Scarred on Both Sides

By Frank Houston

Scarred on Both Sides is a story of growth, maturity, and love that shows the ability to mature in the face of our fears. It is about two cousins who were scarred and too ashamed to admit their fears and guilt. One cousin, the villain, mistakenly burned down his grandmother's house but somehow dodged the blame that was put on the other cousin. The true victim was haunted for years with the curiosity of the truth but never wavered through the false accusations or the physical abuse forced upon him. The other cousin was frightened and ashamed of the truth that he held inside for many years. He was too immature to confront his demons, which caused much psychological second-guessing and abuse. They were both scarred on both sides.

Frank Houston attempts to use the characters to enlighten an example of self-evaluation and growth. He prays Scarred on Both Sides will enlighten the inner man therapeutically and spiritually to understand how to best move forward from unresolved issues. He intends for Scarred on Both Sides to influence families, communities, and the country to move forward with positive energy and responsibility to oneself and others. Scarred on Both Sides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098099268

Book preview

Dare to Dream

July 9, 2012

Life has me standing on the beautiful beaches of my life, watching the memories of my life roll in and out. The footsteps of so many wonderful memories washed away, then appearing again in my heart and mind.

I can only hope that my seed will understand the joy and comfort of the relationships in my journey.

Truly, I have loved to live, and no material thing will ever match the blessed relationships that I have truly experienced. I stand here with my feet sinking in the sand. And it feels good wondering if I’ll ever see the rainbow of love in my heart as I have learned to comprehend it.

I turn to marvel about the silly material things and serious conversations of times past. I realize I have to move on and not become complex and stationary in my emotions.

I grabbed the hand of my granddaughter, who just learned to walk. She keeps asking me the same questions repeatedly, Poppa old, why are you looking and staring at those things so hard?

I pick up a handful of sand and let it wash right out of my hand into the beachfront ocean waters. We both smell it together; she stares at me without a question.

We alone share this moment with my granddaughter asking so many questions. I’m careful to answer because she’s too young to understand. Yet I phrased the questions in a manner that she’ll understand someday that her grandfather truly loved her. I realize I’m just a speck of sand, which must return into the sea someday.

Yet I will take my time and be firm so that my granddaughter, my seed, may stay firmly on these truthful sayings. Hopefully, she’ll mature before it’s time for me to return to my Maker.

Just as the sand unto the sea to my Maker, my granddaughter and I share this moment with the appearance of a rainbow over the beach ocean. Just a brief moment when we capture this together.

I pray this child never forgets this precious moment. I silently think, Who would dare to dream? Yet this moment, I shall drift into a deep sleep, a deep sweet sleep of memories.

Reminiscing about all the beautiful relationships I once touched before, but none more precious than my desire for this child.

I shall look into the eyes of the past, present, and future. Hello, you who keep me as I sleep; thank you, Lord. Yes, thank you so much, Lord, for allowing me to mature and count my blessings. Most of all, Lord, for not throwing me away and for loving me in those decisive moments in my life. O Lord, please visit my seeds and keep them.

I could never repay you. Therefore, I ask once again that you allow me to show the love that you put in me to someone who would allow me to have an honest sharing relationship, as we have, Lord.

Oh Lord, I cherish these beautiful and precious moments of growing together. I remember waking up this morning and brewing a cup of coffee.

As I look down on my granddaughter, the look in her eyes speaks. I can hear a voice saying to me, Stay with me, Poppa.

My heart goes out to protect this baby from a mean, cold, cruel world. I can hear a squeaky young voice of younger years saying, Tell me the stories of the old that my heart may rest in a love that lasts forever.

God knows, it feels some kind of good to be appreciated. I truly yearn to hold the hand of love. If by chance your mind should drift across the seashores and beaches, or a cool summer thought or breeze should cross your mind, that’s where I’ll be.

Keep this letter written in your heart. My friends, say a prayer for me. Say a prayer for God’s children, the children of the world, and especially, say a prayer for the babies.

Hey, my friend, I love you. Stay strong at heart and rich in faith, and God will be with you through your journeys.

Now if I may ask one thing of you, Honey, please may I have some hot dogs and pork and beans with some toasted bread on the side? That would make me so happy.

Scarred on Both Sides

November 25, 1999

Now this story is about a time in my life. Nothing is more important than a person’s childhood. Looking back, I saw a lot of changes going on in America.

The civil rights era was really on the move; separate but equal and voting rights were some of the issues. The whole country had to deal with black folks’ right to vote. And at present, it’s still an issue of the day because some black folks won’t exercise the rights that were given them.

