An ancient African proverb asserts that African men are the wool of the African tribe, but that the African women are the ones who weave the pattern. Hence, African women determine the types of lives lived by their African men. No life bears out this proverb better than the life of Jay Thomas.

The great Jay Thomas was a child of his age - the roaring 20s. It was an age of hope -- of high aspirations yet of great uncertainty - the heroes of the age were the rich, like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, William Randolph Hearst and George Vanderbilt. Jay Thomas, an African from the village, had a big dream and he saw himself as an entrepreneur, a future financier like any of the great men of his generation.

It must be a human trait to want to be something, that under these circumstances, you can never be. The grass is always greener on the other guy's lawn. It's becoming more common today to try to be something you can never be, even though the deck is stacked against you, but back then Jay's dreams were enormous.

In 1946 heroes in the colored community were the likes of Jackie Robinson who was playing baseball for the Montreal Royals, Branch Rickey's top farm club for the Brooklyn Dodges. There was Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter "pound for pound" who ever lived in Boxing history; he was about to win the title: King of the Welterweights. Then, there was the smooth and debonair Nat King Cole who was singing "Straighten Up and Fly Right". Of course there was also Joe Lewis.

Can you image how many Jackie and Sugar Ray Robinsons, and Nat King Coles there were out there? Kids love to dream, don't they? So, Jay Thomas' dream of being a tycoon, even a colored tycoon, does not seem so absurd now, as it was then. But, to Jay it was more than a dream; even back then Jay dared to make it a real goal, to be a real tycoon, in real time and real life. As a real goal it now seems absurd, and back then, it was twaddle. There must have been those who thought Jay was crazy, but, just like that little, old ram, Jay had high hopes. Most times high hopes are better than no hope.

Had Jay been a highly skilled baseball player , playing for less money, in the Negro league, a Jackie Robinson; had Jay been the greatest fighter pound-for-pound that ever lived, fighting for years without a title, a Sugar Ray Robinson; or had Jay been the popular singer-jazz pianist, who, as the featured Star performer in many Nightclubs, was forced to enter for years through the club's backdoor with the service help, a Nat King Cole, had Jay's decision not been different than theirs, would the universe of mankind had shaken their heads in shocked consternation and said your wrong: be a Jackie Robinson, be a Sugar Ray, be a Nat King Cole? No, Jay was ahead of his time; he rejected the idea that his race should predetermine his suitability to be successful in what he wanted, when he wanted it and how he wanted it to be.

All images of my recollection of Jay as I think back today are sepia in tone and color and oddly there's a music that I associate with him; it has a scratchy edge to it, like a phonograph needle running over old vinyl.

When I met the great Jay Thomas for the first time I was little more an infant. An old 78 record on the gramophone was scratching out a Billie Holiday tune. My parents were very much in love at that time and their music reflected it. So, whenever I reminisce on Jay this tune always comes to mind . . . . . . "As Time Goes By."

****

By that time I met Jay, Jay had had a thousand and more memories of promising midnights that had fallen apart by dawn. You see, the character of Jay Thomas is essentially that of a man with an unhappy childhood. As he was older than I am, naturally, he was born before me, but also before my mother and my father. So, this story is based on what I learned from others, and from what over the years I have surmised. But in large part, Jay is a fictional character. He harbored a strong dislike for the authorities of Halifax, who destroyed his village; I confess his dislike is something I have inherited. Jay had a strident personality and it is far better to let him tell his story where possible in his own incomparable style.

"A murky wasteland hollow at the edge of the city was my place of birth, a place euphemistically called: "the colored village," and known by the name Africville. Though on the peninsula, and logically part of the city still the City Fathers rejected Africville from its precincts. Here, about 1900, I was born in that outcast village on the shores of the godamm city's bay.

After Africville, my father, Art, and mother, Lana, settled at 106 Maple Street at the edge of the central core of the colored Hood within the city. A fast-talking, sweet smelling Mama, a Jezebel that Art couldn't resist, broke up our happy home. So, Art moved out.

