The Garbage Man
He was just a lowly garbage man, but as a father, he had the right stuff.
Oakland, California has never been what you’d call a garden spot. Yes, it is across the bay from one of the world’s most beautiful cities but, if San Francisco is Cinderella, Oakland is her ugly stepsister. I know. I was born there in 1963 to Otis and Gladys Dove. So were my sisters, Tamara and Whitney, and the neighborhood where we grew up was the wart on the ugly stepsister’s nose.
My parents were proud, honest, poor, and very religious. We attended Good Shepherd Baptist Church, and of all the Sunday school teachers I’ve had in my life, Mrs. Watson’s the one I’ll never forget. She was larger than life and infused right down to her toes with the Holy Spirit. Her personality resided precisely between sternness and hilarity, could scold or belly laugh on a dime. I remember my first day in her class as if it were yesterday. I was transfixed on an image of Jesus in a frame on the wall. Everybody around me was black except for Jesus, and I wanted to know why.
I raised my hand and asked, "Mrs. Watson, was Jesus white?" She must have been caught off guard because for a minute she had that do-I-really-want-to-go-there look in her eyes, but to her credit, she answered me. "I don’t believe he was white or black, Mitchell," she said.
"Well what color was he?" I asked, thinking he could be just about any color he wanted to be.
Mrs. Watson said she believed his skin was a swarthy tone, seeing as how he was born in the Middle East, and Middle-Eastern people have that type of complexion. Then I asked what color swarthy was and could my mama buy me a swarthy shirt.
Placing a hand on each of her generous hips, she shot me a look as if I’d asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard. But then, just as fast, her faced transformed into a smile, as if she suddenly remembered she was talking to a six-year-old, and she explained that swarthy was a dark brown color that only pertained to skin tone and no, my mother could not by me a swarthy shirt.
"Then Jesus was closer to black than white, right?" I asked.
"I think swarthy is a combination of all skin colors," she said. "Just the right tone God meant his son to be. But much more important than his color, you must remember Jesus means love. When we think of him we should not think of skin color, we should think of love, understanding and redemption. And the same is true with him. When Jesus looks at his children, which all humans are, he doesn’t notice skin color.
" Mrs. Watson was ready to put the conversation to rest, but I had one more question. "Why is Jesus white in that picture?"
"Little Mitchell Micah Dove," she said (she addressed us by our full names when she became irritated), "if you had to guess, who would you say painted that picture?"
Without hesitation, I said, "A white person, Mrs. Watson."
To learn at age six that Jesus’ face is a mosaic of every ethnicity and that I am not excluded, left an impression on my soul that drives me to this day.
Another major ah-ha moment occurred in the sixth grade, on the day I was suspended from school. A mixed-race group of friends and I were horsing around with a soccer ball during recess. I stole the ball and shot down the field toward the goal, intent on scoring. Ten yards from the net, a big white kid ran across the field from nowhere and knocked me off my feet.
Lying on the ground, groaning from aching ribs, I looked up into the snarling face of what looked like a giant. The sun, positioned behind the kid’s red head, created the illusion of fire.
"You think you’re hot shit, don’t you, nigger?" He said.
With considerable effort I picked myself up, tired of turning the other cheek. Especially to Derek Bork. This made the third time. "Why don’t you leave us real people alone?" I said. "Go hang out with your small-minded pals and watch the grass grow."
Derek telegraphed his punch with a grunt, and I ducked under it. Much quicker than the slow-moving bully, I meted out turn-the-other-cheek frustrations on him until the playground monitor broke up the fight and escorted us to the principal’s office.
Head down, shoulder’s slumped, I trudged along the sidewalk past run down, graffiti-marred, low-income shacks toward my house. The principal’s office had called my mother to pick me up, but she didn’t have a car or, for that matter a driver’s license. Even though it was just a few blocks, it was the longest walk of my life. Suspended for a day, I was in real trouble. Dad would be crushed.
I crept onto our ramshackle house’s front porch and carefully creaked open the tattered screen door. So much for sneaking in. Mother stood in the center of the living room pointing like a traffic cop down the hall toward my bedroom. I slinked past the sternest stare I’d ever received to my temporary sanctuary and dove into my schoolwork.
