Dawg at the Right House

Poor William and Magical Madge

By POOR WILLIAM

CLARKSDALE, Mississippi

Poor William has taken a lengthy hiatus from “whiming.” What a crying-ass shame, not because his whims are manna-like sustenance for weary, famished readers; nay, let it not be thought so! Poor William just needs to write for his own unmitigated sanity.Now he will share precisely why he is the proverbial “dawg that wandered up to the right house.”

One of Magical Madge’s, Poor William’s bride of mythic proportions, childhood friends was attending the very first soiree given for some visiting European guests at the Salon de Boheme–our new domicile nestled soundly in the heart of Clarksdale–when she remarked to Poor William, whilst imbibing his libidinous libations gratis, that he was surely “the dawg who had wandered up to the right house.”

Translation: Poor William hit a homerun and definitely got the hopeful end of the wishbone when he married the Magical One.

Poor William finds no fault with the metaphor, and was not even a little “booty-hurt,” as the statement is true. He considers his having “wandered up to the right house” evidence of God’s Grace–both capitalized.

It was not so many years ago (though it seems like several lifetimes) that Poor William was living straight up in the “hood” in a New Mexican town. Gunfire was heard often, and

if not for his students, members of the West Side Locos watching his crib, his white mini-van with the state-mandated breathalyzer and his few earthly possessions would have been purloined and never seen again, except maybe in Juarez.

In fact, my ex-wife didn’t really feel comfortable letting my four young children visit, and I can’t really blame her. My hood, one block from a laundromat and two blocks from a true saloon, was multi-cultural with a healthy mix of blacks, Hispanics, another displaced Mississippi boy and me.

A Mexican family lived across the street in several homes and there was about a four-year old boy who often played in the front, grassless yard–the only grass in the hood grows in baggies. They spoke little English and I spoke little Spanish, but we lived in environmental harmony.

Shortly after moving to the hood, I noticed the young boy playing in the front yard with what I believed to have been his cousin of about the same age. The little muchacho, who had obviously seen police dramas on television or heard his “city’s finest,” struck a pose while his cousin was running from his make-believe finger gun, and shouted in his four-year-old voice, “Freeze motherf—–!”

My grandmother would have had a fit, but that was where Poor William had been and is no longer–well, not today anyway.

Now Poor William lives in a monstrous edifice, has no cockroaches to mention, pays his mortgage (go figure who would give him one of those–he is of the rent-paying kind) within a couple of months after it is due, and no longer has to breathe into an ignition lock to crank his ride, while picking up his kids at their elementary school, hoping young, hot mothers would dig him. Jeez! What was he thinking?

No, Poor William is thankful for God’s redemptive Grace in the form of family, old friends, new friends, well-adjusted kids who visit every summer, and his incredibly loving and accepting wife.

Alas, Poor William finds no shame in being the old dawg who wandered up to the right house and acknowledges the end of his wanton sojournings and the beginning of his newfound life with a fantastic wife.

So, next time Poor William hears, “Freeze motherf—–,” he will hopefully not look over his shoulder as before; but then again……