by Earl Monroe
I wasn’t playing any kind of basketball at the time, but when we didn’t have a basketball I used to shoot socks stuffed with rags, beach balls, soccer balls, or baseballs at milk crates. These crates were substitutes for a real basketball rim and were nailed to a wooden post holding up the gate outside Miss Mabel’s school. We just made ourselves a court to play on. Nearly every young person in the neighborhood—including girls, like my sister Theresa—shot baskets there and were a part of these games. We would shoot at this milk-crate basket most summer days when it didn’t rain from the time I was four until I was 13.
That’s where I made my first basket, in the milk crate nailed to the wooden post in the vacant lot outside Vacation Bible School. Later we graduated from a milk crate to a kind of rim of sorts. We’d just measure out 10 paces back from the crate, and that’s where people shot from. Whoever made a basket from the 10 spot would win. I’d win some and lose some, but I always had fun, though I wanted to win all the time. Later on, after I started playing basketball seriously, I always thought my game would have some kind of divine intervention because I had shot so many baskets at Vacation Bible School when I was young. Deep down, I always thought something good was going to happen because I shot and played there. I don’t know why I thought this way, but I did. Maybe because I thought shooting at a basket in a religious place would put me one up on everyone else. Who knows, maybe it did.
I don’t remember a lot of details about my first eight or nine years on this planet, but I do recall having a lot of fun playing with the other kids in the neighborhood as I grew up there, despite the poverty, violence, pain, and sadness all around me. I grew up on that one block on Alter Street, and for much of my early childhood it was like a cocoon or small bubble, and it was my whole world. It was almost like living in the rural part of the country, but in the city. Overall, however, I would definitely say the good times outweighed the bad times in my life by a wide margin. I do remember, though, that the neighborhood smelled really bad sometimes, stunk like rotten fish because of all the trash and garbage piled up in the alleys and on some of the vacant lots. People didn’t like it, but the authorities didn’t do anything about it, so we had to live with it, because it was what it was. We didn’t have air-conditioning back in those days—I don’t know if it had been invented, but I do know nobody living where I lived had it—so everyone’s houses would be steaming hot in the summertime. We had fans to cool everything down.
I can’t remember anyone in our neighborhood who had an electric refrigerator back in those days, either—I know we didn’t have one until later. Everyone had iceboxes that they stored their meat, fish, and vegetables in so they wouldn’t spoil. So people needed ice to keep the iceboxes cool and that’s where the name “icebox” came from. (Even today, a lot of older people call electric refrigerators by that name.) So there were icemen who went around the neighborhoods selling blocks of ice and shouting out chants to influence customers to buy their product. They would come around with ice piled high in their horse-drawn wagons or on little trucks, calling out that they were there, saying, “Get your fresh ice here,” or something like that.
The icemen also carried steel ice tongs around with them that had two loop handles and two curved tongs with sharp ends that looked like elephant tusks; this is what they used to pick up the blocks of ice to carry them into their customers’ houses. Everyone had ice picks they used to chip the ice (or to stab someone with in a fight—they, like the ice tongs, were fearsome weapons!). When people heard the iceman’s chant, they would rush out of their houses to buy a few blocks of the square cold stuff. The blocks of ice might sell for 25 or 50 cents or even a dollar to people who had the money to buy it, and fortunately my family did.
But the blocks of ice were used for more than just keeping food cool; they were also used for helping to cool down houses during the summer heat. Ma would put the block—or blocks—of ice in a tub. Then she would turn the fan on and the spinning blades created a wind that blew over the ice and sent a cool breeze over us. It was slick and cool at the same time, you know what I mean? Black people were always creative about a lot of things, and this was one of the ways that we made do.
Those people who didn’t have electric fans would sit out on their stoops—you know, the three or four little stone steps fronting their houses—and fan themselves by hand. They would use whatever would circulate a breeze—a cardboard fan from church, a magazine, a rolled-up newspaper—and they would talk, drink, gossip, and laugh about whatever funny story was circulating in the neighborhood on any given day. And listening to my neighbors growing up there, they seemed to be having a lot of fun, despite the heat.
Winters were different, if only because people didn’t sit outside when the weather turned cold. And when the snow came, especially if it was heavy, entire streets would be covered with the white stuff that looked so peaceful and pretty when it first fell. Then, after a few days the pristine-looking heaps of snow would become ugly, with dirt, trash, cigarette butts, and empty cans and bottles turning the once-serene-looking scene into a horrible mess. When the snow was really heavy, because we had such narrow streets around where I lived, cars would get snowed in and sit covered top to bottom by the curb, some even out in the middle of the street. No snowplows came around to clean the streets where I lived, so me and some other kids would charge a nickel or a dime, or sometimes as much as 25 cents, to dig out people’s cars. Even though I made a little money sometimes, man, was that hard work.
