Noel Copiaco, Lansing, MI
One of the earliest friendships I made upon moving to Michigan in the summer of 69 was with a guy I will simply refer to as McDickenson to protect the innocent. He was a few years older than me, handsome, educated, politically conservative and proud of his Irish heritage. Why he liked me, I will never know but we seemed to get along most of the time despite our opposing socio-political views.
He viewed me with suspicion at first but when he learned that I played the bass and guitar, he invited me to sit in with his band. We ended up playing music together which was the only thing we had in common. We landed a few gigs in the outskirts of town and surrounding suburbs. Although he was married when I met him, he was always carrying on with women like he was unattached. He would linger around the bars after gigs and make out with various bar flies in the back of his van till the break of dawn. His wife then was a very kind and sweet woman who doted on him and their three children. She was June Cleaver with the body of Raquel Welch. I thought she looked a little like Ann Margret. I felt revolted for the way she was being deceived by McDikenson but I also felt helpless to say or do anything to interfere in their marriage.
Even though I felt that he genuinely liked me as a person, McDickenson believed and made it clear to me that all men are not created equal. See, McDickenson was a racist with a capital R. He used terms such as gook, chink, nigger, wetback and other derogatory words to refer to non-whites. When I reminded him so many times that I too am non-white, he would respond quickly that I was different because I was his “friend”. He told me during one of his drunken episodes that he valued my friendship but that he would not let me marry his sister because he did not believe in race mixing. Believe me, I never knew what his sister looked like or if he had one at all, but marrying into a family with such warped perspective of humanity was not in my radar even in those days.
Regardless, McDickenson showed his appreciation of my friendship in some ways. He was even a little protective of me when we played small redneck bars and advised me to stay close to him at all times because he didn’t trust those “peckerwoods”. One time, he gave me a gift. It was a pocketknife with the Ku Klux Klan insignia on the handle. He told me that his grandfather was one of the original Klansmen in this area who moved to Michigan from the south and that he too was a card-carrying member. I almost felt offended that he would give me such an object but accepted the gift for I felt that McDickenson’s friendship was genuine. The knife was something of value to him and it was his way of letting me know that he valued my friendship. I take it out of my knife collection box once in a while and look at it just to be reminded of the complexities and the paradoxes of mankind’s relationships on earth.
I lost track of McDickenson after he was forced to “retire” from his job because of alcohol abuse. I do know that his life spiraled downward after his wife busted him en flagrante with another woman and consequently divorced him. To rub salt to his open intolerant sores, his wife married a Mexican man after the divorce. McDickenson could not take it. He thought of it as an abomination. Some called it poetic justice. It led him to drink more, womanize more and eventually lost control of his life.
I saw him again several years after he “retired” looking very old with a raggedy sheepish-looking woman about half his age. He told me he was planning to move to Iowa to start a bed and breakfast. I wished him all the best and I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for him. All the hatred in his heart seemed to have lodged on his face making him look eerie and cruel. McDickenson is proof that hatred will always find a way to karmatize our soul into a state of total chaos and dysfunction.
Still, I saw a small spark of the good in him hiding in a scowl of fear and loathing. As we parted, I silently wished for that spark to find a way to ignite some love in his heart and maybe realize that those that he feared and hated are really part of him and that there is truly only One of us here.
El amor de Dios te envuelve.