One Man's Journey - Grandpa My Guide

My Grandpa Thomas Adolph King - My Hero

With my own father, I could never connect with his journey. He mostly journeyed away from his own father's legacy and from his home town, which for a headstrong over-active male in the late 40s was anywhere but his one-church college town and the faith of his father. He was more influenced by his mother and his mother's people who were more like him. Impulsive, stubborn, prideful Scots-Indians. His father (my grandfather) was a quiet hard-working studious man who deferred to my strong-willed grandmother in almost all things. We grandkids loved him, but looked to my grandmother for any decisions about family matters. She was the axis about which we all rotated. She was for my dad too. He looked to the rowdy, disruptive McClure clan for his example rather than to his strong, quiet father, the culmination of a line of schoolteachers, preachers and farmers for his guides.  He later came to respect my grandfather, but by then he'd been to prison, fought a lifetime addiction to tobacco and alcohol (all things his own dad's family heartily disapproved of). In Grandpa's family 3 of the 4 siblings left their father's faith and went a-roving in the manner of my grandmother's clan, although the girls especially were always respectful and loving with their quiet, patient father. But it was my powerful grandmother who, in spite of her tacit acceptance of her adopted faith, remained independent of the King family culture and very much bound to the culture in which she'd grown up. This was despite her old wounds at how she was treated by her own clan.

My grandfather was my mentor. My Dad abandoned my Mom and his 3 kids when I was five. My grandfather, however, never wavered in his love for us. We remained close to Grandpa and by association, to my stern Scots grandmother.  My father went his own way, pursuing his own goals and dreams and left us largely to the care of others. I forgave him as I got older, though my grandmother could never figure out what Dad had done to forgive him for. Mom remarried and I never really bonded with my step father though I learned to appreciate him. He was from somewhere else and on some other journey that did not include me. With my 4 half siblings by him, and my Dad's two kids and step daughter by the women he got pregnant and ran off with, there were 10 of us total, divided between two widely separated houses. At the age of 52, Dad had a heart attack (he was a 4 pack a day smoker), fell off the wagon (AA for 15 years), and my step-mother ambushed him when he came home from work drunk. She shot him through the chest with his own shotgun. Dad's journey ended on the floor of his living room while my step-mom waited for him to die before calling 911.

I felt sorry for him. I wrote a poem for his funeral in which I said, "He was a fisherman, in a world unkind to fishermen some times." I'm not sure why I wrote that, but it seemed right to me somehow. His legacy was never mine. Unlike Abram's father, mine did not settle. He went off on his own way. Neither father that I had really shared a legacy journey that I needed to complete. I chose my own father figures, my grandpa first of all - paternal grandpa.  My maternal grandpa left my mother and grandmother when she was young to run off with a younger model and left behind an abandoned family that to my maternal grandmother remained true to our faith and scattered like missionaries from Texas to California. He lived his own life, much like my Dad did, aloof and distant from his kids. Visiting my grandfather was like a visit to a foreign country. I recognized few of the characteristics of home and the family I loved and grew up with.

I read books and chose male mentors to model how to be a man and a father.  King Arthur, Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Captain Horatio Hornblower and others. They all shared one thing. They were men on a mission. They fought with stubborn honor and integrity for what they believed was right. They were leaders and wise ones and that's what I attempted to be. My Uncle Bobby, a church leader was an influence. He stood for what was right, even when he had to oppose powerful church leaders he believed were doing wrong to the churches that were his job to care for and defend. 

As a result, I've gone down with more than one ship in my time. I don't regret a single one. I worked with abused, mentally ill and neglected children, people with disabilities, seniors, low income families, youth groups - basically anyone that seemed to need a defender.  I am deeply grateful to all of the people and organizations that have stepped up to aid me in my fight over the years. I especially am grateful to all of you, to Fred and to Dawn and the others who have helped me do what I was able to do until I couldn't do it anymore. From you guys I learned much. With your help, I was able to do some real good for real people.

I'm still teaching (night ESL classes with Chinese kids). I'm physically disabled with crippling arthritis from abusing my muscles and bones over the years. I always felt I was on a mission from God. Some of that may have come from having missed receiving any kind of legacy journey or direction from my father and from who I chose as my role models. From my Grandpa King, I got patience and devotion to my own family. From King Arthur I received a willingness to use might for right even though you may only get that "one brief shining moment" out of the struggle before it all collapses around you. From Robin Hood, I learned that just because someone has power, they aren't necessarily worthy of your obedience. You can do what is right in spite of them. I once got an angry letter from a very important person over one of my crusades. I've always been rather proud of that. Captain Blood, went to war on his own hook, because he refused to be slave to a tyrant. Captain Hornblower appealed to me because he was a smart leader who made the system work despite it's fundamental flaws and who was, in the heat of battle, cool-headed and courageous. In the eleven Hornblower books, CS Forester, the author, traced the growth and career of Horatio Hornblower from midshipman to admiral.

