Episode 3: Big Bill, Black Panthers, Bye

My father was a civil rights activist in Seattle in the 1960s. A lot of people didn't like it. I am proud of what he did and can only imagine what might have happened had he had more time.  Listen to the trailer and Episodes 1 and 2 first! 
Episodes 0 and 0.1 are well worth listening to as well!

Transcript

Crack Tales 
Episode 3

0:00
Gospel call and blues music.

William 
Hi, listeners. I'm William Borden, and you're listening to episode three of Crack Tales. It's my story and the story of some people I love about what happened during my 10 years of addiction to crack cocaine. If you're just starting out with Crack Tales, I recommend that you listen to the trailer and the previous episodes as there is a story to follow. A quick warning. This podcast contains adult language and is adult in theme, including frank discussions of sex and sexual violence, suicide and drug use. If you find yourself triggered by any of these topics, please honor that and consider carefully whether you should continue. 

William singing
Because past sent through the eye of a needle isn't as easy as it sounds for those who like me.

William
I am a social worker by degree and by calling although it took a long and winding road of harrowing, but fortuitous in the long run, events to get me here. As far back as I can remember, social injustice has left me distressed and motivated to do something about it. Even though I was overwhelmed by self-doubt, fostered by a culture that shamed and persecuted those off the binary, those who presented anything other than the traditional male and female roles which now seem like such an antiquated concept. What even is male? What is female? Thank goodness for progress. In any case, during my childhood, while my faulty footing caused omnipresent fear and self-loathing, at the time, it also made me indignant. Why should fabulous me suffer because someone else doesn't approve? Of course, 10% of the time, I felt I was fabulous and the other 90% I doubted my right to exist. 

1:58
Take that in for a moment. A kid wondering if he deserved to be here. And after you consider that, consider that I was white and sis male. If I suffered deeply, in spite of my privilege, it takes very little to imagine in the face of racism and institutional racial oppression, misogyny and male dominance classism, and the inequitable economic conditions fostered by greedy capitalism, ableism and homo and transphobia what pain must be experienced by people of color, women, folks living in poverty, the differently abled, and my full spectrum queer fam. As a large white man who can hide his homosexuality, I walked through the world safely without fear of harassment or harm. 

Here in my city, Bilbao, Spain, we have a street called Calle San Francisco. I often hear people refer to Calle San Francisco as a dangerous area. I always wondered why and suspected it was racism as the neighborhood is alive with Arab and African stores and the street is often very active with expats from all over Africa. White people who pass along the street see color. However, Ahmed, who owns a meat and pastry shop sells me rosewater drenched miraculously chewy, while also crunchy pistachio confections and Adadayo can be found behind the cash register in his secondhand store where I discovered and purchased one of my favorite paintings, a pitcher and its shadow in hazy blues next to a plate of sunny side up eggs. You see while blue and yellow are colors Ahmed and Adadayo are not. 

I always felt a lot of anxiety and frustration when friends brought up the dangerousness of Calle San Francisco. Then something happened. I delved a little deeper into a couple of those conversations and I realized that the people I was talking to about fear of Calle San Francisco were women. I had to open my ears. The street is full most hours of the day with men, men walking or men hanging out and talking. These men don't harass me, they don't cat call me. By listening, I learned that women even in the aftermath of the recent consciousness raising #MeToo and #TimesUp movements still walk down a street, on which I am 100% safe, but they are not. So, I can navigate this world without fear, but there are those who cannot. For that alone, I find myself compelled to take action to make this world an equitable place for queers, for People of Color, for women, for trans folks for the non-rich and for those who walk or roll differently than I do. The little suffering I experienced as a kid was enough. 

William
Here's Kay, the mother of our Des Moines next door neighbor friends.

5:00
Kay
Well in those days William you were just the only boy in two households of girls. There were three sisters your house and two girls at my house and there weren't very many other boys in the neighborhood either. So, I would see you run down the street after the ice cream man carrying the purse and wearing the high heels. It just seemed natural to me because what else could you do?

William
And Kay’s daughter Julie.

Julie
We were just all friends and I thought we were the same sex. What do you mean? Like when Jaden and Kellen were little, Jade would say, you know, okay, I'll play with your trucks with you and then you have to play Barbies with me. And you know, he played Barbies with Jade way more than she ever played. She was bossy. That's what we were doing. There just wasn't any boys in our family, so, you know, you had the high heels and the apron and you were pushing the baby buggy with your bald head. I've always wanted to spend the night with you more than anybody. You were my buddy, you know. I always thought I was gonna marry you when we grew up. That was my plan.

