Know When to Quit

I began taking a keen interest in my father as an individual when I moved out of the house and no longer saw him as the grand enforcer of rules and regulations. His favorite word was, "no!" and my favorite rebuttal was, "but why?!" Good times. It wasn't until I got some life experience under my belt that I started to wonder about the life my father lead and how the choices that he made as a young man had affected the ebb and flow of his life. Three things in particular always piqued my curiosity: why my father did not drink alcohol, always wore dentures and did not eat red meat. And so I asked what was the impetus of those choices and to my pleasant surprise my father was happy to share his story. His exact words, "someone can learn something from my biography."

 

It was early 1959 and the state of emergency issued in Kenya eight years earlier was still in effect. Nairobi and Kenya as a whole was socially, economically, residentially and politically divided into racial lines: the whites at the top, Indians in the middle and the Africans at the bottom. It was around that same time that Africans started agitating for freedom – just as it was happening in America with the Civil Rights Movement. Julius was twenty one at the time and worked as a clerk in a bank dealing with out of town checks; his first job in the big city. He beat out thirty-seven other boys that took an exam for the bank job and was one of three who did well in arithmetic and composition. The bank job paid well and afforded him simple luxuries that until this point had been foreign to him: money, freedom, an apartment and entertainment. It was on a dance floor at Amar Bar and Club, and he knew how to cut a rug in those days, that Julius caught the attention of another man's girlfriend. With liquid courage flowing heavily through his veins, Julius asked her out on a date and she agreed. Two weeks later that woman's boyfriend, accompanied by two of his friends, gave Julius a thorough beating and threw him in an open drainage outside the back of Amar Bar and Club. The following morning Julius woke up in the drainage bruised, bloody and missing two front teeth. He was eventually found and taken to the dentist by a lady friend that worked at the restaurant next door to the bar. That was a Tuesday night and from the following Wednesday of that week to date - Julius has never tasted any alcohol. Since then the only libations that quench his thirst are Kenyan tea and/or coffee boiled to perfection until a thin film rises to the top of the pot, sunny delight, orange soda and the occasional glass of coke.

At 5’7’ and 118 pounds, Julius was a fairly skinny guy. After leaving Kenya and moving to Ohio in the early sixties, he managed to maintain his slim build up until the early seventies. Between 1970 and 1975, in the company of two friends – a Kenyan and a guy from Barbados – Julius frequented Gino’s to indulge in some serious Gino’s Giant eating sessions. Gino’s was a burger joint that preceded Burger King, although McDonald's was still around but a much smaller outfit. Gino’s Giant was the featured sandwich and was equal to a double Big Mac. Almost every day, Julius and his friends would go to Gino’s and in one sitting eat five Gino Giant burgers and drink two or three cokes. Within 5 years, Julius weighed about 200 lbs. His Kenyan and Barbadian buddies, who were physically bigger and even heavier, passed on courtesy of diagnosed heart attacks within four months apart. His friends were a little older than he was at 37 – the Kenyan was 39 and the Barbadian was 41. Julius panicked and figured he would be next. He went without eating regular meals for two full weeks and lived only on juices and fruits. It worked because his weight fell from 199 lbs to 182 lbs. That was the last time he ate red meat in the form of Gino Giant or any other form. These days, his food preferences consist of boiled chicken and potatoes without salt, traditional Kikuyu dishes like Mokimo – a mash up of spinach, potatoes, peas and dry corn and Ugali – a corn flour cooked with water to a dough-like consistency. 
 

At almost 80 years old my father is one of the strongest and healthiest people I know. I thank goodness every day that he had the smarts and discipline to quit because it saved his life. As children, we get so entangled in our own adult lives that we never really stop to think about the lives our parents lead before we existed. Hearing my father's story gave me a deeper understanding of the man he is and what got him there and as a result of that we have grown even closer. Who knows, maybe one day I will finish his biography so that someone else can learning something.

To see a photo of my father in his early years click on the following post link - A Plucked Memory

EJW