The Boyfriend

His name was Rev. Homer Nathaniel Johnson, he was my mom’s boyfriend, and I didn’t like him from day one. I was about eight when they started going with each other and in the beginning, everything was hunky dory. Mom was enamored of this guy and thought he was great but I felt something different, which made me want nothing to do with him. He acted like he was the authority about everything. I thought: I know some things too, my ugly little friend. I know that I would rather have the mumps for a year than be around you.

Mr. Homer, as I called him, was an odd little man. He had big ole ‘light-brite’ blinding white, slightly bucktoothed teeth inside thin black lips and had big feet like Bozo the Clown. His skin color was the blackest blue black I had ever seen in all my years on this earth and he wore black horn rimmed ‘birth control’ glasses like the kind they wear in the military. He was a skinny little Preacher man, just a teensy bit taller than my mother, who was like five feet tall, he was always hungry and he drove around in a boat like, ugly green, 1967 land yacht Cadillac Coup de Ville.

We lived on a street called Lundy Avenue in a shuttered, two bedroom, one bathroom ticky tacky type of house with a rock driveway, and a front and back yard was that was kind of big, but not very special. All of the yards and houses were the same style only the shutter and trim colors was different. This neighborhood was a quiet one, for the most part, but almost every house had children, which infuriated the only older couple living there. They never came outside except to leave or come home. The main thoroughfare to get to Lundy Avenue was by way of Cypress and Mr. Homer came this way almost every day.

This man liked my mother a lot, but I suspect that it was probably because she was almost the polar opposite of him: petite and kind of thick. She was half Irish with long, curly black hair and pretty in the face. He was always coming to our house, mauling moms face with those thin lips of his and would suck up any food she’d cook with the grace of a leaky vacuum cleaner. He always talked loud and down to people, sounding like a foghorn stuck in the on position. He spoke to Mary, my seventeen year old sister like he was her father, feeling super important in the process, but I think he just liked to hear himself talk. I often wondered if mom knew she could have done so much better than this guy. But I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have many female friends to compare notes with.

Mom would say to me

“Don’t hang around with a bunch of women. Having a lot of women friends can make things messy”, she would say.

I asked Mary what she thought of this guy and she told me she didn’t think about him at all and that he wasn't right for mom. She said to me that she didn’t like him, but mom did so just behave, be nice, be respectful and don’t get into grown folk business. I shrugged and said ok.

Yesterday was a normal Saturday morning for me in the summer of 1968. I built a blanket fort using the kitchen chairs then made four slices of cinnamon toast with too much butter, a banana, and big glass of milk with so much undissolved Nestles Quick in it, you had to use a spoon to get every crunchy bit. I ate this while sitting in my fort watching the Three Stooges on two stacked, hand me down TV’s. One was for the picture and the other was for sound.

After eating, I pulled out my Hot Wheels and before long, the living room was occupied with blanket fort, orange Hot Wheels track everywhere, and sixty-three cars in waiting lined up to do my bidding. The setup was perfect: all across the front room floor, the coffee table, one of the side tables and track attached to one of the TV sets through the fort, and I was ready to have some fun. I know mom doesn’t like me taking over the living room like this but I think that if I do it before everybody wakes up, then I can do what I want, right? Especially since they don’t wake up till around eleven.

I was just about to send down the first car, when I heard someone pull up in the driveway, blowing the horn. It was Mr. Homer. I said under my breath:

“What is he doing here?”

I unlocked then opened the front door to let him in just as my mother was coming around the corner into the front room in her robe. While coming up the steps Mr. Homer caught a glimpse of mom in her robe and got excited. So much so, that he dropped his satchel in front of his big old clown feet which he stumbled over and almost hit the floor while coming through the door, so I moved out of his way to give him room to attend his trip. Watching him almost wipeout made me laugh really loud causing my sister to wake up and mom to scold me.

