The first thing he learned was how to cook.
“I baked cakes and pies,” he said, since he was as tall as his hip now—baking was his thing. He learned to can vegetables—a small child wrestling with a boiling pot, dropping in corn-stuffed glass jars, lifting them out to cool. All the ins and outs of working with food, cooking, he learned from his parents. All the recipes and methods became ingrained in his head.
He cooked for pleasure and out of necessity, helping to take care of his seven siblings.
Not that they were in extreme want. Their property was owned by Ken’s grandfather, later handed down to their family. 200 acres of land just north of DeRidder, Louisiana. It included a 12-acre lake, ideal for the fishing adventures of a small boy. And it included a magnificent garden, kept by the family. Corn, watermelon, black-eyed peas, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, eggplants, collard greens, mustard greens, kale, and butter beans—ideal for the cooking touch of a small boy and the guiding hands of his parents.
If his parents taught him to cook, his uncle taught him to fight. His uncle, 6’ 5”, was a former member of the US Special Operations Forces. He kneeled to teach his young nephew multiple forms of martial arts. Judo, Aikido, jujutsu, and several more.
Ken recalled the lessons. “I learned Judo and a form of jujutsu, and a very gritty hand-to-hand combat. And weapons. Shields. My swordplay is good.”
By the time he was about 16, he’d taught himself to use a nunchuk his own unique style, he said.
He demonstrated: “Here, I go down, ah, ah, akidi, one arm here, catch it, roundabout, here, like this here, down like this, down here, all the way down, back up, like this here. It’s the same thing. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. One hand here. Back up.”
While his uncle gave him lessons and he practiced in his backyard, his friends were watching. Soon, they wanted in on practice.
“Everybody just saw that, and more people from the community, from my class, got into it. I had a class, right outside my backyard. I would teach them how to fight—judo, aikido, some kung fu.”
Ken showing off his moves…!
If he taught his community, it was a small return for all his community taught him.
For one, he picked up various languages and diverse customs from his neighbors. Since Fort Polk is actually a military base, he said, the population was very diverse. He grew up in a neighborhood of not only black people and white people, but also of Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, Cantonese, and Japanese.
He remembered two people in particular—a very old Cantonese couple, the extent of their English “hello” and “goodbye.”
“They were darlings,” he laughed. Over the years they taught him basic greetings in Cantonese and tricks of the language. They also passed on several traditions.
“They taught me, go into a residence, never go into a residence without taking off your shoes and setting them aside. Never do that.” He mimicked the movements as he described them: “Enter into a house, set your shoes aside, step inside. When you get to your shoes, you step into them, and you back out of the house. Never turn your back on it—back out of the house.”
He suspects that many Asians of the community were so open to him partly because he knew how to fight, had developed skills in martial arts. He’d learned an aspect of their culture—they respected him, and they taught him on his free afternoons.
At school, Ken’s learning was measured in numbers.
“They almost demand that you take a [IQ] test in Louisiana. One IQ test a year. Because they take your IQ test to be able to place you in your year. Where your strongest suits are, they’ll put you in that. Where you’re weakest, they put you in those, so you’re all-around developed.”
Once he reached junior high, his weak suits appeared to be chemistry and mathematics, he recalled, grinning. He still remembers that he had an 82 and 69 respectively. But here, he was able to reciprocate his parents’ teachings by instructing his mom in basic math—especially after he learned the trick of using a ruler to set up fractions.
“That’s how I taught my mom, I taught her fractions, decimals, division, multiplication.” He helped her as she went back to a local school and obtained her GED.
When he reached high school, he learned different skills and discovered other passions. By chance, he caught sight of a school chess player in preparation one afternoon. He sat down and watched the entire game.
After it was over, he approached the original player. “I asked the guy, ‘Can I play? I don’t know how to play.’”
From there, he steadily improved, showing a natural talent for the logic of the game. He was increasingly able to win against various opponents—and then even to play ‘perfect games,’ achieving checkmate using only the two knights and the queen.
Besides chess, though, he had difficulty relating to his peers.
“I didn’t have very much in common with the younger crowd. They were all going to clubs, getting drunk. I didn’t go to prom, I didn’t go to dances. I didn’t have very many girlfriends. All I did was stay at home.”