I couldn’t read, my mind too filled with dread, but I figured my nose stuck in a book presented a helpful image. In a way, I wished Dad would resort to violence instead of tongue-lashing me in his particular way. I think he had a little preacher in him. When we messed up, he could make us kids feel like dog squeeze without raising his voice or a finger.
He entered the house a little after five-thirty and conversed with Mother. Then silence, and in this particular instance it was not golden. This was eye-of-the-storm quiet, a mere interlude before the winds of fury would start to blow. The bedroom door inched open and my stomach flipped. Whew… my sister, Tamara. She stuck her head in and announced dinner was ready. I listened to the small talk during dinner, waiting for the hammer.
Dad bit into a chicken leg, chewing slowly, waiting until he swallowed to speak. "How was your day at school, Whitney?" he asked.
I squirmed in my seat.
Whitney, mouth full of cornbread, said, "Jush --." "Honey, you know better than to speak with a full mouth," Dad said. Whitney nodded, swallowed, then said, "Sorry, Daddy. I had a real good day at school."
"Go on, tell your mama and me what made it so good."
"Well… I got an ‘A’ on a quiz about the flag."
Dad, a big smile splitting his face, put his fork down and clapped and everybody followed suit. "Now," he said, shifting his eyes to Tamara. "What about you, Lovebug?"
Tamara shrugged.
Dad shrugged back. "What’s that mean?"
Tears welled in her eyes. "I got a C plus on my quiz, Daddy. I’m sorry."
"Did you give your best effort?"
"Yes, Daddy."
Dad clapped. "Then it’s my fault. You did the best you knew how. Next time you’ll be better prepared."
Here it comes, my turn, I thought.
"Mama," Dad said, "nobody fries chicken like you. Not the Colonel, not Popeye, and not that old Mrs. Winner. If I had the money to open a restaurant, we’d make millions."
Flustered, Mother replied, "Oh, Daddy, you just go on and eat before it gets cold."
Now, here it comes, the roof is about to fall in on me.
Dad finished with his main course, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and waited while Mother dished out peach cobbler to his kids. In pure agony, I focused on a tiny piece of cornbread he’d missed at the corner of his mouth.
Mother beckoned, and he passed his plate. "You need to do something about that hinge on the fence gate. The thing’s about to fall off," she said while dishing out a generous helping of piping hot cobbler.
Dad nodded. "I know baby. I’ll get to it after I tune up the Chevy. Been meaning to fix the front door too. Never seems to be enough time."
I pushed my dessert around my plate, my appetite but a memory.
"You gonna eat that, boy, or play hockey with it?" Dad asked.
I took a bite, swallowing hard, while Tamara and Whitney shot furtive looks and knowing little smiles at me. Nothing wrong with their appetites, they were eating this up.
Finally, Dad fixed his big brown eyes on me. "Son, join me on the porch after dinner."
"Yes, sir," I managed in a higher pitch than normal. Thunder and lightning on the front porch.
Dad opened the door and I slipped past him, intending to sit in Mother’s rocking chair.
"No, son," he said. "Sit right here beside me on the stoop. I want you to hear what I have to say."
"Yes, sir." "
Do you listen to me when I speak to you?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I don’t mean listen with your ears, I mean listen with your heart. Do you do that?"
"I think so," I said. My heart could hear?
"Do you know what I mean?"
"Not exactly."
"First, listen to what I have to say and let it sink in. Then, strongly consider what I’ve said. Don’t just let it flit in one ear and out the other. Live with the words and the emotions they evoke."
He paused for a moment, big hands interlocked, soft brown eyes set on me like spotlights. "When I was a young boy in Mississippi, our family was dirt poor. Daddy was a farmer. Scratched at a small piece of hand-me-down, hardscrabble land for days and years on end. Wasn’t worth much, but to him it was a chunk of gold. My great grandfather got the parcel from his owner. Daddy couldn’t read or write, barely could count. During bad growing years, we all suffered because he couldn’t do anything else. Without an education, he was unarmed. Back then, blacks in the South weren’t offered much, but those given menial jobs could at least read and do arithmetic." He paused again, eyes far off.