I thought to myself, how cool would it have been if he had fallen, hit his big ole head, got knocked out, woke up with amnesia and never remembered my mom or where we lived again. But I guess this just wasn’t my lucky day, dang it.

I shot mom a dirty look and said instead:

“Come on mom, how you going to yell at me for laughing at him tripping through the door. He came into our house, and interrupted my playing. And he almost hit the floor too? There was no way I’m not going to laugh at that”.

She shushed me then helped him get himself together. As I was picking up his satchel to hand to him, I thought what is so great about Mr. Homer for you to shush me? Then they went into the kitchen. Shaking my head, I went back to playing, watched TV, and rolled my eyes in a direction mom couldn’t see, but Mary did. She told me again to behave. A short time later I heard them having a loud discussion about money or something.

Then the talking got louder and louder. Mostly it was him pontificating about something unimportant to everyone else but him, so I turned up the TV. All of a sudden something hit the kitchen table and then a clapping sound. My sister went into the kitchen to see what was going on with them. After seeing what she saw, Mary went into the bedroom where the phone was. Mr. Homer tried to loud talk mom but she stood up for herself and yelled back. It was then that he realized he shouldn’t have put his hands on my mom because she said some things to him that would have made a sailor blush. Whatever it was that she said to him got him so upset he decided to leave. In my mind I’m screaming HALLELUJAH and thinking maybe this is it and we will be rid of this guy. Boy was I was wrong.

He was halfway through the living room heading towards the door, stepping all over my tracks, when mom ran after him and apologized for what she said. This calmed him down, so mom fixed him some food and gave him something to drink which calmed him down further. Come on mom, kick him out, I’m thinking. After the hoover fest, they came into the living room and sat on the couch to watch TV. This is when he verbally apologized for what he did to her, and then he kissed her. All was right again in Homer-landia.

As Johnny Quest was coming on, I heard the ‘ding’ of the popsicle truck coming down the street before either of them did and I asked mom for some money to get a popsicle. In the middle of them making eyes at each other, he pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and gave me a dollar. I said thank you for the moolah, rushed out the door, bought my popsicle, shared half with another little girl, and ate my half. The thought occurred to me while going to the popsicle man: what do you know, maybe that near trip to floor-ida knocked some kind of good sense into him. I appreciate the cash but sadly you are still ugly old Mr. Homer to me. I was happy with the cold treat though.

Mr. Homer was leaving while I was getting my goodies, so I turned to waved good bye. Once back at the house I found out that he gave mom some money too because the rest of the day was a blur: a car ride to Jeffersonville Indiana to take Mary shopping and while there we ate at Benny Hanna of Tokyo. Back to Louisville over the Second Street bridge, my favorite, then to the triple hump slide. After everything was done, we went home tired but happy. Talking to myself, I took stock of the days festivities:

“Today was a really good day. I ALMOST saw Mr. Homer get knocked out by my mom. He gave me cash. He gave mom some money. She took me and my sister out for the day and we had fun and good food, then we came home and it was great because Mr. Homer was not there. Yep, life was good and I’m going to sleep good tonight.”

Yesterday was a good day, but today is Sunday and Mr. Homer showed up after we came home from church. He’s usually pretty quick to flash some cash or bring goodies but today, nada. Maybe he forgot he was coming over. Maybe he had a rough sermon. Maybe he put too much money in the collection plate, I don’t know, but matters made worse, he didn’t come out when the ice cream man came around. I was not happy with him. I think he did something else to my mom too because she sent him on an errand. In the midst of me plotting my revenge against this feeble minded nothing of a man, he asked me if I wanted to go with him on the errand. Even though I was unhappy with him, I said sure. Maybe I could wrangle some chips out of him or something, I thought.

