It took many years for me to finally Grow Up; but once I did, I was suddenly engulfed by the depth of discoveries and the brightness of the light that shinned over me. How I Grew up led me from my birth to the streets to having spent 15 years incarcerated for a murder of which I had no involvement. When I was in the tenth year of incarceration in 2001 I decided to write about how I learned from my past and then matured in life while imprisoned and how that subsequently led me to Grow up. I now present to you a section from the opening chapter of my life story.
INTRODUCING YOUNG BONES
(How I Grew Up)
Detroit was a volatile city in the late 60’s and my father and mother were right in the midst of its urban landscape. They lived on Linwood and Dexter, a neighborhood rampant with drugs, prostitution and gambling. Unfortunately, in my teenage years it became a place that inspired my curiosity and interest, as the street life captivated me more and more as I witnessed the hustle and bustle of urban life. Just west of Detroit’s metropolitan area lies Jackson, Michigan, a city notoriously known for being the site of the state’s central prison, the world’s largest walled penitentiary. This is where my mother is from and where she met my father.
My father migrated from St. Louis in 1964 with his family, some of whom had already settled in Detroit in the 40’s and 50’s. By the late 60's my father and mother were living in the midst of the hustle life that so many others in Detroit were involved. My father, nicknamed Pimpin Sam, didn’t earn his name by chance; rather he was a well known pimp in the 60's that turned infamous marijuana dealer in the late 70’s. Unfortunately my mother found herself on the wrong side of my father’s hustle in the 60’s and as the Cass corridor area of Detroit became a stroll for most of the city’s women of the night, my mother sought to escape.
She left my father and that life six months after I was born. My older brother and I never witnessed that part of her past life as we were growing up. Nevertheless our upbringing wasn’t oblivious to it’s reality in the community around us. She went back to school, college and found full time employment, far away from the life of the streets. However, while growing up knowing of my father’s life and his past, I aspired to follow in his footsteps and take on his role as big city hustler, as his name alone evoked respect and admiration from all sectors of the hood.
In the early 80s I was deeply involved in the new emergence of Hip Hop culture. I began breakdancing in the Shahan while attending Hunt Elementary school. I became very accomplished and joined the Uno Express. My breakdance name was Solo Uno. I was one of the few dancers that could compete as a solo breaker within our group. I then began spray painting graffiti under the guidance of Shango. He was from Atlanta and had family in Jackson. My graf name was Tripple C, or CC Chill which stood for Crampton Can Chill. By the time the mid 80s came, breakdancing became obsolete. Crack hit the streets and I was ready to change professions.
My other brother on my father’s side, Ebin and I began the same quest, and together we started out young in the game. I was known as Young Bones and he was called Bird. We were about 12 years old when we started hustling together. Prior to that I had interactions with weed sales as early as the 6th grade. Once my brother and I hooked up there was no stopping our notoriety; together we were the sons of Pimpn Sam, and every older hustler, drug user, gambler, etc. knew of our game and respected our hustle. No one dared try to rob or cheat us; fearing the wrath of our pops and the sheer respect they had for him earned us our recognition.
While in middle school I ran with the Beastie crew. My cousin Jeff Poole had recently returned from living in Los Angeles and was a full fledge Black Pea Stone Blood. He was the first person from the West coast to bring the LA street gangs to Jackson. The iconic movie Colors hadn’t even hit the screen when my cousin Jeff or Jay Capone as he was called, represented the hardest of street culture Mid Michigan had saw. He created the Beastie Crew and although not all were as ruthless and hardcore as Jay, we were the most respected and remembered group in middle school during the late 80’s. We were a small but formidable little crew, such as Tray Capone, M-Killa, Butch, Jamie Armstrong, Donald and Dooney, Dinka, Norm Rock-Ski, J-Wells, Geno, Lil D, GT, Hollywood and a few others that occasionally tagged along.