The weird thing about growing up in Philadelphia back in the day (especially for me), though, was that all the neighborhoods were like small, insulated communities. They were like little cities within a city, or a small town within a small town, and seldom did people venture out of those little isolated areas to meet other folks. So these communities were like little bubbles that we all lived in, and to get to know people who lived maybe only a couple of blocks—maybe even one block—away was very difficult and sometimes even dangerous. It was even worse for me, because I mostly only knew, trusted, and hung out with people in my own immediate family. (This was to change, however, as I grew older and started to get out into other communities through playing basketball, though it didn’t change my personality all that much; I still mostly dealt with my immediate family and with friends I knew from a long way back.)
I remember Mom had a big, black dog named Jack—he might have been a terrier, but he was definitely a street dog. Jack would just lay around Mom’s house, never bothering anybody, until a car came by. Then he would jump up and chase that car down the street, barking like crazy, until he disappeared. Then he would come back a little later, his tongue hanging out, his eyes all wide and bright, and everybody would pat him on the head and say, “Good dog, Jack. Good dog.” Then he would lay back down and doze off until another car came by and then he would repeat the same thing all over again. A few times he jumped up and chased those cars and didn’t come back for maybe a week or so and nobody knew where he went, though we didn’t worry too much about him because he always came back.
Then one day, when he was about 14 or 15 years old, Jack jumped up and chased a car and never came back and we never knew what happened to him. It was only after he was missing for a month or so that everyone started to worry about him. Finally, everybody grew sad because we realized he might never come back, and he didn’t. It was a downer not having Jack around anymore. Everybody missed him, especially seeing him chase those cars down the street, barking like crazy. Jack was really something.
Mom was a very independent woman, and although she didn’t go to church, she always kept her Bible close by and would read from it whenever she could. She cooked all the time, though I never liked her cooking because it was different—just like she was different from everyone else in my family—so I never ate her food. But the real reason I never ate her food was that I liked the way my mother cooked so much better; I just preferred her food over Mom’s. Mom’s cooking was for a large group of people and my mother cooked spec
ifically for us.
Now, she never liked this, but over time it was something Mom accepted and we got along real well. On the other hand, everybody in our family gained a lot of knowledge from her, including me, despite her being very different in the way she spoke. When she talked she would use all these Southern black words, like she would call me “Oil” instead of “Earl.” I don’t know why she called me that and I never asked why (maybe it was because she couldn’t pronounce “Earl” correctly). But it never bothered me and over time I just got used to her calling me by that weird name. But other than being different in her use of language, she was a fountain of wisdom for all of us.
My mother worked at a factory until I was older—around 17—and she and my stepfather owned a grocery store. I remember her being on her knees a lot at home, scrubbing floors because she was such a hard worker and she liked for everything to be clean. Ma was always there for my family and she was always trying to make everything right for everybody, and she did whatever it took to keep things running smoothly. I was the middle child, but it was almost like I was the baby of the family because I had two sisters, and so I grew up basically being the only young male in a house full of women. I think having all these females around really spoiled me, because I got my way about almost everything, especially from my mother, who thought I could hardly ever do anything wrong. But everything wasn’t peaches and cream for me growing up—everything wasn’t roses—because I saw some really violent things.
I remember once two guys started fighting right on Alter Street next to my house. I was across the street with some other kids when this started to happen. I must have been about five or six years old. These guys were grown men, 30 years old, maybe—everybody looked older to me back then, you know? So I don’t know exactly how old they actually were. But they were really well-dressed guys, sharp, with straw hats, hip, probably some numbers cats, you know, men in what we called back then “the life,” meaning they were on the fringe of criminal activity.
Like I said, I was across the street from my house, playing by the garden next to the Vacation Bible School, when all of a sudden I heard the voices of these two men rising to shouts. That’s when I started paying attention to them. I heard one of them saying to the other guy, “You motherfucker, I’ll kill you, motherfucker!”
All of a sudden they started pushing each other, then they started fighting each other with their fists, hitting each other upside the head and on their bodies, swinging wildly, tearing at each other’s shirts and cursing. Then one of the guys took out this big knife and started stabbing the other one. And he didn’t just stab him once, he kept stabbing him, over and over again, and screaming, “I’ll cut your fucking heart out! I’ll cut your fucking heart out!”
Then the man being stabbed fell back on the fence around the yard next to our house, and the guy doing the stabbing started cutting into the man’s chest, trying to carve the other guy’s heart out! By this time the guy was bleeding profusely, all over himself and the street. Then the other man started digging into the man’s chest again, this time with his bloody hands, trying to pull his heart out! Suddenly he stopped, took a step back, and looked at his bloody hands. Then he looked at me and a bunch of other kids who had gathered there on the street after the fight started. All of a sudden he seemed to panic, started walking toward me, his face a mask of fury and shock, and I remember this scared the shit out of me. Then he ran by me and the other kids, went up on Cowboy Hill, and I never saw him again after that. It was horrible, really scary and crazy and I think I was traumatized for a long, long time after that by the memory of it all.
The man being stabbed never said anything except for making a few grunts. He didn’t scream or yell out in pain or fear. He just had this stunned look on his face the whole time, like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. Maybe he might have already been dead! Then he slid off the fence and fell on the ground, flopped around awhile twitching, with blood coming out of his mouth and nose, until he was still. It was a terrible, awful, bloody scene. There was a lot of blood everywhere, thick pools of it that left red stains after people in the neighborhood brought out hoses and washed all the blood away.
