"Just A Moment. Life"

Before anyone starts trembling thinking of walking or driving down a street and there's a 99-year-old guy driving out there, we must clarify:  .There was this old guy who when sipping a few he'd call me up -- not by cell phone, he wouldn't know the difference between a cell phone and a tablespoon.  But he had this old shell of a car and we'd be in it, knocking back a few and he'd hit the accelerator, figuratively, and start telling me stuff about some of his involvement in trying to eradicate some social problem.  There was one story he never tired of repeating; didn't have anything to do with a social problem.  He'd read Death Of A Salesman so many times that he believed that he was Arthur Miller.  And his favorite moment -- he'd say, "life is but a moment" -- was when he was  married to Marilyn Monroe.  And that's when I would really start listening because if he could believe that he was married to Marilyn Monroe I'd trade places with that 99-year-old man in a flash.  And speaking of flash, reminds me of the time he told me that when he was 16 he wanted a gold tooth.  Black people once thought that having front teeth capped with gold was really heaven.  But the dentist, who was white, told him, "Son, your teeth serve a useful purpose, so don't ruin them with that gold mess.  Besides, when you open your mouth to kiss a girl she'll get that gold flash and scram outta your arms, thinking you're something from outta space."  He said that's when he realized white people have a culture that keeps them pretty smart, that black people have only a cheap imitation of white peoples' culture; some black people identify as Indians.  He said he despised any black who didn't identify with our ancestors who came over on those slave boats.

But getting back to the car.  He had a bad heart, bad lungs, bad kidneys, high blood pressure, a bad liver and only God knew what else so much smoking and drinking had done to him.  But he'd been in the Marine Corps in World War II and believed that nobody could be tougher than a marine.  So we'd sit in that old shell of a car that had nothing under the  hood, he sold all the parts, and he'd imagine we were kicking dust down some dirt road and he'd be telling me about life being a moment and only God knew what in the hell we were doing on this magnetic rock revolving and evolving somewhere in space, and he'd always end by saying, "See you next time, God willing and the creek don't rise."  Then he kicked off sitting there telling me that and I later wrote I Don't See Race Or Color.  My tribute to him.