Keep up the good work. Folk like all of you play an essential role in keeping all those knights in dull and dented armor going out there on the front lines in the war on apathy, indifference, poverty, ignorance, and self-righteousness. God bless you for that.

© 2020 by Tom King

Does Anyone Else Have a Dream?

I was watching an episode of Right Angle the other day.  In it, Bill Whittle pointed out that America is the only nation in the world that has a dream.  There is no Chinese Dream, no Italian Dream, no British Dream, no Russian dream not even an Indian Dream in a land where mysticism rules. There is only The American Dream.

You could define the American Dream as having the opportunity to work hard, build something for yourself that is yours and nobody else's, to raise a family and to have some fun along the way. That's pretty much it. It's a plain and simple dream, but it's only possible in a nation where the state serves its people rather than the people serving the state. Even the one nation closest in philosophy to our own - Great Britain - It is by charter a nation which grants civil rights to it's people. Actually the queen is technically the one who bestows the blessings of liberty on her people.

In America, we the people let some duly elected officials pretend to be in charge of us, but in the end there's not a one of them we cannot depose without violence, bloodshed or even a great big effort. All we have to do is vote out any of the bums we don't like. I rather think we don't do that often enough, but it's there if one of them gets too big for his or her britches and pisses us off!

There is only one other nation that I can think of that can be said to have a coherent dream. Their dream is very similar to the American Dream. That nation is Mexico and their dream is to get across the border into America and have the opportunity to work hard, build something for themselves that is theirs and nobody else's, to raise a family and to have some fun along the way. That's pretty much their dream and it's a carbon copy of our own.

I love the scene above from "Born in East LA". Wouldn't it be grand if all these guys were educated, English-speaking, Republicans. And one day Democrats were to look up to see thousands of Mexicans with job prospects, green cards and and the autobiography of Ronald Reagan tucked under their arms, coming over the hills and already signed up to vote Republican! It might look something like this. If it didn't I would certainly organize something like this just to get them all in the mood to be an American!!!!

I think we should get organized and let everyone of those folks who dream of America come on in. Not illegally, but legally. If they are not doing well in Mexico, we should provide a way for them to learn the English language. Perhaps we could host free pre-migration English language classes in our embassies and consulates all over Mexico. Offer online or correspondence classes so that at least everyone who crosses has a basic education and maybe some technical certification so they can get a job. If Mexico is going to bleed off its surplus population, let's help them do that, only let's take the best of their people, the ones that were born Americans in their hearts, even though they might have grown up oppressed and impoverished. We need people with a work ethic, who are willing to work at it.

Heck, we could even trade some hard-working Mexicans for some of these worthless snowflakes of ours that are a drag on the system. Set them on the beaches in Cancun and put them on the "no-fly" list so they can't get back. It would be a kind of exchange student program. We take one Hispanic immigrant and we drop off a snowflake in his or her place. One rule though. If the immigrants don't learn anything they go back home (or in the case of the snowflakes, if they don't learn anything they stay there).

The Republican Party should offer potential Mexican immigrants to the US an orientation program in consulates in the border towns and at the immigration check points. The classes would explain how we share their values of family, the sanctity of life, freedom of religion and opportunity. Can you imagine what a howl we'd hear from our leftist friends in the Democrat Party?  We should just do it quietly and don't tell Pelosi and Schumer until we've imported a couple of million or so Republican Hispanic immigrants and it's too late.

We might even get Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw elected president and vice-president. It could happen. Bring some muy macho into the White House. We should at least write a bill and some funding to create real live freedom loving, fire-breathing, educated and trained out of the folk Everett McKinley Dirksen called "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..." Several dozen teachers assigned to our embassies and consulates in Central America could generate for us an ambitious, hard-working shot in the arm for our culture which day by day is being degraded by progressivism trained lazy victim culture. We are getting some of that kick in the economic pants from stray born-to-be Americans coming from India and China and other places where they have schools worth their salt. What fun that would be if we could help our Mexican neighbors, who dream even more desperately of coming to el Norte, to find their way to the home that should be theirs!

© by Tom King