William
And finally, a very enthusiastic friend of gays, my childhood friend Marin.

6:14
Marin
I'm sure if you exhibited anything that would have been thought of as girly, one, I probably just wouldn't have noticed and two, like you're right, you had all sisters, it wouldn't have surprised me. I mean, that was just as gay people were getting invented anyways. 

William
Yeah

(Both laugh) 

Marin
When did I realize gay people existed?

William
Growing up sports was an arena in which I felt totally out of place. I always felt inadequate. I remember very clearly one time being in a big circle in gym class, and peeing my pants. Luckily, I was wearing a sweatshirt, so I was able to tie it in front of the huge wet spot on my pants, but not before everyone had seen the darkening at my zipper. I was never comfortable in a gym. In the fifth grade, we were called upon to play intramural basketball, all boys, all from my grade and one grade higher. I had never been taught how to play basketball, and had never played, never. It seemed to me at the time and seems likely to have been accurate that every other boy had some knowledge of what we were doing, of how to engage in what was for me a completely foreign activity. Overwhelmed by fear that I would be called out as abnormal, I told no one. I told no one that I didn't know what I was doing. But even at that young age, I was what my sister calls crafty, a term should she coined in reference to my later activities that helped me maintain my drug supply. We'll talk about that later. Like avoiding withdrawal feels critical to survival, so did my fifth grade need to never let anyone know that I didn't know what every other boy knew - how to play basketball. I entered the court that day with the other nine boys but I had a strategy. I ran around the court and looked active. No, I don't think you understand. I looked very active, flapping my arms and jumping about with the expression of someone who cares intensely what was happening with that ball, but I never looked anyone in the eye. Even if they called my name, I would not respond. I would feign unawareness. In this manner, I avoided any errors that would have certainly occurred had I been forced to handle that ball. Now I have deep empathy for that little boy who just wanted to be.

Music

8:51
William
Apparently, I shared my strategy with my childhood friend Marin.

Marin
I also remember playing baseball in your neighborhood. And, and I'm up to bat and I'm terrible, and finally, you said to me, you came up to me, you said, “Just don't swing at the ball. Don't swing and they'll call it a ball. And you don't have to - you can just run to first base then.”

(Both laugh)

William
So, we were so we were like compadres in the we don't know how to play sports so we're gonna do the things that you have to do to survive. 

Maybe it's because I'm a Libra, maybe it's Maybelline? I don't know. But, a fire was lit very early and has been with me as long as I can remember. A fire to balance the scales of social justice. My father, also named William was a warrior as well. I'm not at all clear how this all began. I was too young to know or be aware when my father began actively seeking opportunities to be an ally. What I do know is that he did what was on heard of in 1960s, suburban Seattle. He met an engaged with Black civil rights leaders from the inner city. I don't know and haven't been able to find out from anyone how he came to be involved. But I do know how grateful I am that he did. It feels like such a legacy, something I can look back on with pride and wonder. 

William
Here's my sister Gail.

10:21
Gail
From the age of 11 through 15, many, many trips with dad into the city. I remember going to Home of the Good Barbecue. I remember being at the Black Panther house at 12. He would go and do whatever he was doing. I would just sit and do my homework and sometimes I would talk to people. 

William
And my sister Kelly.

Kelly
I don't know how he got into it. He must have met somebody somewhere or maybe he just researched it because there were a lot of civil rights things going on in the 60s. And somehow he got hooked up with Keith Bray, who wasn't at that time a Black Panther, but he was affiliated with the Black Panthers and had a lot to do with opening the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers later on. But he at that time was the leader of…can't remember the name, but it was a Black civil rights group of some sort that was local, and dad became affiliated with him and then there was David Mills, who mom went on to do things with later after dad died. But he was involved in civil rights stuff and Keve Bray and the Black Panthers and so dad got together with them and KY AC was already on the radio, but it was owned by a white person. I don't remember his name and a Black guy came from North Carolina or somewhere and wanted to purchase it and have it be the first Black owned Black operated radio station in Seattle and there was opposition about that from white people, the people that didn't want that to happen and so dad became an ally and started working towards that getting signatures by anybody and everybody he knew to sign for it to pass that they could have this fully Black owned and operated radio station, which eventually did go through I don't think it actually went through until after dad died. I read somewhere it was like ‘72 or something when it finally happened.

William
I didn't know anything about this. But we listened to KYAC as our radio station.

