The Holy Buffalo

 "[After boarding an old truck with my father] we would ride through the countryside of his youth where he would, like an unintentional oracle, point out the enlightenment to be found in the faces of those who looked like me, who were the same color as me.  People who had never left those fields and backwoods, who didn't know yoga from yogurt but possessed the true essential wealth of life. . . and would have shared it with me had I thought to ask."   

It was 1967.  John Hunter attended an all-black elementary school in Chester, Virginia.  "A handful of us seventh graders were, I guess, hand-picked to integrate the all-white school.  We didn't know what to expect.

"Our principal called us together to speak with us before we left.  He told us to go as far as we could into this other world. 

 "We felt like astronauts, exploring.  Like 'Star Trek'--going where no one like you has gone before.  Ultimately, the idea is to bring back what you've learned to share with the people you left behind."

 Hunter took his principal's advice further than anyone could have expected, absorbing not only Caucasian, but Asian culture as well.  He has made six extended trips to the Far East and was for years a meditation group leader practicing Surat Shabd yoga.  Most Richmonders know him as a member of the world-music playing Ululating Mummies or as a teacher with the gifted and talented program with the Richmond Public Schools. 

His teaching techniques are as individual as the man himself.  He once had his students build a spaceship as a set for a science fiction video.  And he tells stories.  Dressed as a character called The Holy Buffalo--horned headgear, robes, ceremonial staff--he'll relate the tale of "Sparkle McGillicutti and the Dragon of Darkness" or "The Dreaded Rainbow Hawk," adventures of brave children who traveled to strange, dangerous places and returned wonderfully changed. 

Hunter's outward journey took a homeward turn in China.  In a country where foreigners stand out, he drew a crowd. 

 "I was this six-foot, 230-pound black man with dreadlocks and a huge backpack.  I also have one leg that's shorter than the other, so I have a raised heel, a two-inch block under my shoe. 

 "The Chinese are, of course, very curious--they would crowd around to see what was going on.  They would look at my shoe, then at my hair.  I'd see the whole crowd bobbing, a sea of heads bobbing up and down. 

"The crowd would get larger and larger and eventually the police would have to come and break it up because traffic would be stalled--bicycle traffic."

On Hunter's first train trip into the Chinese countryside he met two teenage girls.  "They spoke English.  It was the only English I'd heard for days.  We had a great time--everyone on the train gathered around to see the girls talk with me.  One of them asked, 'Sir, where do you belong?'

"I knew from what we had been talking about earlier that she didn't mean geographically.  She meant to whom did I belong--what group of people.  The question stumped me.  I couldn't readily answer.  It set in motion a chain of events of self-rediscovery, of things that I had long since moved out from."

When he returned to Richmond, Hunter cut his dreadlocks and bought an inexpensive, conservative suit.  He began attending black churches.  "It was the start of a completing circle."

 One result of this return to his roots was an unpublished novel, "Tales From the Vision Tone Sky."  In the book Hunter invokes the black church of his boyhood, remembering the impression a country preacher made on him as a child:

Preacher talk 'bout Jesus like Jesus was a fifties hipster, wearing a stingy brim hat, shades, diamond pinky ring, silk handkerchief, goatee, with toothpick dangling from his full, sensuous, street wise-lips.  ("Dig: Jesus--cool-to-death, man . . .strutting . . . with his fine self!")  A cool Jerusalem Slim . . .

 "Say, Jesus, there's some sin over dere, man."

 WHAT?!!!  SOME SIN?!!!  Here I go!  Takin' no prisoners, boy . . ."

In a postscript to the book, Hunter writes:  "It would be years into adulthood before I would board an old truck with my father, and, in a tour echoing childhood Saturday outings, shockingly hear the exotic wisdom of the East speaking through him!  As we would ride through the countryside of his youth he would, like an unintentional oracle, point out the enlightenment to be found in the faces who looked like me, who were the same color as me.  People who had never left those fields and backwoods, who didn't know yoga from yogurt but possessed the true essential wealth of life. . . and would have shared it with me had I thought to ask." 

Today, Hunter peacefully coexists with all aspects of his multicultural self.  His latest trip to Japan--he returned in April--involved making a video comparing and contrasting Japanese and African-Americans.

"Most of my students are African-Americans.  People are the same everywhere."

Hunter videoed an acupuncturist, a shiatsu masseuse, and a businessman who handles the video contracts for Frank Sinatra and Madonna while they're in Japan.  He also shot extensively inside a Zen monastery.       

"Every morning you'd hear the big temple bell ringing, then the rustling of the monks' robes as they rushed by on their way to morning meditation.  It was quite a contrast to come down from those ethereal heights to the electrical district in Tokyo, the Ahki Habara, where they had all these incredible neon signs and Stephen Jobs' new computers."

 Hunter's trip was made possible by a grant for teacher excellence from the Greater Richmond Foundation.  Generations of his students will be saddened to know that he's leaving Richmond--this time it's not a trip.  He's moving to Baltimore.  His wife, Martha Saunders, will be attending graduate school at the Maryland Institute of Art.  They're leaving midsummer.

 "Baltimore is no different from Richmond," says Hunter.  "It's the same cosmic family--just up the road a piece."

 "The Holy Buffalo" first appeared in the May 14, 1991 issue of Richmond's Style Weekly.