O.D.

AuthorHouse

Contents

Terminal Avenue...................................................1The Name..........................................................10Moving-A Time of Change...........................................11School Days.......................................................12Warner Junior High................................................18The Impetus.......................................................25An Unpractical Joke...............................................27Race Matters......................................................29The Turning Point.................................................32Save the Last Dance (By Bonnie Williams)..........................34Washington, D C...................................................36A New Direction...................................................42Time to Get Focused...............................................45Horse's Ass.......................................................51Why Do You Think They Call It Commencement?.......................53The Marriage (By Alton)...........................................59Breakin' Up (By Bonnie)...........................................71Born Again........................................................73The Stand.........................................................78The Walk of Faith.................................................80It's the Devil Brother............................................86The Wisdom of Man.................................................88The Other Prescription............................................90How Could God Do This?............................................92I Am Delaware.....................................................94Pick Up That Seed.................................................98The Seed Speaks...................................................100I Have a Plan.....................................................103The Just Shall Live by Their Faith................................106The Divorce.......................................................110Christ the Restorer of the Breach (By Bonnie).....................112Come Out From Among Them..........................................114Bring This Boy Home Now...........................................117Your Number One Responsibility....................................121Reunited (By Bonnie)..............................................127God is Sovereign-Home Coming......................................131A Marriage Made in Heaven.........................................134The Enemy Steps Up Attack.........................................136Don't Shut That Door..............................................141The Klan..........................................................145Dr Charles Stanley...............................................150Cousins Reunited..................................................156Singing Again.....................................................157The God's Honest Truth............................................159Your Life is Not Your Own.........................................161The Boogey Man is No Longer in My Closet..........................165ADD/ADHD..........................................................168The Real Eye is Spiritual.........................................17220/20 vision is not enough........................................175

Chapter One

Terminal Avenue

I vaguely remember my sister Barbara and I taking a long train ride when I was three years old. My mother would hand us pieces of fruit bananas, grapes, and apples along the way. I also remember staring out the window wondering where I was. For most of my early life, that recollection sort of hung in the back of my mind as a meaningless, unconnected detail.

You see for a long time, 600 Terminal Ave in New Castle, Delaware was the only home I knew. It was a noisy, crowded place where three families lived together in a two-story bungalow near the docks and several small chemical companies. Growing up there, I had little recollection of my life in Chicago where my mother, Nina Williams, had followed my father, Alton Allen, as a young woman.

My father was from a strong, hardworking family. His father, Henry Allen, had grown up in Mississippi where the senior Allen worked hard to maintain his small farm and used the money he was able to save each year to buy more and more land. One, two, twenty acres at a time as money and opportunity presented themselves. After several years, in order to work the homestead of now more than 150 acres; he and my grandmother Mary Allen, raised twelve children-three boys and nine girls. After all, he needed a cheap and reliable source of labor in order to maintain the amassed land. The work was grueling and not one of those kids considered continuing in daddy's footsteps.

Henry Allen was a respected, no nonsense kind of a man. His name alone conjured up favor and high regard from both the black and white citizens of Magnolia and McComb. When the family needed anything-seed to start a crop or to purchase an icebox or credit to buy a tractor-the white folk would, on Henry's signature, give him anything his family needed. He knew a good name was more valuable than currency and strove to teach his children that hard work was a virtue and integrity a must. He, even on his good name, would retrieve many a young man from the county lock-up after a night of boozing and belligerence and running a-foul of the law.

My father, Alton Allen, had apparently taken my mother to Chicago where she met all of his family members who had migrated up the Mississippi to the Chicago and Gary, Indiana area for work. They all loved her. She stayed in Chicago with him and her babies, me three years of age and Barbara, four years old. They were not married when he got the call to go into the military. But then, the unthinkable happened. At some point, he went back to Mississippi for a time before shipping off to the Army. He wanted to spend a few weeks with his mom and dad because he did not know if he would ever see them again. Mom went along with it as long as he honored his promise to stay in touch, which he never did. Instead, one day his sisters got a call that their brother Al had hooked up with another lady and had gotten married. They could not believe their big-headed brother had done something that stupid and foolish.

In disbelief, his sisters helped my mother pack her belongings and sent her home to her family in Delaware. Growing up, I never knew this story. It was only in 1972, when I was a third-year student in optometry school and had a free trip to the American Optometric Student Association Urban Optometry meeting in Chicago that I was able to track down my father. That's when I learned from his sisters why we were really on that train.

We came home to my grandparents, Jesse and Viola Williams, who lived, at the time, in Millside, a former Army barracks that later became a slum tenement for poor blacks. It was there in Millside and later on Terminal Avenue that we buried our life with Alton Allen, the man who stole my mother's heart, but did not marry her. And for eight years, my grandfather Jesse was the only father I knew. He's the one who gave me my nickname, "Butch," and taught me how to "chuck" a ball. I can still hear him instructing me to "chuck that ball to me boy." He was proud...