IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

conveniences, like cars, but we are great cooks and my grandma taught me all of their cooking secrets when I was a little girl. When you and Eli come to my house for dinner, I will give you some Amish history and food.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Yolanda said as she and Eli leaves the office.
“Do all Amish people dress like that?” Yolanda asked.
“Yes they do. They feel these distinctive clothes encourage humility and separation from the outside world. Her clothing was not a costume but an expression of her faith. They do not use electricity because they believe that using electricity connects them with the world. They also don’t drive cars, they generally uses bicycles or horse drawn buggies for transportation but on rare occasions, usually an emergency they will ride in an automobile, but they are excellent cooks and carpenters and Mrs. Gault graduated from Indiana University and has a degree in economics. She is an exceptional employee, hard working, knowledgeable and loyal.”
Later that evening they go to dinner with Mack and Maggie. Maggie had prepared walleye pike that Mack had caught and froze during the fall, smothered potatoes and salad for dinner; Billy came in to the house shivering.
“Hi, little brother.” Eli said.
“Hi big brother,” Billy said hugging Eli.
“I want you to meet my fiancée’ Yolanda.”
Billy hugs Yolanda, “Nice meeting you, Yolanda, my soon to be big sister.”
Smiling, Yolanda said to Billy, “Nice meeting you too, my soon to be little brother.”
The family sits down for dinner. After dinner, they all sit by the fireplace.
“Maggie, have you and Mack lived here all your life?” Yolanda asked.
“Oh no, we are from Chicago, Mack retired from the police department and I am a retired schoolteacher,” Maggie answered.
“How long were you on the police department?” Yolanda asked interestingly.”
“Thirty years,” Mack said.
“I joined the department when I was twenty years old when the department was going through reorganization. A large gang of rogue police officers were involved with burglars, dope dealing and were stealing everything. They got caught off course and the department offered them a choice, resign, retire, or go to jail, about forty five percent of the department police officers retired or resigned, the mayor fired the police chief and hired a reformist college professor, O.W. Wilson, as the police chief. In order to fill the vacancies the department went on a hiring blitz, although you had to be twenty-one to be a police officer, I was hired when I was twenty because I would be twenty-one when I graduated from the academy. During the old times the police and the fire department consisted of mainly connected Irishmen, but the police department under the new chief wanted to attract more blacks.
“What does connected mean?” Yolanda asked
“Chicago is a very political and crime ran city. Most good city jobs like the fire and police department require that the applicant have a sponsor, a politician, a minister or a gangster. These people are connected. Unfortunately, by the mayor being Irish most of the members of those departments were Irish. The blacks did not have any connections, but when the scandal broke and most of the officers involved were Irish, it opened the door for other races. I can remember being a young aggressive police officer, I didn't want to take my days off, I thought crime would stop before I got back to work, Mack said smiling.”
“Wasn’t that dangerous work?” Yolanda asked enthusiastically.
“Yes it was dangerous, but not as dangerous as it is now. There is a different criminal on the streets now, a lot of these kids come from single parent homes where the mother is doing drugs themselves and they began their lives fearful; fearful of the police, fearful of not having any food or clothes to wear to school, fearful of being rejected by white society, in essences they are fearful of everything so they lash out at everything and everyone. History has showed us that fear begets hatreds and hatred begets rage and this rage is directed against the police, the school teachers and any other authority figure, but saddest of all is their hatred towards themselves and each other, that why they are killing each other, this hatred is causing the violence.
Unless a black kid, growing up in one of our public housing developments, have a strong constitution or the protection of older brothers, they are likely to become gang members or at lease marginal members. There are no positive examples or male role models in many of these homes. Some of these young people do not care about anything. I have had them tell me that it would be easier to be dead than to live the way they do. The young gangbangers and dope dealers do not respect anyone, not the police, schoolteacher, or even their parents. They do not respect life, your life, my life, not even their own lives. They are constantly killing each other and what is sad; they are killing innocent people. The little assholes can’t shoot; they close their eyes when they pull the trigger on an automatic weapon that can fire twenty bullets in a second and everyone in the area get shot, except who they are shooting at, and then there is the retaliation, one gangbanger gets shot and his home boys shot the rival gang member and their home boys shot another gangbanger and the violence just keep going. Black people in this country have a serious thing about respect. Invading some gangs turf or falsely throwing a gang sign is considered lack of respect and much of the violence is over what they consider lack of respect. I guess the black man in America feels as though he has been disrespected all of his life by white America and there is nothing he can do about it, but he will viciously protect what little morsels of self respect he has from a another black man.
