Some People Some Other Place Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Some People

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  The Greens’ Home, 905 Dream Street

  Lona Rich Green

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Henry Lee, 906 Dream Street

  Ha

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by J. California Cooper

  Copyright Page

  Dedicated With Love To

  Joseph C. and Maxine R. Lincoln-Cooper, my parents

  Paris A. Williams, my chile

  Joseph Randolf Williams, my son I lost

  The Great Congresswoman, Barbara Lee, Berkeley, CA

  The Dial Book Club of Dallas

  IMPORTANT PEOPLE

  Cesar Chavez; Noam Chomsky; Rita Hogan, NY; Michael Jurich; Beatrice (Bea) Martin, San Diego; Allison Argo and the Elephants; Lauren Hutton; James Cromwell; Lena Horne, Singer, Actress, Woman; Katharine Dunham, Artist Extraordinaire; Donna Henry, Sister, Oakland; Tuscaloosa College; Tavis Smiley; Deihentics Clay, Cook People; Gustavo “Guga” Kuerton; The Double-Dutch Divas; Daine Goyle, Author; Robert Remini, Author; Eric Nelson, Producer Genesis Awards; George Flemings; Karey Kirkpatrick, Author; Huwaida, Egyptian Woman, Alexandria; Greenworks Pictures; Kyenan Kum; Millie and Susan of Gualala;

  Other Important People

  North Shore Animal League, NY; Animal Rights Groups; Morris Animal Foundation; Animal Planet Patrols; All Animal Protectors.

  ESPECIALLY

  All twelve million (plus) people who died during the Nazi Holocaust in concentration camps: the many Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, German conscientious objectors, and Gypsies.

  Author’s Note

  This book really began when I was ill and could only stare at my ceiling for over two years. I kept seeing these houses on Dream Street through a misty yellowish fog. These houses seemed empty, but each seemed full of stories they wanted to tell.

  Also in my mind was how every race feels superior to the others, and feels that their race has suffered more than any other. I believe each race IS special, but they all remain equal.

  My belief is that though we are all different, seemingly, in our cultures, we all eat, sleep, have children or not, have good habits or morals, or not, etc., we are more alike than we are different. I know we are equal in the sight of God, collectively.

  Finally, God has ten commandments . . . for all of us. They are not labeled for any special color; Black, White, Red, Yellow, or Brown. They are not labeled for men or women. They are for ALL. And we all break them in some way. So we are subject to the same weaknesses according to our strengths.

  After living with these houses for a long time, they began to tell me their stories. The stories of the people who reached Dream Street. Their struggle to survive, to pursue their happiness.

  Unable to handle every race or voice, I saw French, English, African, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, and Indian, always searching for love, or self. One house remained empty. Why? I don’t know. This is a story of how these few races of people made their way to Dream Street in a town called Place (as we all want to find a place where we will be happy).

  The voice that came to tell me these stories was an unborn child with a stake in the outcome of her mother’s and father’s survival.

  Bear with me. Try the story. I think you may like it. I was fascinated with all the tales. I love looking at life, seeing how people survive in this hard, mostly uncaring world that, Thank God, has pockets of love in it that keep us going, keep us reaching and searching for Some Place like Some People.

  Please, please enjoy the quest, the lives in this book. I learned a lot about life and love.

  J. California Cooper

  Some People

  I have not been born . . . yet. I am not an angel. Nor am I in Heaven. I am some other place. I am going to be born as a human being on Earth. It has taken me a long time to decide to be born.

  I wanted enough time, before I made a decision, to look upon the Earth to be sure I wanted to live in such a place. Human beings think their life is very attractive; it is not attractive to me. I’ll tell you why. Oh, I have so much to tell you.

  One thing helping me to make up my mind is, even after my birth, I will still have freedom of choice. God does give everyone a choice. That is what makes us, even now, almost perfect and it is also what makes everyone born equal. Fate does not control our lives, contrary to the untruths you have heard. You have to make the decisions that will decide and control your life. Believe me.

  So, I must make my decision—to come to Earth—the only beautiful planet God has given man to do with as man will, for a while. So far, evidently, for man to destroy. Mankind will have no other. Believe me. Man is not doing very well, do you think? He would be destroying a magnificent creation if he were not to be stopped . . . in time . . .

  Mankind has divided Time on earth into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, and on and on. But Time is not like that in this place I am in. Can you count Eternity? I have been able, almost in the twinkling of an eye, to look back through time, down upon the world and even at the ancestors I will have, if I decide to be born. Ahhhhhhh, what a huge web has been woven by humans for humans, in which, they say, they are in pursuit of happiness.

  I have observed the rich, whom I find hollow, filled with thoughts of gold or money, filled with greed. Greed has driven the soul out of them. They are empty. More than enough is never as good as more than more than enough, because great riches mean Power. And great riches are rarely made honestly. Even so, the rich are admired, even respected and imitated.

