My gang and I met each night during that summer under the street lamp on the corner, Harold M, Harold T, little Gordie, Kenny and I. There, the reports of the day’s activities, the gossip, were exchanged. We were a study, what sociologists call, a street corner society. My name is Junior, so they call me JR.

There was that crazy escapee from the mental hospital who took Kenny’s loaf of bread from him outside the store, tore it up in front of Kenny before devouring it like a madman. Kenny told us all about that and the man kept mumbling something about hating kids. You could see that same look coming over our faces at the same time and it was a question that needed no reply and the question was: “How could any sane person hate kids?” We all asked ourselves.

“Yeah, he was definitely crazy!” Kenny said. “Sort of like Buzz Riley. Buzz was the after-hours joint King. (Buzz sold liquor, drugs and broads after-hours from his flat to the destitute and idle rich, who had exotic tastes.) Under the influence of official booze Buzz wanted to fight and beat everyone in the Hood. Buzz never drank his own grog. His size and strength made him the King of the Hood and none could beat him --drunk or sober -- but once he had a few drinks no one would challenge him.

Harold T piped up: “Be quiet now, or I’m not going to tell ya the joke I heard just this morning, but Junior (JR.) isn’t goin’ get it.” They all laughed harder at that than the joke Harold T was about to tell.

“Okay Mr. T’s got the floor, tell the joke JR.’s not goin’ to get,” said Harold M. They all chuckled some more.

“Well,” said Harold T, savoring the silence, “there was this small business owner whose business was in trouble. His accountant told him you’ve got to lay off two people to save your business. Now, the boss was a humanitarian and did not want to lay people off. Still, the two ‘junior’ employees," Harold T went on, looking at me with the guys all laughing. “had to go, or be fired.”

“The two junior employees were Jack and Jill,” Harold T said to a roar of laughter.

“Not another Jack and Jill joke,” Kenny said.

Harold T nodded and continued:

“The boss decided to approach Jill alone. So the boss asked Jill into his office and begged her to get comfortable in the large leather chair he reserved only for visiting dignitaries.”

“Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way," the boss said to Jill. “Jill, you know there are a lot of hard things a man has got to put up with and it’s hard and I mean hard. And there’s no easy way to tell you, Jill.” The boss said: “I’ve got to lay you, and Jack off!”

“Jill paused for what seemed like eternity. Then, gradually smiling with a look of discernment on her blushing cheeks and she said: “Okay, I’m ready,” asserted Jill with the conviction of a regular martyr.

The boys were rolling in the sidewalk in laughter, all but JR. Gordie yelled: “HAA HAHAA -- Jill wasn’t goin’ to be losin’ her job!!”

“What’s so funny?” JR. asked.

Everyone on the street corner shook his head in agreement that this joke was one of Harold T’s finest. Still, the meeting adjourned with JR. repeatedly asking the same question: “What’s so funny?”

“JR! Guess what?” Gordie said. “Sometimes I can’t believe that you were born in the hood.”

“Gordie,” I replied, “There are a lot of things people don’t understand or don’t get. You know that!! Like why do we fall down instead of up?” They all laughed again.

The night before our visit to the witch I was lying in bed trying to keep my mind on what the gang expected me to do to the old witch. After all, my father had told me to treat this same old woman with respect, to run errands for her and to expect nothing in return. Ask her how she is feeling when you see her father told me. And tell her the Lord would bless and keep her. My father was a piece of work, an amazing man, and a charmer, the kind of man who every woman loved.

As I lay in bed then, the night before the visit, I could hear Gordie strumming his guitar, getting ready to holler for his brother, Harold M, to come home: Haaa Haa Haa orl! Haaa Haa Haa orl! The last thing I did during this summer very night was to imitate Gordie and I’d holler out the window at him: Haaa Haa Haa orl! Haaa Haa Haa orl!

Don’t forget, tomorrow we’re going to get the old witch and you have to be there; the gang is depending on you!” Gordie whispered intending only me to hear.

“Haaa Haa Haa orl! Haaa Haa Haa orl!” I said again as if to give confirmation.

“Yeah, Yeah the ol’ witch’s goin’ to get what’s comin’ to her!” I replied forcefully.

On her porch we lighted, and, like hummingbirds at a feeder, we swarmed the old, housebound woman mercilessly from her own porch. Some boys stationed a little way down the street were the lookouts for adults who would object to this behaviour and when the coast was clear, it all began -- the chanting and the swarming. The boys hid outside behind the curtain-draped windows in her porch so she couldn’t see our faces. She walked toward us grimacing in pain, lifting her cane faster than what she could actually walk. And we chanted loudly:

“Old nanny Witch fell in a ditch; Picked up her panties and Thought she was Rich!”

Faster and faster she walked toward us and we repeated this refrain incessantly. Her speed and agility, like a mighty lioness, surprised us. Caught in her claws she toppled one of our numbers with a crushing thud from the top of her veranda to the ground below. The ringleader was down! We were so sufficiently corrected by the old lady we left in humiliation.

Have you noticed that there is always at least one elderly person who stands out from the rest? There is always one with whom one can truly identify in some unknown and eerie manner. Though you barely know one another, there’s an intense search going on within the both of you to uncover a past link, a life or a history between you. These remarkable people, for many reasons stand out in our collective memories. Who she really was, is hard to say; what she looked like is easier.

