"The writing is strong, heartfelt, but not syrupy, at points hard-hitting and at others tender. The way you tell your story is realistic and elegant.”
Janet Hill, former Executive VP of Doubleday
and founder of the Harlem Moon imprint.
In Black
In White
L.T. Woody
IN BLACK IN WHITE
Copyright © by L.T. Woody
May 28, 2011, Digital Version
(Smashwords edition)
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CHAPTER 1 – IMMEDIATE FAMILY
Our household consisted of my father, Reverend Johnnie Watkins, a Pentecostal preacher; my serene mother, Mary Jane (maiden name Mary Jane Woody), my older sister Velma, whom we called Plum, and the twins Anthony and Angela. It has now become clear to me that while in many ways we shared a familial bond, we were a rather loosely knit clan, my mother being the strong thin tie that bound us all together.
My older sister Plum was born of a union between my mother and some mystery person of whom I have never heard anyone in the family ever speak. The twins were the youngest and they were Reverend Johnnie Watkins’s offspring.
It was not until I was an adult that I learned my biological father was a man named John O. Penson. One of my aunts gave me a few scattered details about him, and helped me to go to his home and meet his wife some years after my Mom died in 1979, and apparently, only a year after my father, John O. Penson, died.
“Aunt Vinnie, I would like to know about my father,” I asked her.
She looked at me somewhat shocked, and then blurted out, “Baby, I want you to know it wasn’t his fault. Reverend Watkins wouldn’t ever let him see you.”
At my father’s home, I saw photos of half-brothers and sisters of whom I had no knowledge. They seemed to have been living a very comfortable life. I was a little jealous. That should have been my life.
My Mom never talked to me about my father - except one time.
I was standing at a window in her bedroom when she walks up to me with this bemused expression on her face. She looked very young, almost girlish, as she leans into me, and half-whispers,
“Guess who I saw today?”
I sensed that what she was about to say was somehow momentous for us both. Yet, I wasn’t sure how I should react to her, so I stood there and kept looking at her sort of puzzled. I suspect I was trying to act grownup, since everyone thought of me as wise beyond my years. I was not.
Then, she leans into me again and very distinctly mouths the words, “YOUR FATHER.”
After first allowing her big pronouncement to float there in the air between us, she backs away and studies my face. I had never seen her like this. She seemed so enormously pleased to have been able to say this to me. I’m standing there and my mind is racing. What is she getting at?
My first thought was, “Is she saying that she saw Reverend Johnnie Watkins sneaking around on her? Maybe she saw him somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.”
Then - it was like, “Well, what was he… oh - oh – OOOH you mean my real father?”
Now I am half-whispering.
My mother calmly looks me up and down and says, almost regally, “Yes.”
Then she quickly adds, “He was downtown.”
I had no idea what I should say. In a vague sort of way, I knew that I had a father out there somewhere, yet I cannot remember ever being concerned about it, certainly not enough to ask about it. Now, it appears that my flesh and blood father is not at all far away. Why, it is even possible to run into him on the streets, right here in Baltimore. Wow!
The only thing I could think to say was, “Oh really…downtown?” I thought that sounded real grownup-like, and she nodded gravely.
We stood there in that moment, saying nothing at all. I tried to come up with something to say. It appeared something from me was required, it felt like she was watching me, maybe even studying me. Unfortunately, I had nothing to offer her - nothing. Then, per a life-long and tacit agreement between my mother and I, that now astounds me, we simply - let it go. It is heartbreaking for me now (as an adult) to see how I let that opportunity to learn something of my father get past me. That, however, is how we did things in our family, and I suspect, many others do the same.
There was a rather strained dynamic at work in our family. My mother had to take extraordinary care not to exhibit any traces of favoritism towards my older sister Plum or me; at least not at the expense of the twins. Johnnie Watkins could be an unpredictably volatile, and at times, irrationally petty man. Although, I must point out that, to his credit, he did marry a woman with two kids who were not his own, and remained with her until the day she died. You have to give the man some respect for that.
Plum chose to deal with the disparities in our family by being rebellious and at times spoiled rotten, fairly screaming for her rightful share of attention, and several times even running away from home to make her point.
Me - I became an over-achiever and tried to disconnect myself from the whole messy business, while every single day quietly searching for a way out of it all. My Mom had married herself into a tight corner as far as I could see. She did not need any trouble from me. I was determined that she would never have any trouble from me, and as I look back, I now know it is that singular decision that unwittingly condemned me to a lifetime of what has been a simmering, barely repressed sense of loneliness. Everything has its price.
I vividly remember April 11, 1963, the actual date we arrived on Edmondson Avenue in the neighborhood of Harlem Park in Baltimore. I was nine years old. We had come from a section of Baltimore called Cherry Hill. Cherry Hill was a great place for a kid. There were railroad tracks where we could watch freight trains come by, and nice hills for sledding and kids, kids, kids. Everyone living out there was dirt poor, but of course, that was not important - then.
The day we were to move away, I was playing with a softball with some of my boys. When our ball rolled into a sewage drain, we decided, like always, to get it back by lifting off the manhole cover above the sewer hole. A large iron manhole cover is extremely heavy, and it was especially heavy for our scrawny little nine-year-old arms.
After we got the ball, and we were replacing the manhole cover, I caught my hand under it as it slid back into place, and it tore one of my fingernails completely off. Shocked, bleeding and crying, I ran home where my mother cleaned it for me like a good Mom, but she was pissed as hell. She was entirely convinced that I had ripped my whole fingernail off deliberately, so that we would not have to move.
