Mr. Jesse

I was a junior in high school when my stepfather told me about a great summer job working for Acme Brick where he was the sales manager. They were paying $3.50 per hour for help on the brickyard and there was an opening for a hardworking grunt. I jumped at it and was soon informed that I wouldn’t have to drive to the yard in north Baton Rouge, but could instead drive to the loading dock under the Mississippi River bridge. It was about 20 minutes from our house.

I thought that was great! I was ready to bust my rear, hoping to gain some kind of approval from the stepfather who later told me that he never really loved my brother and me. So, I busted my butt for Mr. Jesse instead, my new-found friend and work ethic mentor!

Before I describe Mr. Jesse, a black man, I want to describe the times, as this was 1973 and Baton Rouge was in racial turmoil. Just 2 years earlier, the state had started mandatory busing to force black kids and white kids to get educated together. I won’t say that it was a bad idea, but it was poorly executed as most government plans are that are used to address equality of any description. I wasn’t bused to an adequately proportioned black school, as it was actually closer to where I lived.

I, among a few other white kids, were loaded on a bus full of, just as oblivious, black kids that lived in the same rural area. We journeyed an extra 10 miles to a white school where the kids, probably influenced by their parents, decided to hate on all of us who got off the bus. They indiscriminately wanted to beat the crap out of all of us. I along with my white friends, also strongly influenced by our parents, turned on the black kids we grew up with. It was hateful and sad, but the truth is the truth.

So, that was my first poor response to color.

What was terrible on my part was that one of the kids was one of my friends, Rosie. We had begun to hang out together after my family moved out to the country a year earlier. To give you an even bigger picture, my mother would not let Rosie in our house as the only black person allowed in was our maid.  Rosie just accepted it, but I remember being embarrassed about the whole thing.

I really didn’t understand it.

I think most kids of my generation just tried to get along, even though most of us were heavily influenced by our prejudiced parents.

I want to give you a little more background about how I responded to the hatred. When I was sixteen, I committed a terrible crime against a black family. I won’t say anything else about it now, as I have written about it, but the husband oddly let me off the hook, and it impacted me so much I decided I would hate no more, on anyone. I actually didn’t hate people then, but made poor choices from peer pressure.

Now, back to Mr. Jesse, as I met him about a year after I was let off with extreme grace for something a black man could have justifiably killed me over.

Well, I guess I had better also address something else before I talk about Mr. Jesse.

I’m sure you have recognized that I use the word “color” in describing people instead of African-American. I believe the term is totally bogus, patronizing and divisive. I have one truly African-American friend from Ghana.  He was born there and can describe the town he was raised in but despises the label as he has worked very hard to become an American. I think back about how Mr. Jesse saw things, and I can hear him saying, “I ain’t no African, I’m from Hammond, Louisiana, like my daddy and his daddy.”

I have friends from Jamaica, St. Thomas, the Bahamas and South America that have black heritage, but like most people in America, they don’t have a clue as to their origin, just like their white brothers and sisters. Many people of color are offended by the politically correct description, but will only say something to someone who has an ear to hear.  Try me for example. According to Heritage DNA testing, I am 1.5 percent African. Go figure!

For me it’s just black and white!

Well, I would describe Mr. Jesse as a simple man.

I met him when he was either in his late sixty’s or early seventy’s. It was hard to tell. He was built for the heavy labor he performed daily without complaint. He would say things like “Wut good would dat do, ain’t nobody listenin noways.” He had the frame and gate of a gorilla and I mean no disrespect by that description at all. He was hunched and had a waddle type walk, sort of like a baby with a loaded diaper. He was about 5’ 6” tall and weighed around 240 pounds. He had silver hair on the back half of his sizable head, and he wore a contagious smile. His teeth appeared rather ground down but mostly intact.

Kinda funny the things I remember!

And most importantly, he had something I didn’t understand but recognized later in life, as he was uniquely grace-filled. He had the Holy Spirit! How did I know that? I didn’t. I sorted that out after I experienced the Holy Spirit. In reflection, I remember a joy-filled man who never let the troubles of life get him down.

Jesse didn’t treat me like the boss’s son, he treated me as the only help he had and I better work or he was gonna get me fired. He was hard and fair when he told me, “Boy, we gotta job to do, and I ain’t sufferin none of your foolishness!”

