This book is written with the poem, IF, by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), profoundly recorded in the back of my mind — a life lesson tool given me by my father. The many other wise sayings of my father allow their eternal impact to shine through the pages of this book.

The early days with my family in Clinton, Maryland, were good, bad, and ugly. The good days would be talking about the garden that we had in the back of the house. It would be about the fact that five of us at that time slept in one room; bunk beds were the order of the day. I had the upper bunk and rolled off it almost every night and hit the floor. My dad would come in and pick me up and put me back. Many times I would not even wake up.

Some of the bad happened when my mother and father would have words. It would be loud. The ugly occurred when my mom left my dad, and I had to go with her and not be with my dad. I didn't want to go; however, my dad came and got me every weekend, no matter what. I was in third grade when this happened. From the time that I started school, I had a tough time reading and spelling. I also stuttered very badly.

The story of where we went after we left Clinton, Maryland, will be told as we moved into the projects in SE Washington, DC. The good part there was that I was near my first cousin and he was my age. This was good because we played together; my little brother was just two years old and too young to play with.

We were not there very long before we moved to northeast Washington, DC. We moved into a house that had more than two bedrooms. Here, I had my own room. I went to a public school for the fourth grade. It was the first time I went to a school with white kids. During all my years in Maryland, we were forced to go to separate schools.

Church was different because my father was a pit bull about his religion. He would not back down under any condition. He believed that God created us all in his likeness and image. The priest of the church told my father that my sister and I would have to walk in the back of the line for our first Holy Communion. Well, Dad wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Washington which became my "Mission to Equality" because my sister and I ended up walking in our respective places in line. We bypassed the "Colored Pew" in the back of the Church and sat in the first row every Sunday. Dad always said, "Sometimes you have to overdo a point to make a point."

Washington, DC — a new house; a new school; and, an apple tree to climb in the backyard made life interesting. Being with dad on the weekends was fun because I got to walk in the woods near our old house and hunt with my 22 rifle. There was a school change after the first year in Washington where we went from public school to Catholic school. Dad thought it was the most important thing in living the American dream.

Moving from my first integrated school system of a 50/50 racial split, I would now go to my first year in Catholic school and become a minority again on the other end of the spectrum. In two years, I had come from an all-black school system as one of many to an almost all-white school, being one of a few black students.

Things did not go so well the first year in Catholic school. With my slow start from my first grade, three-room schoolhouse, I got D's and F's my first year in Catholic school and thought that it meant `Doing Fine'. Wrong! Well, with a repeat of the fifth grade, I had to get serious and I did. I turned those D's and F's into A's and B's.

I would start my sports history with the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) football as a tight end. This went on from the sixth to the eighth grade. I was tall and skinny and didn't set the world on fire. Girls became an interest and Yolanda took me almost one mile out of my way home as I would walk her home after school.

My testing skills were still not good when I took my entrance examination for Catholic high school. The result proved it. I didn't get into any of my selected schools. I was in limbo. Every Catholic high school was designed as all girls or all boys at that time. At fourteen years of age and with a new-found interest in girls, this was not considered such a bad thing.

The events of that summer would prove to be earth-moving in my life. My mother married again and we moved into a new house. My mother's mother, my four sisters, and my little brother were all a part of this new matrix. The chemistry in this new abode was not good. I was neither tied to a school nor the new house that was called home. I still saw my dad every weekend.

I turned fifteen years old on the first day of August that summer. I knew that I needed my dad and not this new "imposter" who didn't measure up in any way, shape, or form. I packed a few things and left for my journey of about ten miles across the landscape of Washington, DC, back to Capitol Heights, Maryland, to my father's apartment.

Dad was a United States Postal Service mail clerk who sorted mail on a train from Washington, DC, to New York City. This was an eight days on five days off job. He would work eight days working on the train, sorting mail grabbed along this route from Washington, to NYC, stay overnight in NYC and return to DC for one day. Then, he would do it again before he would have a schedule that gave him five to seven days off. Then he was back on the train to NYC. No fair warning was possible of my cross-town sojourn for my dad because he was in New York City the day I abdicated from the mother country. There were no cell phones, texting or e-mails in those days.

I knew his schedule like it was mine. I knew that he would return in the early am of the next morning of August 2nd. I had my apartment key and with a skilled hand of hitch hiking, I made it to dad's place. All was well until a knock came at the door about eight hours after my arrival. I didn't open the door but asked who was there. "It's the State Police," was the response. I still didn't open the door but asked if I could help them. They asked if I was Eric and I affirmed that I was. They stated that my mother reported me a run-a-way. I explained that I couldn't be much of a run-a-way when I was at my dad's place. I never opened the door. They asked me...