My mother, Lana started a new life with a new man, that fuckin' Howard Ball, and a new godamm family of brats began. Stupid Art -- no longer raptured by that freakin' fiend -- wanted mother back. They say hope springs eternal, but in this situation, hope was fuckin' nuts, for Chrissake! Ya couldn't tell that godamm dummy nothin'!"

Jay's alienation -- while based on values and generation -- was also based on color. A Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield of his generation, Jay – the classic youth refugee – was on his lifetime odyssey of youth. Added to this Jay was also a kindred refugee, who wandered between two families – the older, and more lost generation, to which he had belonged as its pampered baby and the newly created one, from which he was barred and of which he was so jealous.

"Adults' are nothing but fuckin' phonies, or hypocrites. Among them are my mother and father. There are so many of the motherfuckers it was like they were crawling through the cracks of my godamm windows. I couldn't get rid of ‘em.

All mothers are slightly crazy or damned nuts; she believed anything I was tellin' her. In truth I had become a fuckin' gangster; yet, I persuaded my mother that I was becoming a lily-white businessman of whom in a short time she'd be justly proud.

Also, I had as many personalities as there were grains of sand on the on the isolated fuckin' city beach. My only limitation was my imagination and that was limitless. My ambitions always ran counter to limitations that society imposed on the freakin' colored man. Not only were my village and my entire people fuckin' outcasts, so was I. Yet, I was in a class of all my own -- I was the original crazy, mixed-up colored kid.

In time even I came to believe that there was something inherently evil in my entire fuckin' line of colored people. For all of us harbored impossible ambitions that ran counter to society's restrictions imposed on us.

Chrissake! Damn it! The fuckin' restrictions made us so godamm crazy! You'd want to go out and punch someone's lights out, or you'd have a fuckin' nervous breakdown. Who, in their right mind, wanted a Je-sus breakdown? Fightin' seemed the better option.

A million fuckin' years couldn't erase the harm society had already imposed on my life, and those of my freakin' families. Life of a colored person is a fuckin' wall of graffiti created by others -- the lowest of commonest denominators – as a result my life is being fuckin' pissed against the godamm graffiti wall. But I was determined to fight the motherfuckers for what I wanted!"

About age 14 Jay's gambling ability, and Hood smarts made him susceptible to the lure of a fast buck, faster women and to all that money could buy. Pinching and reselling liquor, drugs, anything, that brought him a fast buck was, as Jay put it, "my fuckin' trademark." Playing the whores was second nature to Jay and he had lots. He quit freakin' school. By the time Jay was 19 he had made a large stash. He imitated the great tycoons and financiers of his generation.

"I learned about image -- the finer things – how to dress-up, and how not to fuckin' talk; I straightened my kinky hair, wore rouge and eye makeup and I led a gang who'd go to the wall for me."

Had Jay been educated and had he shown any degree of sensitivity for others, perhaps someone might have said to him that when you feel like criticizing any one just remember that all people in this world haven't had the same advantages that you've had. Jay had had advantages that other colored people had not. But that never happened and Jay reserved judgment on nobody. Perhaps, this was the reason for Jay's eventual ruin. Of course only a few fully appreciate that a sense of fundamental decency is parceled out unequally at birth. To put it mildly, popularity often eludes a colored man with high business acumen and uppity aspirations, so Jay's apotheosis has lay dormant all these years.

Peculiar demons haunt and motivate a man. The loss of his mother's affections -- to another, "less worthy, brood of fuckin' kids who I despised -- was the ultimate insult." So, he pondered how to win back "my freakin' mother's affection." Jay resolved that success in an honest business, and starting a new family with someone dignified would do it.

"So, I courted Helena Coleman, the Deacon's daughter, who recently returned home from a French finishing school in Montreal. Helena was copper-tone sepia from top to bottom. She was as slight as a hummingbird's flight feather. Her auburn hair, fashioned in the latest style of the era, highlighted her deep, brown eyes. Tennis gave her an athlete's figure -- a body that was more than Greek -- the stuff of which classical statues are made. Know what I mean?!

