Pete Hernandez

This is from my blog. Recent events brought old memories to mind and I wrote this. It's all true. Not really looking for critiques. I'm sure there's plenty wrong with the structure. I just wanted to write something real.

Thanks in advance.
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When my little sister was eight she brought home a shotgun shell to show me for New Years./ She'd found it in the street when leaving my grandmother's apartment in Brownsville, NY back in 1990. She thought it was cool. That's the shit we saw in the ghetto; shootings, fights, arguments, laughter, drinking, smoking, tears, rape, abuse, cartoons, barbeques, basketball, baseball, skelly (a game played with bottle caops filled with wax or tar) in the street, Frisbee, drunks and junkies, whores fucking for weed (crack wasn't around yet).

My family insulated me as best they could from all that and it was good enough because I'm not in jail, have no record, no illegitimate kids, no baby's mama, not on welfare, graduated college, don't have a gun hidden under my bed, and don't have a giant photo blowup of a dead relative on my living room wall.

Though lord knows I could if I wanted.

I was talking to someone about the ghetto, or life in it per se. I forgot about a lot the shit I experienced growing up in the projects.

You don't want to remember most times.

We moved when I was seven, out of Brownsville, soon after my mom went out to toss the trash into the incinerator (they used to burn garbage way back before they started used compactors) and found a pool of blood by the door to the stairwell nearest our apartment. Apparently some guy had killed THEN raped the mail woman one Sunday morning and dragged her body up to the roof via the stairwell just a few feet from our door.

I guess that's why hood movies piss me off so. Most of them are bullshit, glorified "I need to get outta the hood" nonsense. Most people DON'T get out of the hood and that's what's so fucked up about it. Most of my childhood friends from Brownsville are dead or in jail. One kid became an arsonist. One guy killed himself with drugs in the arcade we used to play Donkey Kong in as kids. Another guy got killed by his homeboy, a kid I knew and didn't like much, because he owed him money for coke for two weeks. Turns out one guy had slept with the other's baby momma at some point and the money shit just set things off.

I remember the black kids, not all of them obviously, but some, would toss microwave sized blocks of ice off the rooftops of the projects and try to hit people. Those they hit sometimes died. Old scores or hates were usually settled on Halloween pr the Fourth of July. Halloween because you could wear masks and it wouldn't look out of place and on July 4th because the fireworks would mask the gunfire.

Almost everyone drank or smoked weed and cigarettes.

They call it the projects for a reason. They make it like a maze, fill it with plenty of liquor stores, and keep the strip malls close soothe minorities won't have any desire to venture out to the rich white areas to shop.

Plenty of 99 cent stores in the hood.

I told a friend that the ghetto wasn't just niggas shooting each other. It was much more.

The ghetto is DESPAIR, FEAR, FAILURE, ANGER, FRUSTRATION, and somehow love and laughter gets mixed in once in a while just to help you survive a little bit longer. The ghetto teaches you how to drink when you're 15. It teaches you how to hide from the cops, how to jump rooftops, how to lie, steal, obey your grandma, love your friends, fight your enemies…and bury your family.

The worst funeral I have ever been to was for a ten year old kid who died from cancer. This little body in a white suit in a tiny, three foot long coffin fucked me up forever. I can't watch movies…to this day…where bad shit happens to kids. Can't stand it. All because of that funeral. I've seen funerals shot up by rival gangs, broken up by crying mothers and girlfriends. The worst ones are when the grandparents lose it. The centers of the family breaking down tips everyone over the edge.

I remember when my cousin was killed and his father was holding his daughter, who was about five, in a pink frilly dress and sobbing because her daddy wouldn't wake up. I remember he burying her face in her grandpa's legs and crying as hard as she could with bran new tears. Her father, my cousin, was her introduction to death so her tears had never been used before. They were brand spanking new. My uncle just held her and tried to be strong but his tears still fell from his cheeks and ran down the back of her dress. Then all my cousin's girlfriends started fighting over who loved him more and who he loved more and fucked it up for everyone. Stupid bitches were all high. They all had kids from him, like one each making four altogether. Shit I even got high that day after that fight. All the screaming just got to me to I smoked a joint with another cousin to just float through it all. Didn't help a bit. When they asked me to help carry the casket I refused and I still hate that to this day. I was scared and didn't want to carry him.

