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Diesel Heart

Page 27

by Melvin Carter Jr


  Nagging whispers of my own inner voice were turning to screams and shouts. Although I was no longer the ultimate alpha male specimen, my final physical fitness tests were still impressive. My official bench press had plummeted to 355 pounds, now only twice my body weight. My official leg press also dropped to merely three times my body weight. And even though my shooting score at the gun range was still 100 percent, my years as combat course top gun were over. Time had begun to erode my vision, reflexes, and sharpness. The action figure was gone. So in 2003, after twenty-eight years, I retired from the St. Paul Police Department with two gold watches and a swift kick in the ass.

  After retirement, I completed my mother’s miracle. I got my bachelor’s degree in police science at St. John’s with a 3.6 grade average. (Stand up and applaud here!) By this time, a degree did me little worldly good, but it was my way of connecting with and honoring Billie Dove. None of this would have been possible had she not set me down and tutored me that summer after I flunked third grade. I love you, Mommy. Sweet Billie Dove! May this gift to you somehow be acceptable.

  Having manned the husband, father, sole-provider-breadwinner battle station myself, I could better understand my own father. Oftentimes his decisiveness came off as harsh and insensitive, but food was always on our plates and a roof always over our heads. He fed, housed, and protected his family with all his might. And yet the more he provided, the more we found to criticize. Being an African American husband, father, brother, uncle is a duty station with little to no recognition and even less gratitude. (Guess it comes with the territory.) Appreciation and understanding are secondary. Dad always put Mom first, the rest of us second, and himself last. He’d refer to Mom as “The mother of my children.” His treatment of her was the most sacred, most definitive, most reverent bottom line, around which all priorities must revolve.

  My physical fitness results. Not bad for a fifty-three-year-old. But I hate to brag!

  Mom had been our interpreter, cushioning the friction between Dad and me. With her gone, we were left to fend for ourselves. Dad and I regarded the Doctor Phil–Oprah Winfrey treatment as “overanalyzing circle talk,” which rarely evolved to solutions, conclusions, or action items. To us, digging up old dirt was picking scabs and leaving the wounds open. And old dirt was for burials. So following Dad’s example of nobility, as oldest son I seized all duties and caretaking responsibilities. Dad appointed me as his go-to bread ’n’ butter franchise, power of attorney, and executer of estate. In his last months, I gave Dad the best care I could, hovering over him throughout heart failure, midnight hospital runs, surgeries, and hospice. My wish was to make up for all the anguish in life that I had caused him and to be worth all the trouble. My brother Mark was gravely ill, in hospice, at the same time, and he died a few months after Dad. But I counted it all joy, thankful for the privilege, wanting to have somehow paid Dad back for so much, and hoping that he felt that I was worth all the trouble I caused him, back when I was a teenager. As a Black man, having learned the deal, I almost felt guilty having such a championship monument of manhood in my life, when so many others didn’t even have a father.

  I was so absorbed in these responsibilities that in my self-neglect I suffered a severe stroke in late summer of 2017. I called Huff the day after to tell him. The phone went silent for a moment, then I could hear him fumbling. His voice came back in a shuddering whisper.

  “Quarter, as you tell me this, I was just about to call and tell you that I’m going in Tuesday for a triple heart bypass.”

  We talked for a while. His surgery was successful. Toni and I visited him weeks later. Thanks be to God we both came out very well.

  I had been retired for a couple of years, still working with SOS. The push, pull, and begging for crumbs of justice had pushed our family into the political arena, where resources get allocated. The call of politics for us was tantamount to taking over the helm of the sinking Titanic: we had a rescue, recovery, and salvage mindset. It was a matter of duty and responsibility, rather than a bid for personal advancement.

  First, Toni had been elected to the school board. Then she became the board chair. Her becoming Ramsey County’s first African American county commissioner, the next step, was a sort of personal revenge for me. Let me explain.

  Back in my detective days, the county big shots would meet with the police commanders behind closed doors, planning juvenile justice family outcomes, operating in a shroud of secrecy. In my mind, they were planning juvenile injustice. With flashing eyes and gnarling teeth, making sure to snub me real good, they’d go in and slam the door, literally shutting the shades so I could not see them.

  The Youth Service Bureau (YSB) held the exclusive Ramsey County contract for providing counseling and diversion programs to youth. They were a nonprofit, but their very existence depended on a steady flow of young people coming into the system. As far as I could see, instead of getting youth on the right track, they were profiteers farming their chattel, dividing the spoils of youth incarceration, feeding off the very flesh of our God’s most precious creation. So over all these years, I had been possessed with the idea of running for county commissioner in order to end YSB’s elite exclusive contract and change the system. The opportunity happened in such a way that it had to have been God’s doing. Our telephone rang. The previous commissioner called our house to tell us that she was stepping down due to a personal issue.