Like I am out there saying, “Hey man, why don’t y’all drop that big heavy-ass manhole cover on my finger, and if you do it just right you should tear my fingernail off, and then maybe we won’t have to move, see.”
The first time I ever saw my mother cry was that day. She was sitting at the kitchen-table sobbing while being comforted by Ms. Susie who was her best friend from next door. I assumed she was crying about the fact that we had to move away.
Ms. Susie was rubbing her shoulders and saying that it was going to be all right but - well - it was not. Ms. Susie was a good friend to my Mom. She had three small boys of her own, and apparently, from all accounts, a no accounts husband.
None of the other moms was stupid enough to mess with Ms. Susie because she could crush you with just the force of her personality, and some of those other women out there were pretty rough themselves. Sometimes the women there would get into fights with each other, usually because of their kids. The moms would be out there throwing bricks and shit. I witnessed it many times. It was great.
I had a crush on Ms. Susie and I wanted to be everywhere near her. In my mind’s eye, I can still see her on those steamy hot Baltimore summer days. Ms. Susie would be holding court with the other moms and their kids. She would be walking around, gloriously young and fantastic, playing with us kids, and just laughing.
“Come on out here Mary Jane. Your children showin’ me this new thang called the hula-hoop. Where did Johnnie find this?”
When he was not preaching, my father worked on the loading dock of Hoschild Kohn, a department store in downtown Baltimore, and he had brought home some hula-hoops. It was a new and cheap toy, and no one else in Cherry Hill had one.
“You got to move your hips honey. Mary Jane I don’t know if these children should be out here movin’ their behinds like this…ah sookey-now.”
Ms. Susie had that hula-hoop twirling pretty well. It seemed as though Ms. Susie could do anything.
“I don’t know Susie. I don’t have time right now. I got cookin’ to do,” Mom replies.
My Mom could be shy. I loved my Mom.
“Girl, you come on out here right this minute and show these kids how to shake it Mary Jane.”
Ms. Susie knew how to have a good time and only she might persuade my Mom to leave her housework and come outside to do the hula-hoop. Ms. Susie teased us all in turn and kept us laughing. Her laughter always ended with her trademark, “Lord Child.”
She and my Mom were very close. If we got out of line, Ms. Susie would beat our butts as though we were her own, and my Mom would do the same to her kids. The two of them were always doing that corny, “See ya later alligator - after a while crocodile,” bit. When we left, I know my Mom really missed her.
CHAPTER 2 - 1315 EDMONDSON AVENUE
Our three-story row house at 1315 Edmondson Avenue was huge, or so it seemed when compared to the very small two-story row house we had vacated in Cherry Hill. This new house was already pretty rundown, but you could see that it had been a pretty nice place once upon a time. My brother told me that he was pretty disappointed when he first saw it, but I think he was only lacking in imagination.
It had long ornate wood banisters that I liked to slide down, and there was a lot of other nice fancy woodwork all over the house, much of which had paint slathered all over it. There were French doors between the rooms, with most of the glass panes still in them. There was also a front and a back staircase (sweet!), and lots of neat looking doorknobs.
On the first floor were a living room, dining room, a fair-sized kitchen and a room we dubbed the “Summer Kitchen.” Sounds nice, doesn’t it? The Summer Kitchen. It was really just a bare room near the back porch that served little purpose except to suck outside what little heat our oil furnace could generate during the winters. There was even a space out there for an extra bathroom, but all the plumbing was gone. It was a beat up old house, but there was stuff a kid could work with.
Two large bedrooms were on the second floor. My parents and my sisters took those. One other very tiny bedroom was also on the second floor, but it went unutilized. There was a bathroom in the back with a giant tub. My brother and I shared a back bedroom on the third floor. There was another bedroom up there, at the front of the house, that my father sometimes rented out.
Next door to our house, on the one side, was a small restaurant and carryout, although it was hardly ever open and often going out of business soon after it did open. Next to that was the infamous Club Astoria, once a well-known bar and lounge, but by the time we arrived it was just another neighborhood bar. They say Billie Holiday once sang there, but they say that about every bar in Baltimore. It turns out she actually did perform there.
Caplan’s Drugstore was up the block at Edmondson Avenue and Carey Street, as well as a couple of corner grocery stores and the hardware store. Directly across the street from our house was a small luncheonette run by an old man named Mr. James. He was quiet and a little cranky too.
The Traynham barbershop was diagonally across the street, where the star of the show was a barber named Jesse who was a fair Billy Dee Williams look-a-like at that time. Jesse was such a good barber that it was not a good idea to go to him unless you had at least two hours of time to wait for a haircut. Still, everybody came to Jesse if just to hear him talk. Jesse knew something about everything. That had to be true because Jesse said so himself.
If you happened to forget to comb your knotty hair before you got into his chair he had no mercy on you as he went about busting them knots. Jesse would have your ass crying. If you had dirty hair, it would really set him off.
“Boy, when was the last time you washed your hair? I can’t hardly get a comb through your nappy stuff. I would bet big money that your Momma don’t know your head looks like this. Damn boy, you got all kinds of flakes and stuff coming from your head. I don’t mean no harm boy, but you got to wash your hair sometimes.”
The whole place is laughing at your ass.
“Don’t your Momma ever tell you to wash your hair? Ain’t no way in the world that my Momma would let me come to a barbershop with my hair looking like this. Especially when you know, someone will be looking at your head all close up. See…come here; look right here, all that is dandruff and stuff.”
