Blogging While Black version 4.0

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

I will make an announcement to my family at the so called Christmas
gathering. I love my family and I like when we get together but I must
say, I do not like the Christmas thing, and that's all I got to say.

In letting go, you have to acknowledge the points in your life where
you let go. With my ex in that last post, I let go shortly after nearly
dying in that car, I no longer needed the things that witnessed that
relationship and breakdown. There was another time I had to let go and
this time I held it for almost 20 years.

I was about 15 or so. My boy somehow got this gun. It was a 38 special
and it was best toy I think we ever played with at that time. In the
mid to late 80's the gun was a new tool in hip hop. It was the
equalizer for those who didn't acquire knowledge of self. The usage of
the gun, as well as the lack of respect for our women is responsible
for the downfall of hip hop. I was fascinated by this piece of steel.
I never held a gun in my hands before, and it felt like real power. It
was so small, but heavy and I wanted to go outside and shoot. My
partner in crime was willing, so we went up on the train tracks to set
up target practice.

We were stupid as kids. It was about 9pm, and the train tracks were
elevated and isolated on this hill so no one would steal the cargo
from the boxcars when the trains stopped. That didn't work either.
Every chance we got, we would 'hit the freights' by breaking the seals
on the boxcars and using the assembly line method to get the goods to
the bottom of the hill and into basements, garages or wherever we
could conceal the items we stole.

My friend had bought a box of bullets from Sears, so we had plenty of
ammo. It was his gun, so he went first. He couldn't even hold steady
because of the recoil, but it sure looked like fun, I couldn't wait to
fire this thing. My turn. I had to reload the piece, closed the barrel
and aimed at nothing in particular. BAM! BAM! BAM! It was scary and
exciting all at the same time. Nothing had ever felt like this. We
were up there rapping Ice T lyrics, so I can somewhat understand
metal heads back in the day, and then we saw a rabbit.

My friend took aim and used the poor rabbit for target practice. Two
things struck me as funny, the rabbit could not get away and with all the
noise we were making, the police never came. I guess you can really get
used to hearing gunshots and won't even think twice about calling the
law. Damn. Anyway, there was this viaduct that ran under where we
were. The viaduct was a corridor to another faction of a street
organization I called myself running with. I know that people were
walking under that viaduct and saw us because we saw them, but with
the newfound power we had, who would say anything?

The blocks east of where my friend and I lived was a rival gang. The
cats on that block tried to rep their hood as much as we tried to rep
for ours. There were times that we would meet up at this little corner
liquor store and get into very harmless fights. We always fistfighted
with them because no one wanted to go up for shooting someone and no
one wanted to get shot. There was this one guy that had this big ass
head. Since we were about the same size, my assigned beef was with
this cat (everyone was assigned one cat from the other side to 'rumble'
with), and guess who was walking out from under the viaduct with some
female on our side?