12:14
Kelly
I knew about it just because, you know, I was aware because dad was going up to all these meetings and I remember him giving us sheets on clipboards and asking when we go to our friend's parents’ house to ask them to sign it. And they had to be over 18 And there were parents that called up our parents and said don't bring that around here. Don't have your kid bring that around here. I mean, he was getting flak from a lot of white people in neighborhood, which, you know, he didn't really care. He was like, you know, “Fuck you.” He didn't say it like that. But you know, I'm sure that's what he was – (laughs) I’m sure that's what he felt, you know. So anyway, he was willing to take that on. And I for one, I felt proud back then and I still feel very proud right now that he got involved in that because it was something that a lot of people didn't do. 1965. He also took us to what I believe was Keve Bray’s house who was affiliated with the Black Panthers that were trying to open this chapter here in Seattle and their house was painted black and I'd never seen a black house before and that was pretty cool. He took us over there a couple times and we played with Keve’s kids out in the front yards and dad was in there planning and trying to make things work. And eventually it did. When we listened to it in high school - really good, soul music - that was KYC that they put together back in the 60s. That was all put together by the people dad was affiliated with.

13:34
William
Although my father was committed, it wasn't without pushback. 

Kelly
He was getting a lot of flak from a lot of his white friends. A lot of them didn't like it. Lefty didn't like it. Uncle Bob didn't like it. They actually defriended him because of it.

William
Lefty as you've heard was our next-door neighbor, husband of Kay and father of Laura and Julie and my dad's best friend.

Kelly
There was no question that Lefty loved us and cared about us and loved dad and cared about Dad, but the things that he felt about racism, were too strong to keep dad and him in that particular friendship at that particular time and Lefty was really upset about it after dad died in wished that it hadn't been like that, that they couldn't work it out to where they could still be close with each other because they actually didn't have contact with each other for a long time before dad died.

William
Here's Julie again.

Julie
I just remember the relationship. That'd be a hole in it. And I didn't understand why at all. I just remember the parents drifting and that was hard now. Now I know why.

William
And Julie's sister Laura.

14:42
Laura
I think the biggest part of them moving was when your parents got involved with the Black movement. Oh, I remember how to your parents had a big picnic next door. Your parents were having a big picnic at their house in your backyard and it was some sort of a support for the Black community and my dad did not like that. He was not open to that. He was so close-minded, so the day that y'all had the picnic, we had to leave for the day. He took us all somewhere else. I think it was very painful for your parents. It was painful for me as a kid, because it was obvious my dad was just cutting him off. And that's what happened. Because I remember, we went camping right before your dad died and my dad wouldn't go. And I was just so glad that, you know, we all went and your dad was so willing to do it. And that was one of our last best memories.

William
I think now of the sinister nature of racism and all the destruction that has wrought from its creation to control humans for power and profit all of its ugly manifestations and heinous configurations that endure even today. And I want to blame it. When you consider what my father was doing at the time and how important and rare it was, and what good things might have come of it, what did happen needs to be blamed on something. 

William
Again, here's my sister Kelly.

Kelly
I felt very, very close to dad. He was like my buddy out of the two parents. Mom was more than disciplinarian. I would do something and there were several times where she would tell dad, “Bill, take Kelly back in the back bedroom and give her a spanking” for whatever I did. And so, we'd go walking back there and I was always so happy it was him going back there instead of mom and he would sit me down and say, “Okay, don't tell your mom, but I'm not going to spank you. I'm just going to talk with you.” And so, he would talk to me, and I don't recall a time where he actually spanked me. I remember him thunking us in the head with his middle finger like at the dinner table and stuff if we couldn't stop laughing or something like that. Dad was really my saving grace during some of those times because I did a lot of bad stuff. I was a little rabble rouser and was getting in trouble a lot. We were very close. And he listened to me and he cared about what I was doing and thinking one of my memories is when I found some baby ducks in our backyard and it happened to be on April Fool's Day. Mom wouldn't believe me that there were chicks back there and dad got right up and said, “Well, let's go look.” And we go back there and sure enough, there's like five or six little tiny ducklings back there and dad believed me and I remember feeling like that was cool that he didn't doubt me. He just believed me or he didn't believe me and it didn't matter to him. He was going along with it either way. He loved people. He liked his social life. He just was a really friendly guy.

William
Here's Laura and Julie.

17:34
Laura
He just was like another big dad. Kind, you know? He always made you feel important.

Julie
I loved your dad, but I know I irritated your dad something fierce. He always knew it was me that ate his dill pickle. And I remember telling my mom to be worried about me. I loved that he could take all of us with nobody else to the Shamrock Dairy, that licorice ice cream. We'd all pop in that station wagon and go together. And I remember going fishing a lot. The two dads taking us out fishing, eating all the candy bars. I just remember him being a gentle giant. He could cook the best food ever.

