Message from a Whiskey Box
After my father finished high school in the 50's, he desired to attend college. However, he faced opposition from his father, who refused to give his consent with a resounding NO followed by choice words, because his focus was affordability. This discouragement significantly impacted my father’s determination to pursue an education. Nevertheless, a mother’s love intervened.
When my father told me how his mother set the stage for him to attend Alabama State University, he always emphasized his suitcase. Because he had no suitcase for packing and transporting his clothes, his mother used an empty whiskey box as his suitcase. However, his story ends with his father sending more than enough to sustain his partial athletic scholarship. Yet, I always wondered why he emphasized the whiskey box.
An old saying is that the devil is in the details. The whiskey box is the devil's details in my father’s story. Why a whiskey box? Why did Ma (what we called her) choose this box over any other boxes? I believe my grandmother (Ma) wanted to inspire her only son intentionally and prepare him for this journey that no other family member had embarked on before him. Since he was the only boy of four older girls, Ma made a profound yet indirect statement by using the whiskey box. The whiskey box, I believe, was a metaphor that represented what he was leaving one world for another as well as a symbol of his preparation to leave. How often do we purchase new luggage just to use it as a traveling status for others to see when our old bags will suffice? Ma wanted her son to realize that he had no reason to second-guess his decision because he had to succeed in this newfound academic setting. The whiskey box was the only means Ma had to transport his clothes, but it was sufficient to achieve the task. Likewise, his secondary education from a rural high school was sufficient for success at the college level in Montgomery. This symbol alone was his motivation to persevere in college despite unexpected circumstances like receiving his draft card for the military after his sophomore year. Since the label on the whiskey box was Jack Daniel, not a bootlegged label, the box alone tells a unique story. This box represents an enterprise of distribution or a means of securing value. My father may have felt embarrassed, but the Whiskey box served its purpose.
After 70 years, his legacy of achieving a higher education lives within his children's children. His perseverance continues as a model of distribution and value among family members. For instance, while his first granddaughter attended college and her father displayed concerns about her performance during her freshman year, she responded unequivocally - If granddaddy finished, you finished, what makes you think I won’t finish college? What a way to plant a legacy, especially when your children’s children understand the value that you placed on education.
Thanks, Ma, for educating all of us about the hidden message within the whiskey box.
