How to be a Man
Ivy Baptist Church, Newport News VA. is honoring my father, Eugene Clifton Boyd this Sunday (19th) for his faith and commitment to God and his church.
My father is very proud of this particular photo of himself. His countenance and pose in his work clothes for him says it all. He is beyond 90 now and doing the best he can… Typically, he ask me “where we’re going again?” And I reply, “I just told you that 3 times an hour ago.” He laughs and says, “You know my mind ain’t what it used to be, but I remember everything about…. then he regales me with stories of his youth, work ethic etc…
The son of a half-cropper (his description), commonly known as a sharecropper, born in 1929, the year of the Great Crash and start of the depression. His mother, Dianne would pass early in his childhood. His twin did not survive childbirth. His father, Tilman passed during his 16th year in 1945. The family like any others moved north from this place Littleton,NC to find jobs and sustainment.
He possess an episodic memory and clearly recalls past personal experiences they occurred during a particular time or place, which i inherited.
Lastly, I’ve always seen my father as a dreamer. When I was about 15 my father, mother and I were standing on the front porch of our home at 309 Pine Ave, NN, Va. The house next door was vacant and we were just enjoy the spring scenery conversing about the house. Then my father reaches into his dirty work pants pockets, which never held more than a dollar in change, rattled that metal bundle and proclaimed to no one in particular, “You know if I had a little more money, I’d buy that house!” I was stunned, dumbfounded, surprised, annoyed, perturbed and proud of the dreamer with pennies. But that audacity found fertile ground in my psychic forever.
How does a dream live beyond and not die on the vine but becomes a raisin
Diminish me and elevate you.
Hold him in your heart
A million in one is still a million
Don’t chain my spirit, let my dreams blow in the wind
JB