Her skin was olive in color, dry, parched. It was as wrinkled as the now familiar old family blanket you’ve had on the bed for years, but really didn’t notice. Her hair was a white glowing color, to say as white as snow would be to trivialize this impression. She was short and slight, her lips were thick and, as the mark of the African was set upon her, she had a rhythm and grace to her gait that could sometimes yet be seen.

During the days of my dreams I had no playmates; I was very much alone but not lonely. I have always been in good company with myself. Besides my active mind, father had also given me a dog, a German Shepard, Rex. Father knew how timid I was. He knew also that I needed all the affection and attention he could give to me. (To this day when it comes to affection, I am the original black hole in space.) I didn’t realize how lucky I am, how lucky I truly was.

If you can keep a secret as blood brothers and a member of our gang, I’ll let you in on something. But first you must swear to keep it secret. Now, you must cut your finger and make it bleed as I will also do, your blood must mingle with mine and as blood brothers we pledge to keep these things between us on penalty of death by shame. Now, you so swear on our blood.

So fascinated with Mrs. Johnston was I that I once spied on her. I watched her one summer’s day when she was on her back veranda drinking tea. Her cherry trees were red in abundance; plants, flowers and vegetables were ripe and ready for picking. The weather was warm and the first, full harvest moon was about to rise. She was drinking lemon tea and reading a sacred book. She read aloud.

“And afterward,” she read, “I will pour out my spirit on all people.” I noticed that she seemed to be looking in my direction. “Your sons and daughters will prophesy; your old men will dream dreams; your young men and women will see illusions.”

"You, over there in the bushes observing me, you, who they called JR., you shall continue to see your illusions and finally you will dream dreams that you shall write about. The writer’s stamp is upon your hands, those of your tribe, and just as I search in the rooms of my house for consolation and strength so you shall search the rooms of your mind to write about truth, harmony and peace in the world. So it is written in your future and so you will do. You need not be timid of me for I am your muse, and as soon as you discover it, you shall be our voice, the voice of our abandoned African people who have known the whip of slavery. Go, now!” She commanded. “Learn how to fulfill your destiny, write. Always remember that a writer writes and witches, they relate prophesy. She swooped into the rooms of her house.

Until now, I have never related this prophesy to anyone. This is our secret. I also want you to know that should I have any success as a writer, it is due to the prophesy of the witch, Mrs. Johnston. As my philosopher friend known, in the Hood, as the African sage used to say from his booth in the Delphi Restaurant: “In the vernacular of the Hood, you’ve just heard it through the grapevine daddyo so ‘just shut your lips and be cool’”

As though over night -- the next day -- or so it seemed, Mrs. Johnston had passed away. Ding-dong the wicked witch was dead. I yearn to ask her pardon! I yearn to ask politely, what dreams, or visions may come?

Very much a fancier, an idealist, I sought the best in everyone, and I believed I’d find it. But when that failed I was inclined to be reclusive as if I had failed. Many children lead me easily because I craved acceptance by them. This is an old story, a story as old as thought. Yet, as I became more self-reliant I craved a newer kind of acceptance and, though in younger form, they too were mysteriously connected to Mrs. Johnston.

It was the summer of a discontent that had been growing from within, the time just before you are a middle-schooler, the time when you discover you really like girls. It’s the time, when in a young man’s life, you love to tease and make them laugh. Yet you still have more important things to do – playing baseball, hockey and redline -- far more important activities than talking to girls about feelings.

All Mrs. Johnston had were those feelings and memories and she sought them out in the darkness of her rooms in the places I dared not look. To me she was boldly mysterious. I imagined just what she was seeking in heir nocturnal circulations through the house. Was she seeking the energy or the souls of her dearly beloved and departed in her house that I had witnessed in my visions in my bedroom by accident as a child?

That hurtful childhood chant runs on and on in my mind today, years after the words were uttered from the mouth of a child. Over the years whenever I have thought about them and Mrs. Johnston, they have grown louder and louder in my mind until now, they injure me in that I once uttered them to taunt a grand, old lady.

Now some decades after her passing I can glance across the street though the window of my former bedroom that no longer exists into her former home, a cape cod, that too is non-existent and I can yet see smoke curling in the air behind a kerosene lamp, being carried by an olive skinned woman with the look of the African upon her face, seeking something in the shadows that I one day will seek for myself. What an image of courage she is, what a triumphant soul with which to re-unite.

Now that I am older, now that I am wise, one day all too soon I shall transpose places with that of some young person whose dreams and visions will be those of my youth.

Perhaps then Mrs. Johnston’s visions of her dearly beloved and departed will become my own, those of an older, wiser person. Some day all too soon I, like Mrs. Johnston, shall disappear, vanish, just as she did to become part of the energy emitted into oblivion – into the darker and further recesses of a bygone time and age. To find Mrs. Johnston’s energy in that place shall be a privilege. Then, as if I had finally learned the lessons of my youth I shall do as Father long ago cautioned. Treat Mrs. Johnston with respect! Run errands for her, expecting nothing in return. Ask her how she’s feeling when, and if, I should be so lucky to find her again. Look around, and she’s there.