Dr. Nathan Hare and Marvin X enjoy trout in memory of Dr. Julia Hare
Earlier this week Dr. Nathan Hare called to inform me the love of his life, Dr. Julia Hare, had passed away in her sleep at their apartment on San Francisco's Jackson Street, where they'd resided since 1973. Dr. Hare was waiting for the coroner to arrive to take away his wife of 62 years. When I asked if he wanted me to come over, he replied it was not necessary. I said OK, Doc, I'll let you catch your breath. A day or so later I called to ask if I could take him to breakfast on Friday, March 1st.? He said yes. I don't know why I told him breakfast when I usually have breakfast between three and five in the morning. But most often when I tell Dr. Hare I will come see him in the morning, usually around ten or eleven A.M., I will leave from Oakland around five or six to avoid the impossible morning traffic across the Bay Bridge than can take 45 minutes to get to the toll gate. So I would get to the city and kill time until my appointment with the esteemed sociologist and clinical psychologist, aka, father of black and ethnic studies in America, who was removed for his black radicalism from Howard University and San Francisco State University, where his controversial chairmanship of Black Studies ignited the longest student strike in American academic history, 1968.
Dr. Julia Hare
Classic Black Woman like no other
Let a thousand years produce another Julia
Stand by your man 62 years
Often I would kill time drinking coffee at Peet's on upper Fillmore, not far from the Hare's Jackson street apartment in the Russian Hill diplomatic neighborhood. I would sometimes enjoy a slice of banana nut bread. But there were also times when I would kill time by driving to Ocean Beach through Golden Gate Park to absorb the greenery and Pacific ocean. I could have gone to the ocean this morning but I had a thought that I would take Dr. Hare to the ocean to enjoy the blessings of Oshun and Yemanja, in the Yoruba tradition.
So even though I had breakfast around three a.m., I did not rush to the City since I had made a tentative appointment with someone between ten and eleven, but I was conflicted since I also knew between ten and eleven is a good time to cross the bridge because the traffic is momentarily better at this hour. Most of the wage slaves have made it to work by this time. I decided to delay the ten a.m. appointment and go for the bridge. I was in luck or shall I say I followed my first mind, entering the route to the bridge from West Grand Avenue, my favorite route to San Francisco.
Once I got pass the toll gate and onto the bridge, I called Dr. Hare to tell him I was en route. He informed me he was in the shower but would come downstairs when I was outside. When I got outside and called him, he said he was coming right down but took an inordinate time so I called him again as I was sitting outside.
I was getting a little nervous sitting outside Dr. Hare's apartment in this exclusive white neighborhood since on past occasions when I had him come downstairs and we talked in my car, he told me to lower my voice because the white people might get upset at the noise. And on an occasion when I brought him some money owed for sale of his books and gave it to him, he said don't do this like this because the white people might think we are exchanging dope money. I thought to myself the Doc might be a little paranoid, though I know full well we have been under surveillance the last 400 years. It is not paranoia when people are watching and you know they are watching you! Another of my San Francisco ancestors, mentors, Alonzo Harris Batin, said, "If we had done what the white man did to us, we would be watching him closely too for the Big Payback!" Is this not one reason the white woman will secure her purse when she sees a "Negro" a block away or on the elevator alone?
Finally, Dr. Hare came outside with a walker. I didn't know he had a walker, and insisted he needed no assistance because he could handle the walker better by himself and thus insure he didn't fall. He mentioned how many elders die after falling. I joked seriously that I have "No fall insurance," i.e., I know if I fall it will take a long time to heal. Young people can fall and keep moving on but not seniors.
I let get into the car by himself as I put his walker in the btparack seat. He wanted to go to the bank so I took him there but when he was taking rather long, I went inside to find him at the Versateller. I needed some cash so I used the one beside him. I immediately he was having problems negotiating his cash but I was too. I was putting my card in the wrong way and he was doing something wrong and decided to use mine after my cash was dispensed. I got my cash and told him I would be outside waiting. After a time, he did not appear so I went for him but he wasn't at the Versateller so I assumed he was inside the bank handling his business. I returned to my car. As I sat in my waiting, a white man entered the parking lot looking at me as if he suspected I might be a bank robber since I backed into the parking space backwards. Then another "colored person" saw how I parked and parked the same way, so perhaps a black man and colored man were both bank robbers, although I never saw the white depart the bank parking lot. I guess the "colored man" parking the same way as I did cooled the white man out that we were not bank robbers! What a day in the motherfuckin USA!
Dr. Hare finally returned from the bank and said we could go to breakfast except he needed to go to his house to meet Meals On Wheels, then when in the car he got a call from them and told them he was ok for the day, thus we were now free to do our thang.
I wanted to take him to a Black place to eat, but when I Googled such I found nothing open until later in the afternoon. I told him I will drive down Geary Blvd where I used to eat with Eldridge Cleaver after he returned from exile, where he used to order Pigs in a Blanket. I knew the place was now run by Orientals and Doc remembered the place where he used to eat as well, but when we arrived it was shuttered and a homeless person was sitting outside. So we drove down Geary toward Ocean Beach and we saw a Thai Cafe. He said let's go there as he preferred Thai food rather than Chinese. I agreed because Thai is more spicy than Chinese but when I turned the block and parked we were closer to Mel's Diner so we went into Mel's and when I saw the menu with their Trout Special, I told Doc that's what I wanted and he wanted the same, so we ordered Trout with mixed vegetables and rice pilaf.
