by Ron Hall
I do some travelin, too. In January 2005, me and Mr. Ron went to the presidential inauguration. Mr. Ron was invited and he asked me to go with him. That was the first time I ever went on a airplane. We landed in a snow-storm, but I didn’t know I was s’posed to be scared.
So there we was, on the White House lawn, sittin on the front row, and I’m lookin around at all the astronauts and war heroes and wonderin, how in the world did a fella like me wind up in a place like this? It was somethin I never even dreamed of. I wadn’t that far from the president, but I wanted to check him out a li’l better so I got up outta my seat and walked up closer to where he was sittin, gettin ready to make his speech. But this Secret Service man, a black fella like me, held up his hand.
“Sir, where are you going?”
“I’m gon’ walk right up here and see the president,” I said.
He looked at me kinda firm. “No. You’re close enough.”
Later that night, me and Mr. Ron went to the inaugural ball. The president and his wife was dancin right there in front of me. I had on a tuxedo and a bow tie. I felt purty good about that.
The next day, I got to stand on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial. I remember way back when I was li’l bitty fella, Big Mama told me ’bout how President Lincoln freed black people from slavery. That’s why they shot him.
I felt mighty blessed to be able to go and see the president. Me and Mr. Ron done some other travelin, too. I been to Santa Fe and San Diego. Back home in Dallas, we still go to restaurants and cafés, the ranch and rodeos, and to church on Sundays. All in all, we’s purty tight. Lotta times, we’ll sit out on the back porch at the Murchison place, or out on the patio at Rocky Top, lookin at the moon shinin on the river and talkin about life. Mr. Ron’s still got a lot to learn.
I’m just messin with you. Even though I’m almost seventy years old, I got a lot to learn, too. I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different— the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us.
The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain’t no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless—just workin our way toward home.
acknowledgments
Denver and Ron would like to thank the Wednesday Watchmen, Union Gospel Mission, Sister Bettie Hedgpeth, Pastor Henry Stanford, Riteway Missionary Baptist Church, Mighty Men, Best Friends, Buckaroos, Vitas Hospice, All Saints Hospital, doctors and nurses, CTRC and a host of friends, family and business partners who prayed without ceasing, phoned, sang, cooked, wrote, cleaned house, ran errands, gave back massages, gave foot massages, walked dogs, kept dogs, cleaned up after dogs, adopted dogs, sent money to Mission and H.O.P.E. Farms, managed well wishers, prepared cemetery and loved us from near and far.
And to my agent Lee Hough, a true believer who went against protocol to read an unknown writer’s manuscript and then tout it to the best people in the industry . . . and to Lynn Vincent who spent hours with Denver and me in Texas and Louisiana developing our characters and shaping our story . . . and to Caryl Avery who taught me about punctuation and verbs and encouraged me that my manuscript, with a little luck, might get published.
Thanks to Jack Temple Kirby, whose book Rural Words Lost: The American South 1920–1960 (Louisiana State University Press, 1987) provided invaluable historical background for this book.
To David Moberg and Greg Daniel—taking a risk on an unknown first-time author telling a wild tale about people they didn’t know!
And especially to my Aunt Vida who has typed this whole thing more than twenty times without complaining.
God bless you all.
To Debbie—
you fought the fight and kept the faith.