So tender the night, so very tender the moment. . .her soft, innocent brown eyes exposed my hot, wet tongue, salivating on her full, round nipples. Her torso winced and rose torpidly to absorb my pleasures. Smirking, I watched Helena's submissive eyes pathetically swell in tears, inaudibly expressing her love saying to me:

"My body's yours, do with it what you want."

"Never had Helena loved me so much as that night, never had Helena felt so desperate as in my arms, and never had I been so confident of her love as at that moment. The true love mate of my life, my eyes would never again wander, kismet."

The side of Helena, the one, no one else saw, Jay was sure was there. Like a prospector he could see it -- just below the surface -- her body convulsing with pleasure from the inside out and he was the mistral of it all. As with all prospectors he believed that he was the one man, and only man, that could bring it -- the mother load -- to the surface.

Jay sauntered across the shiny showroom floor with Helena draped on his left shoulder, his bone white spats reflecting light above and over both cuffs of his bright-tan, summer Italian suit:

"We'll take the light blue Buick convertible. . . Have it delivered just before five this afternoon."

Jay stood with an elegant, all-season trench coat, slung over his shoulders like an impresario. From an Algerian, leopard-skin billfold he took three fresh, and crisp, thousand dollar bills and place them on the business desk like three aces from a stacked deck of playing cards. He looked like a man with an unbeatable hand when Jay declared: "That will be sufficient, won't it?" Staggering to his feet, and nearly falling in a heap behind the desk, a bewildered salesman moved his lips inaudibly at first, and then blurted out red faced:

"Tha. . . That'll be fine. . . . Just fine."

Jay sent the index finger of his right, kit-gloved hand along the brim of his upturned summer hat, as if to salute: "Keep the change!" He entreated through his tone of voice. "And now . . . . . like a good fellow, ol' Sport, have us chauffeured home."

Behind them rose a tide of whispers, blue eyes meeting other blue eyes, a hushed silence in one corner of the showroom and a suspension of momentum in the other that nearly hurl them through the showroom door. Jay was the kind of colored man worthy of watching: how was it possible for a Negro to pay that kind of cash money for a car? The police watched Jay.

"Jay will take what he wants, by any means necessary", exclaimed Albert, Helena's father, in his deep baritone voice. "Then, when he's through with Helena he'll cast her aside like yesterday's newspaper." He kicked the railing of his veranda at the back of his house in the warm summer's air.

"Albert, you can't continua to go on like this." Daisy his wife said, sucking her teeth. "They're going to send you to the other side of the harbor, to the nut suite. Who's going to pay for it?"

At that moment a sleek, black cat darted in the moonlight and as Albert turned his head to follow it, he quivered when he found that they were not alone. On the veranda, less than ten feet away from Albert stood Jay, dressed to the nines.

"How long have you been standing there Niggar?" Albert shouted. "You want to go back to the sewer where you belong on the other side of the hood."

"Now, there you go! Is that any way for a Deacon to talk to his future son-in-law?" replied Jay putting on his clam, self-confident poker face.

"You're nothing but a gangster!! You'll never be my son-in-law!!" Albert relied.

"Oh, and what do you do behind Johnny Bone, the bootlegger, on my side of the sewer as you put it." Jay snickered.

"Daisy!" ordered Albert, "Go in the house!"

Behind the scenes the two men settled their differences and Albert no longer opposed Jay. Jay, the businessman, won out. The stage was set for Jay's plans to reach their denouement. Under duress in June 1950 Helena's father gave away the bride. Turns out the deacon ran a bootleg and prostitution joint under cover.

The Seaview Baptist Church rang out with the music of choirs and individual performers; the Coleman-Thomas wedding became the local standard of excellence. The Mainliner -- the great star from homeland, the US of A, and the Hotel Nova Scotian-- performed at the wedding reception, Louis Armstrong, sang Helena's favorite ballad: "A Kiss to Build a Dream On."

"The wedding culminated in the longest drunk that the Hood had ever witnessed, when I determined that my bride -- the woman of my dreams -- was a lesbian. In desperation near the end of his seven-week drunk, I went to my mother for consolation. Instead, I ran into trouble. I fought with my eldest stepbrother. A punch, my punch, struck my mother in the temple.

