Joey Cloudy online

And It Was Sweet 

When I was about seven years old, I guess it was the summer of ’69. My father hit my mother for the first and last time After the fight we, my mother, little brother and I moved out of our white wood framed two-bed room house in Oakcliff 2607 Overton road phone number 214 374 0939 

funny the numbers you remember. into a 2-bedroom apartment on Ewing still in Oakcliff William Brown Miller, Roger Q. Mills, and Harold Bud were my elementary schools. I wish I had good memories of those days but I don’t. This was a neighborhood where being brutal was more important than being intelligent. This was a neighborhood where on Sundays at the Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal churches on every corner looking good was more important than being good. This was a neighborhood where the residents fertilized the roots of their ignorance with fear until it blossomed into flowering stupidity. (hypocrisy violence and intolerance). My uncle Hardy (Harden Lemons) moved in with us while he was still in high school and things got better for me and my little brother Reggie but never a week passed without our neighbors psychopathic brood chasing me and my brother home.

Pelting us with rocks when we out ran them. spit and fist when we ran too slowly. I know you’re thinking we must have been a pair of first class assholes for the other kids to treat us like they did but our only crime was not dropping our ‘Rs’ and being a couple of nerds in a world of bullies. By nerd, I mean we did weird things like read for pleasure and enlightenment. We listened to music other than r& b like the forbidden jazz and that devil music rock and roll. I’ll let you in on a secret about children. Most of them ain’t filled with compassion. They are filled with a hunger for power, vicious, deceitful and manipulative. 

no one desires the company of children except pederast. Why do you think poor parents send their kids to distant relatives for the summer? Middle class families send their kids to summer camp and rich parents send them to boarding school getting rid of them for the whole year. Because every adult knows a child’s true nature isn’t noble, heroic as the characters in lord of the rings but base, and sadistic as lord of the flies. Something horrible happened one night someone broke into our apartment while we were home. so, we moved into an upstairs apartment in the same complex.

One day when the neighborhood pack was chasing me and my brother home, hurling insults like stones calling us punks and white paddies, my uncle heard us running up the stairs with a dozen or more kids in pursuit. He decided he had enough of this bullshit, so he locked the door. My brother Reggie and I pounded the door pleading for our uncle to open the door. through the locked door, he shouted that he was ashamed of us for being afraid to fight and he wouldn’t let us in until we fought. There’s too many of them. It’s not fair we screamed through the door. Life ain’t fair he shouted through the door. “Kick their motherfuck’en asses!” and they were on us. spitting, cussing and punching but this time it was different we didn’t cower and there was no place to run.

So we turned and faced the mob our “…fear our only courage” we unleashed the wild.  We had been taught that there is no such thing as a fair fight in the streets, all laws and customs of civilization are rendered null and void the moment someone even threatens to hit you.  Regardless of age or gender.  We clawed faces, punched mouths, pulled hair, stomped, kicked, bit, head butted.  Crying like babies screaming and howling like wild dogs. We gonna beat your mutherfuck’en asses. We gonna beat your mutherfuck’en asses! WE GONNA BEAT YOUR MUTHERFUCK’EN ASSES! The first rank went down under a storm of black fist. Together we charged into the second wave. Their courage broke with their ranks and they tried to run down the stairs. Too late in their retreat we continued to attack. Kicking the slower ones half way down the stairs to the concrete landing, We leapt into the fleeing herd like a pair of rabid wolves.

Uncle Hardy 6’2” over 300 lbs. of Tyler Texas pulled us off of the poor bastards that couldn’t get away. We were still kicking, arms flailing the air, cussing We gonna beat your mutherfuck’en asses! as he dragged my brother and me upstairs into the apartment. He turned us loose and silently beamed at us and I now recognize the expression as loving pride. Quietly we followed him into the bathroom to get towels and bandages, as the rage began to subside. We saw our reflections in the bathroom mirror and each other. Red eyed from crying, tear streaked cheeks, lips swollen, noses dripping snot and blood. I looked down at my skinned knuckles, raised a fist to my mouth, licked the blood and it was sweet.