Growing Up Then and Now

What are you doing?!

Being a Streetworker at Voyage House included going for long walks with throwaway kids trying to get them to see a future for themselves.  Geri was very bright and already living in one of our group homes attending a private high school on a scholarship.  On this particular Saturday she told me she was high on some hallucinogenic drug and wanted to go for a walk.  We left Rittenhouse Square and walked past the Art Museum into Fairmount Park.

At the Glendenning Rock Garden we stopped and sat next to a small brook running down to the Schuykill River.   It was all very quiet and peaceful – not another soul around.   Geri was being pretty insightful about her life, the world, and her future.   I’ll always remember her telling me how humans should expect higher cancer rates, after all we give cows these chemicals to grow faster.  She was just beginning to tell me about how she hoped to date this Black guy, and what all that might mean (she was a 15 year-old white girl who ran away from the suburbs to escape the racism she saw there), when this tiny man walked up with two packages wrapped in brown paper, one dangling in front and one in back, from a stick he had over his shoulder.

Not another soul around

He came right up to us, didn’t say a word, didn’t look at us (as if we weren’t there), and began to unwrap the packages.  From one he took out a scrub brush and began scrubbing the rocks over which ran a small waterfall.  I had to ask, “What are you doing?”

“F******g Nig***s pissing in it all the time,” he said.  No sooner had he said the “N word” when literally at least a hundred black kids came swarming right towards us.  He gathered his belongings and went off a short distance standing behind a big tree so as not to be seen.  We were glued to our seats in disbelief at how our quiet solitude had so quickly changed.  Each little black kid took a turn getting a drink of water from the brook cupping their hands under the tiny waterfall.

Finally an older kid came up and I asked him what was up.  He said he ran an outdoor adventure club for some inner-city kids and this was their spot to get a drink – the water in the brook was pure from deep down.  Nobody I saw took a piss.  Finally they all ran-off; the little man re-appeared, and recommenced to scrubbing.   Sure enough he then used his stick to set up a spigot for the water to run off, and filled two plastic bottles with his drinking water and headed home.  Geri continued to be one of our success stories and stayed with us until off she went to college.

Not every kid I worked with turned out a success story.  The word on the street was that Hunter had taken the rap for his dad having seriously assaulted his mother because his dad convinced him that as a juvenile he’d only get a short sentence.  Hunter was an angry young man no matter how many walks we went on.  Once I took him to the Puerto Rican neighborhood near where I lived and immediately upon seeing a small group of Puerto Rican kids playing in the street he kicked off his shoes and charged into them fists flailing.  (Apparently sans shoes was the signal for a fair fight.)  I had to race after him and drag him out before the kids’ parents beat the s*** out of both of us white guys.

Hunter never changed.  After I left my street work job I read in the paper where he was killed by a police sniper because he was up on a roof shooting at people below.

Tomorrow:  Streetwork???

High Noon in Chattanooga.  A really Hot August day.  Stomachs filled, but hot and thirsty, we imagined the next car having a beer for us.  (We seemed good at calling our rides.)  Only minutes later a convertible pulled over.  Three guys with short hair and red necks.  Drinking beer. We looked at each other.  They looked like Red Necks.  We looked like Hippies.  But they had beer.  We got in.  “You want a beer?”  Sure we said, and guzzled them.  “You guys seem thirsty, should we get off the Interstate, find a bar and buy a twelve-pack?”  Sure we said (things were happening just as we imagined).  The bar was on the banks of the Tennessee River, “Do you want to take the scenic route and follow the River?”  Of course we said (what could be better?).  “Should we hold the place up or just pay?” they joked.

But it was no joke when we got back in the car and the guy riding shotgun pulled a shotgun out from underneath the front seat and started talking about “shooting niggers and scared rabbits.”  Murph and I nudged each other – a nudge which said it all:  Just imagine they’re not rednecks, we’re not hippies, it’s not 1972; we’re not in the Deep South; and maybe if we don’t act scared, don’t act as if we think they’re going to shoot us, think of them as nice guys showing us a good time, then maybe we’ll get out of this alive.  So we made jokes and said how great it was that they wanted to show us the scenic Tennessee River Valley.

Meeting descendants of bootleggers liking Chattanooga’s 3 borders to stay 1 step ahead of the G-Men

This imagining we’re safe got a bit tougher when the driver pulled out a switch blade and flicked it in front of the rear view mirror with a glint in his eye sharper than the knife looking straight at me in the mirror.  I was sitting in the back seat in the middle with my army duffle bag in my lap.  My sister was on my left (although they didn’t know it was my sister).  The third guy was to my right.  We were all drinking.  After a stretch it was time for a piss-stop.  They turned left onto a dirt road and drove until there was not a soul nor a house in sight.  We all got out.  Yea!!! This is the time to run!  But No, we were on a hilltop, the guy was taking a pee with his left hand and cradling the shotgun with his right.  We were the scared rabbits!

So we all got back into the car.  Then the driver and the backseat guy got out and opened the trunk and had some type of a conversation.  Then the backseat guy got back in and the shotgun guy got out and had a conversation with the driver.  This gave me an idea.  Since they were making plans that didn’t include us, it would be perfectly normal for me and Murph to make plans that didn’t include them.  When everybody was back in the car I was just about to open my mouth and say “it’s been great, but we need to start making some better time, could you get us back to the interstate?”

But I never got the chance to.   The guy in back beat me to the punch.  Nudging me on the elbow he says, “Say, the driver wants to take your girl for a spin in the woods, you got anything to say about that?”  Without missing a beat, without any hesitation, I said, “No, I’m not going to let him.”  (I’ve always wondered if I would have said the same thing if it wasn’t my sister – I sure hope so.)  Well, in that split instant the driver swings his arm over the front seat and I imagined the switch blade coming and my life passing in front of me.  But instead he shook my hand and said, “You know kid you’re ok  – if you were some sissy hippie and hadn’t stuck up for your girl we were going take you out in the woods and beat the shit out of you to teach you a lesson.   Listen, we got to get back to town; we’re dropping you off at the interstate just over the hill.”

When we get out of the car and they were out-of-sight my sister and I leaped for joy higher than I’ve ever leaped in my life – and wished that the next driver was some hippie smoking pot.