Some of the most brutal killings and beatings I have seen in my years as a police officer stemmed from minor incidents of disrespect. I remember this young kid maybe thirteen who had shot and killed another young lad telling me that he killed the kid because he dissed him by calling him a fag. When I asked him if was enough reason to kill someone he told me that “He couldn’t do much to keep white folks from dissin’ him, but he damn sure could keep niggers from doing it.” They won’t raise a hand to a white person who diss’ them, but will kill a brother in a minute over a perceived slight. Gangbangers have told me, as young as thirteen that they did not expect to live to be eighteen, and they do not care. One gang member shoots a rival gang member and the retaliation began.
You got grandparents, usually the grandmother, raising their grandkids because the mother is on drugs and the daddy is in jail or is gangbanging himself. The young black woman is in trouble too, where she goes to meet a decent man. A man with hopes for a better future, a young man who is not trying to pimp her or turn her out. It is sad, sad.
It is heartbreaking to see a little child dying on the streets for nothing. Their lives snuffed about before he has had a chance to enjoy its sweetness. The white man greatest fear used to be their daughters messing with black men; today their biggest fear is the young Blackman. To the white man the young black man is their menace to society. I read an article a few years ago by Reverend Jesse Jackson where he wrote that while at some affair in Washington, D.C. after the affair was over and being still early evening and a nice night he decided to walk to his hotel, which were just a few blocks away. At first, he did not notice how deserted the area was until he heard footsteps behind him. He did not turn around but quicken his pace, as did the footsteps behind him. As he looked around there was no one on the street. He went on to say that all a sudden he became afraid, he knew that D.C. was considered the murder capital of the country and murders and robberies were common. He prepared himself for a fight; he knew he was too old to try to run. As the footsteps got closer and he was about a half block from the hotel and in full view of the door attendant, he decided to turn to look at his maybe attacker. When he looked it was a young white man, maybe twenty and all of a sudden, a sense of relief overcame him as the young man passed him and said good evening. He wondered how he would have reacted if it would have been a young Blackman.
It is hard being a Blackman in America, the young Blackman in this country is in trouble, and he is perceived to be a crook even if he is not. Many young white police officers are actually afraid of the young black man. I’ve seen them stop young boys maybe 13 or 14 for nothing and they have their guns out, any sudden move by the youngster or if the officer lose his balance the gun go off and another black mother will never see her son again. What makes it so bad is that the police department circles the wagons and rule the shooting either accidental or justified. I have seen innocent young men shot to death by police officers merely because he talked back to them. If he goes into a store, especially one of those foreign owned stores he is followed around or watched, he can’t find a decent job so like many other ethnic groups in this country he turns to crime and winds up either dead or in prison, it’s sad. I heard somewhere that if the Blackman between the ages of 18 and 25 were wild animals they would be on the protected species list. Yep, our young Blackman is in big trouble. Right now the crime and violence that dominate our black and Hispanic neighborhoods has not really affected white America, but once it does look out, and believe me when that white man’s fear turn into hate they are going to demand the government do something, what, I don’t know what, but if this gang and drug related violence start to affect the white community, watch out.
I think the criminal justice pendulum has swung too far in the favor of the accused and against law enforcement. When I was on the job, I will admit that we abused the rights of some citizen the guilty as well as the innocent, but the streets were safe. I have dropped gang members into rival gang territory hoping that got beat up or worse, that was the way it was in my day but you could spend the night in the parks or take your favorite girl to the lake front and sit on the rocks.
Maggie and I spent a lot of time at the lakefront, when she was trying to win my heart,” Mack smiled at Maggie.
“Not now, you go out there now you are going to get mugged or worst. The police officer hands are so tied now that the good, aggressive police