After coffee, the meal arrived and Doc said, "Meals on Wheels don't serve no spread like this!" Indeed, the Trout covered the plate and I devoured it as Trout is my favorite fish. And rich my favorite dish since my father was from Kentucky's rice country. We ate rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I saw that Dr. Hare left an ample serving of rice on his plate long after I had devoured all my rice and I wanted to tell him to give me his but I was silent. After all, I was not starving from my three a.m., breakfast.
My ten a.m. appointment was calling as well as a San Francisco appointment. I told them I would be dropping Dr. Hare off at his apartment and would connect with them ASAP. But Oshun and Yemanje were calling me, telling to bring Dr. Hare to the ocean, and so I did, driving out Geary Blvd. to Ocean Beach, and as I neared the ocean, Dr. Hare suddenly came alive, especially when we got to the Cliff House Restaurant, which I could have taken him for our repast if I had known his past with Julia in the area. I did not know they had lived in the area until we arrived and Dr. Hare came alive with memories of eating at the Cliff House and jogging on the beach, and their apartment nearby with the fireplace where they enjoyed wine time after time, lovers for life!.
We parked at the beach looking out at the ocean. He continued telling me his memories with Julia when they lived in the area. We drove around searching for the place where they used to live but couldn't find it, although Dr. Hare has fond memories where the Fat Lady used to laugh, and the apartment where he and Julia used to drink wine and look into each other's eyes with love and passion that lasted for Black eternity.
I told Doc of my eating at the Cliff House and I would have brought him there today if I had known it was a favorite spot of theirs, after all, my undercover project was only to bring him to the ocean. I informed him during my recovery from Crack cocaine I used to come to Ocean Beach and jump into the freezing cold water as part of my recovery. I used to tell my associates who wanted to converse with me to come to the beach near Cliff House and meet me in the water which they did. It was my therapy, yes, I would go from Ocean Beach freezing water to the Berkeley hot tub on University Ave. to facilitate my recovery. It was after my session in the hot tub on University and taking the 88 Bus home that I discovered my partner had joined the ancestors where I passed her house on Harmon Street and saw her car parked that I knew something was wrong since she was a teacher and her car was parked outside her house during school hours, plus her car was dirty when I knew she kept it washed and clean.
I say this to say I know as I never got over the loss of my love, I know Dr. Hare may never get over the loss of Julia, most surely after 62 years. During our trout dinner, he repeated how he fought to keep her from confinement that her friends and relatives only knew to do. He said today and many times before today, "I didn't know how to confine the woman I loved for 60 plus years. I didn't know how, no matter how her relatives and friends persisted in their abysmal ignorance of love.
On the way home from Ocean Beach that Amelia Ashley, Publisher of the San Francisco Sun Reporter Newspaper and close friend of Julia was publishing an article in her paper next week and was organizing a memorial for Julia at San Francisco's Third Baptist Church on March 30, 2019. He told me to proceed with the memorial I planned to do in Oakland at Geoffery's Inner Circle at which I will announce the date. "Go ahead and do what you want to do, Marvin, because the Third Baptist celebration will not be the same crowd that will come to the celebration you organize in Oakland.
Indeed, the Oakland Celebration of Dr. Julia Hare must be an inter-generational discussion. The Hip Hop generation, especially the young women, must know the greatness of Dr. Julia Hare, a model for them to emulate in the tradition of Harriet Tubman.
But Dr. Nathan Hare made it clear to me Julia did not start out as a revolutionary or radical, rather she was of black bourgeoisie origins and opposed his radical notions until he radicalized her consciousness. Dr. Hare said to me that she was not a scholar but a speaker and he wrote the books under their joint title. For sure, Julia was the speaker, Nathan the writer supreme, the English major taught by the subject of the film Great Debaters, Melvin B. Tolson. Nathan informed me he had tried to enroll in the creative writing program at San Francisco State University, although they rejected him because he was too old at 24 years of age. Marvin X, who received his B.A. and M.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, told Dr. Hare, "Doc, I knew of many black writers at SFSU who were rejected and some, especially sisters, who suffered mental depression when told they didn't have the qualities to be a writer."
Such is the American academic educational system as per North American Africans. FYI, when I submitted my thesis for the Masters Degree, my thesis adviser approved it but refused to sign it because he didn't like my subject matter, a dramatic script on the SLA, i.e., the kidnapping of Patty Hearst based on first hand information. He said he didn't want the FBI coming to him asking about me.FYI, I obtained my Masters in one semester! Check my transcript!
I dropped Dr. Hare at his apartment, connected with my appointment in San Francisco in the Fillmore where a brother Johnnie Burrell told me I could get a copy of the Sun Reporter Newspaper with Dr. Julia Hare on the front page, then I made my way across the bridge to a meeting in Berkeley and navigated the rush hour traffic to my hovel in Oakland, up the street from Lake Merritt.
On March 30, San Francisco will celebrate the life of Julia Hare at Third Baptist Church. Soon after Oakland will celebrate Julia at Geoffery's Inner Circle, an inter-generational celebration with the Black Arts Movement and the Hip Hop Generation. Call 510-575-7148 for more information.
--Marvin X
3/1/19