  Our phone rang off the hook for the next couple of weeks. About three of those calls were from people encouraging me to run for the seat. More than twenty of them were for Toni to run. Knowing all along that I had planned to run for that seat, she offered to stand down. “Oh, hell no! Do the math!” I said. She filed.

  Politicians exploited “Tough on Crime” platforms; prosecutors and law enforcement boastfully stockpiled arrest and conviction stats promising to do more. Juvenile detention and jailing facilities overflowed. Stats showed that one of three African American males in Minnesota were going to prison. Black males were crowded like sardines in cages to the tune of 80 percent of the incarcerated population. The juvenile detention population exploded like crazy. Plans were on the board and already in process. Counties across Minnesota hired architects and consultants to plan and design new and bigger detention facilities. To me this shit is personal!

  And then, miraculously, in 2005, with her pragmatic approach and radiant excellence, Willetha became the first African American to be elected as a county commissioner in the history of Minnesota. This was astonishing. Ramsey County’s population that year was just under 10 percent Black.

  Her dreadlocks served powerful notice, changing the conversation at its very core. The discussion was now about the best interests of our neighbors and their precious babies. Dialogue suddenly reversed from competitive arrest and conviction stats, building new jails and detention facilities, to adopting best practices and meeting the needs of offenders and their families. Just five years after she was elected, working with fellow community members, spearheaded by Fatso’s oldest son, Maurice Nins Jr., we reduced Ramsey County’s juvenile intake by over 70 percent. So now, instead of 110 boys overflowing an eighty-six-bed facility, Ramsey County has a daily population of fewer than twenty residents and—in addition to drastically reducing the number of detention cells in use—has restructured policies and detention practices, instead of building more and bigger kiddie cages. Willetha will point out, first giving thanks to God, that what would otherwise have continued as a community-driven mounted offensive was carefully embraced in Ramsey County as a stakeholder partnership, and she gives all the credit to everyone else. But people need to know that none of it would even have been possible had it not been for her. She’ll never say it. In fact, Willetha and I individually received national awards for juvenile detention reform from the Annie E. Casey Foundation in recognition of our accomplishments—hers for leadership within a system, mine for an outstanding contribution as a community leader. God had allowed me to be an element of his own mighty
vengeance. AMEN!

  Now, here I sit, a highly regarded, highly respected community pillar and especially a grandfather, having achieved the impossible and survived the unimaginable. By the grace of God’s almighty miracle, my family is healthy and well. Watching Anika, Melvin, and Alanna grow up and become good people, good parents, and ever so wonderful made all the trials ’n’ tribs in life well worthwhile. I can’t thank God enough for them, their spouses, and my grandchildren. I could catalog a litany of virtues, values, and principles that they have in common: they are hopeful, faith driven, loving, and peaceful. They have the courage of their convictions and intestinal fortitude.

  Anika became a business executive and runs a branch of a major business with several employees reporting to her. She is a good person and a great mother.

  Melvin, twice elected a city councilman, was elected as St. Paul’s first African American mayor in 2017. He is a good person and a great father.

  Alanna is in customer services for a major communication company where she serves as powerfully as a union representative. She is also a faithful choir director at her church. She is a good person and a great mother.

  I’m secretly thankful to God that none of them became cops!

  At my sixty-ninth birthday celebration, as I sat in my recliner, feet elevated, blankets covering my lap, Anika, Melvin III, and Alanna paraded my eight grandchildren before me. As I scanned and memorized each child, exploring their essences, understanding each to some extent, my sensors felt them scanning me right back. We embraced one another in the instant while releasing each other to the archives of eternal time.

  The disconnect was the connect itself. In me, my grandchildren imagined a past that they could never understand. And just like Big Momma, I released my children’s children as projectiles into a future that I could only try to imagine, a future which I would be denied.

  Skeeter, Jasper, and Jay Jay are up in heaven. Arlan calls me long distance to tell me he loves me. Bighead Benny now does most all of my SOS artwork. Huff married a beautiful Minneapolis lady and still lives here.

  Me ’n’ Fatso still hang out. We slam a whole bottle of red wine, toast to the brothers as they depart, listen to oldies that bring back memories, and argue over whose car has the best tires and who will live the longest.

  I am forever haunted by Henry’s tangible absence.

  Not long ago, Toni and I took a late-night stroll. Lost in conversation, we found ourselves walking down University Avenue (late-night Gangster Avenue). By this time, my thirst for action had been well quenched, action figure days were well behind—although I do sometimes go to three gyms in the same day.

  Anyhow, there we were, walking down University Avenue at zero dark thirty. Suddenly loud migraine music emitted from a raggedy-ass car approaching us from behind. The car slowed down, rolling alongside us as we walked. It sped up when we sped up and slowed down when we slowed down. Several do-rags with bloodshot eyeballs underneath peered from inside front and rear car windows.

