Eugene B. Redmond

Strong as Pot Liquor

(In Memoriam, for Charles "Tex" Peabody, 1933-2003)

"Redmond, you wont find another nigger as well-read–& well-dressed–as me…"

it was mid-century, & "Tex"

–as the lanky embodiment of his nickname–

was a precocious teenage monarch, shaking dues, taking names

& presiding over a dynasty of street corners…

Baker…Tudor…Piggott…Market…Bond…Broadway…

animated arteries,

criss-crossing Fifteenth like "T’s,"

that bred philosophers, doo-wop poets, mathematicians, orators, pool sharks;

weavers & bobbers & hustlers; war-bound homeboys, jazzicians, ministers,

college-cooled jocks; intellectuals crooning Marcus Garvey, Karl Marx, Edgar Allan Poe,

Frederick Douglass, Lenin, Mary McLeod Bethune, Abraham Lincoln, James Weldon Johnson

& Paul Laurence Dunbar whose namesake edifice glistened nearby

imbibing Bird Duke Billie Miles Dizzy Mahalia The Dozens & Thelonious,

Tex hungered for the light, bopping & whirling

like a riot in the turnstile of notions & dreams,

feasting on books and current events like this morning’s grits

 caught in a fever of learning, he mined politics, fine art, expansive conversation, US Army,

Central State University…; then, during hipsofical summers,

he resumed his Fifteenth Street Monarchy,

spiking it with Cab Calloway, baby baby baby & we shall overcome

testy "Tex," challenged you to rank teams of the Negro Baseball Leagues & Colleges

prove that Florida A&M didn’t possess the baddest marching band on the planet

call the round that Brown Bomber floored the German

number the gold medals minted when Jesse Owens or Wilma Rudolph sprinted across the globe

catalog the hallowed heroics of Tuskeegee Airmen

compete in a litany of toasts or boasts like the "Signifying Monkey"

name two Lincoln High alumni who attended Julliard School of Music together

find somebody who’s out-read or out-dressed me

discover the recipe for Scotia’s Shrimp

Manchild Tex duffed off-time to his innerdrummer,

forged in the ancestral belly-kettle strong as pot liquor,

blessed by the force blessing all

engaged in the time-minted hustle to get their own

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