cleveland

Tags: #portraits #musicWhen Cleveland was about 8 years old, he was working out in the cotton field doing some hoeing, and when the lightning hit him “Cleveland went one way and the hoe went the other way.” My dad is telling me this on the phone, on Father’s day. During the story I learned that Cleveland is a black man, “a very black man” from Mississippi. And that he has white hair, he’s in his eighties, and the contrast looks “very cool.” Cleveland, a friend of my dad’s whom I will very likely never meet, is moving back to where he’s from, back to where he grew up, somewhere in about the middle of Mississippi. He’s the only person my dad knows that has been struck by lightning. I don’t know anyone else that has a friend that’s been struck by lightning, and lived or not. Somewhere in Wyoming, last year.He introduced this arc by saying “here’s a thing that might happen,” and after quite a few other details I learned the “thing” is that next April he might help Cleveland drive a U-Haul…