  The music stopped. “Mistah Cottaah, remember me?” Voices shouted from the car, all talking at the same time.

  “I’m back in school!”

  “I’m off probation!”

  “I got a job!”

  “I’m paying child support!”

  “I never forgot what you taught me!”

  I remembered most of them. We had a big reunion.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve always been in awe of my own story. (You can’t make this stuff up!) How the heck can an angry confused backward kid with every issue, complex, and syndrome stumble through life and turn faults into virtues?

  I always intended to write an autobiography but never got around to it until Mary Gardner saw my writings, heard my story, and told me I should. She read draft after draft, asked me questions, told me to write more, and proceeded to push, pull, and coach me through every phase. She then sent the manuscript to Minnesota Historical Society Press. I am so grateful to Mary for her advice and friendship. This book would not exist without her.

  Dearest Teresina, Paris, Mark, Mathew, and Laurence, my beloved sisters and brothers: We all grew up under the same roof at the same time, but it never occurred to me that we were having such different experiences. I was careful not to tell your stories. I wish I’d known to be more thoughtful, considerate, and supportive. Thank you for being in my life. Like Stevie says, “I’ll be loving you always.”

  I am grateful for those people who kept me on the straight ’n’ narrow: the Oblate Sisters for making the thought process mandatory; mentor and boxing teacher Mr. David Nins Sr.; football coach Mr. John Cotton; Officer Jimmy Mann for multitudes of rescues; Mr. Roy Johnson, for the YMCA membership and camp scholarship; Aunt Rhoda Moore; Mrs. Lillian Reed; Mrs. Cordelia Nins; Mrs. Fannie Webb and her sister Rev./Dr. Thelma Buckner; and of course Warrant Officer Lear.

  To my buddies who grew up with me who left too early: Bernie Brooks, Merlin (Skeeter) Price, Henry and Gregory Moore, John (Jay Jay) James, Duane (Tweet) Patterson, David Sharpe, Wayne Wilson, my brother Mark, and Mark’s best friend Dennis Durand. And to those who are still in my life: John Griffin (John Gee), Bob Griffo, William Huff, Philip (Dr. Feelgood) Johnson, Jeffrey (Guff) Lewis, Maurice (Fatso) Nins, and Arling (Arlan) Reese.

  Thank you to Maurice Nins Jr., Big Willie Nesbitt, Kamou Kambui, Glenn Beecham, Lutalo Toure, and countless others for embracing my vision and mission of men giving Black boys the art, skill, and science of manhood in America: Save Our Sons!

  Thanks to former St. Paul Chief of Police William (Corky) Finney, who already knew that Black lives mattered, for courageous leadership and for reviewing and advising on the police segments of this book. Special appreciation to Deputy Chief James Griffin, Commander Ed Steinberg, Captain Bob Grey, Sergeant Frank Foster, and to Officers Mike Toronto, John (Dude) O’Brien and his partner Keith Mortensen, Richard Gardell, and Eugene (Genno) Burk.

  Deep gratitude to Ann Regan for her dogged power editing and intense fact-checking, forcing me to be more accurate and taking me out into the deep water of editing, to a level I never knew existed. Sometimes, when my fifty-year-old memories were a month off, it was almost as though you were in a time warp with me.

  Thanks to Race MoChridhe and Anna Craig at the Minnesota Department of Transportation for help with the photo of our home; to Kaitlin Skaja and Victoria Roberts, MNHS Press interns, for retouching my old and treasured photos; and to Anthony Galloway, Roi Ward, Dimitri Boroughs, Bill Tilton, Mary Kay Boyd, Laura LaBlanc, John Senar, Superman Recoe Howard, Ian Keith ’n’ Gail Daniker, Kathy Jefferson, Shirley Pierce, Adisa Ben Asaki ’n’ Ernie Jefferson, and whomever else I’m forgetting due to old age.

  This book is dedicated to a number of people who made it possible, and I want to acknowledge them here, as well, especially Mom and Dad and my cousins Henry, Gregory, and Jeffery Jr. (all three lost to gun violence). And Willetha, for the good times and hard times, for being at my side through the rotten shifts, for your relentless support throughout my professional career and sacred SOS mission. I thank God for you and our children and grandchildren every day.

  I find myself saying, “Ain’t no sense in reading this story if you don’t believe in God.” But maybe you should read it especially if you don’t. I’m talkin’ ’bout the Voice that instructed me to stay off Bernie’s bike, the Arm that helped lift that quarter-ton rock, the Wind in the desert, the Hand that placed the tiny washcloth to protect my jugular vein, the Force that pushed me out of the room just before the double homicide, and the Spirit that gave me the SOS vision in church. In the end, what is it all but a testimony?

 

 

 
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