From the slopes of the citadel's elevation the gigantic retinas of the Vulliamian clock kept their constant vigil, witnessing my assault on my mother and I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding my actions with earnest intensity also, for less than five feet away from me stood Helena. I never forgave myself, Helena ran, my drinking began to increase and following a brief illness, mother died, at least in part, from my punch.

Two years after my wedding, with my mother dead, and my wife Helena vanishing to a larger city with another woman, I was a man alone. It was a big fall from the days when I had dolls falling all over themselves only to light my cigars."

Jay never stopped drinking, not even when he lost his job on the CNR for robbing a blind man and for drunken and disorderly conduct on the job. He continued to drink until almost all of his money was gone. Jay never fully recovered from his mother's death and the guilt he carried, not only kept him on the bottle, but also in the end may have taken his life.

********

There are times still when I hear, "As Time Goes By." When, in the 1950s, mother was suddenly taken o hospital for the first time ever to give birth, I came home from school, to my surprise mother was absent and my world was in disarray. I had no idea how babies were born. I was afraid that one of the pillars of my stability was gone forever. There followed my first clear recollections of Jay Thomas, my uncle.

Jay arrived dressed in work clothes. I had never seen him dressed like that and he was carrying paper bags to make lunch. Jay, from that time onward, became another pillar of my life. I really didn't even know his name, until after that day. I became more than his nephew and he became more than my uncle -- family and intergenerational issues be damned. Never did we ever discuss such things. They had no place in our relationship and Jay was my hero, a standup kind of guy.

To this day none of my family, other than myself, actually remembers this event, or his dumpling, chicken barley soup and just how good it was. I have never had a soup engaged my sense of smell as did its satisfying aroma wafting from the pot-belly stove in the kitchen and a taste so soothing the Arch Angel might just as well have descended because heaven's where I was during that meal.

After that day I always watched out for Jay, the sheer delight at seeing him gave meaning and purpose to my life and always warmed my heart. I thought life was worth living because Jay cared about me.

Years later, I was walking alone on the street, the commercial street, sightseeing you might say. I was older then. It was near Christmas and the street was alive with the smells of the season.

The butcher's sawdust and pickling aromas and his rack rollers screeching under the straining weight of sides of beef and pork, though things of the past, I remember well. There were Syrian fruit vendors -- stocked with always-exotic Christmas fruit-- the smell of sandalwood crates, containing pomegranates, peaches, plums, russet apples, colorful hard candy containers, grapes, and grapefruit. The pastry shop's soothing ginger bread bouquet -- Grant's Bakeries – home of the World's most famous lemon squares – the stuff of which a poor kid's large, and wildest Christmas fantasies are made – food, lots of food -- inviting you home for a Yuletide feast never to be forgotten.

At the Hood's two Chinese Restaurants, run by brothers, the smells would drive you wild and inside one, to my surprise and delight, I saw Jay and boldly in I walked.

"Well, if it isn't the Cisco Kid!" (A famous, handsome, Mexican cowboy movie star) Jay cried in surprise and with a smile on his face, he was awaiting a reply.

"No! It's just me uncle, JR." I replied shyly in the echo of the silence. It was the weekend so he was dressed like the Great Jay Thomas and he was either drunk, or on his way there. Suddenly, it happened.

The kitchen doors, the kind that swing wide open, erupted violently. Out came Mrs. Hum with a gaggle of little Hums right behind her, none of them missing a step, each tied to the one in front as if they were all linked by tiny magnets and speaking in Cantonese, all at once. Mrs. Hum was answering every one of her children, and carrying a large bowl of steamed rice to Jay, along with his soup for which he was famous in that restaurant – egg drop soup.

She placed the food tray on a nearby table and served the food to Jay and as she swung around the table (with all the kids in tow) Jay peeked out from around her body as she passed with that familiar devilment in his eyes. He never lost his boyish playfulness, and looking directly in my eyes, he said:

"Do you want to hear me speak Cantonese?"

I thought rather quickly that his doing that was not a good idea and besides I didn't want to be embarrassed. I shook my head violently signifying:

"No!"

