When crack hit in the mideighties, it hit Atlanta hard. A crew out of South Florida called the Miami Boys were behind a lot of the dope flooding into Atlanta’s projects. But by the time I arrived, those guys were on their way out. The city was working hard to land the ’96 Olympic Games and increase tourism. To do that, Atlanta had to deal with its reputation as unsafe and drug-ridden. So the Miami Boys had to go. The feds came in and took them out.
But that didn’t fix anything. Taking one big gang out just made room for the smaller ones to step up. When they did, they clashed. The violence continued. The drugs continued. Same shit, different toilet.
The folks at city hall couldn’t accept that. Atlanta needed the Olympics. So as part of the efforts to downplay the city’s dark underbelly, the police department started underreporting crime. Violent crimes were downgraded to misdemeanors and other police reports were being thrown away altogether. This went on for years.
But enough playing dope-game historian. Because I didn’t know about any of that shit then. I was ten years old. All I knew was my new neighborhood was a fucking drug zone. Zone 6.
The Knights Inn was infested with dope as was the rest of the Eastside. Deals were being made in the middle of traffic in broad daylight. Prostitutes on every corner. The robbing crew always out looking for the next stickup. It was very, very rough.
There were also a lot of rumors going around about children being kidnapped, molested, and murdered. It had been ten years since the Atlanta Child Murders, where nearly thirty black boys and adults had been abducted and killed, but the story still loomed large over Atlanta families. A lot of folks seemed to think Wayne Williams wasn’t the only killer, if he was even the killer at all.
For a young boy from the country, all of this was frightening. Culture shock. My new surroundings were so aggressive. The people in it seemed vicious. Cruel.
After spending almost a year at the Knights Inn, the four of us moved to Mountain Park, an apartment complex on Custer Avenue made up of redbrick low-rises. A little nicer than the motel but essentially the same shit.
We were now living in East Atlanta, but Duke and I were still going to school by Ellenwood. I was at Cedar Grove Elementary and Duke was at Cedar Grove High. Cedar Grove had a good football program and like I said earlier my brother was a hell of a ball player. He mostly played linebacker but you could put him anywhere on the field. Hell, Duke could even punt. He later got a scholarship to play ball at Tennessee Wesleyan University. I imagine he was supposed to go to a different high school after we moved to East Atlanta, but somehow he got to stay at Cedar Grove to play ball, which meant that I got to stay at my school too.
?
Since kindergarten back in Alabama, school had been easy for me. Because my momma was a teacher, she’d taught me how to read young, and I took to it quickly. At Sunday school the teachers were in awe that I was able to read and recite scripture from the Bible. So when I did enroll in kindergarten at Jonesboro Elementary I was way ahead of my peers. I finished my work before anyone else. I was praised for being a good student but I knew it was because my momma had given me a head start. I carried over that early advantage as I continued my education in Atlanta.
Like my brother, I was naturally athletic, but I never had his drive and ambition when it came to sports. It didn’t interest me. I never wanted no letterman jacket. I envisioned myself as the guy at school with a nice car. The guy who dressed the best. The one with a bankroll in his pocket. As far back as I can remember, I really just wanted to get me some money.
?
The move to East Atlanta had instilled in me a deep financial fear. It seemed like every month my momma was saying we were behind on the rent, or we didn’t have money to pay the light bill. I’d eavesdrop on her calls and hear her telling my aunties in Bessemer that shit just wasn’t going right for us. I was seeing people in the neighborhood get evicted—something you didn’t see in Alabama—and I became convinced that would be our fate.
That I was still going to school in Ellenwood only made me feel poorer. The kids at Cedar Grove were by no means rich, but they came from working-class families and their houses were definitely nicer than our Mountain Park apartment or the Knights Inn motel.
I grew up thinking my father had money, but once we got up with him in Georgia I realized that wasn’t the case, at least not anymore. I discovered that back in the day, my father sold heroin and coke, but by the time he entered my life in Atlanta he was a full-fledged con artist. Every penny he made came by way of tricking somebody else out of theirs.
Not long after he left Alabama my father made friends with a guy named Tony from Philadelphia. He’d taught Tony the ins and outs of the dope game and in return Tony put him onto the con game. Three-card Molly, pigeon drop, shaking the pea—all sorts of trickery and bullshit.
To my father everyone was a potential mark. He couldn’t turn it off. He had to beat everybody. We might pull up to Hardee’s on Bouldercrest to get cheeseburgers and he’d hand the cashier a fifty-dollar bill. They’d give him his change, and with a quick sleight of hand he’d swap it out with some lesser amount he’d had ready to go for that exact moment.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
When my father got to talking all proper like that you knew somebody was about to get got.
“Ma’am, you must have miscounted my money. I gave you a fifty-dollar bill.”
It worked every time. He might only make a couple of dollars off something like that, but it worked every time.
I learned a lot being around my father. He taught me all his little tricks, but what he was really teaching me was how to size people up, how to read body language, and how to use that information for my benefit. Everything about the man was smooth. Even his hands, they were softer than my momma’s. And he had so many different sayings. I got so much slang from Gucci.
Empty wagon make the most noise.
If you keep lookin’ back, you gon’ trip going forward.
Buddy eat shit and bark at the moon.
Three things I never seen: a flying saucer, a pigeon in a tree, or a nigga or a bitch I need.
Most niggas cross the street, I cross the country. If I get enough cheese I will cross the continent. From Maine to Spain, I can play that thang, because I’m the original Gucci Mane.
As sick as he was, my father’s tricks weren’t paying the bills. When he’d first gotten to Atlanta in the early eighties he and his crew hit the city hard with the cons. People in Georgia weren’t familiar with Three-card Molly, so they tore the town up. But that hustle started to dry up. Folks weren’t falling for that shit anymore. The days of white Cadillacs were over.
Even when he did stumble into money, it was never long before he lost it gambling in the streets. Gambling was his vice. One of them.