Black folks had strong neighborhoods with a lot of respect for one another. They had hope and a cause in America to become recognized as full citizens with civil rights and with equal treatment right in the face of the Vietnam War.

When I was around four or five years old, almost everybody in my family lived close to my grandmother’s house, which was right across from Francis Junior High School and swimming pool, in the Georgetown, Foggy Bottom area of Washington, DC.

All the kids in my family could swim. Grandma was the family babysitter, while our parents, her children, worked. I come from a large family. My grandparents had nine children, and none of their children had less than four kids, which made thirty-seven grandchildren in all.

Thank God some of my cousins lived out of town. My grandmother couldn’t watch us all, and where would we fit? Nap time was fun time for Grandma and us; she could get some rest, and we could play.

We played hard like so many children and used what we had. We used brooms as horses, towels to become Superman, and sticks as swords for Zorro, just being kids. It was a time of maturing as a kid, creating memories that would forever stand strong in our hearts and minds.

The year that America got two new states, I was just about to go to school, away from my mother and family. Alaska and Hawaii became the forty-ninth and fiftieth states, and the baby boom was underway.

Black folks had real close-knit families who moved from the south to get work and good-paying jobs, including domestic work. Racial segregation was at the forefront as was the ugly face of racism. It was a fight for most people of color.

Television was a big thing. We only had one television with only about four stations to watch. We kept up with Dr. King and went to church.

The world was changing, and so was I, from a kid to a big boy talking about going to school. I needed to know I’d be all right. Because I was by myself for the first time, I felt like I was alone, being pushed out of one world to another. Therefore, my mother sent me to stay with my grandmother and my cousins.

Television was a lot different back then. Tubes were in the back of the televisions and from time to time they had to be changed. We’re talking about poor people with secondhand televisions, most of them black-and-white. All this was new to America, not just black folks.

Most grown-ups had two jobs, one full-time and a little something on the side. My grandfather worked as a janitor’s helper at the Safeway store. Remember, in those times, domestic work was one of the few types of work that black folks could get. This should sound a little familiar with the immigration laws changed today.

My father did gardening work on the side. As I got older, he showed me a lot of things. All the kids in my neighborhood hustled soda bottles for money.

My grandmother could cook like nobody’s business, and it seems like everybody in the neighborhood knew it. She always made just a little something more for my one cousin; we called him Fat Boy.

So many people would come by my grandparents’ house. Children knew their place and would go outside or into another room. There was a family order, which kids didn’t cross and stayed out of grown folk’s faces.

All grown folks had to do was give you what we called the look. At times, the grown folks would say to us, I wish you would; that meant you were in trouble.

In my neighborhood, I don’t remember anyone having air conditioning in their homes or cars. They just couldn’t afford it. Most people had fans or radios in the windows with clothes on the lines outside. Families were bigger then. That’s just how it was; my, how things have changed. I remember that like it was yesterday.

My cousin and I were having a good time, playing inside. About seven of us had yet to start school. Therefore, we played inside. We all made ourselves into imaginary characters. I was the Lone Ranger, and nobody could catch me on my horsey Silver.

It was a hot summer day; Grandma had just given us lunch and had a good talk with us. Then she took herself a catnap. She was worn out; man, we ran wild, chasing each other like kids do. Usually, we took a nap too.

I got tired and put my horsey, which really was a broom, beside the fan in the living room, which was beside the television. Never mind you, we were poor people. Granddaddy had a secondhand TV, and two of the tubes had gone bad. So he changed them and didn’t put the cover piece back on the back of the television, which left that area wide open.

It was around noon on a hot summer day; there was no air conditioning in the house. A strong breeze came through the window and blew my horsey, the broom, inside the television. Just at that time, Fat Boy walked in the house, looked at us, and said, What are y’all doing, and where’s Grandma?

We said nothing. I didn’t think anything about it till the television caught on fire. Nobody really knew who really started it but me. Moreover, all of us ran out. Grandma started looking for all of us and calling on the Lord.

We knew somebody was in trouble. Therefore, we all kept our mouths shut. That was the darkest day of my life. Grandma was crying, and all of the grown-ups were upset.

The woman across the street said that the last person she saw go into the house was Fat Boy, so I let it be that way. I was too little and scared, shaking in my bones. One of my cousins, Al, said to me, Don’t say a word.

If they found out we were playing in the living room, we’re going to get it really bad. Fat Boy was a soldier; he could take it better than we could.

Man, I’m so sorry for what happened to Grandma’s house and Fat Boy. Once that woman said she saw Fat Boy go in, all the grown-ups in my family beat the hell out of him. They would take turns going to Fat Boy and asked him what happened; he kept saying he didn’t do it.

