Well I guess I’m overdue for an update. I’ve had a few entries bouncing around in my head for a long while. I just haven’t been in the mood to put hands to keyboard lately.
I’ve been on the East coast attending Granny’s funeral and visiting relatives. Family get-togethers can be a trying time for me. Both of my parents come from huge families so memorizing names is like cramming for the bar exam. It’s really frustrating for me because I don’t have a great memory to begin with. When I’m in a situation where I suddenly have to get reacquainted with people I haven’t seen in some cases 15 years. My mom is one of thirteen children and dad is one of ten children. That number does NOT include another boy that died at birth AND three girls that Granddaddy W adopted. They were children of a friend of his that he agreed to take care should anything happen to the friend. One day something did and Granddaddy W kept his word, although they weren’t legally adopted until they were grown. Both my parents also grew up on farms in rural South Carolina so that was called “free labor” back then. I’m talking about a town so small I’ve even talked to people from South Carolina that have never heard of it.
Great Granddaddy W died when Granddaddy W was just a boy. A friend of Great Granddaddy W agreed to take care of him before his death and he did so……barely. Granddaddy W was not allowed to stay with the new family so at age 13 he built (BY HIMSELF) the house that my father and 12 brothers and sisters would later be born AND raised in. He would sleep in the house alone and go to the the other family’s house to eat meals. The real shitter was the friend was a mean man. He would let his boys eat first and whatever meat they didn’t want he’d let Granddaddy W have. I didn’t find this out until Granddaddy W’s funeral service and it still irks me some seventeen years later. Everytime I think of that I have to remind myself of something funny to calm down. Granddaddy W married Grandma W on the front porch of the house he built. They were standing on the steps to the porch and they caved in during the ceremony! 
Thankfully nobody was hurt. Grandma W was half Native American Indian and she gave birth to all but one child at home.
Anyway, growing up in Atlanta I was always closer to my dad’s side because they were geographically closer. My mom’s side moved to Philly in the late 50’s so I only saw them once every 10 years or so whereas I saw my dad’s side almost every summer, if only for a weekend.
I was often a little uncomfortable visiting Philly because Grandma Z lived in “the hood”. I mean blocks and blocks of row houses no more than 15 feet wide. You have to understand something. While you may call me DT, I am actually Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I grew up on an upper middle-class street that had three houses in the space of a football field. Grandma’s neighborhood had 20 houses in the same distance. No grass nor white people for miles. The kind of neighborhood where if you were out after dark you were probably up to no good. The backyard was roughly a 10×10 foot area…from her backdoor to the backdoor of the house behind her is about 25 feet. The dudes around here were what my friend Harold would call “hard brothas”. Poverty, drugs, alcohol were rampant.
Grandma Z had one of those freestanding tubs with the lil feet like you see on tv…only not nearly as nice. I was always afraid something would come running out from under it and grab my leg while I was getting out. Man, I hated that tub. I was one chickensh*t lil fugga though. I woulda gone the whole summer without taking a bath if I could have. The truth is Grandma Z did not have rats or mice and I can’t recall ever seeing anything under that tub. Nevertheless, I was convinced the Loch Ness Tub Monster did indeed exist.
There was one thing I did enjoy though. Well two actually. Every once in a while my cousin Tracey and I would get money to go to the store a few blocks away. We’d come back with a soda and a Tastycake and all was right in the world. The other good thing was “city swimming”. What’s that, you say? Well there wasn’t a swimming pool for miles but when it got really hot the fire dept would come around and open one of the fire hydrants for an hour or so. All the kids would splash around like it was the first time we’d ever seen water until they cut it off.
I could go on for a while but frankly, it’s late and I’m getting tired. Another reason I had a hard time memorizing names in my family is because so many of them go by nicknames. Once a cousin from Virginia came to stay with us in Atlanta for the summer. Everybody in the family calls him “Handsome”. I think I went the entire summer not knowing what his real name was (true story). I saw him in Philly and he was in the hotel room next to me and dad. Once again I had to ask Mom what the heck his name was….it’s Leroy, Jr.
Anyway, I’m going to wrap this blog up with a shout out to all my relatives that have a nickname. So “big ups” to Noot, Crunchy, Tiny, Roshaun, Handsome, Fat, Buddy, Snookie, T-mont and the 425 others I can’t remember.