Where school failed him in its breadth of subjects, he looked for more. “I read a lot out of the encyclopedia, the dictionary. I bought my own study equipment. I would buy college books. That’s how I learned everything.”
College students would come through the neighborhoods annually, looking to resell their expensive textbooks from the year to help with school expenses.
“They’d come in cars in bands. And they’d go from door to door, saying, ‘I have this book, I have that book. Do you want to buy?’ I bought history books, science books. I bought medical books. And I’d learn, I’d teach myself.”
He took advantage of the opportunities even to enhance his comprehension of martial arts. “I taught myself various muscles, and various acupuncture points. Pressure points/points of painfulness. Your face, eyes, temple, here, I learned it. And I was beginning to see that actual points of painfulness; how to use that painfulness to make a guy surrender.”
Overall, he tended to gravitate toward and rely on the older people—his uncle, his Cantonese friends, the adults and even college students in his community.
“All I ever learned was from the older men,” he said.
And overall: “I’m always learning, learning, learning, learning. That’s me. That’s my life.”
***
He’d always loved the sound of motorcycles—throughout his childhood, he listened for their roar in the streets.
“So as I grew older, I told my mom, ‘I’m going to buy a motorcycle when I grow up.’ I said, ‘I refuse not to buy one.’ My mom said, ‘No. Not buying a motorcycle.’ I said yes, I was. She said no, you’re not.”
***
His older brother had served part-time in the military as a member of the National Guard. Once he came home for good in Ken’s senior year, he’d look after him and give him yard and mechanic work to do. He taught his little brother to operate various machinery and do diligent work.
“I’d do his starters, transmission, motors, things like that. All those things.”
When he graduated high school, he chose not to pursue college. Instead, at 18 years old, he started his own landscaping and yard care business. He hired two men and began taking on jobs.
“I had 32 places I’d do, and any extra money would go to getting more places to do. I’d have a plan, getting flowers, getting trees, getting shrubs. In one place I planted 185 fruit trees. In another place, I planted 35. Another place I planted about 15.”
He took pictures of the yards he designed, planted, and helped care for, putting attractive ads in the paper. Things were going smoothly. His biggest difficulty was balancing the finances—the workers wanted higher pay and were holding other jobs simultaneously, so he had to offer competitive wages, negotiating that with the cost of machinery and operation.
Nevertheless, the company offered another opportunity to teach. One client, who had never managed a yard before, observed Ken at work.
“He saw the way I did it, the way I’d done the yard and cleaned up and everything. To this day, he himself does it the same way.”
He was running his business and still living with his parents when his father had a heart attack and passed away. Suddenly, he was slammed with the responsibility of paying the household’s water and electricity bills and property taxes. It was manageable for the time; his business produced enough revenue to keep everything afloat.
Then he met a woman and fell in love. Retaining oversight of his company, he moved out of his childhood home. The couple married and made a home in Franklin, Louisiana, a few hours’ drive away.
Franklin was a new setting with unique quirks.
“Franklin, Louisiana is one of the capitols for sugar production. There was so much sugar cane coming through the town that it would fall off the trailers. You would run up with sugar cane, almost up to your knees,” he laughed.
The couple soon had a son: his married life was rich. But the added cost of the running their Franklin household, along with providing for his mom’s home back in Fort Polk, forced him to take on odd jobs to make all the ends meet.
“So one thing became too much. I wasn’t home enough. I worked as a caterer. I learned how to balance the RE, I learned what casing was, drill bit was, drill pack was, how to read directions on floor maps. I learned to read blueprints. I learned how to mix mortar, cement, and things like that. I learned how to do body work on cars—how to change out fenders, lights, bumpers, tires, how to sand the car down. All those talents I took to help me take up a job.”
Prolonged absence from home to work multiple jobs created tensions that eventually led to his divorce. He left his wife and son in Franklin and returned to his hometown. He reclaimed the reins of his landscaping company and drove out to survey a yard.
***
The same month, his mom fell seriously ill.
He acted quickly, leaving his landscaping business for good in the hands of his brother and a friend. He moved to Austin with one other brother, joining their sister in her house.
