing I don’t think any other people anywhere would butcher the name Michael that way.

Anyway, my Granny said: “Mackle, go round up them chickens and put em up for it rains.” I didn’t want to do that, and I believed that I didn’t have to. I thought

 “I’m a grown man. I’ll put up them damn chickens when I get good and fucking ready.” Since Papa didn’t punish me for cussing, or drinking or anything else I was feeling myself. I calmly said. “Look Woman, we watching this show. I ’ma put the chickens up, LATER. It anit fid din ta rain woman you don’t know what the hell you’re talking bout.”

Once again, I was stunned by how fast this one eyed Nonagenarian, a man born a scant decade after slavery ended could move.

Papa, grabbed the leather strap that had been hanging on the wall of he and grannies bedroom for my entire life. A real whip. One I had never seen move. He tore my ass up with that old piece of leather.

I was hyper-ventilating and crying. Papa cried as much as I did. It hurt him to have to whip his best friend, but he needed me to know that no one, NOT A SOUL, was gonna disrespect my Granny.

Later that evening he and I walked out to what he used to call the “Corn Crib”, this was where we used the old ears of corn to make corn meal and grits. It’s also where we stored OUR stash of corn liquor. Papa took a long pull of the white lightening and passed me the bottle, usually he would pour me a small shot and not allow me to get as much as I wanted, and I tried to impress him with a really big swallow.

I still recall the lava melting my esophagus. I remember as vividly as I recall the soft spoken words Papa said next. “I love ya Bud. I love ya a right lot boy. You my favorite, it hurt me as much as it hurt you to take that strop to you son. But look here, nobody not een you gone ever disrespect my wife. Jus member if Maude said it, its rite.”

That leather whip never left that spot again, not until I had inherited the house and decided to give it to Papa’s baby brother, a man also in his nineties and cut from the same cloth.

I realized the respect that my Great-Grandfather demanded for me and covered me in was his, I hadn’t earned my own yet. I also learned that when you decide that another person is going to be in your life, you do the hard things to make them happy.

So get your hair cut the way she likes it and ignore the knuckleheads at the barbershop. “If she says it. It’s right.”