Jesse will have parted your hair and called people over to see.
“This don’t make a bit of sense. That’s what I’ve been saying in here. These young single mothers nowadays don’t know what they doing. Things just ain’t like they used to be.”
Your hair looked good when he was finished though. You smelled good too. At one time or another, there was always one other barbershop in a building two doors down from Jesse’s. Eventually, they would always just give up and close shop.
Close by the Traynham barbershop was the Yat-Gaw-Mein Joint, which the Lee family owned. That is what everyone called it. The actual name of the place was Chop Suey. They had Yat-Gaw-Mein on the menu with chicken, beef or pork, and that was a preferred dish in the neighborhood, especially the pork yat.
Lots of us bought the Yat-Gaw-Mein because it was cheap, only .45 cents, an amount even us kids could scrape together from odd jobs, or on payday, when our folks were feeling generous. You really had something a bit substantial in that pint of noodles, pork and onions with catsup ($.05 extra). It could fill the belly of a grown-up and would easily have us kids feeling bloated and satisfied.
Most of their business happened on the weekends when people got paid. In the case of the adults and older teens, that often meant a person who had first stopped to get liquored-up at Club Astoria. They would then go to the Yat-Gaw-Mein Joint for something to eat, where it was the accepted sport to make fun of the Lee’s imperfect English and generally berate them.
I guess folk down there, were trying to feel superior to someone...anyone. They were behaving as though those hard working Asian people were somehow beneath all of us good black people. I thought folk shouldn’t treat other folk like that, but hardly anybody was going to be dumb enough to take up for the Lee family. I mean, on the wrong night that could be one stupid way to get shot.
Back on our side of the street, in the other direction, were more row houses, and then the Pawnshop. The Pawnshop was off-limits to us kids, but we sure liked looking at all the stuff in the window, you know... guitars, horns, jewelry, guns, tools and all.
Just past the Pawnshop, at Calhoun Street, was another drugstore called Adam’s Drugstore, which was not as nice as Caplan’s up at Carey Street. Caplan’s was another place where we kids could go to buy candy, and where we would often end up having them chase our loud black asses out of the store. Usually, we just stuck to Adam’s Drugstore where they were a little more tolerant.
The neighborhood of Harlem Park was virtually one hundred percent Black; as was the other neighborhood I left behind in Cherry Hill. Consequently, until I finally left Harlem Park, I had never been to school with a white child or even had a teacher who was not black. Yet, with the exceptions of the Traynham barbershop, Club Astoria and a few other smaller businesses, most of the businesses in our neighborhood were white-owned, primarily by Jewish folk. This was a fact which only registered with me slightly at the time, because at nine-years-old, who cared?
After the riots of ‘68, however, things changed for everyone.
However, this was 1963, when I still had many hard lessons to learn, many people to know.
CHAPTER 3 – MY PEOPLE
I have heard that the creation of the universe (in the context of the Big-Bang theory) was “a mutation from zero to everything.” Well, so it was for me with the start of my life in the neighborhood of Harlem Park; and it had everything to do with the people there - the good and the bad - because they became my people, the foundation for the life I was to create.
The center of our universe was Ms. Alma’s row house at 1417 Edmondson Avenue, in the next block up from my block. Her home became the staging point for much of what our circle of friends did. Ms. Alma Pope had six children, three boys and three girls, all of them around my age or just slightly older. They all shared the same father, but her ex-husband was not living with them at that juncture in their lives.
Although I did not know it at that time, Ms. Alma’s family had arrived on Edmondson Avenue only two days before the day that my family moved in. They had moved to Maryland after living for some time in Virginia. Almost immediately, we found each other. More specifically, Ms. Alma’s son, Allen Pope, and I found each other.
Allen was in Ms. Woodfield’s third grade class at P.S. 95, Franklin Square Elementary School. So was I, as well as one other boy who would become a key member of our tribe. Bruce Johnson lived at 518 N. Calhoun Street, which Allen and I had to pass as we walked the four blocks to school.
The trip to school was marginally dangerous. We had to cross Franklin Street (Rt. 40), a notoriously dangerous thoroughfare. Our parents showed us that we were supposed to stand and wait for the light to turn red and stop the traffic. However, where was the fun in that?
No! The trick was to just step on out there and time it so that you had to use stutter-steps and dramatic pauses; ducking and weaving to negotiate the fast moving traffic, much as a guard does in basketball or a running-back in football, stiff-arming cars and whatnot, that “Heisman” pose.
At times, those cars would skim by within inches of our frail bodies with the angry drivers screaming at us and cussing our dumb asses. Then, if you made it across the westbound side, you had earned the right to walk one more block and do it all over again on the eastbound side of Route 40 (Mulberry Street). We did this every day of the school year. Cars did hit kids from time-to-time, but it was never any of us. I am now old enough to know better, and yet, at times I will cross a street in the exact same manner.
Actually, an even more pressing concern during that walk to school south on Calhoun St. was the ever-present fear of the “Franklin Square boys” and the other solo bandits roaming the streets. Those guys were only five or six years older than we were, but in some cases, they had citywide reputations as juvenile delinquents.
Johnny Murphy, Doody-pig, Eggy-mule and Flubber would jack you up for your measly lunch money, just as surely as they would snatch some unlucky old person’s pocketbook or stick somebody up with a pistol.