Their mom lost her ability to speak and was moved into a nursing home. She was put on a feeding machine. She needed almost constant attention—and the responsibility for her care and expenses fell entirely to the siblings. His sister was working in Maintenance Operations at UT Austin. His brother found odd work; Ken worked three jobs at once, working as a cashier in the electronics department at a local Walmart, and as a food runner for IHOP and Sonic. Caring for their mother while making the money to support her involved a daily elaborate dance, trading off so that someone was always by their mom’s bedside, but everyone held their jobs and made sufficient wages.
“After one job, I’d come home. [My sister would] rotate and go to work, and I’d stay the afternoon, until 6 or 7 in the evening. My brother would come home at that time. I’d leave there, and go to Walmart, work all night. I’d get 2 hours of sleep, watch her for 10 hours.”
Although Ken made a total of about $2000 a month, most of it went to immediate needs.
“I’d take that money, I’d pay rent with that money. And after that, I paid to have my mother taken care of, when [we weren’t] there. I’d give the lady $100, $200 to take care of her. Then I had child support, pay $200 child support. Most of my money was paying it out, paying it out.”
Eventually, it came to an end. His mother passed away peacefully, still on the feeding machine. One less thing to worry about. A weight was lifted off Ken’s shoulders and onto his chest.
“What happened was, ever been lost? Just lost and listless? You have your parents now, you have your grandparents now. But once they go, cause they contribute so much to your life, it’s gonna be like, you’ll have so much more time on your hands that you have to occupy yourself. And everyone will be affected. When that happens, it’s like a puzzle, like chess. You want to play the game, but you can’t play it effectively.”
He recalled his last action before his mother became sick and he moved to Austin. He’d taken classes at the local Harley-Davidson dealership and earned a license to bike, and finally bought himself a motorcycle. The engine was powerful. The handling was sturdy.
***
His brother went home, and the share of the rent he owed to his sister multiplied. With next-to-nothing in reserve funds, Ken was quickly swamped in the multiple and layered costs of living. Still grieving his mom, he became homeless on Austin’s streets in December 2016. He kept his three jobs and was confident that, without having to constantly pay out for rent, he would be able to save enough money to fly home in a short time. All his property, his stuff, his beloved motorcycle were in Fort Polk, and he had no intention of staying in Texas.
He moved in at the ARCH, and almost immediately, his IDs and driver’s license were stolen.
“So I have to work, have to go to a shelter, work, get it all back.”
His focus for the past two months has been pursuing the proper paperwork, and trying to make enough money off the jobs he already held to pay for new identification—then, he can again start saving for the plane ticket.
“I have to get all my paperwork for my ID together. I’ll take that, I’ll go get my ID, and my driver’s license after that, and then go get me my Social Security. Then I’ll be set to leave Austin. To go back home.”
Every day, he washes his clothes, dries them, goes to work, eats, works. And he still lives at the ARCH.
“Anything you put down in that place, can’t be out of your eyes. They take stuff constantly,” he shook his head.
“I have food and have a plate. I set it down in a chair. I come back, and he’s sitting there, just eating it. So I come back and I’m like, uh, why are you eating my food? And he’s like, uh, was this yours…? But see, I knew that he was hungry. So I let him have it. I knew he was too hungry.”
***
Ken’s biggest regret is that he never taught his son to fight. Martial arts are in Ken’s muscles, and it saddens him that he was never able to pass on a working knowledge to his own son.
“[My wife] had custody. So I was never able to teach him. And I regret that, because he grew up without me. Earlier, he was with me. But after that he wasn’t. He grew up without me.”
When he goes home, he wants to visit his son. He wants to reclaim his business, reestablish himself. And Ken is perhaps different in that his homelessness isn’t chronic. He expects to be out of Austin and back home in Louisiana by May 2017 at the latest.
“I’m going back to my hometown, going back to my hometown. Gonna get it, go back.”
When he goes home, he wants to take a breath.
“I’m gonna sit out for a while. Sit out on the lake. I’ll sit there, do some fishing.
Catch some fish.”
Reflections on ‘Ken’ →
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