"Hong Kong!! Ching! Chong! Cigar! Cigar! Cigar!" Uttered Jay, raising his voice louder, seeing I was embarrassed and running the limit of his Cantonese.

Mrs. Hum laughed, saying something like:

"Qual walla! Qual walla! Qual walla!"

"Jay want White Owl cigars." She was off again to get the cigars, with her gaggle in close pursuit.

"Have some rice and some soup with me?" He asked and then he volunteered:

"Take each man as you find each man, and if you don't like them, have nothing to do with them. But don't judge them based on how they look."

Then, he gave me that serious look, dipped his head and one shoulder, looked at Mrs. Hum, swung his head back at me and rising up for emphasis:

"Because one never knows, do one?" Meaning perhaps, that at one time he needed help and the Hums had helped him. Then, he said:

"Eat up! Take this dollar, and don't tell anyone else, meaning the other kids, you saw me, Okay?"

After that I saw Jay many times and he often gave me money and said the same thing: "Take this, but don't tell anyone else you saw me, Okay?"

Jay was a stunningly handsome man. Standing only about five feet four inches tall, he was a Sugar Ray Robinson powerhouse and equally, if not more, handsome. Jay was also a boxer, though an amateur, unlike so many of his idols. He looked timeless; he never lost his youthful appearance. Jewish merchants in Montreal tailored his suits and his aesthetic eye for detail was excellent.

We were together another time, during the first heavy weight boxing match between Floyd Patterson and Ingumar Johansson, I think, in 1964. We were listening to the fight in the dark living room of my parents' house on an old black and white television. At each punch I could hear Jay bobbing and weaving, throwing punches himself at his imaginary opponent. It was eerie. When the fight was over and Johansson had won, Jay went to the bathroom and when he returned I heard Jay talking to himself about the witch.

He said: "Beware the Gander Witch!!" The witch would visit him that night and what hell he was going to have to pay.

Years later, Jay's persona had dwindled to two: there was the Great Jay Thomas, who surfaced now only on weekends; there was also the practical Jay, who, during the week, hid and doubled as a sanitation worker for the city.

He was a broken man; and like a drunk he was stumbling between his dreams of what he wanted to be, and the reality of what he had become, a man alone. In a bar, days before his death, he made a very upsetting realization:

"I'd become, almost over night, the same fuckin' adult hypocrite, who, as a youth, I had shunned."

On the morning of September 11, 1966 Jay's drowned body was found floating in the Bay near the outcast village of his birth. No one knows for certain just when life ceased for Jay – whether life's end was quick, or whether it was torturously slow. One thing we know is that in his outcast village Jay met the likes of Duke Ellington playing: "Sophisticated Lady." The two ladies in Jay's life – his mother, Lana, and wife, Helena-- were certainly sophisticated ladies with their own ways of doing and seeing things.

Perhaps, some age-old African wisdom or proverb – asserting that African men are the wool of the African tribe, but that the African women are the ones who weave the pattern– applies. Today, however, Jay might have added a corollary to this proverb stating something like this: when the African man does not like the patterns being woven by the African woman he should find a new weaver.

Finally there are many theories regarding Jay's mysterious death. There's the school of thought stating that Jay committed suicide or had a vision in a drunken stupor, fell overboard and drowned accidentally. Finally, there's the romantic school that says Jay died of a broken heart. Perhaps, his heart was broken and although he lived a long life, truly, Jay had been dead for a very long time. So, his tragic achievement in the waters of the bay was a mere formality.

Yet, there are other lessons to be learned from Jay's experience and, in the end, I suppose, what truly matters is your take on things. I know Jay would want me to tell you this and he would probably say:

"Still, while it may take mankind a thousand godamm years to change their freakin' attitudes on matters of race, sexual orientation, and other social issues, it will happen; eventually, society will eventually do the right thing, as fuckin' time goes by." We all know that Jay was no angel; oddly, he read his Bible daily and to keep the Gander Witch away. He slept with a crucifix under his pillow; he believed in The Ten Commandments, although he transgressed them all. To err is human, to forgive, divine.