William
Here's my younger sister Lisa.

Lisa
You just take everything for granted. But I remember him being a good dad. And I remember always kissing him good night before we’d go to bed. He’d be sitting in his chair watching TV. I remember going camping with him and going on driving trips. And he liked to drive. And because I was still pretty young. We used to watch golf like I don't know why. I think I just liked to watch TV from a very young age and then we got a color TV and that was really exciting. And he liked to golf and for some reason I started liking to watch golf with him so we would do that so I learned about some of the golfers at the time, which you know normally a nine-year-old girl probably wouldn't know that stuff. He used to go golf like he'd get up early in the morning and go golfing on a weekend sometimes.

William
18:58
My dad was good friends with Kay, a male female platonic relationship, not real common at the time.

Kay
He was solid. He was our friend. I knew he cared about me. I knew that he cared about us. He was the best male friend. He was a really great male friend and he just was a solid dependable person that was a joy to be around. And then going to choir. You know, we always went to choir together and he'd have to wait patiently if he was driving for me to finish up every little thing I was going to do in the house. And he was very good buddies with Dwayne and they did a lot of things together and they did some fishing some golf. You guys all remember going up to Diablo and going off camping and that sort of thing.

William
At some point, my dad developed a small hemorrhoid. Tiny as it was compared to Big Bill, it was painful and bothersome and so he decided to have it removed - day surgery. 

William
Again, my sister Kelly.

Kelly
Before dad went in the hospital, we went camping and we all got to bring a friend. Mom wasn't with us. Moms didn't like camping in the dirt. We went up to Auntie Lonna and Uncle Gene’s property for I don't know, a week or something. And the following Monday was when he was going into the hospital and I believe we got home on like Friday or Saturday. And during that trip, we went to the fish ladder. And I remember standing on that fish ladder and all the other kids had gone down the ladder and we're watching all the salmon jump and dad and I were standing on a part of the stairway and I asked him Are you afraid to go to the surgery on Monday? And he looked at me and he said, “Well, I haven't told anybody this but yes, I'm really afraid.” And he said, “They're just doing a minor surgery and everything was going to be okay. But I am afraid.”

William
And here's my sister Lisa.

20:53
Lisa
I remember when he went to the hospital, and I remember him kissing me goodbye. I was standing on our front yard and he was going to the hospital and he said goodbye to all of us and then that was the last time I ever saw him.

William
Here's my sister Gail.

Gail
I got a call from Dad and I was in Lynden and he asked me if I wanted to come home and go camping with everyone and I begged him not to go. I said “Do I have to? I'm having so much fun up here and riding my horse” and he said, “No, you don't have to come home. I just wanted you to know that I'm going to take everybody camping, and I wanted to know if you wanted to go.” But that's one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't come home for that camping trip.

William
Although there was some confusion about this for years to come, my younger sister Lisa, when exploring some medical options herself contacted the doctor that had performed the hemorrhoidectomy to find out the facts about the anesthetic, as that is what we had been told caused the problem. Lisa learned directly from the doctor that my dad had been given spinal anesthesia in the form of phenobarbital. My father was lying face down for the minor surgery and because phenobarbital suppresses respiration and heart rate that coupled with his position caused him to stop breathing. By the time the team realized he wasn't breathing, my father was unresponsive and would in the next four days, never regain consciousness. 

William
Here's Gail.

Gail
I got the call and Jill and Brenda drove me to Seattle. I wasn't there until Dad was already unconscious in a bed with a rubber thing in his mouth. I remember that clearly and I don't know that I went straight to the hospital because they were having trouble deciding who could go visit and who couldn't. Because of our ages, I was the only child that was allowed to go to the hospital. I got to go twice and the accident happened on Monday and I came home on Tuesday and I visited him on Wednesday and he died very early Thursday. I just remember Aunty Bea and mom coming in on that morning and telling me that dad passed away that morning. I can't believe how all these years I still cry over this.

William
My dad's friend Kay.

