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Kenny Ray

Here is a story that Ruth Ann has asked me to share with you all. In 1983-84, my cousin and I had just finished preparing a new cafe in Mobile, Alabama to open. It was called The Cock of the Walk, and it opened on January 1, 1984. The name came from the old Riverboat days of the 1800’s, when the meanest, baddest dude on the Riverboat was called the “cock of the walk.” I had been hired on as a waiter, which was an easy gig because the only food the restaurant specialized in was the best tasting filet of farm-raised cat fish you will ever put into your mouth, along with a side order of fried green dill pickles. So, a waiter didn’t have to memorize too much from a menu. I wore a black felt, wide-brimmed hat with a goose feather sticking out of the side, a red long puffy sleeved shirt with long draw strings, and black pants and shoes. The hours were from 5:00 to 10:00 during the dinner time hours. Our bread and butter, as the owners explained to us waiters, was this jalapeño cornbread served from a black cast iron eight-inch round skillet. The whole novelty behind us waiters making good tips would come down to how good we were at flipping our cornbread into the air and catching it again in the skillet. We quickly became masters of the game, and once we got that down we started flipping the bread and catching it behind our backs. The customers loved it when we were successful, but it didn’t take long to discover that they loved it even more when we dropped our cornbread! Then we would quickly pick it up, brush it off and say: “We’ll put that back in the oven and use it again later.” They would laugh at our goings-on.  Whole families would return week after week and ask for their favorite waiter by name. It was, like overnight, we had become a part of their families. But, the show must go on and our act had to grow. So, we began to toss our cornbread from one waiter to another. They loved us even more. Finally, we came up with the four-waiter toss. It was a hot Mobile Friday evening, and there were at least seventy-five people in the front room of the restaurant. We had carefully placed a waiter in each corner, four in all, and on “GO” we would toss our cornbread to one another. It was a long toss, to say the least. But, one thing we forgot to account for. Since the toss would be a long one, it had to have enough height and speed to make it to the other waiter. And we had forgotten all about the ceiling fans between us. We tossed the cornbread, the fans caught it and shredded it and then showered it all over the customers. “Oh, no!” I thought, “we have really messed it up this time.” But the customers loved having cornbread shredded all over them. Everybody laughed and had a gay old time!

 Ahhh, only in America! Or, only in Mobile, Alabama on a hot summer’s evening!

Like Grandma and I had done for two years to Grandpa's grave, I was now taking flowers to place on her grave. I would sit and talk to her, and I told her how much I loved her and missed her.  Sometimes I would feel close to her, and other times I would feel nothing at all. Then it suddenly dawned upon me that this would have meant everything to her, for I realized that it is the little things in life that mean the most. And this is what she taught me, just by her actions of taking those flowers to place on my Grandpa's grave. For in life, the hands of fate and time give little to us at first, and then take so much from us in the end.

I return often to these memories. They recall to me the best part of my life. Losing my grandparents and my plans for a happy future while I was in my middle teens sent me into a free fall that resulted in years of alcoholism, as I tried to live with the pain and the confusion. I became a disappointment to my family and to myself. And I know that in this real world there is no going back.

Sometimes, as I lie in my cell, I think - and hope - that I am a young boy again sleeping and dreaming on the couch in the farm house. Then I shall finally wake up from this nightmare and walk into the kitchen and there they all will be, Grandma and Grandpa and maybe even Freckles and Eggroll, like nobody ever left or died. And I can be Kenny Ray, the happy young man who works the farm with the two people he loves most in the world.

. . . . . . This is the end of my memories of my beloved grandparents. Thank you for sharing them with me.

In my next message, I will post a story about my early days as a waiter that Ruth Ann thinks is very funny.

Grandma's cancer progressed. She would lie in the back seat of her Chevy Malibu while I drove her down to the Naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, for her to receive radiation treatments. As we drove down Highway 460 and through the town of Waverly, she would point out places to me that she remembered as a small girl.