I could hear the blows and him hollering; it hurt me terribly to see him going through that. I mean, each one of my aunts and uncles took turns kicking his butt. Finally, my grandmother said, That’s enough. Fat Boy had to sleep with her.

My uncles and aunts couldn’t sleep; they just kept talking and pacing the floor all night, wanting to kick his butt. After a few days, they left him alone; they just called him a firebug, humiliating him.

For a long time, until this day, he kept saying he didn’t do it. For years, I had to deal with that terrible guilt; his scars, which he didn’t deserve, became my shame.

As I was brought up in the church, this scar would be forever before me. The Bible states to trust in the Lord and let nothing come between his love (Romans 8:35 says, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ shall tribulations, or stress or persecution or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword?).

I asked the Lord to help me understand; I didn’t have an idea. I like that Fat Boy would stand for himself and the truth of the matter. His stand became a testimony, an example of maturing to face my fears.

I became a much stronger man in tackling these types of immature issues, situations, and fears that would test me in being truth-driven.

I learned a lot from Fat Boy; he was one of the best athletes in my family and a good guy. Grandma passed away when I was in the second grade. I couldn’t tell her the truth; I guess I was still too scared and too immature, ashamed to say anything.

Like a lot of black folks, we would have a family reunion every so many years. Each time I thought about saying something about the fire, but I was so afraid Fat Boy might kill me if he could catch me.

He weighed about 310 pounds; he could move really well on his feet and hit like a horse. That was the biggest problem, no doubt, all the abuse he took. He definitely was going to let everybody in his world know he didn’t burn down Grandma’s house.

That dirty, rotten, no-good bastard of a cousin of mine did it, knowing he could probably say even more. Yet he could, to the heart, be so sentimental.

With these kinds of battles going on in my mind, I needed the Lord. Like the Lord said in Luke 14:28, count up the cost and finish it. God bless the reader of the Word. So I waited until we were grown.

It was the summer of 1987, and little did I know that it would be the last time we saw many of the older people in my family. Death began to hit our family some kind of hard. Sometimes two to three people at a time.

I’m not talking about things happening in the street or like that type of stuff. I mean people just dropping off from not taking care of themselves.

Thank God, it has let up some, and we have learned to love each other just that much more. In my family, we like to play cards and talk trash. Fat Boy was sitting at a picnic table having a ball, playing cards. I walked up behind him and said, Fats, I know you didn’t set Grandma’s house on fire.

He said back to me, Man, I don’t want to hear that mess.

Nevertheless, I said, I know that, but you didn’t do it, I did it. I thought he was going to kill me, and if he was, everybody was going to be around to help me get out of there.

He jumped up and just about turned the picnic table over, ran to another picnic table like a little child to where his mother was sitting, and said, See all those years, I told y’all I didn’t burn down Grandma’s house. That dirty bastard over there, he said, pointing to me. He did it.

I could see the sunshine on his face. Just as a little child, I was scared of the family again. The whole family looked at me, to have my head, and called me all kinds of dirty bastards.

However, God had prepared me. I told them that’s why I never said a thing about it, no excuse. I was scared. I learned that scars can be on the inside and last a long time if they aren’t dealt with. I hope y’all hear me talking to you. That y’all can look past that fire and Grandma’s house being burned down, no one got hurt, and I’m sorry for that, but I could not carry this mess in my heart any longer with them or Fat Boy.

The mind is something we know little about once the mind has been darkened. The question is how we deal with the scars on the inside. You see, Fat Boy endured the physical side, which lasted just a few days. He held on to the truth of the matter that he didn’t do it, which sustained him through the mental side.

Man, he stood strong through those butt-kickings and the mental abuse. He was strong enough because he knew he didn’t do it. How about that for a young child to have the heart to face a mob of vicious grown people who wanted his blood.

I had to run for over twenty years dealing with the mental side. Once the fear and the shame are there, the head has a tendency to jump time! Runner, nothing can give you peace of mind.

Nevertheless, Jesus can fix it and open any doors to bring you to the light. For this, I sure enough want to say, Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for so many blessings you have given me and the fortitude to deal with my fears.

Now if I may ask one last thing, Honey, may I please have some hot dogs and pork and beans with a little garlic bread on the side? That would make me so happy.

My brothers and sisters, stay strong at heart, rich in faith, and God will take you through your journey.

Just around the Corner

August 8, 2013

To have the joy of experiencing life is more precious than words, which, at times, cannot be expressed. I guess that’s why sharing and reminiscing moments have such emotional effects on people. Those experiences are like medicine, which keeps us forever young.

