CHAPTER 1
The beginning
My name is Ronald Hampton born February 27th 1943 in a little town called Englewood N.J. on Humphrey Street. This book tells about my life, which was a journey that seems like only a little while ago. Now, at 67, all I can say is, "There is a purpose that I am alive today". As you read this book, you may come across situations that you might be in right now, but do not give up on yourself.
I remember my childhood days growing up with my mother and an older sister. We were relatively from a poor family. My mother got divorced and my stepfather stepped into the picture when I was in second grade. There was a time when we lived in a two family house. We lived downstairs with my grandmother and my Aunt and her two children lived upstairs. My cousins lived down the street. We had quite a few colors in our family. For example, there was a cousin whose name was White, then somebody, married into his family that was named the Browns. Eventually, we moved next door to somebody named Mr. Green and down the street lived Mr. Gray, so as you can see, there were quite a few colors there.
The Difference
I knew all along that I was different from the rest of the kids in my family because one Christmas everybody got a brown sled as a gift, and I got a red one.
I don't remember a single day that I didn't get a beaten by my mother or sister. When my sister and I would fight, somehow it would end up being my fault so if I didn't get a beating at least once or twice a day, I would think something was wrong. My mother would send me out of the house and tell me to go and break off a switch. What I would bring back looked like a switch to me, but it was a branch from the tree. If it was too small, she would go out and get a bigger one to beat me with. Why she would do that never made any sense to me. Those are beatings you can never forget, and they just stick with you.
I can remember, also, back when I was five, there was a crawl space in front of the house and no one could see it as it was dark inside, we used to go through a little hole. As we were playing, an older kid told me to pull down my pants which I felt a little weird even at that age but somehow he wound up pulling down my pants and he pulled down his and he was trying to mount me. No penetration was involved but that really messed me around. Of course, I was told not to tell anyone and I kind of shut that out of my mind and that has been a problem through a great part of my life. I truly believe that could have been the cause for a lot of the things that I went through in my life and this is the first time I am speaking it out about it.
Kindergarten
I used to love the times when I was in Kindergarten. The best things I loved about those times were the graham crackers, milk and sleep times. When we got out of school, we played little games like Kick the Can, Drop all Leaves, and another game called Red Rover, I Dare you to Come Over.
At that time, we didn't have a television like now. All we had was a radio and a Victrola. We used to listen to Amos and Andy, Phoebe and McGee and the Green Hornet on radio. I remember people sitting around the radio watching it like we do television now, especially when the Joe Lewis fight was on. I will never forget dancing to those records that were played on the Victrola. I recall those records being very large in size and they were called 78's. I loved to dance and I still do, but I just don't have all the moves anymore. Finally, we got a TV and we were lucky to get one at that time when only a few people had them on the street where we lived. It was something!
CHAPTER 2
The new house
My mother had a house built, and I believe the year was 1951. We moved from Humphrey Street to a place called Shepherd Avenue in Englewood, New Jersey, and we felt like we were doing pretty well. Because of this, I had to move out of one school, which was an all black school, where I wasn't being taught much to a new school. This was a diverse school consisting of both black and white students.
I was in my third grade there and it was a little tough for me. I was not a straight A student or even close to that. I had a problem, and I couldn't keep up with the class the first year. My teacher sent a letter home saying, "If Ron doesn't improve in his studies, he will have to repeat third grade." With that voice in my head all the time, this began to play on my mind. I used to wake up every morning to go to school and just pass by it. I figured I was not going to pass to the next class anyway, and true enough, I did not pass to the third grade. When the kids I used to go to school with moved ahead of me to the fourth grade, I really looked and felt out of place with the next class that was coming up because I was really tall. I felt awful, especially during recess time while playing basketball with kids younger than me. Being older, I also played a little better than they did. This made me take some extra effort to work harder to get to the next grade. The following year it paid off, and I did go on to the fourth grade.
Fourth Grade
Music was always a part of me. I grew up listening to a lot of jazz and I wanted to learn to play a saxophone because I liked the sound of it. I took up music classes at school to learn to play the saxophone. For some reason, everybody else had an Alto Saxophone and I had to have a Tenor Saxophone. I wanted to be different. The tenor saxophone is quite a bit larger than the alto saxophone, and I had to carry this back and forth home when we had music lessons. This saxophone weighed just about as much as I did. At least, that is what it felt like at that moment. Finally, the only thing I could get out of it was the beginning of Drag Net which is four notes, but it was just not working for me so I gave up on playing the Saxophone
Ten or Eleven Years Old
I was about ten or eleven years old, and I used to like to hang out in the woods. Kids from school, both black and white, played in the woods after school. The new house was built close to the woods. They were all around us, and we used to build all kinds of tree houses, underground huts, trap squirrels and opossums. All of this was different for me. Shepard Avenue was surrounded by woods, and because of this, Humphrey Street was like a different place. I loved playing in the woods. All the people were different there, and I never figured that one out.
My Dog Blackie
I had a dog named Blackie, and we would go play in the woods together and hunt. This dog became a thief. We would go to this...