I sort of liked Johnny Murphy, who was shorter than average, stocky, and pretty scary looking. He was a genuine outlaw, but he lived around the way, knew me by my name and made me feel like a true homeboy. He never robbed me.
Everybody hated that damn Doody-Pig who was just a mean son-of-a-bitch. He would take your money and then beat you up for no rational reason. The one called Eggy-mule was supposedly a genuine bonafide killer. You did not even want to dream about him.
It was my bad luck to encounter Flubber one day. I happened to be walking to school alone that day, moronically flipping my lunch money in the air, I was so happy to have it. Flubber started in on me the way they all did, by asking me to “loan him some money,” and we all knew what that meant. They always asked you for a loan as though you were old friends or something.
“Hey little muthafucka, loan me some money?”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Well...what’s that in your hand then, nigga?” he says.
“Just my lunch money,” and I am trying hard not to look like I might begin sobbing, at this point.
“Well... let me see it,” he says, still smiling and everything.
I manage to whimper out, “I can’t!”
I swear I did not want to give up that money, because it was a rare thing for me to have money to buy my lunch and if I had to give it to him, I would have to go hungry that day.
Flubber roughly grabs my arm and tries to pry my paltry little change from my hand, but I would not release it. Can you believe it?
“Let go of the money you stupid little punk. Don’t make me kick your skinny ass.”
So now, he is a little angry, and he began twisting my wrist like a corkscrew in an effort to force me to let go of my money. To his amazement (and mine), I went down on my knees and twisted my entire body around on the ground in an attempt to relieve the pressure he was putting on my arm.
“C’mon you dumb-ass, let it go.”
It looked ridiculous, although for a few seconds my squirming around on the ground actually worked. Even Flubber laughed a little bit.
Flubber took my money anyway, as though there was ever any doubt. At least he was good enough not to beat the hell out of me, which I guess he had every right to do.
Still, it all goes to show you that Flubber was not a killer or anything – not yet. He was still just another sorry punk out there making his reputation by jumping school kids. That day, I went home hungry, but when you think about it, that is not so bad.
Ultimately, Allen, Bruce and I were just three skinny black kids who formed a bond as a way of getting safely to school on a daily basis. It helped us that Allen had two older brothers, Glascoe and Hubert, who were reasonably well known and very athletic, and who were both tough guys themselves. We could somewhat ride on their coat tails as long as we did not behave too much like scared pussies.
While there was always the potential for violence in that neighborhood, it was not impossible to negotiate life in relative peace as long as you did not deliberately go out of your way to mess with other people. Harlem Park had a hard reputation then, as did Lexington Terrace, Pennsylvania Avenue, Park Heights, Pimlico and several other West Side neighborhoods.
And the East Side of Baltimore! You did not want to think about going over there unless you were begging for trouble. No doubt, they probably thought the same thing about us, but we were scared of those boys - for real.
Everybody was always worried about getting shot, which was a legitimate fear in Baltimore. Even way back then it seemed that Baltimoreans had a fascination with handguns that was way out of proportion to its perception as a relatively small urban center.
There was gun violence enough to keep you afraid, but it was of a variety, at least at that time, that you felt could be avoided unless you were really - really - unlucky. Everyone knew, when gunfire did break out, the thing to do was to “Stay Down,” no mystery there.
Essentially, if you wanted to get out of there alive, what you did was to stick close to your own neighborhood with your own homeboys, the good ones and the bad, it was smart to know them all. However, who the hell was going to confine themselves to a few square blocks in their own neighborhood. I mean - the guys and gals, who were a little bit older than we were, had stuff to do. They had to get to their parties and jobs. You cannot just hide on your block like some kind of punk.
You see - it helped to look at your survival this way, it was a lot like when we were crossing Mulberry Street to get to school. You had to get over your fears, step off the curb, and get on out there into the fast moving flow of Baltimore City. Just remember to stay low and use that stutter-step, duck and weave. You do that, and most of the bad stuff will probably miss you, if only by inches, sometimes.
CHAPTER 4 – THE PLAYERS
Every boy needs to have those two other boys in his neighborhood who become his two best friends. In my case, that was Bruce Johnson and Allen Pope. Allen Pope had charisma. As a kid, he was a born leader. He was not a big kid, but he carried himself in a way that made you think of him as big and strong. Nobody ever wanted to pick a fight with Allen because he was so quick, with a fierce determination.
When I would wrestle with him, as we all loved to do with each other, Allen would never give up. Sometimes I was not sure if the wrestling match had not degenerated into an actual fight. He would engage me with such intensity that most of the time; I would be the first to quit.
We did something else that we called body punching. It was a way of standing toe-to-toe with another guy and using your fist to pound the other guy’s body, hitting him above the waist and below the neck as hard as you could punch him. Oh, man, Allen could hit hard, and he stoically took whatever punishment you could dish out.
It probably helped that he had older brothers and he would have to body-punch with them sometimes, you know that rite of passage stuff and whatnot. I watched Allen and his brother Glascoe go at it once and Glascoe was jackin’ him up, and this was his brother.
The boy had heart! I knew that I was not going to be doing any body punching with Glascoe, and none of the rest of our boys was either. I mean, damn. Glascoe was quicker and a lot stronger than Allen was. Glascoe was going to inflict some real pain.
All of us knew that if there were ever any trouble, Allen would always have your back. He was an enormously loyal and honest person who was also a good athlete and incredibly industrious. During the summer months, Allen could always think of something we could do. At that time, it was usually chasing after the neighborhood girls or playing softball. Everyone knows what happens when you have a bunch of kids, with no imagination, standing around doing that dumb,
“What do you want to do?”