Let me say it can make us laugh, just as well as make us cry. Yet we have a way of bringing the best of our experiences to life to share with one another.

We only bring up the bad experiences to hurt one another. Alternatively, we defend ourselves most of the time. We must just come to grips with understanding that it is human nature.

Yet these kinds of situations will always be around. We do have a choice in how we choose these moments. We must learn to recognize the moments for our good and not fall into despair.

Just think about this! This isn’t a perfect world. The seasons do change, and each day presents a different situation. Yet how we comprehend it is our choice!

Overall, I’ve had a wonderful life; I’m looking for even better days as I write to you today. This isn’t a story about black or white people but people in general.

The date was December 1962, just a few days before Christmas. My family was having a hard time. We lived together with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in a one-bathroom house. My aunt and uncle had seventeen children.

I’m one of six children, which is a lot of people in a one-bathroom house, let alone with four grown-ups, but as far as a child could see, we were very happy being a family.

America, our country, was still dealing with the nasty face of segregation, and the civil rights era was in its grassroots. As a matter of fact, the school busing issue had yet to be implemented in our area.

Therefore, segregation was still in full force. You could turn on your TV and see civil rights demonstrations all over the country.

A friend by the name of Hambone and I were around eight years old. I was in third grade at the time; he may have been in the same grade or a year behind. Maybe I was a year or so older than him.

We were trying to find a way to make a little money and be a part of the giving spirit, which means so much on Christmas Day. Most of the people in our neighborhood did odd jobs, like shoveling snow, to make some money.

Most of the jobs in our neighborhood were already taken and too difficult to handle for little fellows like us. With the two of us being so little, we knew this would be a difficult job for us to handle for so many reasons. One reason is that we had to get some shovels, then look out for the older guys who aimed to roughen us up and take our money. Times were hard; work was hard to find.

With that in mind, we decided that we’d go outside our neighborhood and sing Christmas carols in the white neighborhood. That was much safer and cut down on the drama that was in front of us in our neighborhood. Just imagine a large number of little boys trying to get the same job in the same neighborhood; that’s too much.

We started out just a little bit after noon. We made our way through the back streets and alleys out of our neighborhood.

We just knocked on doors, singing as the doors opened. People would listen and laugh at us, saying things like, Look at them, little raggedy black boys. Sometimes they would give us a little change to put in our pockets. Many times, they gave us fruit or just laughed and made fun of us. Then they would slam the doors in our faces. It was fun for a while, and then we felt that we were just cheap entertainment.

We had a routine of getting upset with each other. When folks were about to slam the doors in our faces, we made sure we took off our belts and put ropes on to keep our pants up so we could get some poor boys’ kind of attention from the white folks.

We had nothing to show for our efforts after hours of being out in the cold, and countless doors slammed in our faces. We didn’t have $5 between the two of us. We were cold and broke; we used our old socks as gloves to keep our hands warm.

The little bit of change we had, we got something to eat with, and so it was a terrible cold day for us. Somewhere around five o’clock that evening, we decided we’d had enough of people slamming doors and laughing in our faces.

All we could do was say Thank you to them, then talk about them folks like a dog after we got away from their doors.

We agreed to just call it a day and go home. We kept singing Christmas carols just to keep ourselves warm, not to think about the cold weather and the long disappointing walk back home.

As we walked through the shopping center parking lot, there were some old white men selling Christmas trees, just enjoying themselves, in the Christmas spirit, and having a lot of drinks.

They began to laugh at us also and called out to us. Hey, boys, would you like to make some money helping us sell these Christmas trees.

We looked at each other and said back to them, How much?

They said, Two dollars and fifty cents. You can keep fifty per tree for the two of you.

We looked at each other and said, That’s not so bad after those nasty somebodies were making fun of us and slamming doors in our faces. Sure, we’ll do it.

The old men were good to us; they showed us how to trim the Christmas trees. Then they went to the liquor store to stock up on some more booze and got us something to eat and plenty of hot chocolate to keep us warm.

Now that shopping center was on one of the main highways in our neighborhood where there was plenty of shopping. We were working right outside of the People’s drugstore parking lot.

During that time, the People’s drugstore, which is now called CVS drugstore, had a large clock on the top of the building. So from time to time, we checked out how late it was.

In addition, we could see the cars and the people coming and going out of the shopping center. We clowned around some kind of terrible, just making noise and singing songs to draw folks’ attention to make a sale.

Man, we were doing great business; sometimes, we had four or five customers at a time. We were just making up songs about the fresh-cut Christmas trees.