Eventually, like a foreign invading army, the cancer ate its way through her body, and she moved in with us to be with family. We set up a bed for her in our living room, where I would sit with her as she talked of days gone by.

I turned to drugs and alcohol to kill my pain of watching her slowly die. She had been the sun my world had revolved around since I was born, and she was only sixty-four years old.  I was slowly dying inside with her. My pain and hurt would selfishly turn to anger toward her for the act of dying before her time. And what about the promises we had made to one another years before while harvesting those concord grapes? I was keeping my end of the bargain. Unfortunately, she couldn't keep hers.

Finally, on a cold, snowing February Sunday in 1979, as she begged the Good Lord up above to please take her to relieve her suffering, she fell into a coma and died. I do believe with all my heart that she instantly went to a much better realm, for a faint smile was born across her lips as she took her last breath in this world.

They would leave the farm to me. But I immediately sold it to Grandpa's sister, who lived in Norfolk. I sold it for two reasons: one, I was young and broke; and two, I did not want to go down to the farm and picture my Grandma standing over the stove frying chickens, or my Grandpa as he walked the fields or through the woods. Although, if it had been about a decade later, I might have kept the old place and worked it in honor of their memory.

Next post will be the last of these memories with my beloved grandparents . . . 

In 1975, my family and I moved westward to Powhatan County. In the Spring of 1976, Grandma was rushed to the Kenner Army Hospital at Fort Lee, a couple of miles outside Petersburg, Virginia. Grandpa was a navy veteran and had proudly served in both World Wars. Grandma was diagnosed with colon cancer and had her colon removed. Even though colon cancer ran on her side of the family, it still caught everyone by surprise. Grandma was a southerner, and she would fry everything we ate. That is probably why so many in her family died early of colon cancer, but at the time nobody thought about healthy diets.

The summer following her operation, everything was still running smoothly on our little farm. A big garden was still planted and harvested. Grandpa had not one but two large strawberry fields. Ours was one of the first strawberry farms in Chesterfield County. Beginning in the late 60's, people would come every middle of May from as far was Richmond, Petersburg, and Colonial Heights to pick our strawberries.  I just read a line from somewhere the other day that we never fully or clearly understand the present as we are experiencing it until it is fully in the past. And now I know that makes sense. But in the summer of 1977 I really did not grasp what was happening when I was sixteen years old and had just gotten my driver's license. I did not understand that everybody that I grew up with, including the pets on our farm, were slowly dying around me. I did not see that as Fall and Winter of 1977 arrived, this would be the very last season that the three of us would share together on our little farm.

Grandpa would often go with me down to Husband’s Place, or I would venture down by myself. After lunch one summer afternoon in 1970, my Grandma and I went down there together. We walked past our little orchard and past the several bee hives that lined the old country road. (I always hated those honeybees, for it always seemed that one of them would find their way to fly into my hair or ears.) As we made our way down to the cabin, we were carefree as can be, and I listened to the stories she told me about her past. She brought a pocket knife with her, and as I reflect back now I do believe we were going down there for one purpose only. That was to carve the initials of my family members on one of the beech trees. We picked one out right next to the cabin, and she went to work. Shortly afterward, it looked like this: 

H.L. (my father)

P.L.  (my mother)

K.L. (that was me)

S.L. (my middle sister)

K.L. (my youngest sister) 

1970

Every time after that, I would venture over to this tree, run my fingers over the names and make sure they were still there. Which of course they were.  Back in 1987, I happened to be working on a construction job down in that part of the county. One evening after work, I made a stop there. I walked across the dam and over to the tree to check out the carvings: still there! That was the last time I went down there.

In 1998, about a month before I was locked up on this sentence, I drove across the creek and up to the old place. The creek is nothing but a little ditch now, with the water barely trickling down it. I could remember back to a time when my Grandpa explained to me how in the old days they used to keep the trees cleared back from the banks of the creeks. That kept the creeks nice and wide, with plenty of water. But now the trees had grown large, pushing the banks in. Plus, the population had grown ten-fold in this area of the county, with sub-divisions everywhere, which of course put a strain on the underground water levels.