“I dunno man, what do you want to do?” etc., etc.
Unbelievably, we actually did that. There was always a need for someone to step up with some authority, and remind all of us dopes that we should do what it is that everyone wants to do anyway, which is to chase girls or play softball. That was Allen’s role.
Running after the girls was mostly a nighttime activity, so boy did we play a lot of softball. That is a fact that somewhat goes against the conventional wisdom at the time regarding black boys and inner-city sports. Everyone would think that we would be playing basketball, but we rarely ever did.
For one thing, there was no safe basketball court nearby, and for another, man... we just really liked playing softball. We would be out there in the back alley lot, in that blistering hot Baltimore summer heat and humidity, sometimes from 10:00 AM until 7:00 PM. The scores would be like, 120-98 or 143-120.
Most of the players for our marathon games were our age or slightly younger, a few of them slightly older. There were guys like our boy William Newman, who liked to pitch and who liked to suck on his middle two fingers. Once, while crossing a street, a motorcycle struck William, because after he was more than halfway across and the light suddenly changed, he decided to run back rather than continue on to the other side.
“Why run back William? You were almost to the other side.”
William never had an answer for that question. He would only giggle.
That story always cracked us up.
There was one girl, Joanne, who often played with us. She was a thick girl with strong arms, short powerful legs and a gruff, loud speaking voice. Joanne always talked non-stop. That damn Joanne could hit a baseball too. She could embarrass you if you were not a very good, fast pitcher. Other than big ol’ Butch, nobody threw hard enough, except maybe Allen.
When she was not playing ball with us she would sometimes chase us around the neighborhood, which was weird fun, especially since nobody ever knew why she was chasing us. Maybe it was just because we were running. It was like one of those “chicken or the egg?” things. I do not know.
If she did catch you, she would usually just grab you, kind of hug you very tightly, maybe try to kiss you, and then let you go. That was it. The whole thing did not make a whole lot of sense but it was something to do. She especially liked hugging the one guy Butch who was a couple of years older than the rest of us, but who would play ball with us anyway, Joanne luuved Butch.
I have heard it said that Joanne was a little “slow” mentally, and people would make fun of her at times. I never saw anything to substantiate her as “slow”. She was talkative and slightly goofy at times, like everybody else. As far as I can tell, her life in later years all but completely refuted what people were saying. She went on to become an honor student in college, a good athlete, and appeared headed for an exemplary life.
That is, until someone pumped a bullet into her body and left her to die on the side of a road somewhere far from Harlem Park, in Baltimore County. That is what I heard anyway. All of Harlem Park grieved for her. All of Baltimore City grieved for Joanne. People sure did seem to like Joanne after that happened. How fucked up is that?
Anyway, the core group of players for our softball games consisted of Allen, Bruce, Butch and me. All of us developed whatever skills we were to possess as softball players out there on our makeshift baseball field on the back alley lot. Quite honestly many of us did become pretty good players. We understood the rules of the game reasonably well, and we were all avid fans of the Baltimore Orioles, who were an exciting baseball team around that time.
Butch fueled much of our interest in professional baseball. Since he was older and had a job working in Adam’s drugstore he could afford to go to the Oriole games at Memorial Stadium. Butch had us all wanting to go. Sometimes we did.
Although all of us had TV sets at home, what we really liked to do was to listen to the Oriole games on the radio as the old folk did, with the mellifluous voice of Chuck Thompson doing the play-by-play. When somebody like Brooks Robinson would hit a home run, he had this great way of saying, “And ain’t the beer cold!”
Allen’s grandmother, Ms. Katie, who lived on the third floor of their house, always had her radio tuned to the Orioles games. Sometimes we would listen to the game with her. She liked to impress us with her knowledge of the game – which was considerable. I learned what a grapefruit game was from Ms. Katie.
CHAPTER 5 – ROLE MODELS
All of us paid close attention to what the older guys were doing. They were our immediate (day-to-day) role models for what it took to be a man, although none of us thought of it that way then. We were lucky; they were good guys. They were not perfect, but nobody is.
After those softball games we would often go back to Allen’s house for water, most of the time without Butch, who often had to work. Usually Allen, Bruce and me would go in through Allen’s back yard and enter a door that opened to the basement of his house.
That basement could be a cool place to be on a hot day. Allen and his two older brothers shared the basement as their living quarters. It was not a “finished basement.” It was a rustic arrangement with a lot of pipes and vents around, but made considerably more comfortable by the creative handiwork of Hubert and Glascoe, complimented by Allen’s artwork. This was the place where they would entertain their women. You had to hook it up as best you could, you understand. They scrubbed it down, put up some soft low lights, curtains, and a couple of posters or whatever. It was not the Belvedere hotel, but it would do.
Everyone knew that if you came up to that cellar door, either from the entrance on the first floor inside the house or the backyard entrance, if that door was locked - don’t even knock. Just Leave. Even Ms. Alma, an absolutely righteous woman, generally adopted a don’t ask - don’t tell policy regarding her boys in the cellar.
We were allowed down there whenever Hubert and Glascoe were “without woman”, as it were. Most of the time, Hubert was a lot more accommodating about things than Glascoe (who never hesitated to tell us to beat it). Sometimes, Allen would bravely bang on the first floor cellar door anyway.
“Hey Glascoe, I need to get that new football. We’re gettin up a real game with some boys.”
