{THE GOOD OL DAYS}
Today I"m gone take you way back to when I a young lad roamed unfettered.
That time that exists before convoluted dreams and painful screams.
Crushed dreams and the utter horribility of the reality of life... The realization I mean.
Back to my formation.
Back in the good ol days as we like to call em I had lofty notions, inspired by stories of great men and a couple of women.
I knew things I shouldn't have known cause the world was a lot more real back then.
I tried to remember it all... My purpose you see?
The ability to bring to written life anything that I had seen.
Back then I hated to write.
I loved to read but I hated to write.
I live in the midst of everything cause I was everywhere, a child trying to get the feel of all this... This life you see?
The old wino who came in the barbershop every Friday when I went to get my cut.
Dad either outside or inside or at the bar down the block.
He would shuffle in and tell jokes and shit while the old church men would look on in disgust.
The other men would laugh, the ones from the country and the ones from the city.
Shit was a lot more safe for a kid back then.
Back then I lived in two totally different cities according to what time of year it was.
Moultrie Georgia in the summer and Tallahassee Florida, during the school year.
Georgia was where my aunts and uncles and cousins were and at any given time during the summer I was within close proximity of 30 or more cousins and an aunt, uncle, great uncle or aunt and a couple of folks from the church.
I was what was then called a bad kid in some respects cause I didn't see boundaries, I was gonna do that shit if I died doing it and there was no way anyone was gone stop me.
I wore ass whuppings with pride cause I was always one of the kids who had actually seen somebody get stabbed or shot and by the time I was around 8 I had witnessed some wild shit.
I also liked to fuck with people and would do shit to some of my older cousins, The ones from way back in the days right after slavery, 4th and fifth cousins. My granddaddies, daddies cousins.
Me and my cousin Mike, would hide in the bushes and throw cats out till my old cousin who had one eye would throw his cane at us.
One time he hit Mike and we had to tell his mom where the knot on his head came from.
Wore bout whuppings for that one.
There was the time I in a fit of rage over some small thing pushed my cousins cousin out of the tree and the time I almost put one of the twins eye out with a bottlecap packed with hard clay.
Yet I wasn't that bad, I just didn't take much shit.
Retaliation was always in order if that's what was needed, sometimes it just came in the form of preemptive strikes.
My mom and my grandmom, my dads mom who lived till I was 7, and aunts and uncles and the church people eventually came to the conclusion that I should be left alone and I was accepted in the men's circle, the women's circle and the old folks circle because I knew how to keep my mouth shut and I learned to do what they said.
Mike and I used to walk all over town by ourselves by the time we were around 6 or seven and would pop in on various folks in the family for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
We were always welcome cause we came with a joke and a conversation.
We bore news from all over the county.
I skipped one important aspect of my life... I had never seen a white person till I was around four years old and to say it scared me is an understatement.
I thought I had seen the devil and was afraid to talk about that shit for weeks.
Mike finally convinced me that I had just seen a white person and even took me to see one.
We crossed the railroad tracks and he took me to the edge of downtown and showed me that yes, these people existed and that they were not devils.
I still have problems with that theory though.
My mom was big on reading and luckily I took to reading like a fish to water and by the time I was 4 knew how to read and tell time as well as knew the days of the weeks the month and the length of a year.
This helped a lot when we were around the old men who didn't know how to read and Mike and I would read the newspaper and the letters that came from around the world for them.
Sons ans uncles in the war, It was Vietnam then and a whole lot of brothers were coming home with fractured minds.
It was also black power and in Florida I learned about it.
I also learned it from my uncle Emmitt and my uncle Terry as well as my aunt Peachy.
Florida was where I could show my intellectual side as a child because I had the unique experience of growing up in a college town and being placed in gifted programs which afforded me a chance to almost live on the campuses of two colleges, FSU and Florida A&M university.
Professors were the men who stopped by and played checkers with me on sunny spring afternoons and I tried to absorb every word that came from their mouths.
The Nation of Islam, Rasta, Christian as well as The brothers who represented fringes of the panthers.
By the time I was 11 I was earring and daishiki.
