Hopeful Mornings

I’m 14, it’s summer and I’m in South Carolina
working in junk with Harvey
not something Harvey, just Harvey.
One job was to mow Harvey’s yard.
I mowed singing loud enough to be heard,
“I will Meet you in the Morning
just inside the Eastern Gate over there”.
A song to chase away cuss words
and filthy stories Harvey told.
After I mowed, Harvey let me come in
If I took off my shoes
and eat lunch with he and Sunny.
The air condition froze my sweat
My soaked T-shirt stuck to my skin,
but it felt so good.
I thought, if I ever get a house
And a reclining chair like Harvey’s,
I will sit in it all the time
and never work.
I’ll find myself a 14 year-old slave.

We got up at daylight.
By seven Harvey drove up
There in his pickup to get me
I would climb in and say nothing
silence to his house and the work.
The morning air was cool
I took deep breaths of it,
Repeating something my dad would say like,
This is a day that the lord has made
I will rejoice and be exceedingly glad.
I fell in love with mornings.

That was the summer of 1971.
I weighed 115 pounds
At about 5’ 7”.
My skin darkened from the sun.
My muscles grew as large
as limited skin and bones permitted.
Veins rose like roots on my arms
looking to carry blood.
By the time my grits ran out,
me and one of the other sons,
would have gotten coffee and a honey bun.
At a gas station.
The schedule was too tight
for home sickness,
but mom and dad’s voices played in my ears.
Mom said, “Daddy look, he’s too little to work like that”,
Daddy said, “I say lay it to him”,
“Lay in there with it son.”
Theirs were not the only voices.
I heard sermons by Oliver B. Greene,
hymns by Billy Kelly,
invitations by John R. Rice,
above the smells, noise and eye-sore junks

After we removed gas tanks -- explosive,
Starters -- valuable copper
and other salvageable parts,
we hauled cars three at a time
on a flat bed truck,
twenty miles up the road to Greenville.

Once a week I rode with Harvey to the landfill,
rooting around the red-brown soil
for gallon-sized jars of Mayonnaise
Mustard, Ketchup or Salad Dressing,
thrown away by wholesalers,
after it had “spoiled”.
Harvey used it in his “restaurant”
Or sold it in his “store”
Or gave some to mom and dad.
He alone decided when something had gone bad,
And being in the landfill
Was hardly proof enough.

In later summers I worked at the State Highway garage,
a funeral home,
the oil fields,
a transmission parts manufacturing plant,
McDonald’s,
selling vacuum cleaners.
It’s hard to remember specifics now,
but looking back on those jobs,
it’s the mornings I recall.
Mornings of sweet ambivalence
Between interrupted sleep and
the possibilities of a brand new day.

At McDonald’s, in the summer of ‘80,
I got up at three-thirty,
opened the restaurant at four,
buffed the tile floors,
cleaned the fry vat
and put in new grease
to be hot by five o’clock,
and when the truck ran twice a week
I slid the boxes of frozen hamburger,
fries, soft-serve and chopped onions,
down a makeshift ramp of two,
two-by-ten boards.
The freezer was at the bottom of the stairs.

After the restaurant opened,
I ran down stairs to get whatever they called for,
opened it with my box knife
I was trustworthy, a maintenance guy
and ran it all up to them.

During the undergraduate days,
After the Summer of 75
Raleigh and I
got up every morning and ran
Some days he pep talked me
other days, I him.
One morning I told him
getting up early and running
is like a dip stick.
If we could do it,
we had motivation in our crankcase.
I was so wise…

Tanga and I toured Florida with a Baptist
Choir in the Spring of ‘76.
Of all mornings, I came to love
Springs the most,
The newspaper would address
Kentucky basketball.
That year they won the NIT
just before we took our trip.
On the trip, the morning paper
Had stuff about spring training
and the Big Red Machine.

I was awkward, uncertain
but my relationship with the morning
was reliable and full of hope.

If you’re young
And read to here…
I have something for you

I wish you hopeful mornings.