After a few moments, Glascoe would yell up, “I’m busy.”
“You can just throw it up the stairs Glascoe, I’ll catch it”
There would be another long pause.
“Go away fool.”
That would bring us all to the door whining and begging, “Aw, C’mon Glascoe. We wanna use the good ball.”
Pause.
“Go on fools,” we can hear him and the girl laughing at us.
Then, Allen gets an idea, “Hey Glascoe, why don’t you just throw it out the back door to the backyard?”
Allen knew that this would not require much effort from Glascoe. He could do it and quickly get back to what he was doing.
There was a slightly different kind of pause, then “Go away fool.”
Allen looked at us and said excitedly, “C’mon y’all.”
All of us would then crowd out of the front door and run around the block to the backyard. The football would be sitting there on the ground, rocking back and forth. That Glascoe.
Often, in the relative cool of Ms. Alma’s cellar, we would end up just sitting around doing nothing in particular, perhaps enjoying a frozen-cup (frozen flavored-syrup and water) and some cookies we had purchased for a dime from Ms. Mary’s house across the way. Ms. Mary was the mother of Ben (the crybaby) and Tony P, who played softball with us. She would make extra money by selling frozen-cups. She also sold cookies she baked herself, a tasty combination on a hot afternoon.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew about Ms. Mary’s impromptu store. A large part of its appeal for us boys was that her daughter, whom everyone called Sister, served those treats up. Sister was one healthy girl. She had nice legs and a bodacious ass that we coveted, despite the fact that we did not know (that we really did not know) exactly what we would do with it. She liked to wear cut-off jeans.
Even at the tender age of nine or ten, we were not very naive about matters regarding sex. As far back as seven-years- old, in my old neighborhood of Cherry Hill, I can remember fooling around with one of my sister’s older girl friends while in a closet in our house. When we came out, my sister Plum demanded to know what we were doing.
“I was looking all over for y’all. Were y’all in that closet all this time? Oooooh! I’m gonna tell. I know what y’all were doing.”
Her girlfriend counters with a smile and some attitude, “what were we doin’ Plum?”
My sister was not about to back down, even though she was younger.
“Let me smell your fingers. I know you. I know you were doing something with him.”
Her girlfriend says, “Plum ain’t no way I’m lettin’ you smell my fingers.”
Plum fires back, “See, I’m not asking to smell your fingers… I did not say that I wanted to smell your fingers - see, but he’s gonna’ let me smell his fingers. Y’all know you were doing something nasty.”
The whole time I ‘m trying to sneak a whiff of my fingers to see what she was talking about, but she was looking right at me. When she grabbed my hand, I let her smell my fingers, and Plum looked confused.
“Well...I’m not sure if I can smell anything. She must have just taken a bath or something, but y’all can’t be hiding in my Mom’s closet like that.”
You have to wonder how my sister knew about this sort of stuff anyway. To this day I don’t know why she could not smell anything, because I sure ‘nuff did have my hands inside that girl’s panties. My fingers were between her legs, inside her vagina, finger popping her, something she had shown me how to do. I remember the warm musky smell.
That was a narrow escape.
Any chance we got, we would assail Allen’s older brothers with blunt questions about girls, sex, titties, kissing, and they were glad to talk to us - some of the time. Also, since I was an avid reader of just about anything, I spent untold hours looking for books, pictures, sympathetic older girls, anything or anyone who could help me unravel the mysteries of sex. Then, I would share any information I could gather with my boys Allen and Bruce. That was my role.
Allen could make good use of the information since he was a good-looking kid with nice wavy-hair and everything. Wavy-hair went a long way with the girls in the black community. Girls found him attractive and he had the confidence and self-possession to capitalize on that. I was a bit awkward, but some girls thought I was kind of cute. Then, there was our boy Bruce...
CHAPTER 6 – BRUCE
Bruce Johnson was our neighborhood’s approximation of the poor little rich kid. Sure, his family was not all that much better off than our families, but his life was unquestionably a tad softer than ours was. He lived with his Mom, his Dad and older brother Lawrence, on Calhoun Street. They had been in the neighborhood longer than either Allen or me.
Bruce’s Dad was out there working hard every day, which enabled him to take good care of his wife and two boys. He had a very good job as a manager of an Electrical Warehouse and their family lived in an apartment rather than renting a row house as our families did. Having such a great job and only two children meant Bruce’s father had a few extra dollars for other amenities, like ample food, summer camp and a car.
One might assume that Bruce would have been successful with the ladies. He had a pleasant round face, which made him look almost stocky when compared with most of us. He was light-skinned, that was another plus with black folk, and he had hazel eyes and nice hair.
Yet, most of the girls gave him a hard time. I mean, he was kind and generally well liked, but the girls were reluctant to spend any time with him on an intimate basis. However, any possibility of understanding Bruce must include some specific mention of the role his mother, Ms. Sarah, played in his life.
As we all used to say, “Ms. Sarah was a trip.”
Taking care of her youngest boy Bruce appeared to be Ms. Sarah’s primary reason for living. Our boy Bruce was spoiled rotten, and unashamedly so. There were times, although rare, when we would go to Bruce’s house to hang out. This did not occur often because his Mom had a tendency to nag him, something that he hated, and something that was painful for us to witness.