23:12
Kay
Well, he was so young and it was shocking. It was our very first real experience with death. And it was unbelievable, because we were all much too young. It was just way too scary, way too frightening. He went off to have that surgery that was supposed to be simple and pretty soon we're getting a phone call that he's unconscious, and they had to take him into Seattle. I mean, we knew he wasn't coming back, but we didn't want to believe it. And it was just a horrible sense of just being in limbo, because he was down there and people were coming back and forth to see him but he wouldn't change. You know, there was this fear right from the beginning that he'd been unconscious too long, that he had brain damage but it wasn't an absolute until we knew day after day that he wasn't changing. And you know, I just remember Dwayne and your mom going back and forth and the kids staying there with and finally, you know, they said, it’s your turn to go see him because… and I remember Jerry and Erma coming over, and we would wring our hands and say, “How long is this going to go on? What are we going to do?” And then I had this telephone conversation with his doctor that he said, “You've been given a gift of some time and so you have to just take advantage of this time and find ways to say goodbye. It could have happened suddenly and it didn't.” He was telling it like it is it was right and it was helpful, but it was so hard to hear that and I remember going in there and sitting there talking to him and then leaving and then he died the next day and I always felt that he just, he just waited. I wouldn't have been very wise in those days. I don't think I said anything very interesting. I’m sure I just told him that I wish this weren't happening. I didn't know what we were gonna do. We're gonna miss him. You know, just talking. I'm here. I was busy. I couldn't come any sooner. You know, I'm really sorry and I'm telling you goodbye and I'm wishing it weren't that way. It was our first experience with death and it was really really, really painful. 

 Music

William
Laura, Julie, Kelly, Lisa and I all stayed with Kay at Kay's house for the entire week that my father was in the hospital. 

William
Here's Kay's daughter, Laura. 

25:57
Laura
Oh, my gosh, was just like shocking, you know? Horrible. Shocking. I remember the week when you all stayed there that we slept downstairs. And you know, we just bonded in a way that was just like, so… We were probably scared, I mean I don't think any of us thought he really wasn't going to wake up. I don't think I'd ever known anybody that had died.

William
My mom gathered us on your hide-a-bed in the basement and told us that he had died and I don't know if you guys were there. Or if it was just us, the Borden kids.

Laura
I think that we were upstairs. We were probably being told by my mom or dad.

William
Lisa. 

 Lisa
I don't remember that much about how we found out that it had not gone well. I have a memory of the week of waiting. He's in the hospital and mom was gone a lot. And then we went and stayed at the Shields. I remember being there. And they told us he had died. And we are all down in the basement all sitting on a bed and mom told us.

William
And my father was gone. I think back now to that moment of hearing the words and then the year that followed, and I remember nothing. I have one memory of sitting in my bunk bed by myself. I had a room of my own and thinking to myself, “What am I going to do? How am I going to be in this world without my father?”

Music

27:39
Julie
It was our first experience with death. It was so hard to process that at 12 years old. I just knew that your lives were gonna be forever different and our lives were. I lost my family, my one big family. I wanted to take care of your mom I wanted your mom to be with us and not to be lonely.

William
For several years after in our new house on Capitol Hill, you could find me upstairs in our attic looking out the cross-pane fold down windows listening to Chaka Khan sing (William sings) “Tell me something good,” while my mom was behind her closed bedroom door, Roberta Flack singing over and over again:

(William singing) Jesse come home. There's a hole in the bed, where we slept. Now it’s growing cold. And Jesse, your face in the place where we lay by the hearth all apart. It hangs on my heart, and I’m keeping the light on the stairs. And no, I’m not scared. I wait for you. Hey Jesse, I’m lonely, come home. Jesse the floors and the boards, recalling your step, and I remember too. All the pictures are faded and shaded in gray and I still set a place, at the table at noon, and I’m keeping the light on the stairs. No, I'm not scared. I wait for you.  Hi just see the flaws in the boy three two to all the place No, I'm not scared Am I waiting for you? Hey Jesse, I’m real lonely, come home.

Credits

Thank you so much for listening. Crack Tales is written and produced by me, William Borden, but would not exist without my interviewees. Also, I’d like to thank the team who transcribed all of the interviews: Beth, my cousins Celese and Laura, Sabrina, Tsetse, Kate, Elizabeth, Katie, Sergio and Ioana. Amazing work. Music for Crack Tales has been generously provided by my dear friend Cornell White. We’ve been friends since the seventh grade. Cornell’s music can be found on Soundcloud. CornellWhiteMusic, all one word. “Eye of the Needle” is a Brandi Carlile song. Definitely check her out and the guitar player on “Jesse” is Javi Atoñana. We want to ask you a couple favors – small favors. If you will, will you please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a star rating and comment on the podcast. The more activity we get there with ratings and comments the more people listen. Secondly, if you could share the podcast or comments about the podcast on your own social media, it would be incredibly helpful. The more people talk, the more people share, the more people listen, and that’s what we want. The website is www.cracktales.com, c-r-a-c-k-t-a-l-e-s.com

End.