I'm thinking of this right now because I had taken a short mind trip back to my childhood and teenage years, triggered by a trip to Oakland to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a California driver's license. I discovered that I was still in the State's records bank, but that's not the focus of this entry...Oakland kind of reminded me of the ghettos of Washington, D.C. and that made me reflect back on my growing up and the switch I had to make from living in a small town to the big city and back to a small town.
I was born in a small town in Georgia named Elberton, which named itself the Granite Capitol of the World. I had spent the first five or six years of my life in Elberton before moving to Washington, D.C. in the winter of 1969 and a few following summers while school was out. I hold dear and fond memories of Elberton as my childhood seemed like something out of one of those Disney movies from the era. I lived with my family in the projects, running around with my friends as we explored the surrounding wooded areas, abandoned houses, homes nestled on the outskirts, dirt roads that lead to mysterious places and deep crevices in the earth. At one point my friends and I started to collect bottles and had a couple of burlap bagfuls that we hauled to one of the stores in town to trade them in for cash. During our trek dragging those heavy burlap bags, my aunt had passed us on one of the streets in a car, yelled at me and ordered me into the car. I didn't get a chance to help trade in our work and purchase slingshots with my friends so that we could shoot each other in the woods later on.
There is a lot I can say about Elberton from my childhood, I'm limited for space right now so maybe I can make it a project for later on. I do remember the innocence of it all; the familiar atmosphere of neighborhood and family. The projects, of course, seemed like the entire world to me as small of a place Elberton was, the projects seemed even smaller. Most of us knew each other as well as extended family members and friends.
Soon enough, my summer trips back to Elberton had stopped. My mother and step-father stopped sending me down even though I begged to return. I was a city boy and I guess it was time for me to become even more familiar with it.
Washington, D.C. was big and scary and confusing. It wasn't very easy to make friends and it seems that real life could be thrown in a kid's face rather quickly. There was dank alleyways, rats and guns. We were told to beware of strangers and to avoid abandoned buildings at all costs. There were stories of kids being raped and murdered and kidnapped. The kids were a lot more meaner and in your face. Where I once thought I was a tough little guy back in Elberton, I seemed pretty soft compared to the kids on the streets in D.C. I saw a man's brains spilled out across the street from my school, a guy chase another guy down the street with a shotgun as he had just busted in on his wife and the guy having an affair, some of the kids thought that they could scare me with threats of violence only to discover that I did not react very well to threats and would leave me be once our confrontation proved to them that fear was something I was not really taught to embrace and being the normal kid I was back in Elberton was nothing compared to being a creative kid in the city which had branded me with being called a sissy.
Through the years, being in the ghettos of D.C. had in a way hardened me as I walked the streets alone and without a fear in the world. I knew what to do in the face of danger. My mother had told me that she never had to worry about me because she knew I could take care of myself whenever I walked the streets. I remembered my past back in Elberton, but it was a long gone life I never thought I would see again.
Then came 1976 when my parents moved us from Washington, D.C. to my step-father's hometown of Bladenboro, N.C. And I was, once again, a small town boy. This time, however, the innocence I'd remembered of living in a small town was gone and replaced by hard labor, caution of gossip and spending Sundays in church. I was coming-of-age and had learned the value of working hard for what you wanted and my part in life as a loner. I was surrounded by a whole new world that I thought I had seen before...but it wasn't. One thing I do remember which distinguished my view from being a child to being a teenager in the south: I finally was confronted with the racism I had heard about in Black History classes back in D.C. It was in your face and rampant and practiced with glee. Maybe that's why I did not gel well with the South. Maybe not. I just knew that Elberton was long gone and Bladenboro did not really feel like home to me.
I mention this now because once I left home after graduating high school and entering the military, I found that I was a city boy: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle and now...well, Alameda is more like a small town: a 4-mile long island that my friend and his family grew up in and proudly call their home. The time will near when I move into San Francisco and it will be another story of me being unleashed into a city. Last weekend I spent an entire day walking around San Francisco and a few of its neighborhoods. I felt at ease and comfortable and anxious. I sighed as I became more and more familiar with the city.
Sometimes, I think about Elberton and what would have become of me if those summer trips had continued throughout my life.
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