Being Proud of Where You Come FromA story about the people who believed in and supported me when I was just a kid on Dunklin Street.
In ninth grade, I needed a hard lesson. I was ashamed of where I came from. My parents were recovering from a bankruptcy brought on by my littlest sister’s heart surgery, her ongoing disability, and associated medical bills. We were broke, and it showed. I did what I could with my Salvation Army clothes and tried to hide as much of the rest as I could. Like our car, an old brown rusted out Ford van, that frequently rumbled and sputtered — and had a knack for sliding out of service when we needed it the most and could least afford to fix it.
Through a combination of skill, charitable billing, and forgiven debts, our neighborhood mechanic, W, a minor hero of this story, kept us on the road. Given the nature of that relationship and our predicament, however, non-critical issues with the vehicle had to be tolerated, including a set of brakes that screeched horribly every time we slowed down. I kept this evidence of our financial predicament out of the public eye by having my dad, on days when he drove me to school, drop me off at the bottom of the hill, far from the front doors, and then dashing away from him and the van as quickly as possible. The strategy worked. I made some friends, almost dated my first ninth grade crush, and raised my profile from bottom rung uncool to slightly below average.
Then, a couple months into the year, I got my big break: I was assigned a project with J. J was a significantly cooler and surprisingly nice girl who lived across town by the mall and had attended our other middle school. Fortunately, this meant that she had no legacy impression of my social standing. One day, near the end of the project, she invited me over to her house to finish it. It was a dream. Her mom picked us up and drove us to their beautiful home in the fancy area of town. We breezed through the project, crushing name-brand snacks and soda (their house didn’t have a single yellow box item in it!), sneaking in some TV time, and enjoying the afternoon. My imagination is filled with future visits, introductions to friends, and maybe the occasional party invitation. After a few hours, her father, Mr. H, came through the garage door. Mr. H was, to capture it in one word, formidable. Tall, thick, deep-voiced, sincere, and, to me, imposing. He greeted me in a perfectly pleasant manner, and I replied as best I could, stuck somewhere between fear and awe. He talked to Mrs. H for a bit while J and I wrapped things up, and then he came in and said something along the lines of “Son, you’re welcome to stay, but I understand from Mrs. H that you’re headed home for dinner?” “Yes, Sir.” “Well, then let’s get you on home.” That was the last thing I wanted. There was no way on earth that I was going to let J see my neighborhood or house yet, and I had prepared myself for this possibility.
“Oh no, don’t worry, Sir, I told my dad I would call him when we were done. I’ll walk down and he can pick me up on the corner.” Boom. Down on the corner. No view of our van. No view of our house or neighborhood. Foolproof. Except… Mr. H was old school. “No, no, no. There’s no need to call your dad or for him to go to that trouble. You came over here to do the work. I’ll give you a ride home.” I pushed back. “Really, Sir, it’s ok. It won’t be any trouble for him. If I could just use the phone…” Mr. H looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Son, you’re our guest,” he said with an indisputable tone of finality. “Let’s load up.” J smiled at me. I smiled weakly back and followed her to the garage. I wasn’t sure if I should be thrilled or even more concerned, but inside was a big beautiful black Cadillac. J got into the front seat next to her dad and I opened the door behind her and climbed in. It was far and away the nicest car I had ever been in. “Alright, where to?” he asked as he backed out of the driveway. “We’re on the east side past school,” I replied, the wheels turning swiftly in my mind. “I can just give you directions if that’ll work.” “That’ll work.” It was nearly six o’clock and the sun was starting to go down. As we left their neighborhood I began plotting a course. I needed to eat up as much daylight as possible and avoid the worst landmarks on the way in. I knew I had to approach our house from the far side to avoid the corner gas station known locally as “ghetto” gas, but the street before ours was way too ragged, so I couldn’t have him turn there. Plus that street had public housing on the other end that he might be aware of. The only real option was to loop all the way around the south side of town and then back up to my house from the east. I gave him the occasional direction. Left. Right. Straight. A few blocks down. At first he followed the directions without paying attention, chatting with J and me about school and our