Nonetheless, it was simply stunning for us to see how his mother would cater to him, as though he was completely helpless. Bruce would say, “What else does she have to do?” Ms. Sarah never worked a day outside of her home, and as a result, she was able to be an omnipresent force in the life of her baby boy. From her perch in their second floor kitchen window, she had an outstanding vantage point for observing the moment-to-moment movements of her boy in the back alley playground.
A few kids were plainly jealous of Bruce and openly resentful of the relative opulence in which he lived in Harlem Park. For this reason, they would pick on him, and Bruce had to do a good deal of fighting. It was always over some dumb stuff, but Bruce lacked the physical presence or the quick thinking to talk trash and bluff his way out of trouble.
This one kid in particular, Black Jesus, was always up in Bruce’s face. He was very, very dark skinned and he did not actually live in the immediate area, but was a regular fixture in the back alley. His real name was Gregory, but in those years, when people still thought of black folk as Colored or Negroes, one of the worst things you could call somebody was black, and since not very many people liked Gregory, he somehow acquired the nickname of Black Jesus. It could be that the Jesus part of his name helped to soften the insult of calling him Black.
I have often felt that some darker-skinned black folk, like Gregory, were ornery simply because the rest of us black folk could treat them so cruelly solely due to their skin tone. They might be subjected to discrimination from white folk, which they could somewhat understand - but from their own people?
When Ms. Sarah would see Black Jesus bothering Bruce, and invariably come outside to intervene, Black Jesus refused to back off one inch. He would sometimes verbally tear into Ms. Sarah with little respect for her age or the fact that she was someone’s Mom.
Yet, even though nobody liked Black Jesus very much and we all hated the way he would disrespect Bruce’s Mom, usually no one would get involved because there was something of a feeling that Bruce’s Mom should never have come out there to fight Bruce’s battles in the first place.
Besides, Black Jesus was not stupid enough to assault Ms. Sarah physically, because then the whole neighborhood would have been honor-bound to kick his ass. Mostly what he did was a lot of mouthing off.
You would see Black Jesus and Bruce out in the alley locked in the usual street fight pose, where the two guys stand face to face with one guy’s chest pushed up against the other guy’s chest, trying to stare one another down. Bruce is too puffed-up angry to speak. Black Jesus is at his most belligerent.
“I ain’t scared of none of y’all niggas around here. That’s right Bruce…and I ain’t scared of your boy Allen or that tall skinny nigga.”
“Shut the fuck up Black Jesus,” I say.
“I ain’t scared of you man,” he spits back.
“Let’s go Bruce.” Ms. Sarah has come up behind us and I am really hoping she did not hear me cussing.
“And I ain’t gonna run just ‘cause your Moms is out here. Ain’t nobody out here scared of your Moms. Shit. I should bang you in your face right now…right in front of her. She always is tryin’ to fight for you. Why you don’t let him fight his own battles Ms. Sarah?”
Ms. Sarah barely looks at Black Jesus.
“He is not that important Brucie. You don’t have anything to prove to that boy.” She quietly pleads with Bruce.
Actually, Black Jesus knows that it would be best if this whole thing de-escalates, before he has to fight the whole neighborhood.
He says, “And she bet’ not put her hands on me ‘cause then…. I don’t know…but I would have to bring a whole lotta niggas down here.”
There was a chorus of, “Yeah…sure” at this declaration.
Anyone who knows Black Jesus knows there is no way that anybody is going to come around here to fight for his benefit.
The whole time he is talking, he has to keep his face like 1/4 inch away from Bruce’s face. Of course, he is spitting all over Bruce, but Bruce cannot punk out and leave.
Ms. Sarah could hear everything Black Jesus was saying. She was standing her ground smartly, being careful not to give him a reason to come after her.
“Come on Brucie. You don’t have to fight with him. Just get your stuff and come on home. Let’s go home Bruce, now!”
Bruce was holding his ground as well. We could see that he had made up his mind to give Black Jesus a good fight today. Black Jesus could probably sense it too. Wisely, they eventually walked away from each other. The thing is – if your Mom comes out there too much, it is not good. That’s all I’m trying to say.
Stuff like that did not do a lot to help with Bruce’s standing in the neighborhood pecking order. Unfortunately, Bruce had no leadership ability and he was not a very good athlete; two attributes which might have improved matters for him.
In fact, he was that kind of kid who, when we were playing tackle football on a dirt-covered patch of that glass strewn back alley playground, would be the only kid wearing football pants, kneepads, shoulder pads and a helmet (well, maybe one other kid might have a beat-up helmet on). Then, when there was a big pile-up of players on the ground, Bruce would all too often be the only one to come out of it badly injured, even with all those pads and shit on. It became a running joke.
However, he was shrewd enough to hook-up with Allen and me, and that gave him legitimacy enough on our little playground. Bruce does deserve some credit for trying. He worked at sports steadily, and over the years, he became a much-improved athlete in many respects. Always he had a good heart. I remember once seeing his eyes glaze over at the sight of a homeless woman.
“Do I detect a tear in your eye, man?” I asked.
Bruce was staring at her, lost in thought, and he answered without taking his eyes away from the old woman.
“I just hate to see an old lady doing bad like that. I look at her and it makes me think, what if she was my Mom?”
His reaction to her was intense even for him. It mystified me, and I thought I knew him well.
Fortunately, Bruce knew how to make the right friends and that is not a bad thing to know in a place like Harlem Park. As best we could, we covered for him and defended him because he needed our help. In many cases, the best way to help him was to let a fight happen, once it developed. We made sure to stay close, to insure that it was a fair fight.