I carried my grandmother's coffin and vowed never to do that again. It tore my fucking heart out. Even the crackheads came to my grandma's funeral. The hood had weird levels of respect like that. Old people who were cool got props from everyone.

Funerals for gangstas always messed you up. Seeing these big ass tattooed guys crying like babies over their homeboy's casket took something out of you. Something unexplainable.

But that's what the ghetto offered. Death, drugs, booze, friends, family, thugs, lovers, babies, bodegas, games, bochinche (gossip) and strength. If the ghetto didn't get you then nothing could.

The ghetto didn't get me.

But it still haunts me to this day.

__________________
Create like a God, command like a King, work like a Slave.

Check out my artwork at http://www.goofeesnax.com

mammamaia

hola, pete!
hey, this is way too good to be just a blog, sweetheart... i read it in a state of awe... it needs to be read by everybody, not just homeboys 'n girls... you have an incredibly powerful 'voice' and important stuff to say... i hope you'll think seriously about offering this to major newspapers as an op-ed piece...

love and hugs, maia

ps: i lived briefly in the south bronx haitian/dominican ghetto back in '98 and saw much of what you depict so vividly here... the bright side was that i was asked to come by a group of youngsters who wanted to make a difference... but even one of them [that i knew of] carried a 'piece' and was on his way one day to 'gat it out' with some guy over a remark made about his 'mama'... it took me over an hour to talk him out of it... only reminding him over and over about what would happen to his little girl when he was up for life stopped him, finally... so f'in sad!!!

__________________
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Pete Hernandez

Wow, thank you very much mama and I will look inot doing something more with this piece.

__________________
Create like a God, command like a King, work like a Slave.

Check out my artwork at http://www.goofeesnax.com

Pete Hernandez

Not sure how many more of these I am gonna do, but here goes the next one.

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Ghetto Memoirs 2

On nice days everyone would be out. At the age of seven, it seemed like no one wanted to stay in their chicken coup apartment longer than they had to. It was like we were always looking for an excuse to be outside and no one could afford air conditioning. My uncles and their friends would gather up in the larking lot for the buildings we lived in and set up cheap folding chairs with brightly colored nylon straps to support their large asses.

There was no shortage of beer and music and the older women, the abuellitas (grandmas) of the area, would make trays of food and set up camp under The Big Tree on the other side of the chain link fence that surrounded the parking lot. The women would have folding chairs made of plastic and small card tables set up to support the condiments while the food was being grilled. Just about every adult smoked cigarettes and my uncles and their boys would "go for walks to the store" every hour or so. Later on I found out they were either smoking weed or doing blow on the little cement tables set up around the benches. These tables had checker boards painted on them that no one used except for the old guys.

We'd play Frisbee or Cowboys and Indians. When we played Cowboys and Indians we had to make our weapons. Whoever was lucky enough to have a plastic water gun shaped like a .44 Magnum or a .38 would be the cowboy and the rest of us would be Indians. We made bows out of thin branches with string strung from one end to another as tight as we could get it. We made arrows out of the straws local coke heads would leave around in the grass because those straws flew better being as they were cut in half and at an angle. We'd split one end of the straw with a knife from any one of the guys in the parking lot and carefully place a fat leaf into the slit to help it fly. We pulled thorns from these bushes and used them as the arrow heads. They hurt like Hell and we always wound up with a nice collection of little bloody pin prinks on our fingertips by the end of the day.