"Go on, Dad," I said.
"I never told you how your granddaddy died, Mitchell. I just said he passed on, and that’s not true. He killed himself… put a gun to his head out in the barn and pulled the trigger… bullet went clean through his head and killed our plow mule too.
" I gulped. "Why?"
"We were having another bad growing year. Mama was sick all year too, and Daddy couldn’t buy medicine. Didn’t have money. Here’s a proud man, can’t take care of his bride or his children. On top of all that, he had the burden of bigotry on his back. His dignity was depleted and he just couldn’t take it no more." Tears, like diamonds on black satin, trekked down his ample cheeks.
"Are you okay, Dad?" I asked.
"I’m fine, son. I loved and respected my daddy. He was a good man and father but just unprepared to live in this world."
"What happened after Grandpa died?"
"I had to drop out of tenth grade. Daddy was determined that I get a good education, but someone had to take care of Mama and my sisters. I worked the farm and studied on my own at night. Read dictionaries cover to cover. Somehow, by God’s grace, we made it. Never got a diploma, but I read real well and use good grammar. The point, Mitchell, is your granddaddy agonized over not being able to be self-sufficient. Felt like less of a man because he didn’t have the tools to provide for his own. He preached endlessly about the importance of being well educated, just as I preach to you. His suicide ended his life, his sermons on education, his dreams for me, and my dream of a better life." He paused, looked at me. "What are you doing?"
"Just looking at the stars, thinking about Grandpa," I said. "Go on, I’m listening."
"The day you were born I looked to the sky, much like you’re doing now, and made a promise to God in heaven that I would do everything in my power to see that you graduate from college… look at me son, this is very important."
My eyes locked with his.
He said, "I will do nothing to impede and everything to help you, but you have to want that diploma bad, son. Striking back at idiots hurts no one but you. Even though you didn’t pick the fight, you were punished. Life isn’t fair and that’s just the way it is. Nowhere in your records will it say ‘Mitchell was suspended but it wasn’t his fault’. Promise me you will stay focused on what’s important."
"I promise. I’ll do my best, sir."
Dad placed a hand on my knee. "From now on, you and me are gonna meet on this porch a couple times a week. How’s that sound?"
"Why?" I asked.
"Just to talk. Get things off our chests. Men need to do that now and then."
Men. My chest expanded. "Sounds good to me, sir."
Dad gazed up at the stars. "Did you know that one of the most powerful men to ever live was also one of the kindest and most enlightened? He had the power to turn thousands upon thousands of people against his enemies and destroy America’s great cities but chose a different path."
"Who was that, sir?" I asked.
"Dr. Martin Luther King. He had a dream… so do I, and you should have a dream too."
I wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words, so I just moved to his lap and hugged him. ***
I proclaim loud and proud that my dad toiled as a garbage man for thirty years. Cut lawns part time too. The money he earned from mowing white folks’ yards on Saturdays and Sundays went into a college fund for his children. I learned at a very young age that my school career would span at least seventeen years. There was never any question about it. My daily priorities were: school, homework, recreation (if time), dinner, and then bed. There was seldom any deviation.
Dad was big on dispensing advice. One day, while helping him work on our old Chevy, I revealed that my friends were beginning to shun me. Seemed the better I did at school, the more I was isolated and called names like Uncle Tom and lackey to whites. I didn’t understand. How could they translate academic excellence into tools of the white establishment? Whites didn’t have an exclusive patent on intelligence. In short, I asked my dad why they were being such jerks.
He rose from the engine well, swiped grease from the bridge of his nose, and said, "People like that can’t see past their own noses, son. I read somewhere about this sickness where people abuse themselves by cuttin’ or gougin’ or some such way."
"Why would they do that?" I asked.