  I have watched generations of men exploit nations and attempt to destroy other nations using wars, guns, and drugs that pollute and corrupt the mind. They have despoiled and brought slaves from countries unable to stop them or resist their worthless temptations. They have carried and sold weapons throughout the world, causing wars through the ages that killed millions and millions of innocent people. They still do . . . for gold. Yet, they are not always despised by the world. They are honored and revered, even respected, because they are rich and powerful. If they become rich enough, they can become an “aristocrat.” Titles are ardently desired in the world. The rich even plot their marriages . . . with gold in their minds and “love” on the bargaining table. When they die, presidents, kings, queens, czars, and others in high places attend their final farewell. Even the poor people they have exploited fill the streets surrounding their grand funerals to pay their respect. Few denounce them. Some are even buried in “holy” ground, pronounced holy by unholy men.

  Sometimes the penalty of honesty is that one is thought to be a failure. Honesty is considered a weakness, a poverty of character. Sometimes, throughout all lands, ignominy, degradation, and neglect, as well a
s hunger and despair is an honest person’s reward. There are those few that are honorable: kind, honest, considerate of others, not chasing gold for the sake of gold at the cost of their fellow humans. I have not seen many. Have you? I have observed many, many poor people. Most were used, abused, burdened, and sometimes they, themselves, added more to their own burden and burdened others of their own family and their fellow humans. A painful ignorance. Even violence. Violence perpetrated upon them by the rich and ambitious, and that which they delivered upon themselves. And some of them enjoy the doing of it to others. Why can’t humans stop killing each other and every living creation on Earth?

  I have seen murderers, liars, thieves, corrupters, the jealous, greedy, and envious. Most of them are the very men people die for. And wars . . . ahhh, wars. They even pray to their “gods” to bless their wars and think the gods on their bloody side; those gods that neither see nor hear or speak. Do they not know that the true God loves all His creation, even those on the “other” side? Even those who call themselves ministers of the Word do not pay heed to the wisdom of God’s Words, for they think they can bless the wars! I believe I detest politicians, lawyers, and false ministers of the Bible the most. And, of course, there are those who laugh and say, “There is no God!” then cry for God the loudest when sickness and death is close upon them.

  The world has not been such a good place to live in since man was sent from the testing grounds of the Garden of Eden. So much so that there are those who decide to leave Earth, in death, by their own choice and hand. How odd and how cruel life must have been for them. I am made not only melancholy, but sick with the sight of some lives amidst such beauty as could be on Earth. A few people find the beauty which I will seek if I decide to be born. These few people seem to have to go off a bit from the world. They live closer to the naturalness of creation. They are different from the rich, who try to separate themselves. The rich try to build a wall around the beauty they call home, but, too often, there is no true beauty or love within those walls except love of extravagance and gold. When the Time nears for them to die, some try to give some of the riches back to the people. Some try to buy more life, but life is not for sale.

  Ahhh, well. Enough. God has a plan and a purpose. God did not create this Earth to be destroyed; God created it to be inhabited by the meek, the teachable, nonviolent, peaceful, loving meek. Mankind has had years, God’s sabbath day to make their decisions. And God is not a human, neither man nor woman; God is a God. God will be true to The Word. The promise.

  Because Satan is pervasive, I will begin to forget my knowledge as soon as I am born and I will not be able to speak until I have forgotten most of it. I will learn from my parents first. I pray they will know the Truth, otherwise I will be learning from a world that knows little love or truth and is pompous in its ignorance. If I choose to believe a lie, have faith in a lie, I will simply have everlasting death. There is no burning hell. I will simply not be able to live on a beautiful Earth that has no sin or death on it. Not just a Garden of Eden, but a World of Eden that no man can make. Believe me.

  Time, as the world knows it, is short. That is why, if I am going to Earth to live awhile, I must be about my business of studying it and trying to be born in a place where there is a bit of the beauty of Earth remaining to feel and see. Here you can choose if you wish to be born and so I will.

  I am alone here, even with others around. Alone. Until I am flesh and blood, I am incorruptible. Satan (yes, Satan is real) cannot reach me until the moment I am conceived, and even then only through my mother and father. He has no real interest in me until I am born, then I am in his domain until I make the next great choice for myself. We understand here, where I am, that the people are the world and the world is in Satan’s hands. The Earth is the Lord’s, it and the people who choose God over Satan’s temptations. God is Love: that is why people are so happy when they have love. Satan knows how to make a love facsimile that never truly satisfies and will, ultimately, be painful. Also, you have to give yourself to God. Satan just takes you, if he can, and some people are so easy to take.

  We are surrounded by Love and Wisdom here. But most of us forget within one year from birth. We can only see the past of particular people. We are not permitted to see their future. With birth, changes begin. We are not allowed to speak when we are first born, but we can think . . . and what we know here slowly fades away in the struggle for survival that can, and usually does, begin immediately upon arrival.