You could re-use your arrows until they crumbled. The men would watch us run around and shoot at one another and laugh and cheer us on. The woman, while cooking, would look over and frown and warn the men that we were gonna get hurt. The men told them that was how we were gonna learn. Someone always got hurt. Some kid either fell out of a tree he climbed to get out of the reach of the water guns or someone would disagree with the "killing shot" (you had to leave the game when you got shot) and a fight would ensue. The adults would break up the fight begrudgingly and we were sent to our moms who'd scold us for fighting our friends.

When cowboys and Indians was over there was always Crazy Manhunt where we had to hide around the projects and whoever was IT had to seek us out and if they touched us we were dead and had to help find the remaining kids. Any girls that played were tomboys and we hated girls back then. They were dumb.

This one day I was riding my bike while the other kids played one killer game or another and some kid tried to steal my bike when I left it outside the local bodega to get some soda. We all knew the owner Irving and his son. It was his son who yelled out that some black kid stole my bike. I didn't get out of the store fast enough and the kid disappeared around the corner like a shot. My brand new five speed, banana yellow Huffy was gone.

That lasted an hour. I wasn't allowed to cry. My uncles swore they'd get it back and one of their friends, Blackie, was the one that vowed he'd retrieve the bike, which he did in record time. My uncles and their friends got to the kid before me. I came running behind my aunt, my mom and some other women from the buildings. By the time I got to the twelve year old he was bloody and beaten and I can't remember if I was happier to see my bike or happier to see his ruined face. Writing this I remember my uncle Ace shouting "Give him to Petie!" Then my dad's friend Fat Ralph echoing the sentiment; "Yea let Petrie get a shot!"

So the crowd that encircled the kid was made of like fifteen to twenty adults. They split apart to allow me entry and I had to hit him. Everyone was watching. So I punched him in the eye and someone shouted "Again! Teach that black motherfucker a lesson" And I hit him again then I started kicking and punching and kicking.

Someone wound up having to pull me off him and his blood was on my fists and shirt and tube socks. I don't even remember hearing anyone when I started hitting him. There was no sound but my breathing and the kid's breathing and the sound my little fists made when they connected with his face. I think I broke his nose but he was crying all the same and by the time his mother found him we were gone. The boy's momma picked him up, cursing and yelling at no one, checked her son's mangled face and started smacking him upside the head for stealing…all the way home. Someone had told her what was happening after it was over and she took her time getting there because she was playing Bingo and "Good for him. Let them beat his ass so he can stop fucking stealin'!"

Some years later that kid was killed on top of one of the buildings. I think it was the one Tyson lived in. He grew up not too far from my family. We didn't go to those projects because they were the Black Ones. We had to stay in the Glenmore projects…buildings 30 and 40 and 1155 because the Ricans ruled those. Pitkin and Osborn (pronounced "Oz Bon") Ave. were our areas and it was our entire universe for a few years.

No cops ever showed up. In fact it seemed I hardly ever saw a cop back then. We never needed them. My uncles all had guns and my grandma hated it, except when someone messed with her grandkids then she wanted everyone shot. The cops that did come around once in a while usually came to grab some hotdogs and a burger and a beer, were the Cool Ones. The "crooked motherfuckers" as my uncle Ace called them.

They were always in uniform and they would drive the black guys off, the drug addicts that would lurk just out of our range hoping we'd leave some food around. The cops were usually white, the ones that were cool with us. Some smoked weed with my uncles, in uniform, some came to house parties in uniform and strapped. You just took it as it was and you knew you had an edge in the street if someone fucked with you.

I was Don Pedro's grandson so no one fucked with me no matter I looked white as snow. I used to joke in later years that living there made me feel like the one marshmallow in a cup of black coffee. Not all the blacks were bad but we only hung with a few. In fact, we never really hung with anyone who wasn't family or closely related, or "like family."

During one of the "cookouts" someone started shooting. It was about two or three in the afternoon on a Saturday (when these things usually happened) and we had to hit the floor and crawl over into the grass to hide under the trees. After the shots stopped we snatched everything up and made for home and continued in someone's house, usually my grandma's. In the evenings we'd watch John Johnson on ABC, then All in The Family, Chips, The Dukes of Hazzard, BJ and The Bear…shows like that. We thought rednecks were cool back then. I remember wanting to be like the skinny Texas guy from BJ and The Bear, or "Colt Seavers" from The Fall Guy. Characters like that I often wished were my dad. There were all kinds of reasons why, but it passed every time we went out with the family and he'd get drunk and show affection around his friends. That's why I loved hanging around his friends because then he loved me and it was obvious.

