Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3

September 15, email to Roy Douglas Malonson, publisher, African-American News & Issues

Dear Mr. Malonson,

I very much enjoyed your analysis of the hypocrisy of many of Houston’s leading pastors. I think your column had more of the Gospel Truth in it than many of them (alas, any of them) are willing to let slip out in Sunday morning sermons – and they don’t want your truth to clear up the muddy water of their deceptions Yep, they fleece the flock down for dollars, then keep ‘em happy by cutting ‘em loose before kickoff time.

So they want to keep your paper out of their property because you tell it like it is, get in the face of the mighty whitey and the lackey blacky? Well, Captain May sez you need to keep telling it like it is, brother, and I know that any truth-loving patriot from Martin Luther King to Thomas Jefferson would say the same thing.

Kindly allow me a few words to describe myself and my interests. I teach martial arts and write (mostly essays) in Northeast Houston. Some twenty-five years ago I was the only junior to ever be elected Student Council President of the predominantly black Smiley High School. I was the only junior to ever edit the Eagle Call, our school newspaper turned into a voice of progress when I held its stewardship. I was the only junior to win the North Forest math contest. Finally (I know it grows tiresome), I was the only junior ever, and anywhere, to have done all of this as a junior and then quit school.

What to know why?

Because the simple fact was that my family lacked in a financial kind of way. I started lawn-boying at ten to buy my school clothes; I was working forty hour weeks in the summers when I was 13, lying by saying I was 16. I went to Washington D.C. on the Close-Up tour for youngsters when I was a sophomore. I listened to five hundred teenagers talk about how their parents, their churches, their relatives and their associations had paid their way to see the show of government. I was the only person there who had saved every nickel out of earned money. I had emptied out the savings account that I had begun with my first lawn money, and nursed over five years. I was ashamed to tell anyone about that, though, because important people love to talk about self-made folks behind their backs.

Anyhow, there was no sense in sticking around at Smiley, because I’d already taken every advanced course and I was bored out of my mind. My math teacher said it straight. “Eric, we aren’t teaching you here; we’re teaching everyone but you here – and that’s the way it has to be. If you’d gone to another school they’d have money for advanced courses, but as things stand, you should just skip the rest of high school and go right on to college. So that’s what I did, only my teacher didn’t know that along the way I’d have to go to the Army to get some money for college.

Well, I got to go to college after the Army, then back to the Army after college, and that’s where, after a lot of time, I got called captain. I was a military intelligence officer, then a public affairs officer; I have done a bit of writing here and there. Nowhere, though, have I written for a paper that demonstrated the editorial integrity of the African-American News & Issues, so I won’t drop inferior names in a letter to a publisher I respect.

From time to time I would be honored if you would consider one or another of my essays for publication. I have a fine one in search of a publisher now, and I attach it below. If not this, then maybe the next.

My compliments, sir,

Captain Eric May

PS: I’m writing a book at present, and am unusually reclusive while I work, but when things clear up a bit I would be honored if you would accept my invitation to breakfast, lunch or dinner – you pick which.

PPS: I’ll make sure to put the African-American News & Issues on the honor roll at the end of my book.

Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3