Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Read Online Free PDF Page A

quickie biographical video on Son's life. I could tell it was going to be a lot of work, but nothing I couldn't handle, especially for the kind of money she was prepared to pay. Son Shine Enterprises must be thriving. The other big plus, aside from the money, is that the project is finite. After May 5, this job is over. At that time, it is my intention to pick up my last check, buy another first-class train ticket home, and tell the weasel to remove me from his database. All I have to do between now and then is keep my wits about me and remember that, this time, whatever goes on between Beth and me is business , not personal.

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    O SNE OF THE PROBLEMS BLACK folks have is we're usually so busy making history that we don't take the time to record it. We keep forgetting that the one who shapes the story defines the hero and the hero defines the best of what a people can be. What's that African proverb about the hunter always being the good guy until the story is told by the lion? That's why Beth is donating Son's papers to Morehouse and why she's so frustrated at their seeming inability to put things in order.
    The day of my arrival, Beth was scheduled to be in Macon, about an hour up the road, so we made plans to meet the next morning for breakfast. I scheduled a meeting with the Morehouse folks so I'd have an idea of what we're talking about without having to depend on Beth to give it to me straight.
    Son was, in many ways, a perfect role model. He worked hard, graduated top of his class at Morehouse, and passed the bar only one year after graduating with honors from Emory Law School. It was Son who encouraged Beth to write her book and financed the whole operation so she could hold on to the rights and the profits. It was Son who started raising money for Morehouse scholarships and mentoring high school guys while Beth concentrated on the girls. It was Son who recognized the political potential of all those single mothers looking for a chance and told Beth they should have a voter registration table in the lobby wherever she spoke. It was also Son who wanted to start his own program for the brothers because he said it didn't make much sense to have a whole lot of enlightened women looking for love in the arms of a whole lot of unenlightened men.
    There couldn't be a better place for Son's legacy to take shape than at the very institution where Martin Luther King Jr. first encountered the work of Mahatma Gandhi. It all sounded good on paper, but what I was encountering this afternoon was not Gandhi, but the reluctant admission that Son's Legacy Project was going nowhere fast.
    “I can't believe there's been no progress at all,” I said, following the Morehouse archivist down into the bowels of the old library building.
    I'm sure my tone reflected both my incredulity and my displeasure, and Mr. Freeney, a dapper little man carrying a hundred or so extra pounds on his small frame, ducked a little like he thought I might revert to universal school-yard behavior and smack him right on the back of his round, brown head.
    “The college agreed to handle this months ago,” I said. “How can you tell me now you haven't even gotten started?”
    “Budget cuts. There is no archival staff left,” he said gently as we came to a halt in front of a door marked storage. “There's just me. They let everybody else go. I don't know what's going to happen when I leave.”
    He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a giant ring of keys of all sizes and began searching for the right one among the many unmarked others. He tried a key that didn't fit. Tried another. No luck.
    “I'm sorry,” he murmured. “I've been meaning to label these.”
    The next key he tried finally fit, and he turned it with visible relief, opened the door, and flipped on the light switch. There, haphazardly stacked in brown U-Haul boxes were all that was left of Son's thirty-five years on the planet. Inside each box, I knew, were speeches, articles, letters,