1017 had a rotating cast of family characters who could be staying there at any time. Walter Jr., my uncle—we call him Goat—was always in and out of jail. When he wasn’t locked up, he’d be there. Or one of my many aunties and her kids might move in for a while.
The house was small, 672 square feet to be precise, so things got tight. Sometimes Duke and I got the bunk beds. Sometimes I’d be on the couch. Other times the floor. My granddaddy had an extra roll-away bed in his room. At one point there was a bed in the living room. It switched up.
Growing up, I called Walter Sr. Daddy. He and I were close. Tall and slender, my granddaddy appeared every bit the gentleman. He wore a suit and tie every day. On Saturdays one of my cousins would go to the cleaners and pick up his freshly pressed clothes for the week. They’d grab him cigarettes too. This was back when kids could buy cigarettes. Camel Straights.
My granddaddy and I had this thing where I would see him up the block coming home from the First Baptist church. As soon as I’d see him turn the corner I’d stop playing kickball or football or whatever it was I was doing and race up First Avenue to meet him. I’d grab his hand and help him walk the rest of the way home.
“Your grandson sure loves you, Mr. Walter,” the old ladies would call out from their porches.
The funny thing was my granddaddy didn’t need help walking. His cane had gotten himself to church just fine. But he played along, putting on a limp like he needed my help. That was our inside thing and I felt proud to walk alongside him.
Like many in my family, he had his demons. I don’t know if my granddaddy turned to the bottle to cope with the mental or physical effects of war. Deep scars crossed his body. Or maybe it was something invisible. Whatever it was, the man was a drinker.
In Bessemer most folks drank the wino wines—Wild Irish Rose, Thunderbird—but my granddaddy liked liquor. Bourbon. He had a girlfriend, Miss Louise, and the two of them would get pissy drunk at one of the shot houses nearby until they were stumbling down the street with bloodshot eyes.
But I loved my granddaddy. Every night I would sit on his knee and we’d watch TV. When I would act up he’d chase me around the house, saying he was gon’ whip me, and I’d dive under his bed laughing, knowing that he couldn’t catch me down there.
I was just as close with Madear, my grandmother on my father’s side. She’d played a big part in my childcare while my momma was in college working toward her degree.
Madear’s house was over in Jonesboro Heights, an even quieter, even more country part of Bessemer that sits on a hill outside the city limits. It’s a tight-knit community made up of three streets—Second Street, Third Street, and Main Street—with two churches: New Salem Baptist and First Baptist. It’s known fondly by its residents as the Happy Hollow.
As soon as I learned to ride a bicycle I struck out on my own to go there. I’d get in trouble for doing that. It wasn’t like the Hollow was around the corner. It was a ways away. You had to cross the main highway to get there. For a little boy, the mile-and-a-half trek was a real journey. But I loved spending time with Madear. She spoiled me.
Whenever I’d come over she’d have something for me—toys, coloring books, GI Joes. We’d watch TV for hours. Sometimes wrestling, sometimes Wheel of Fortune, sometimes Jeopardy!
“There’s my smart grandbaby,” she’d say if I knew the answer to one of the trivia questions. “I don’t even have to think anymore because I know Radric knows the answers.”
If I wasn’t with one of my grandparents, then I was following my brother around. Duke is six years older, so you know how that goes. To me he was supercool, and I was his shadow. I really got on his nerves. I would always be stealing his clothes to wear and trying to hang with him and his buddies.
Duke didn’t care for that much, but I didn’t care that he minded. I’d trail him and his little crew on my bike, usually from a distance because my brother would beat my ass if he knew I was following them. He didn’t want me to see what he and his friends were up to. I’d watch them steal beers from the corner store or throw rocks through car windows and take off running. It wasn’t much. Country teenagers getting into country teenage shit. But I was a curious child. I needed to know what everyone was up to.
Duke was a bona fide music enthusiast. He put me onto all the great hip-hop of the eighties. Every week he would go to the Bessemer Flea Market and come home with whatever new album had just come out. He’d pop the cassette in his boom box and we would listen to the albums endlessly. We’d focus on the lyrics, committing them to memory. Then we’d start rapping to each other, alternating verses.
Even when Duke wasn’t around I would listen to his tapes on my own. Actively, carefully, diligently. Damn near studying them.
Duke brought me to my first concerts at the Birmingham Civic Center. The summer of 1986 I saw Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Whodini, and LL Cool J on the Raising Hell Tour. I was six years old. That shit blew my mind. Two summers later I saw Kool Moe Dee, Eric B. & Rakim, Doug E. Fresh, Boogie Down Productions, Biz Markie, and Ice-T on the Dope Jam Tour. What a lineup. When Kool Moe Dee dropped “Let’s Go,” his diss going at LL Cool J, the whole arena went crazy. In 1989 I saw N.W.A perform there. That was the concert after which MC Ren was accused of raping a girl on their tour bus.
The bedroom Duke and I shared was covered with posters of all these guys he’d pulled out of Word Up! magazine. Top to bottom. His favorite was one with LL and Mike Tyson on it. You couldn’t see a speck of the room’s wall, there were so many posters.
?
From time to time my father would slip into Alabama. We looked forward to those visits. He would pull up in a clean, white Cadillac—a Fleetwood Brougham with white leather interior. He was tall, six-four, and slim. He would step out of the car bearing gifts; clothes and toys for me and Duke and a bankroll for my momma. Back then we always knew my father to have some money on him. To me the guy was rich as hell.
As a child I was told my father was a lab technician, which at some point had been true. But by the time I was born those days were far gone.
“Oh, he’s a lab technician?” Madear laughed when I said it. “So tell me, what does he wear to work?”
How was I supposed to know what he wore to work? I hardly knew the man.
The closest thing I had to a father passed when I was seven. Duke and I were in the house when Goat rushed in, carrying Walter Sr. in his arms. He’d collapsed in the street.
I had witnessed similar scenes earlier. I said before that my granddaddy could walk just fine but not when he got drunk. I’d see him falling into the ditch that ran along our street. My uncle or one of the neighbors would scoop him up and usher him into the house. Honestly that was a normal occurrence.