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In their hamlet, the tradition was that the possums
would strike out on their own and collect their favorite
food called Henseets. Henseets were delicious fleshy pods
that the possums would store up in their homes and when
winter came, they would have no need to go out and scavenge
for food.
At the meeting of the younger possums, Frankum went to
the front of the small room and asked for silence. But
something was different. In this meeting a newcomer possum
was talking with the young possums about doing something
different and Frankum did not like that kind of talk.
"Come to order," said Frankum and the assembled
possums stopped talking with the stranger and looked at
Frankum.
Frankum did not like to be surprised by any new possums to
the hamlet, so he asked this new possum his name.
"My name is Jero and I am visiting your hamlet to see if I
should plant roots here."
Frankum grimaced at the thought of a young upstart
coming to his hamlet and turning the heads of the younger
possums and especially so at the critical time of gathering
the valuable Henseets pods.
The young stranger continued to speak, "I noticed that
it appears to be a custom of this hamlet for everyone to go
out on their own and collect those delicious Henseets. But,
I was wondering is there a better way that the Henseets can
be collected so that the whole hamlet benefits."
The younger possums smiled and chattered amongst
themselves at a new idea being introduced that would allow
them to be more productive and collect more of those
delicious food pods!
Frankum cleared his throat and said somewhat dryly,
"Oh, what is your plan Jero?"
Jero went to the front of the small room, smiled to all
and said, "As you know, we have all year to gather the famed
Henseets pods but it appears that we do not make the best
use of our time and energy when we randomly collect the food
pods.
We need to ban together, all of us and plan so that we
can use all of the possums to collect these pods and we can
get bigger numbers and if so, we can prosper more and more
and even trade some of the pods for the Allber pods of our
neighbors, the Gathat possums up North."
At the idea that their hamlet could trade some of their
Henseets pods for the fabled Alber pods had all of the
younger possums yipping in delight and dreams of baking
Alber pods with their Henseets pods.
Anyone one who was a possum knew that the Alber pods
were possibly even better tasting than the Henseets pods,
but just by a tiny, tiny margin.
Jero saw their joyful reaction but he also noticed the
deep frown on the face of their leader, Frankum.
Although Frankum had tasted the Alber pod many, many
times in his travels in the land of Podit and though it was
an excellent food source, he was not sure if he wanted to
trade with the Gathat possums because it meant that the
Podit possums would have to travel long stretches of open
land occupied by the dreaded Macca Eagles.
Jero, anticipated Frankum's concern about the fearful
Macca Eagles and said, "We know that throughout the land of
Podit, the Macca Eagles monitor our movements but we have
been smart in the past and have used wisdom to outwit them
and none of us have been harmed."
Frankum quickly quipped, "Yes, that is true but who
wants to venture back and forth between the two hamlets
burdened down with either Alber pods or Henseets pods? That
would expose us to greater danger from the Macca Eagles
since we would have to carry the pods in sacks on our backs
and that would slow us down in case we were attacked!"
Jero smiled and raised his hand for silence since the
room was now in a near panic
with the possums just thinking about being trapped by the
ravenous Macca Eagles with sacks of pods strapped to their
backs.
"Listen, one and all. We all know that food gathering
can be risky but unless we band together and do what is good
for our hamlets, we will not be using our time to its best
advantage. The Macca Eagles will always be there, watching
and waiting but we have something that they do not have!"
At that statement, all of the possums including Frankum,
stood still and looked at Jero and said in almost near
unison, "What is that?" But before Jero could speak again,
Connie and Bambo both cried out, "We don't want to die for
some Alber pods!"
Fabrian and Delso also chimed in and said, "Why can't we
just leave things as they are and then nobody would get
hurt?"
Macen, the oldest of the younger possums, started to
wail and said, "Let us be and go away. We do not want your
new ideas. They scare us!"
At this outburst, Frankum sensing a way to recapture
his authority, loudly shouted out, "We have been doing food
collection this way every since my great grand dad
Everjon came from the land of Caul and settled here and we
should continue the same way!"
The possums all clapped and cheered at this grand wise
statement and then warily looked at Jero who was now
standing alone.
Sadly, Jero raised his hands for silence and said, "If
you never change your ways of how you do things, your old
ways will cause you to settle for second best and you will
never know the potential of trading your pods with the
possums of Gathat.
The Gathat possums have already started trading with
other possum villages and they are doing quite well and are
building up a surplus of pods so they can expand and buy
more land in order to build a larger hamlet.
If you don't use what you have and use it wisely, you
could lose it in the end and you will always regret that you
did not at least try to trade with the Gathat possums."
But. It was too late. The fear of the unknown froze the
possums from venturing out and Jero dejectedly left the
hamlet to seek another place where the possums were not
scared to be brave and to succeed.
The moral of the story? The five current black
politicos on Toledo City Council, the Toledo mayor and many
of the pastors of the black churches in Toledo are the
possums and the Macca Eagles are the everyday obstacles that
face anyone that dares to venture out and change their
environment or circumstances.
Jero is a change agent that tells the scaredy possums
that they can do much better if they band together and
venture out from their comfort zone and work for positive
change for the other possums in the land of Toledo.
Fear of the unknown will freeze you in place unless you
are willing to do what has not yet been done; and much more
if you ever want to taste some of those delicious Alber
pods!
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
tolliver@Juno.com
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