  That is all I can tell you. I want to remember, not to forget, Satan and his wily ways to help people forget. See, he was the first liar, the father of liars, among all the other things he is. I hope to remember he does not like people to know him or his purpose. He likes people to laugh at the idea of him. He likes to do things God will be blamed for. He is a master of propaganda. He is so jealous and hates so much; he keeps helping humans create new little false gods and philosophies to take them away from the only true God, Jehovah. (Not the true spelling or sound of God’s true name, but humanly close.) He knows mankind has an innate need to worship something above itself. Mankind is always searching. And remember, Satan can look beautiful. Believe me.

  An insatiable hunger to know my future mother has made me look back in Time into the lives of my chosen family. I have become a spectator of mankind. Consequently, I have decided to whom I wish to be born. I will tell you a little about the woman who may be my mother and a small bit about her ancestors. These are my ancestors, I suppose, if I hold to my decision to be born to her. I want a good, wise mother who is neither blinded by riches . . . nor steeped in poverty and ignorance. Because, finally, the greatest poverty is the poverty of spirit.

  I will tell you, also, about the place, the houses, that led me to my decision. In my search I saw many houses of all kinds, more old than new, and they each had a story to tell. Have you ever looked at a house or place and wondered what tale it would tell if it could talk? Well, I did. From where I am, I could see the tales they told. In my searching, I was struck deeply by a town named Place and a street there named Dream Street. With six houses and a store. Fascination and a vague feeling of affinity drew me to look and to listen closely to what the houses had to say.

  It was late night or early morning, I don’t know, but there was a hazy, vaporous, gray color, like a veil draped over the land there. I was about to return to my place of safety when something held me suspended over this block on the Street named Dream. Something familiar, yet unknown to me.

  The trees that lined the street were very old, with gnarled branches, some dead. But within, the tree still lived, with a spirit striving to survive. Both the trees reaching to the skies and the bowed trees bending to the earth had dead shoots still trying to reach for the sky. Water to nourish them was probably coming beneath the ground from the river nearby named Striver River. I do not know the names of these trees, but about them was such a look of sadness, as though they were standing in their graves.

  I wandered closer to see the houses better, and saw most of them were blind; still, they seemed to be looking back at me. There was such a deep silence over all. Yet, I could hear the sound of life breathing above the sound of the restless river rushing past. There was about the houses a sense of irrelevance, of bitterness, of hostility and yet there was a sense of courage, even pride. The block surely had about it a feeling of long accumulation of history, of life, of many lives intertwined. A weight hung over the houses as though their history of joy, love, pain, cruelty, melancholy, and foolish memories, even death, had left these houses with a dark dignity. They had a past. Still, I felt a future among them.

  But now, they were not living, fully, in the present. Like a cemetery left uncared for, they could have been tombstones arranged on this block. Three houses on each side of Dream Street. Still they were alive, not tombstones. They were scarcely breathing with the lives still clinging to them. I felt the sheer weight of their seeming hopelessness, their faltering strength in their deep silence. But
, their strength was holding on, for their undreamed futures, I guess.

  I wandered closer to each house, their yards, not just to see, but to feel all the houses had to tell me. I wanted to know more. And I could feel, through a hazy blur, my dear mother. How warm even that slight feeling was.

  The few flowers struggling to survive, the weed-vine covered fences and gates, the dying moss that fell from the pottery on porches, the wild growths of shrubs, bushes, and vines all reflected the houses there on Dream Street. But, still, they were alive. They were evidence of the life still pulsing slowly, persistently, inside of them.

  Two dogs I had not noticed, a small, young gray and a very old brown and white dog, huddled together in the cold beneath the steps of a porch. They watched me, though I had not known they could see me. I have no earthly substance. Yet, their eyes followed me as I passed close to them. I stopped to get the feel of them. They did not move. The feeling of sadness passed from them to me. They were cold . . . and hungry. Too cold and hungry for even a whine or a growl from their throats. I had nothing I could give, so I moved on, my spirit grieving. I felt my mother dear would be here someday.

  So.

  I wanted to know the history of these houses. I returned often to listen to their tales. But, one thought remained: This Street named Dream seemed to be the loneliest place in the world, as if no dreams, visions, or illusions lived there.

  Why? How would my mother get there? I burned with the desire to know the lives of my mother and the people in these houses on the Street of Dream.

  The houses are numbered from 902 through 907 Dream Street. Most houses tell the truth about their inhabitants. Some houses lie, but they tell you they are lying. I have known some not to utter a word.

  In time, I knew my mother would, one day, live at 903 Dream Street in the town of Place. I learned and will tell you her story and the other stories on that block. I will begin with my mother.

  Life

  Some Other Place