As we drove away from the house down Lundy towards Cypress, he tried to admonish me about being nicer to him. I tried to ignore him, but kept thinking that he needed to do the same thing with my mother. I thought sure if I didn’t answer him, he would lose interest and leave me alone, but that didn’t work. I’m pretty positive I said something smart mouthed instead, which produced the opposite effect, making him yammer even more. I had had as much of his self righteous blathering as I could stand, so I decided to do something about it. When we got to the end of the street, making the turn onto Cypress, I made my move.

I threw something on the floor and acted like I was going to retrieve it, but instead of picking up what I threw down, I reached over and put my hand on the accelerator and punched it as hard as I could and we took off blowing through the red light at the intersection of Nieman Parkway and Cypress. This freaked old Mr. Homer out.

“OH LORD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING. STOP IT. GET YOUR HAND OFF OF THAT. STOP IT.

YOU ARE GOING TO KILL US BOTH. STOP”, he screamed.

The whole time he was screaming and hollering, he was trying to stop the car and maintain control, all the while praying to GOD. Then I switched it up on him and mashed the brake pedal hard causing us to screech to a halt and me to bust my head on the underside of the dashboard. Before we came to a complete stop, I mashed the gas and off we went again, burning rubber in the process.

“OH MY GOD, PLEASE STOP” he kept saying.

About a mile and a half down the road, Cypress turns into another street at an intersection where four other streets come together with a double set of railroad tracks crossing all the streets. The intersection is controlled by a big crazy set of traffic and railroad crossing lights. Freight trains come through here almost every two hours or so, and it was about time for a train.

“STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT”, he kept saying over and over.

I ignored every word he said, and I laughed so hard I thought my side would split. I didn’t stop my tomfoolery until ‘I’ was ready to stop which, fortunately for him, was before we got to the railroad tracks. But what actually made me stop was him regaining enough of his composure to remember that I liked playing counting and spelling games. He started up this counting game where we had to count by weird numbers like by sevens or by thirteens until we could go no further without using fingers. I sat up in my seat and acted like nothing happened, but he was scared. I know this because he was still praying in between turns while I was answering. I found it impressive that he would have the ability to do this while being terrified out of his mind. We played these games until we reached our destination.

Mr. Homer was visibly shaken as he was trying to get out of the car to run the errand. I thought his knees would buckle, but the they stayed strong. He wobbled his way into the store and did what he was there to do, making sure to take the car keys with him. I decided to wait in the car to watch all the people in the parking lot.

Mr. Homer was in that store for quite some time. So long in fact that the people and cars in the parking lot changed completely. When he finally returned to the car, he had regained most of his composure and was carrying several bags. He put all the bags in the back seat except for one, which he handed to me. I said:

“What’s this?”

He said “open it”

In this bag was everything I liked: a cold bottle of Barqs grape pop, a bag of Lays potato chips, a Caravelle candy bar, Bazooka bubble gum and a cheeseburger. I was stunned, but said thank you and proceeded to eat the burger.

On the ride back home, he didn’t say a word, but I did. I chewed and swallowed the burger that was just in my mouth, took a drink from the pop and said:

“Don’t yell at my mother and don’t you put your hands on her that way ever again. And be careful how you treat her; she is a nice lady and trying to rule over her is not very Christian-like of you.”

This was all I said to him looking him dead in the eye. I didn’t blink or drop eye contact. He turned away first and continued to drive, silently. I think this shook him up all over again. I ate the rest of the burger, drank the pop and ate the candy bar due to his slow driving on the way back to the house.

Once there, he couldn’t get out of his car, so Mary and I took the bags into the house. Mr. Homer called my mom to come sit with him. They were in the car for a long time. No loud talking, no fussing or fighting, no nothing, they just sat there talking. I don’t know what they said or didn’t say, but after about thirty minutes mom got out and he drove off. I pretty positive he told her about what happened but I just can't be sure.

Mr. Homer didn’t come over much after that. I never got in trouble about my shenanigans, and nothing was ever said about it ever. As a matter of fact, they broke up not too long after this incident. I guess he and I both understood the assignment.

Mission accompli…..