"‘Cause something happened real bad to them in their childhood," he said. "It’s a mental thing. Makes ‘em feel good to hurt themselves. It’s called self-mutilation, and I think some of our people suffer from something similar. Those who have it are eaten up with bitterness and hatred and have no hope. They’re gonna show the white man by mutilating their lives, if that makes any sense."
"I don’t understand, Dad," I said.
"I don’t either, Mitchell. Education is the road map to the horizon. Who in their right mind would want a future of this?" He waved an arm in a wide arc toward the dilapidated houses across the street. "A future of ghetto, drugs, and filth." Then he glared at the fence surrounding our front yard. "It’s just not right for a man to have to build a six-foot slat fence around his front yard to protect his family. Just over two years ago it was a knee-high picket fence. This neighborhood’s rot is because of attitudes like your friends’."
"Ex-friends, Dad," I said. "I won’t be one of those self-mutilators." My chest filled with pride, as I watched him install the last of the spark plugs into the Chevy. The old blue wagon was diseased with reddish spots and springs were beginning to push through its vinyl seats, but he continued to drive it. He wouldn’t take it to the repair shop or buy a new one; instead he saved the money for his children’s education. If not for Otis Dove, I would most likely be on a street corner selling drugs, or worse, an urban violence statistic. ***
Dad imparted another pearl of wisdom when I was fourteen and my hormones zooming around like accelerated atoms. During one of our bi-monthly porch sessions two jabbering fourteen-year-old neighborhood girls, sporting tattoos, cigarettes, and distended bellies, walked past the open fence gate and he asked, "What you think about all these girls have babies, son?"
I shrugged, not really knowing what to say, but confident that I was about to hear his take on the situation.
"Well, I’ll tell you what I think," he said. "Girls around here are using their bodies and saving their minds. Should be the other way around. You can’t save your mind like money under the mattress. You got to invest it; make it work for you just like you do money. Invest your mind in books and school and your money in stocks and bonds and watch them both grow. Fifty dollars under the mattress today will be fifty dollars under the mattress twenty years from now. Same with a mind. Let yours stagnate today, and you’ll have a kid’s mind when you’re thirty. Those girls have no one to blame for their predicaments but themselves. I haven’t noticed any flying white penises flittin’ around the neighborhood pollinatin’ young black females, have you?"
"Uhhh… no sir," I said, and he continued.
"Let that be an example of what can happen if you’re irresponsible with your manhood. Invest in your body that way and your return is babies, mouths to feed, diapers to change, and dead dreams. Premature responsibility poisons the future; careful preparation nourishes it. There’s a time and place for everything, boy."
I think it’s fair to say the garbage man had a way with words. ***
I won’t lie. As big a positive influence on me as my father was, a party and jock school is where I wanted to go for higher learning. I was a pretty good wide receiver in high school and carried a 3.85 GPA, thus full-ride athletic scholarship offers were plentiful. Dad preferred that I accept the scholastic scholarship offered by the Colorado School of Mines, even though it was less than full-ride. I ended up attending CSM and again, his advice was right on. I played on a second-rate football team at a prestigious, first-rate academic school. It very easily could have been the other way around.
The CSM curriculum was tougher than I ever imagined. For four years, I spent almost all of my spare time studying in my dorm room or in the library, although I do remember taking occasional breaks for sustenance. I dated twice, once each with the two black female students attending CSM. A school for geologists and petroleum engineers was far from a favorite destination for college-bound African American girls, especially in the early eighties.
I was always lonely, and at times depressed, and called Dad weekly, sometimes twice weekly. He kept me going via the phone lines until graduation day arrived.
I’ll never forget that day. At the time, it seemed like a mirage. Was all of my sacrifice and hard work finally paying dividends? I was valedictorian of my class, and as I approached the podium to deliver my speech, I locked eyes with the Garbage Man in the front row.
His face displayed tears and a look of pure unadulterated satisfaction tinged with relief. For that instant we were the only two people in Colorado. I remember that night as if it happened yesterday. The ceremony took place outdoors, and it seemed even the trees, mountains, and stars were in awe over my triumph. Feelings of pride and accomplishment welled up inside me, and to this day they have not ebbed. Every kid should have that experience.