day. But at some point he gave me a long look in the rearview mirror. “Son, are you sure you know where you’re headed?” He asked me after a particularly strange turn. “Oh yes,” I replied, “I’ve lived in the same neighborhood since we moved here when I was really little.” “Where is it again?” “Kind of down from the highway patrol…” I answered, which was vague enough to encompass a massive area. “Streets?” “Dunklin… and… um… Ewing.” Ewing was a super tiny street by that house basically no one would know. He looked back at me again, but didn’t say anything this time. From that point on he let me guide him without question. As we turned to go up the hill on Dunklin I felt a sense of relief. We had gone the nicest possible way and J had hardly paid attention. I winced a little as we rolled past the crumbling house two doors down from ours, but I diverted their attention by starting my good-byes and pointing ahead to our house so he would know where to stop. Following the line of my own finger, though, my heart sank. I never came up to our house from this side or paid attention to it, but that whole side was shedding paint. Like a molting lizard. Big chunks missing everywhere and paint scales just barely clinging to it. My parents had recently done their best to paint the house — my mom nearly caught it on fire at one point with a heat gun — but they hadn’t had the time or money to paint the entire thing. So they hadn’t done the east side, presumably reasoning that people rarely came that way and it was the least exposed. As the car slowed to stop in front of our house, for the first time I really noticed everything that was wrong with it. The patchy yard. The broken curb and twisted sidewalk. I mumbled something nondescript about working on things or how busy everyone was or something like that, said a weak good-bye, and fled the car. I don’t remember hearing anything from J or her father. I was just trying to get out of there and move them along as quickly as possible. Then, as I walked down the front walk, I heard the worst noise imaginable: a second car door shutting behind me. As Johnny Cash would say, it echoed through the canyons like the disappearing dreams of yesterday. Someone else had gotten out. The sound took me to a new low. With nowhere to go and nothing else to do, I fortified my will and, slowly, I turned around. Looming across the top of that big beautiful black Cadillac stood Mr. H, looking down at me. The car was still running. He had closed his door so that J wouldn’t hear what he had to say. “Son,” he began, in his big deep voice. I forced myself to look at him. I was going to take it like a man, so he wouldn’t think less of me. He continued. “I want you to know that we were honored to have you at the house today. I am glad I got to meet you and that you’re my daughter’s friend.” He paused, looking past me at our house, and then looked back down at me. With complete sincerity, that I believed in my soul, he added: “You have a beautiful home and you’re going to do great things. I’m proud to know you and I’d be proud for J to come back anytime.” He didn’t wait for me to respond. That was it. He just opened the door back up, climbed in, and put the car in gear. J waved as they drove away, obviously not noticing a thing. To this day I tear up when I think about that moment. The moment when a man I didn’t know made the effort to understand me. And then took a moment to let me know, without telling me directly, that I could be proud of who I was and where I came from. That lesson couldn’t have come from my family. It couldn’t have come from inside the world I lived in. It had to come from outside. And if it hadn’t been for Mr. H, I don’t know if I would have ever been comfortable enough to just be me. I never saw him again, but that year was a turning point for me, a kid who had been entirely undistinguished up to that point.
I studied hard and practiced hard. I made it to Yale on a Pell Grant. I went to that fancy east coast school and was never shy about where I came from and who I was. And then I came back home to mid-Missouri for law school. It’s where my roots were. My grandparents were in the early stages of Alzheimer’s there and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
This was my world. I looked up Mr. H. I wanted to tell him thank you. For everything. For lifting up a kid he didn’t know when he didn’t have to. But I never got a chance. He passed away unexpectedly while I was at school. Now, I make sure his legacy lives through me by never missing an opportunity to lift a kid up and let him know that he can be proud of where he comes from. This is the legacy I will bring to the United States Senate. ### Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.
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Thursday, September 26, 2024
Being Proud of Where You Come From
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