Ricardo "Rick" King March 31, 1931-October 27, 2002There are two sets of children in my family. The oldest 3, of which I am one, experienced my father, Ricardo King, leaving when we were 3, 2 and 1 year old. However he can never be called a dead-beat dad.
He and my mother were “2 Chiefs… no Indians” and agreed to live their lives apart. It was not a case of his having any kind of free reign to come and go, with my mother being one of his women. They separated… no divorce.
I can’t remember the stretch of time not hearing from him, though I remember my mother once telling a story of how many years we hadn’t. I do remember how frequently I heard from him, and how his not being there seemed entirely natural. His calls were to express his love by checking to see if we needed to be disciplined. He called it a “Home Sweep.”
A Home Sweep was where each of us got a whipping, when all of us deserved one. For example, if I messed up in school in January… I had to wait for my brother and sister to go against my mother’s rules or mess up as well, before he would come over and share his belt. Thus, it could be 2-3 months before all 3 of us deserved a whipping.
We’d congregate in the same room and watch one another get their turn, as he ‘preached’ with each swing about how he couldn’t understand our not valuing an education and having a good mother to take care of us. I can’t count the number of times I heard about how he would’ve become President of the United States if he were allowed to go beyond his 6th grade education… if he had had a decent mother…. The Home Sweeps were always about those 2 topics.
My mother would calmly come to the door and signal him when she felt it was time to stop. Of course he’d get in another minute or two before she’d come back and really tell him to stop. He would either leave, or sit and talk with her for a while. No matter what their differences, they respected one another. And I learned to respect them both.
Living with my mother, I could see some of my father’s short comings. However, there were some that I learned were his standing tall as a man. I chose to adopt some while rejecting others. I chose him as my role model of what it takes to focus on being the man of the person I am today. Besides my now understanding the Home Sweep as one of his ways to stay in my life, and guide me to appreciate what he could only dream of, here are some of the values he instilled toward my development.
* Treat women good, so that your sister won’t be mistreated
* Never wear another man’s name on your back (sports jerseys)… it means they own you
* Work with people… at a company… for yourself
* Be on time
* You lie to those you fear… and you should fear no man
He never once said he loved me. I never once doubted that he did.
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