The monkey bars back then were made out of metal and we always went home bruised after an hour on those things. This was around the time of Ka-Bangers. Two solid wooden balls attached at either end by a string. There was a knot in the center you grabbed onto and flung the balls up and down by swinging the string. At the beginning we all just mashed are forearms with those things until we became experts at it and made the "Ka-banging" sound which was a steady wooden click clack!

All our toys were dangerous. Things that shot little plastic discs or little rubber missiles. I miss my Shogun Warriors toys. Two feet tall and fired all those things I mentioned.

I remember when Superman The Movie came out, man my whole world changed. I wished I could fly and would imagine that whenever a strong wind swept through the projects, bringing dirt and bits of glass with it, I could fly if I just kicked my feet back hard enough. I imagined the wind would take me up and away and I could fly over Brownsville where no one could touch me. Some kids took it too far and fell to their deaths out of six story windows with bath towels wrapped around their necks or tucked into the back of their shirts. It was messed up because then our parents wouldn't let us go outside until the funeral was done. Death was an annoyance back then, at that age.

What the hell did I know anyway? We just wanted to play before we had to go in and shower, eat, and get ready for bed and school the next day.

And still those were some of the fondest memories from my childhood. I had everything I could ever want; family, friends, food, fun, and a little danger.

Like I said, what the hell did I know anyway.

__________________
Create like a God, command like a King, work like a Slave.

Check out my artwork at http://www.goofeesnax.com

Farror

Heart felt, very matter of fact. Nicely done.

__________________
A minifridge... The doll house of the alcoholic.

Pete Hernandez

Thank you.

__________________
Create like a God, command like a King, work like a Slave.

Check out my artwork at http://www.goofeesnax.com

MIchelle

The feeling is there, I was intrigued to read more.

You obviously have a story to tell that would be great for a memoir. So it's a matter of tightening it up and working it out, making it different than other memoirs that are out there. Humor memoirs are the thing now, you lend a seriousness to the art.

You can do it if you put your mind to it, which you obviously are.

Michelle

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Smile.

Epic

It's amazing. It's the kind of stuff that you can see every day, but not really think about it until you read about other peoples experiences.

Anyway, great stuff.

mammamaia

it's truly exceptional stuff, pete!... and told in a genuine 'voice' of such matter-of-fact casualness, that the impact is all the greater... i'd love to help you make these memoirs into a book [if you want or need any help, that is]... i only see minor goofs here and there that need correcting and i wouldn't suggest changing anything else... you clearly know what you're doing and do it well...

keep it up, and get it all in shape to submit, willya?!... this is NEEDED... most people in america don't have a clue!

love and hugs, maia

ps: title is prime!

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"You must BE the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi

kerpoe

DAMN!

Pete very nice job I LOVED BOTH of the stories. Who cares about "structure" anyway? A good story is always better than "idealism." THIS IS WAY TO GOOD TO BE A BLOG WRITING! bravo! keep up on the ghetto memoirs! and such!

CLEVER

I don't know what to say. I never see these things.
I hope you are out of these hard times, I don't like to hear someone talk about the present in this way. It's the sad truth.

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Signatures are totally uncool

mammamaia

sorry, clever... but it IS the present!... all that pete experienced in his childhood still goes on... and even worse, hard as that is to believe...

just watch an LA tv station's news any night of the week... or detroit's... or any other city where the majority of its inhabitants can't ever hope to live as nicely and as peacefully as you can... that so few know the truth is sad... that most don't want to, is beyond sad...

hugs, maia

__________________
For 100% free writing help/mentoring:
www.saysmom.com

"You must BE the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi