  ever have those sentimental daydreams? Thoughts about some one from your long ago or someone that has effected your life in some way, good or bad? &nbsp;I was on the shitter thinking about the stomach cramp I was working through and wondering if it was partly the result of my increase in drinking over the last two weeks.&nbsp; I decided it was most likely a combination of the drinking and the leftover fajitas, but anyway. I thought about my grandfather. Not the good one. &nbsp;I thought about that mean son-of-a-bitch tommy wright. That's what my mother called him. she always said he was just a mean old drunk. I guess he was a mean drunk.&nbsp; And when he died they said that he had more malt liquour in his blood than he had blood in his blood. no one cried at his funeral either, in fact there was some dispute about putting him in the ground next to my beloved grandmother, mary ruth. &nbsp;In spite of being a mean drunk, I wonder what the hell his story is, or was. Maybe he was mean for a reason?
Maybe he was pissed off at the world, just about like I'm pissed off at the world. &nbsp;I can almost see myself someday sitting in a rocker on an hot old porch down in nigger town dumping salt into my schiltz while fanning away the flies and yellow jackets. He did it. Did it for years. In fact that's all I remember him ever doing, that and yelling at people.
&nbsp;"Son-Runt" (That's what he called me) "Close that goddamn screen door boy, your a lettin all the flies in. "&nbsp; &nbsp;No one knew just&nbsp;quite how to take his love, I don't think. &nbsp;I was just sittin there on the shitter wondering if I got his mean genes. I reckoned that&nbsp;I might turn out to be a drunk, a pissed off drunk that hates the day and the night even more. I dunno...maybe so. But I also think that if I had been through World War II, or if I spent all my damn adult life in a cotton mill living in rented shacks I might be a little cock eyed too.
&nbsp;When the cotton mill in Canton shut down they had to move to Atlanta to work. They lived in one of those shacks where you pay by the week, they lived in the same one so long they could have bought fifty of those places. It was one of those kind of places that let light in &nbsp;through the spaces between the boards when the sun was low in the sky.&nbsp;I remember going with them sometimes to pay the rent at some mansion on West Paces Ferry and thinking that something just didn't seem right about the whole thing.
They were wonderful people and how could any landlord be so mean as to make my grandparents live in a shack like that? &nbsp;I suppose that's just a part of living in nigger town. Really there was not all that much different between those black kids and me.
We all had the same dirt on our bare feet and we all collected the same empty coke bottles and bought lemons and packs of sugar from the produce man. I reckon we were all niggers. &nbsp;And niggers we were. But if I can't&nbsp;dig me some lessons&nbsp;out of&nbsp;that mean drunk son-of-a-bitch there&nbsp;may not&nbsp;be any crying at my funeral either. &nbsp;Here's to you tommy. What is it your trying to teach me? I'm listeing papa, I'm listening. 