Now, I had seen the two men many times in the neighborhood, because they lived around there somewhere. They were regulars, seemed to be friends maybe, at least when I saw them. I don’t know, but I remember seeing them talking to each other a few times, smiling, you know, being friendly with each other. Then this shocking madness happened, and it was so weird and unexpected.
When the cops came, they didn’t question anybody in the neighborhood (they didn’t question me, and I saw it all), maybe because it happened a lot back then, you know? People fighting with fists and knives. There were a lot of horrible, bloody scenes and the police probably saw a lot of them. Maybe that’s why they didn’t question anybody. This killing happened before guns were everywhere, and so the fights back then would be mano a mano with fists or knives, and the fights would be very bloody, though I never saw another one quite like this one.
When it was all over I think I was in shock, even though I didn’t know what shock was back then because I was too young to really know what I felt. But I did know that I had never seen anything like that before—or since—so I know I felt real weird, very different, scared even, confused. So to get a handle on my feelings and to get back to some kind of normal routine, I just jumped on my broomstick pony and rode it up to the top of Cowboy Hill, which was where the man who had killed the other man had run. I don’t know why I went the same way the killer ran, because I should have been scared to go that way. But I didn’t think about that then, probably because I wanted to be somewhere comforting and Cowboy Hill had always been that way for me. So I just rode my broomstick pony up there and tried to forget about what I just saw. It comforted me to be up there and it remained one of my favorite places to play when I was young.
Looking back on it now, that episode was the most terrible thing I ever witnessed in my life. It was so horrifying because it was so vivid and I remember it still today, as if it just happened! As I grew older this savage memory became a touchstone for me whenever I thought about violence and death. It perhaps is why I have always tried to avoid violent situations and why for a long time I was so afraid of death.
We called Cowboy Hill that because it was the place where me and the other young neighborhood kids would go to play and where we would ride our broomstick ponies—some of the other kids had them, too—because we really saw ourselves as cowboys. We went up there also to look at the trains that ran by. Some of the older guys in the neighborhood would hitch rides on the trains. I didn’t know where the trains were going, but I knew they were going somewhere, and that really intrigued me. Anyway, I remember another incident that involved my mother and Cowboy Hill.
My mother was tall and fast for a woman. Very fast. That’s why I never tried to run away from her. I remember one day when I was about five or six years old, I was riding my broomstick pony in front of the house and these older guys came down the hill, crossed Alter Street, knocked me off my broomstick pony, stole it, and ran back up the hill with it. So I ran into the house to tell my mother, hollering, “Ma! Ma! Some guys just took my pony!”
So she said, “Where’d they go?” and I told her, “Over the hill!”
So she ran out of the house, up the hill, across the tracks, down to the trestle, about a two-block run, and caught them. She took my pony back and brought it back to me. I don’t know what she did to those guys, because she never told me, but she came back with my stuff. Ma was a good athlete. I don’t know if she played anything, though. I never asked her. She was just Ma to me. All I know is that she came back with my favorite pony and that was real cool!
My mother was also fearless. I remember one time she went into the garden next to Mom’s and came out with this black snake, a garter snake, I think. A garter snake isn’t poisonous, but seeing it scared the hell out of me, I guess because I was so young at th
e time. I still don’t want to be around any snakes even today, poisonous or not. But Ma had grown up in North Carolina and she just wasn’t afraid of many things, including animals and snakes. She would talk to me about going through chests of drawers when she was growing up and finding snakes in there and killing them. Even my older cousins, Jimmy and Joe, didn’t ever mess with my mother, and they were very tough guys.
Growing up was really something back then, really a lot of fun, despite all of the violence. I remember on holidays during the summer, grown folks would roast a whole pig on a spit at the bottom of Cowboy Hill, right across from our house. And people would eat barbecued pig and party until the wee hours of the morning. Like I said, the kids would have a ball because when I was young we used to make all kinds of things, all the time. We’d make our own slingshots, wooden guns that we played war with, and wooden skate trucks with roller-skate wheels we attached to the bottoms of two-by-fours instead of buying metal scooters from the store. We had to use our imaginations to make the things we wanted, because our parents didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend on us. The only thing I remember we couldn’t seem to make was sleds with steel runners that we used to belly flop and slide on in winter when there was tons of snow. So our parents would break down and buy them from the store, even though they were low on money; they just made do to keep us kids happy, and we were.
We also played hide and go seek, games like that. We played a lot of stuff up on the railroad tracks, you know, throwing stones at each other, at passing cars below, and at the white guy in the caboose of the freight train as it passed. He used to get so mad at us for throwing those stones he would shoot a real rifle at us, because we’d hit him sometimes, or the window of his cab, which would go ping! ping! ping! and annoy the shit out of him. Then he would pull out his rifle and draw a bead on us and fire. Bang! bang! bang! would go his rifle shots. The bullets would be ricocheting all over the place, scaring us to death. But we’d come back whenever we knew the train would be passing, or when we just happened to be up there and it came by. You know, being young kids, we were too silly to be really afraid of anything. We weren’t bad, though, just curious and mischievous, but mostly we were just bored.