Memories of Emily: Run Part 2

Toni (2) & Denise

Two black families lived in my neighborhood, neither of which I knew. I probably would have never met one of them had I not answered a flyer posted on a telephone pole advertising for help with yard work. Calling the flyer’s owner garnered a Saturday yard work job.

On Saturday morning, Grandmaster Flash sang “The Message” from beyond my neighbor's front door I knocked. The door opened, revealing a black man with a slight beer gut, holding a beer in one hand and a remote-control plane in his other. “Alright, come on in, young man.” The six-foot, good-humored Ric Fuel opened the door wide for me to enter his home.

“Hi, Mr. Fuel? My name is Vince.” Offering my hand.

Setting his beer on a small foyer table, he shook my hand. “Man, just call me Ric or Fuel like my friends.”

“I got to tell you, Ric. You got a cool name.”

“It didn’t use to be. I was Richard Fuelinower, but everybody called me Fuel, so I said fuck it and changed it.”

“I never thought of changing my name.”

“Yeah, I always thought that was kind of cool. You can change your name to anything you want. Too bad some people can’t change who they are.”

“Totally.”

The tour of Fuel’s home showed bookshelves and glass cases overflowing with memorabilia from just about every science fiction movie ever made. Whereas my parents decorated their home to impress visitors, Ric intended his home for fun and relaxation. In the den, five computers ran performing different functions while his Commodore’s dot matrix printer clunked and printed sheets of numbers.

I turned in amazement. “Fuel, what do you do for a living?”