RoseWattleWriting

“Brother Kight’s Love”

It’s the year 1984. Apple Macintosh computers were introduced, Ghostbusters was released, Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik, and in March, JoJo was born. He is the first child of his parents, and because he was given the same first and middle names as his uncle and Great-grandfather, they called him JoJo. JoJo was born into a family from Mississippi, and, like most economically disadvantaged families from the South, they were a very large, religious, close-knit family, led in this case by JoJo’s grandfather, James Earl Kight, or “Brother Kight” as most people knew him.

To understand Jojo, you would have to know James Earl Kight. James Earl was a no-nonsense man from Mississippi who grew up in the Delta as a sharecropper. James Earl would often tell Jojo stories of when he was a child, his family worked for a cotton farmer, and that they were so poor that they would have to borrow money from the owner of the land in the winter to make ends meet and pay it back in the summer by working for the farmer. Or how the first time he had ever watched television was when he was 21. Years later, James Earl would move his family to Memphis for better economic opportunities and start a landscaping company, where Jojo would work on weekends and in the summer, developing a strong work ethic to please his grandfather. James Earl may have seemed to be a tough, humorless, hardened old man with what the family called a mean bulldog look upon his face, but there was something about the slight smirk, teary-eyed look, along with the compliment of “I’m proud of that boy,” that James Earl would give Jojo after a hard day’s work that absolutely drove something inside of Jojo.

There is a story that James Earl spoke about for years about Jojo. It was a Friday evening, and the sun was just beginning to set, offering a perfect view of pinks and purples in the sky. There was a feeling in the air, the kind you get when you can feel the excitement that the weekend has in store, and the end of the workday is within your reach, with the last cut of the day being a beautiful rural property with a big red barn, several old tractors strategically placed throughout as yard ornaments, and a small pond at the end 5-acre property.  James Earl called it “the ponderosa.” It was like something from a movie scene. As James Earl unloads the riding mower from the trailer, he drives the tire over a sharp piece of metal, and it pops. James Earl, frustrated by his bad luck, tells Jojo to just cut what he can with the push mower while he attempts to find someone who could repair the tire. Given how late it was at the start of the weekend, it took James Earl several hours to find someone to fix the mower’s tire. When James Earl returned with the repaired riding mower, ready to cut the 5-acre “ponderosa,” Jojo, who was sitting on a log next to the pond and sweating profusely, had shards of grass on his arms and face, and had finished the job. Jojo, knowing that this act of hard work would please his grandfather, cut the “ponderosa” with a single push mower. James Earl was not only pleased with Jojo, but it was something he never ceased to bring up at James Earl’s family fish fries with a slight smile on his face, with watery eyes, saying, “I’m proud of that boy.” There was something about his grandfather’s approval of his work ethic that carried over throughout Jojo’s life. Although it has come in different forms, such as awards or accolades, the thing that drives Jojo’s work Ethic is the chase for that slight smirk and watery eyes, and James Earl saying, “I’m proud of that boy.”

Somewhere along the way, many years before Jojo was born, James Earl found religion in the form of the Pentecostal Church. He worked his way through the ranks of the Pentecostal organization and became the pastor of a small church in the Frayser neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, on Whitney Ave. It had such a profound effect on Jojo’s life that, after 20 years without visiting the church, he could still remember the building’s address: 1946 Whitney Ave. But it wasn’t the building, but rather the people, the relationships, the atmosphere, the smell of the Cajun batter at the fish fries, the late-night summer tent revivals, the singing, and the feeling of being a part of something bigger than oneself that instilled all of this in Jojo. And it was all centered around James Earl. James Earl was not a man of wealth and didn’t have much in the way of materialistic things, but he was always happy to give. He knew what it was like to struggle, and he wanted to give in any way that he could. On Sundays, James Earl would take Jojo to the church on Whitney Ave, and they would make, as it seemed to Jojo at the time, hundreds of Bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid, and take them downtown to feed the homeless. As Jojo passed out the Bologna sandwiches and invited people to church, he would look over to his grandfather and get a nod and a slight smirk in James Earl’s watery eyes, with James Earl saying “I’m Proud of you boy,” which was a sign to Jojo that what he was doing was something bigger than himself, something that helped people, something special and it made his grandfather proud.

After James Earl passed away, most of the things that were centered around him began to fade. The close-knit family, the fish fries, revivals, and most of the experiences that made Jojo feel like he was part of something bigger than himself seemed like distant memories. Shortly after the funeral, Jojo joined the military, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and later joined the police department. This was Jojo’s own way of serving his community and doing something greater than himself, the way that James Earl did. However, amid the landscape of radical politics, Jojo began to question his position and his life. Would James Earl approve? One day, while in uniform at work, Jojo walks into a restaurant and sees a familiar face. It’s a man whom James Earl met while handing out Bologna sandwiches in downtown Memphis. Lee Brown was a homeless man who had a mental illness that prevented him from doing many “pro-social” things, such as maintaining employment. When James Earl would try to get Lee off the streets and let him live at the church on Whitney Ave, Lee would succumb to the things that he had little control over and end up right back on the streets. Nevertheless, James Earl would always take Lee right back in for many years. Fast forward back to the familiar face, it’s Lee Brown. Jojo knew him as a child, so Lee didn’t initially remember him. As Jojo walked up to him in his police officer’s uniform, he said, “Lee Brown.” With a startled look on his face, Lee says, “Yes, officer. Is there something wrong?” Jojo goes on to tell Lee about his grandfather, “Brother Kight,” and they begin to enthusiastically reminisce about the days of old. He wanted to know about how Jojo’s life had turned out, and Jojo told Lee about his escapades in Europe and the Middle East, as well as his time with the Police Department. At the end of their talk, as it was time to go, they both got up from the table and gave each other a hug. Lee Brown shook Jojo’s hand and said, with a slight grin and watery eyes, “Brother Kight would have been proud of you, and so am I.”