Really, the last thing any of us wanted was trouble. Still, even if you did everything to avoid it, in Harlem Park trouble could find you.
Then, there are always those who cannot seem to survive without purposefully cultivating danger. One of our boys, Huggie, was a perfect example of that sort.
CHAPTER 7 – OUTLAWS
The boys and I did our best to be good guys. Whenever we could, we tried to find some odd job to make a few pennies, thereby avoiding the temptation of petty thievery in the neighborhood stores. We also went to school everyday and none of us played hooky even though that was something many kids did. Together, the three of us made a conscious decision that we would not use a lot of profanity (maybe some for effect). We simply decided that we did not want to be cussing all the time, like some of the other kids.
Jumping on the back bumper of the old transit buses and hitching a ride for a few blocks, while holding on for dear life, was a big thing then. For some guys, this was their sole means of transportation for riding downtown or just getting around looking for some trouble. A bus would come by, and I’d see crazy-ass Sponge (Carlton Dixon) leaning from the back bumper, waving. I wanted to try it. I hopped on the back of an idling bus once, but jumped off after it had only gone a few feet. I was a coward.
We did not smoke cigarettes and we had not developed an interest in alcohol or drugs. Lots of kids our age did some of these things to varying degrees. However, in our corner of Harlem Park it was not so terrible to be a moderately decent kid. At least no one ever had to come and pick us up from jail.
We had this friend, Huggie, who was also in our class at school. He often hung out with the three of us. Huggie lived with his mother Ms. Bobbie and his younger brother on Calhoun Street, in the same block as Bruce. He was a so-so student in school, choosing to disguise his academic deficiencies by being a cut-up.
Despite this, we liked Huggie and he was welcome to spend as much time with us as he wanted. He did come around intermittently, but there would be long stretches when we would not see him. It was not very hard to guess what he might be doing.
At some point early on, it became clear to us that Huggie had made the decision to be a tough guy, an outlaw. We would see him running with some rough boys, the kind of guys who were sure to lead you into situations that would get you hurt at the very least, killed in the worst-case scenario.
Huggie was hanging out with two boys in particular. The lesser of the two bad guys, was a guy named Tyrone Lewis, who would later earn the nickname of “Wine.” Wine lived on Calhoun Street on the same block as Bruce and Huggie. Wine’s sister was Joanne, the gruff girl with whom we played softball, and who was found shot dead.
Wine was a homeboy but he was a rough customer who was already way beyond the control of his mother. He knew all of us kids by our names and he was about two or three years older than we were. Wine hung out with Sammy who was Wine’s cousin (supposedly). Sammy was one cruel, sadistic, and rotten son-of-a-bitch.
For us, having to live in fear of Sammy, and the few dumb thugs who followed him around everywhere like puppies, was bad enough; but Sammy would never show up with only his flunkies. When you saw Sammy, there were always two or three big-ass German shepherd dogs or Pit Bulls, tugging him along. These dogs were way scary and vicious. Sammy did everything he could to keep them hungry and angry, usually by beating the shit out of them.
On several nightmarish occasions, we would be out playing in the back alley lot when we would see Sammy and his squad turn the corner with those dogs. Everybody with any sense knew to drop everything and find something high on which to start climbing, and it had better be high enough so that the dogs could not easily drag you down from it.
Once, when we were around twelve or so, we were playing softball in the spacious new playground at Harlem Park Junior High, when someone started yelling.
“Run y’all, here comes Sammy...Sammayyyy!”
We looked up to see Sammy and those German shepherds coming through the gates and heading straight towards us. He was still easily about a hundred yards away, but this time Sammy let those dogs run ahead of him sending terrified kids running and screaming before them.
One good thing about the new playground was that the walls surrounding it were high, and topped-off with a very high chain link fence. If you ran at the wall with some speed, you could vault high enough to pull yourself up to the chain link section, safe from the dogs and the thugs running with Sammy.
However, that day Sammy obviously had something particular in mind. That day, he was not there just to harass and terrorize us. He was there to get Huggie, who was right up there cowering on the fence with the rest of us. Not a good sign I would say.
Right away, that bastard Sammy came over and ordered Huggie to climb down. Poor Huggie had no choice. After all, he did hang out with those morons sometimes. Looking a little sickly, Huggie resignedly jumps down. We all watch them surround him and hustle him off across the playground, heading north on Calhoun Street. Everybody felt bad for Huggie, but the sad truth is, we were all relieved that he only wanted Huggie.
I jumped down and ran to get Huggie’s Mom, Ms. Bobbie. Those boys were practically dragging Huggie away with them and despite his attempt at a brave face; I could see that Huggie was scared. While I went for Huggie’s Mom, Allen and some of the others followed Sammy and his stooges, at a distance, to see where they went.
Soon, with Huggie’s Mom, Ms. Bobbie, following behind me, I began slowly jogging north on Calhoun Street in the direction I had last seen everyone headed. Up ahead, we could see Allen and the others peeking up an alley. That is when Ms. Bobbie, knowing that her child was in trouble, went charging by me up that alley and man - she was pissed! What she saw when she got back there must have truly horrified her.
Sammy and two kids everyone knew as The Twins were holding a badly bruised and bloodied Huggie suspended in the air above their heads and dangling him over a fence surrounding someone’s backyard. Inside the yard was an enormous German shepherd that was somewhat legendary in Harlem Park for its size and its viciousness. I would have bet money that Sammy was planning to steal that dog, and Huggie was some kind of bait.