Who I am. Part one

 Who I am!

I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Charles Parmele. I am a 57-year-old disabled Veteran. I spent 11 years in the United States Navy's submarine service. Now, I am working on becoming a writer. Does that give you a picture of who I am?

I bet you are forming a picture in your mind. You think that I’m a white guy in a wheelchair and that I spend my time watching Fox News, blaming all my problems on the liberal democrats. You probably picture me wearing a red MAGA hat. (Give me a second to recover. Just writing that made me throw up in my mouth a bit.) You think this because that’s the image that comes to mind because of stereotyping. If you look at a demographic breakdown of Trump supporters and with the limited biographical information I provided you think that is where I fit in. Wrong.

No, I am not MAGA, and I don’t support Trump and never have.  I am a Christian but not the Republican type who thinks Heaven is a whites-only country club. I am a person who loves people, no matter their color, religion, or if they belong to the LGBTQ community.  Why would a loving god condemn someone for who they are or love? I will get into this more in a later blog post. Right now, let’s take a trip through time.

I was born on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, just outside of Dayton, Ohio, in 1968. The funny thing is the hospital I was born in was across from the building with the offices of Project Blue Book. My family used to joke that my parents brought home an alien instead of a human baby. Speaking of my parents, my dad was from Kansas, and my mom was from Northwest Florida. I was the youngest of four boys and have a younger sister.

My dad retired from the Air Force after 20 years of service in 1973. After he retired, we moved to Ozark County, Missouri. We stayed there for a couple of years and then moved to where my mom had family in Florida, the small town of Port St Joe. Actually, we lived in St Joe Beach. My dad repaired TVs for a few years before he got a job with a contractor tracking target drones for the Air Force. While we lived there, we attended a small Baptist church. I loved going to that church. It was at this church I learned about God, love, and mercy. Surprisingly, The Southern Baptist Convention this day is closer to those that preach hate.

My dad was transferred to a small town called Carrabelle on the Gulf Coast. I bet you're asking, “Which Gulf Coast?” The Gulf of Mexico one. A funny thing is that St Joe Beach is near a small place called “Mexico Beach,” which gets its name from the Gulf.

Anyway, back to my life in Carrabelle. I will sometimes call Carrabelle my hometown, but I don’t know why. I have a love-hate relationship with Carrabelle. There were a lot of good people in the town but a lot of bad too. You see, back in the late 1970s and 1980s, Carrabelle had a problem with racism. The town was divided into two sections, one for whites and the other for blacks. The black part of town was known as “the hill” or as the more overt racist called it N***** Hill. There were no laws or ordinances that segregated the town; it was an unspoken rule. If a black person moved into the white part of town, they would be harassed and driven out. It sucked. Of course, every reason in the world was given to keep people of color out of the white part of town. Imagine a redneck with an overgrown yard, three broken-down cars, and a sofa in the front yard complaining about having their property value go down because a black person moved in next door. Ridiculous, but that is what they did. I will say that when I lived there the Hill looked better than the white areas of town.

Carrabelle High School was a small school of 500 students K-12. The school doesn’t exist anymore as it was combined with Apalachicola High School in a new facility between the two towns. Back in my day that would not have been done because Apalachicola High was mostly black and Carrabelle High mostly white. Things have changed but only after I moved away in 1986.

I started in the Fifth Grade at Carrabelle High School. I didn’t know anyone at the school but made friends there easily. I also made enemies there for simply existing. Not really, but close enough. I was teased because I was born in Ohio, a Yankee. Yep, I lived in a place where people believed “The South Shall Rise Again” was a motto and religion. One kid, who happened to have been left back a couple of grades, was the worst. He liked a girl in the 6th grade, which my brother in that class liked too. This kid was definitely a product of a racist upbringing, and the kid claimed his dad was a member of the KKK. He likely was. Anyway, this kid could not beat up my brother, so he decided to go after me, the Yankee. He kept saying I needed to tell my brother to leave the girl alone or something bad would happen to me. Of course, I did not tell my brother because the kid was full of crap, or at least I thought so.

One day during recess, the kid and a couple of his friends grabbed me. I was thin as a kid. They had someone get the teacher’s attention while this was going on. They dragged me to this one jungle gym that was out of view from the rest of the playground because of a tree. The jungle gym was shaped like a Mercury space capsule. I used to like that thing because I loved everything about space. I definitely stopped liking that piece of equipment, and you will understand in a minute. The goons brought me to the jungle gym, and with some yellow nylon line, they lynched me. Yes, they hung me by the neck and left me there swinging. I remember the fear and panic. I had my hands tied and could not get my feet on the ground. I remember the pressure building up in my neck and face. My tongue felt like it was swelling, and my throat closed off.  I don’t know how long I was hanging there, but I was thankful when my best friend found me and cut me down with his pocketknife. That was back in the day when there was nothing nefarious about a kid bringing a pocketknife to school. After I was cut down, my friend and I went to the teacher to tell her what had happened. She brought us to the principal’s office along with the kids responsible for the hanging. You would think that with what happened the principal would have expelled the kids and turned them over to the cops, but you would be wrong. The kids told the principal they were playing, and since the principal was related to the lead offender, it was written off as “kids will be kids” and that I had an overactive imagination. How does one’s imagination leave rope burns around a kid’s neck? Yep, attempted murder is “kids will be kids”. The ringleader told me after we left the office that if I told my parents he would have my whole family killed. At the time I believed him and didn’t tell anyone in my family until years later.  If I could go back in time I definitely would have told my dad and he would have made sure those kids would have been punished and a principal fired. The principal was not a bad guy really and it was sad when he had a stroke the next year that left him paralyzed on one side. He ended up shooting himself a year after that. No, I don’t think it was his punishment or he deserved it. He just made a bad judgment call.

I did learn something from the experience. I learned to defend myself and from that point on I did not let anyone get the better of me. Not as easy as you think for a skinny kid. I don’t like violence but will defend myself or others if I have to do it. I won each of the fights I got in and after each one I cried because I didn’t like hurting people.

This blog entry seems to be about my experience with racism and hate growing up so I will continue with it for now. Like I said Carrabelle is a small town and did not have many black people that attended my school. There were a couple years when we would have a black kid as part of my class, but they never stayed which was sad. I made friends with them because to me they were just like anyone else. I can understand why their families would send them to relatives who lived in places not so racist. It sucks to see your friends be called names and not be in a position to help them. I’m not talking about the kids calling names but adults. When my class graduated in 1986 the class was all white. This was one reason I joined the Navy. I wanted to get out of the town and the service was the way since my family could not afford to send me to college. I was lucky, I was blessed with a pretty good brain. I joined the Navy to become an Electronics Technician and serve on submarines. Except for visits to family I do not return to Carrabelle. I have friends from school that still live there but for me the town doesn’t hold the greatest memories. The town has changed over the years and so have race relations but the memories of the racism when I was there kept me from moving back. When you escape from prison you don’t return to it no matter how well they gild the cage.

Now I live in Washington, across the sound from Seattle. It isn’t like Florida with its sun and beaches, but it is near the water and has a more diverse population. I think this is great. Our differences are what makes life interesting is probably a societies greatest strength. Well, it is getting late, and I need to get to sleep. I think next entry will be about my interests then the one after that will be about an experience in the Navy that led to my PTSD and social anxiety. Plus, I need to proofread and edit this entry in the morning.