Some of us ended up being some real cats in the streets while some changed their life. Yet a few others turned out to be classified as fake in the game and are now recognized as either snitches, dope feigns or what is termed “lame.” I began selling crack in the 8th grade and found myself hanging out at the Arcade on Francis and High streets. Ebin and I always had access to large amounts of marijuana from "pinching" out of the large supply of our father's weight as well as that of his step-father Robert's supply too. We had the weed and the rocks and were out there living day to day trying to make money in the game.
I then moved to Lansing in 1989 when I was 16 years old and it was there that the prelude to the final defining moments of my street life took its fate. Having endeared the enmity of most of Lansing’s natives, I couldn’t go anywhere without packing a pistol or pump. I had beef with everybody. With several shooting victims under my belt, most were too afraid to retaliate while the few shoooters weren’t quick enough on the draw. We ran a Westside neighborhood that spanned from Logan to Walnut (West to East) and from Oakland to Shaiawassee (North to South). Our crew was deep. It consisted of homies from both east and west sides of Detroit. They were Pooh, Jeff-Ski, Macktown, Spider D, Big Dave, Big Pine, Nook, Lil Dee, Neke, Myron, Eli, Hawk, Fat Cat, Shon, Tee, Money Mon’e & Mike, Roo Dog, Jamarc, Montrell, T-Bone, Pee Man, DJ, and host of all others from various cities. Roo Dog, Fat Cat, Macktown, Shon, and Vern all got shot in either 89 or 90. They all survived. In April of 91, however, Montrell was fatally killed in a shooting on Shaiawassee as retaliation for a shooting the month before. A Cat named Jawan Mask, the cousin of shooting victim Derrick Oliver put two Shoutgun shells in his chest. This was the result of a beef that started in 1990 when Jawan and Derrick shot Roo Dog. They left him with eight bullets in his neck and back. We retaliated. They retaliated. That’s how the streets were.
My homie Shon, originally from East 8 Mile, notorious as a drug dealer and killer, was my ace boon coon and together we crisscrossed between Detroit, Lansing, Saginaw, and Muskegon. While packing pistols and pumps, dope and an attitude of NWA, little did we know that our tour of duty together was coming to an end.
Later that year my homie Vern and myself were on our way to stick up some Colombians on the north side of Lansing. Before we made it there a swat team intercepted us and took us into custody.
A cat named Young snitched on us. He was the one that had the drop on the Colombians and in order to go get out of a drug possession case, he set the Colombians and us up.
After 4 days in the county we made bail. Knowing that I was going to get some time for possession of firearms, I began my last relentless quest for riches. By the time my sentencing came around four months later in April of 1991 I had made thousands, lost the same in drug raids and ended up serving time in Ingham County Correctional Facility. Upon my release in August of 91 the streets quickly abandoned me as I was out only three and a half months when I was arrested for a trumped up homicide charge in Milwaukee that I had nothing to do with. I became the victim of police interrogation tactics that induced a 19 year man named Marc Henry to falsely confess to a murder that neither of us had any part in. Ten years later I began telling my story from a computer terminal in a prison classroom in Oklahoma where I was transferred in 1998 due to overcrowding in the Wisconsin Correctional system. The year is now 2001 and the pages of my life are beginning to unfold in the next few chapters as I reveal a few Memoirs of my life.
I probably will never tell my whole story or even finish narrating most of it. My whole life was spent in the shadows of my father and that of the streets where I’ve sold drugs, shot people and attempted to take over whole Lansing neighborhoods. I’ve witnessed murder, suicide, prostitution, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse at the highest level. Yet how I grew up is an aspect of my life that gives me direction for a new future. While I’m actively involved with organizations and programs designed to help solve many of these problems within our community that I helped create, I believe my lesson in life will prove to be my legacy to others whose life is affected in ways unable to be adequately told in an autobiography. Growing up looking out of project windows and abandoned crack houses, while loading magazine clips and cooking up cocaine, finding the words to tell you my story is as difficult as it is to tell you How I Grew Up.