We were working on a loading dock under the Mississippi Bridge, where it was humid and hot, like 100% humidity and 95 degrees. Under the bridge didn’t mean there was shade, as we were 50 yards from the bridge, but there was shade in the boxcars we were unloading. There was a small price for the shade as it was at least 15 degrees hotter in the boxcars, and that was where I spent every day that first summer.

We were unloading brick from either St. Louis or Chicago shipped to a rail spur under the bridge. The bricks would shift back and forth every time the train hit the brakes or sped up, in doing so, the bricks banded in bundles, or worse, stacked on pallets, ended up in large piles in the boxcar. My job was to drag a pallet into the car and stack the bricks on the pallet using a ten-brick set of tongs, five hundred bricks per pallet. Mr. Jesse helped me some but he was the forklift driver and would be getting the bundles or pallets out of adjoining boxcars that were still intact.

He reminded me to eat salt tablets and drink plenty of water during the day. He was sort of legalistic about rest breaks as he was a loyal company man that believed a man worked honestly and was paid honestly when he did so.  We took our breaks, exactly 15 minutes, and ate our lunch, exactly 30 minutes, together under the dock.

There was a truck driver designated to haul our bricks to the brickyard in north Baton Rouge that ate lunch with us nearly every day. I will call him James, as for the life of me I cannot remember his name, but he was a real character. He was about ten years younger and taller than Mr. Jesse by a few inches and much thinner but less white hair and he wore an old ball cap sideways. He had false teeth and ate lunch without them for some reason. When he wanted to get on Mr. Jesse’s nerves he would click them together.

I loved lunch with these guys as they treated me as a fellow worker, not a privileged white kid. I really believe I was accepted when I worked as hard as humanly possible and never complained as I agreed with Mr. Jesse in that nobody cared no how. I remember James eating boiled eggs without his teeth. It was beyond comprehension, but I think your imagination is better than any description. He would also bring fried fish sandwiches that he would share with us.

This wasn’t a “Mc Mullet”, this was a fried bream or what Georgians call a crappie but Cajuns call a sac -a -lait, fried whole between two slices of white bread. The first time I ate one, I pulled the fish out of the sandwich and began to pull it apart when James asked me what I was doing. He said, “Boy, what are you doing, you’re supposed to lip it!” I said,” What’s that?” He said, “Work the fish with your lips as you eat the sandwich!” I laughed and joined in the fun and it really was funny when I confirmed that they had found the white city boy in me and I learned how to eat fish their way. James and Mr. Jesse could lip the flesh off an entire fish and leave nothing but the skeleton.

If you don’t think that’s a culinary art, give it a go and see how you do! Dey’s professionals!

I ended up working for Mr. Jesse through my senior year in high school. During that time, we were moved to the yard in north B.R. and unfortunately my commitment to the work ethic Mr. Jesse had instilled had diminished. I started smoking dope on the way to work every day and spent too much time hiding from him. One day Mr. Jesse caught me smoking pot in a warehouse and confronted me with becoming a “sorry ass”. Mr. Jesse wasn’t one to cuss but he spoke the language he knew I would understand.  I think I laughed and told him that I was tired of killing myself out there stacking bricks in the yard, and he reminded me that was why I was there and he wasn’t getting fired because of me.

A few days later, I nearly flipped a forklift off a ramp going into a boxcar and that was the end of my brickyard career. I never forgot Mr. Jesse as he made a huge impression on me in that a man gives an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. He was a mentor that I never thanked but I will see him again, I know it in my spirit!

Because, I’m one of His favorites!

THOUGHTS OF THE HUNTER KIND:

We can all look back and see those people that maybe others saw as insignificant but we saw as incredibly significant to us. Mr. Jesse was that person to me! He loved people and he loved the Lord, but all I could see was that he was good to me, as his character stood out above everything.

For those of you that may think some of the words I use describing people is objectionable, you will love this. Yesterday, I was in a level 5 prison in Georgia teaching on I Thessalonians 5:16-18 and eating with some of my rowdy friends, when I heard one of my brothers telling another brother where the mop bucket was. He said, “It’s over there by the light-skinned guy, you know the light-skinned guy between the red guy and the dark-skinned guy.” Now that’s my people! Cause they describe me as the short white guy that’s always laughing and they love me just like I love them! And my brother from a different mother calls me Booshay!

 

PRAYER OF THE HUNTER KIND: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan….” John 4:9-10

I believe that scripture includes all of us, yet Jesus offers us “living water”.

Lord, water us with Your love, grace and mercy even though in our weakness we share little with anyone else, forgive us when we can only see our circumstances. Thank you Jesus .