- We only went to town once a month,
when I was a little boy.
We had a farm.
We grew raised or hunted everything that we had.
When we went to town, my mother and grandmother
would give us a nickel or a dime.
To buy whatever we wanted as a treat.
I so looked forward to that.
While my brothers and sisters would go off
and buy toys and candy, I would go
to the back of the five and dime store to this one area
where they had these little bitty disks
with bits of film in them
and I would buy a View Master slide.
I would go through the row and look for places like Rome,
London,
Paris,
and a town called Constantinople.
I would then come back home in the truck,
go into the backyard, pull up my View Master slide
and point itat the sky
and I would sit there in reverie for hours.
I would cross the bus for us.
I would go up the Eiffel Tower.
I would create these travel logs,
a word I didn't know at that time,
in my mind until my mother called me
to do a chore in the house.
I was raised in a very waspy black family.
We did not talk.
My parents spoke in syllables.
If they really liked what you did, they would go.
Mmm- hm.
If they thought what you did was adequate but expected.
Mm-mhm-mm
If they thought what you did was horrible.
It was hmm.
And the lower, the register of that
hmm
the more judgment was imparted by that.
When I was nine years old, my mother
I recall my mother making this statement all the time.
She kept saying,
“I raised you to leave my house.”
“When you got to be 18 years old, all of you
“I raised you to leave my house!”
- My brothers and sisters, and I would look at each other
and wonder.
At age nine, I decided to tell her,
“I'm going to leave this place.”
My mother looked at me, she said, “What did you say?”
I said, “One of these days,
“I'm going to leave this place.”
She went, hmm
Integration occurred in 1968.
And I went from an all-black school, named Shadeville,
very Faulknerian
To the county school.
And there I had probably my second fight
of my entire high school career.
This guy called me something and we got
into a fight and I fought to win.
At this school people became aware of me.
And so they recommended me to a program.
Lyndon Baines Johnson program called Project Upward Bound
at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
What a destiny I had.
nonetheless, I got into the program and
there was a lady who ran the program.
The most glamorous black woman I had ever met.
A lady named Ms.Freddy Grooms.
She had a medium size Afro.
That was perfectly quaffed.
Every day.
She wore clothes that were in blocks of colors.
I can see them to this day.
And at this program
she really took an interest in me.
In my classes however, I was the eager kid.
I was constantly putting up my hand, every answer.
I knew the answer to everything.
And I was really, really, on.
And the teacher said to me, “How do you know so much?”
And I said, “I read the world book encyclopedia.”
When we had no money at night, my mother who subscribed
to the world book encyclopedia would say to us
“Don (my middle name),pick out the letter Q, boy.,
“and read something to us.”
“Pick out the letter B, boy, and read something to us.”
Well little did we know that I was learning all that stuff?
So in class I was really eager.
This does not make me popular with the
other people in the program.
Eventually, I got into a little scuffle.
I was put on parole, but Mrs. Grooms took interest in me
and recommended me to her friend, Dr. Joel Fleishman,
who had started a program
at Yale University called Yale Summer High School.
And I applied to that program.
The day I got that letter,
I sat in the kitchen of the house
and I knew with everything in me
that I was going.
I was going to go if it took everything to make it happen.
And I think my parents suspected that.
So on the day I got ready to go
I wasn't afraid of anything, not a single thing
because in my mind, I had already traveled
to Paris and London and Constantinople.
So going up to new Haven, Connecticut, cinch
I got on that plane.
Got to New Haven, Connecticut.
And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home.
There was John Wall, John Limley, Alba, Clyde
all the tutors and counselors made me feel so at home.
I loved it.
At the end of the summer, I had to come back home.
I got off the plane, came home and my grandmother walked
up to me, put her hands on my face on both sides
looked into my eyes and then held me close to her and said
“You are never coming home again.
“You are never coming home, again.”
I then applied to college.
Went off to school in Maine.
Had a wonderful time.
Did well in school.
Life was good.
It was pretty good.
I got a good job.
I traveled a lot.
I would write my parents postcards and tiny little writing.
I'd write these entire narratives.
And I would say to my parents,
“Did you ever receive my postcards?”
My parents would go.
Mm mm mm.
Nothing more was said about the postcards. Curious,
I said to myself. Well, eventually I got a job
in New York City, a job that I really loved
on Wall Street and things were going really well for me.
And I started to travel.
I still wrote my parents cards.
When I told my parents that I was moving
to New York City, my grandmother said,
Hmm.
“You know that Richard Pryor man lived in New York.”
Wall street was really good to me.
And I had, I found a place where I could work.
I enjoy the creativity of being in training on wall street.
But in one of the recessions I got laid off
and I knew that the layoff was coming.
And I got so mad about the layoff
in anticipation of it that I decided I was gonna fight.
I was gonna fight when they laid me off.
So on the day they laid me off, I said, basically to myself
you're going to have to pay me to get rid of me.
You're going to have to pay me.
And I fought that day.
One of the hardest fights I've ever fought
in my life to get a great severance package.
When I walked out of that office.
I had a severance package that was beyond my dreams.
I walked out of the office
got into a taxi and said, “Take me to Tiffany's.”
I took the taxi from downtown to Tiffany's.
I told the taxi to wait.
I had wanted these green celadon bowls
for three and a half years.
I would go to Tiffany's and I would just lust after them.
And today I was going to give them
to myself as a present for that package I negotiated.
I had them wrap them
in the blue and white box, put them in a bag.
And I came down on that side elevator
at Tiffany's, got into the taxi
and said, “Take me to the D'Agostinos.”
I went to the D'Agostinos, bought a half gallon
of milk at a box of Cheerios, and then said, “Take me home.”
I went home, opened the box,
washed the bowls
and poured the Cheerios and the milk in the bowl.
And I thought, if I have to be unemployed
every day I eat from these bowls, I will be happy.
And I sat there and I ate my Cheerios blissfully.
And as I was eating those Cheerios
I said to myself, it's time to go to Paris.
I had avoided going to Paris.
I don't know why, but it was time to go to Paris.
So I called and booked a ticket, called a friend
of mine and said, “I'm going to come to Paris.
“Can I stay with you?”
He said, “Sure.”
I got on that plane to Paris.
It was so exciting.
Got off at Charles de Gaulle
took the air air inn
And uncharacteristically,
I missed my stop.
I travel a lot, never miss a stop.
I missed my stop.
So I got off of the next stop, came out of the Metro,
walking down the street and turned a corner.
And it was like, everything went out of me.
I was in exactly the same spot where that picture was taken.
That I used to sit and look at
through that Viewmaster slide.
I was in my own dream.
I had made it real.
I sat there for a moment and then I burst
into tears and I just thought, I can't believe I'm here.
I can't believe I'm here.
And for the next five days, I went all over Paris
and I saw every place that was in those Viewmaster slides.
I did not miss a single one.
That first night in Paris my friend who lived
in the first (foreign) mall had a rooftop terrace.
And so when I arrived late, he said, “Oh
“I have some champagne and caviar upstairs.”
So we went up to the rooftop.
And as the sun was setting over Paris.
I watched this, all of the
lights came up on the monuments one by one.
And as I stood there
I heard my mother and my grandmother say,
mm hm.
This year is a significant birthday for me.
And I've decided that it's time
for me to see that city once called Constantinople.