At first, the old men would come out from time to time to collect their money from us. Then they started telling one of us to bring the money inside to them because it was too cold outside for them. They were lit up with the Christmas spirit and didn’t want to walk too much; you know what I mean.

Therefore, we decided it was a good thing for one of us to hold all the money for us; the other one would hold the old men’s money. As time went on, we raised the price of the Christmas trees to $5 a tree. We did the right thing!

We gave the old men their $2 and expected our fifty-cent off the top. So they got their $2, and now one of us would keep the other $3 for ourselves. We could see the old men were laughing at us. We thought that was funny because we were laughing right back at them. Now everybody was laughing. How about that for laughs? Ain’t nothing funny about how folks treat each other dealing with money. We were just doing business.

As we continued to do a little business, we had some unwanted visitors lurking in on us. Across the street from the drugstore’s parking lot, lying in the alley, were a few of my cousins and Hambone’s brother. They were anticipating the opportunity to rob us, telling us, If you know what’s good for y’all’s little butts, you’d better bring us some of that money you got.

We gave them some strong gestures and said, You broke raggedy rascals.

So now, we had to keep an eye on the people buying the Christmas trees and those rotten alley cats trying to knock us in the head. Here’s how we did it. After we would sell about five Christmas trees, we would split up our money from the old guy’s money. One of us would stay outside selling Christmas trees, while the other one would go inside with the old men dividing up the money.

We noticed by looking at the clock on top of the drugstore that the bus came every fifteen minutes. Sometimes we could see the bus coming to a stop by looking at the storefront windows. Yes, we were very much paying attention to our surroundings.

Man, the more money we made, the more those nasty, dirty threats were coming our way. Every now and then, those nasty, dirty, raggedy alley cats would throw snowballs and nasty slurs at us. We could tell that they weren’t paying any attention to the bus stop area or what time the next bus was coming. Man, we had it made; all we had to do was sell Christmas trees. We ate Gino’s chicken, sipped on some hot chocolate, counted the money, and watched them dirty alley cats trying to knock us in the head.

Man, around ten o’clock that night, we decided it was time to make our move to go home. After the bus came to a stop, I told Hambone to watch how the people got off the bus and count how much time it took to let them off.

We knew the bus came every fifteen minutes, but the timing was everything because those nasty, dirty thugs were bigger than we were and could run much faster than we could.

We were on one side of the drugstore parking lot. The bus came on the opposite side. The drugstore sat on a corner lot of the shopping center. It was a large building with a bank on the front side and the drugstore on the backside, as well as many stores across the street from it where the bus stop was, about a good fifty yards.

It was a few days before Christmas; folks were doing their Christmas shopping, coming and going on their merry ways. All this could be seen by glancing at the storefront windows as we worked the people in the parking lot.

Now it’s time to go. Let us go tell these good old men ‘Thank you’ and watch that clock so we can make our break for that bus. We thanked the old guys, and they thanked us.

I saw the bus coming as I glanced at the storefront window. We started running as fast as we could to get to the other side and to the bus.

Those dirty thugs started chasing us and calling us all kinds of nasty names, saying, Come here, you little dirty somebodies. You’re going to give me some of that dem money or else you’re going to feel what I’m saying!

I could hear the old man saying, What’s going on here? What are they trying to do to those little fellows? Wait a minute here. He stood up and waved back and forth. The boys haven’t done a thing to y’all.

The bus stopped, and we pushed our way onto it real hard, right through a bunch of people. We just simply put our twenty-five cents in and went right straight to the back of the bus.

Boy, I could still see those broke rascals outside running beside the bus, hollering out all kinds of threats to us. Man, they must have been running about a half a block hollering out threats until they couldn’t run anymore.

We sat in the back of the bus, planning how we would handle our money. I told Hambone that I was going to give most of my money to my mother to keep for me. Hambone told me he couldn’t do that because he was too little and that his family would take all of his money. He said he was going to put his money inside a can, then put the can inside his dog’s doghouse. He said, Don’t nobody really feed the poor dog but me anyhow.

So then, we came to our stop, and we got off the bus. Man, we ran like hell to get home. I came in the house, sweating profusely.

My mother asked me, What’s wrong with you, and where have you been all this time?

I told her the story about singing Christmas carols and selling Christmas trees at the drugstore.

It was a good night for us. My mother counted my money. Hambone and I both took home $126.86. My cousins came in the door behind me. They told my mother some cockamamie story and that I had stolen the money. However, my mother was a praying woman and said to us, Let me go into the other room and pray to my God. She came back from the room, then said to them, He’s telling the truth, and leave him alone.

She sat me down and said, "Son, this is too much money for a little boy your age to be walking around with. You’re only