If you want to read more of this story let me know.
Today I"m gone take you way back to when I a young lad roamed unfettered.
That time that exists before convoluted dreams and painful screams.
Crushed dreams and the utter horribility of the reality of life... The realization I mean.
Back to my formation.
Back in the good ol days as we like to call em I had lofty notions, inspired by stories of great men and a couple of women.
I knew things I shouldn't have known cause the world was a lot more real back then.
I tried to remember it all... My purpose you see?
The ability to bring to written life anything that I had seen.
Back then I hated to write.
I loved to read but I hated to write.
I live in the midst of everything cause I was everywhere, a child trying to get the feel of all this... This life you see?
The old wino who came in the barbershop every Friday when I went to get my cut.
Dad either outside or inside or at the bar down the block.
He would shuffle in and tell jokes and shit while the old church men would look on in disgust.
The other men would laugh, the ones from the country and the ones from the city.
Shit was a lot more safe for a kid back then.
Back then I lived in two totally different cities according to what time of year it was.
Moultrie Georgia in the summer and Tallahassee Florida, during the school year.
Georgia was where my aunts and uncles and cousins were and at any given time during the summer I was within close proximity of 30 or more cousins and an aunt, uncle, great uncle or aunt and a couple of folks from the church.
I was what was then called a bad kid in some respects cause I didn't see boundaries, I was gonna do that shit if I died doing it and there was no way anyone was gone stop me.
I wore ass whuppings with pride cause I was always one of the kids who had actually seen somebody get stabbed or shot and by the time I was around 8 I had witnessed some wild shit.
I also liked to fuck with people and would do shit to some of my older cousins, The ones from way back in the days right after slavery, 4th and fifth cousins. My granddaddies, daddies cousins.
Me and my cousin Mike, would hide in the bushes and throw cats out till my old cousin who had one eye would throw his cane at us.
One time he hit Mike and we had to tell his mom where the knot on his head came from.
Wore bout whuppings for that one.
There was the time I in a fit of rage over some small thing pushed my cousins cousin out of the tree and the time I almost put one of the twins eye out with a bottlecap packed with hard clay.
Yet I wasn't that bad, I just didn't take much shit.
Retaliation was always in order if that's what was needed, sometimes it just came in the form of preemptive strikes.
My mom and my grandmom, my dads mom who lived till I was 7, and aunts and uncles and the church people eventually came to the conclusion that I should be left alone and I was accepted in the men's circle, the women's circle and the old folks circle because I knew how to keep my mouth shut and I learned to do what they said.
Mike and I used to walk all over town by ourselves by the time we were around 6 or seven and would pop in on various folks in the family for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
We were always welcome cause we came with a joke and a conversation.
We bore news from all over the county.
I skipped one important aspect of my life... I had never seen a white person till I was around four years old and to say it scared me is an understatement.
I thought I had seen the devil and was afraid to talk about that shit for weeks.
Mike finally convinced me that I had just seen a white person and even took me to see one.
We crossed the railroad tracks and he took me to the edge of downtown and showed me that yes, these people existed and that they were not devils.
I still have problems with that theory though.
My mom was big on reading and luckily I took to reading like a fish to water and by the time I was 4 knew how to read and tell time as well as knew the days of the weeks the month and the length of a year.
This helped a lot when we were around the old men who didn't know how to read and Mike and I would read the newspaper and the letters that came from around the world for them.
Sons ans uncles in the war, It was Vietnam then and a whole lot of brothers were coming home with fractured minds.
It was also black power and in Florida I learned about it.
I also learned it from my uncle Emmitt and my uncle Terry as well as my aunt Peachy.
Florida was where I could show my intellectual side as a child because I had the unique experience of growing up in a college town and being placed in gifted programs which afforded me a chance to almost live on the campuses of two colleges, FSU and Florida A&M university.
Professors were the men who stopped by and played checkers with me on sunny spring afternoons and I tried to absorb every word that came from their mouths.
The Nation of Islam, Rasta, Christian as well as The brothers who represented fringes of the panthers.
By the time I was 11 I was earring and daishiki.
If you want to read more of this story let me know.
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