1968 from texASS to Kali Xmas

hola,
this is a fave Xmas memory but the set up is a bit twisty.

1964 graduated high school at 16,
expelled from an All Negro college partial scholarship
in North Carolina and return to NYC.
meanwhile Mother's hassles with second hubby escalated so she
decides to move me and half brother with her
back to the texASS of her childhood
that she could not wait to leave when younger.
(she met my future father in frisco,what irony)

so we stay briefly with her money grubbing
soon to be millionaire kid sister and her family
then to some black projects nearby.
i get a job via fedgov and my Uncle Charles
paying 65 cents per hour minim wage
at Lackland AFB handing out wool overcoats
 in 100 degree heat to new recruits.

later i bounce into a Surveyor class
then out again to St.Phillips Jr.College,
once again All Negro and substandard.
i give up on that and get another minim wage job at Joske's
a dept.store next door to The Alamo.

Mother decided to bounce back to NYC and i say
BYE BYE which stuns her that i do not
automatically follow in her wake
and actually think i can survive
on my own two feet.
she leaves and i stay.

now what i did not know was that
texASS is a RIGHT TO WORK
(i.e. right to starve) state
so when they minim wage went up i
naturally looked for more coins in my pocket
WRONG.
pre Walmart my hours were slashed and breaks extended
so that i made not one penny more.
so impetuously i quit
and was told by my boss Neal
"If you quit without notice
you'll never work in Texas again."
fuck it.
that same day a co worker asked if i was going to Kali-pornia
since everyone she knew was going there.
why the fuck not?
had a female cousin in L.A. and
all it took was one phone call to confirm
that she had room on her couch so...

anyway one Greyhound bus later i was in L.A.
and looking forward to turning 21 in
KALIpornia.
things did not go as i expected.
my cousin, who was accepted as a slutty barmaid nearby,
one day brought home and ex-con lesbian thug
who seemed like a younger version of Mother's
second husband but we managed to tolerate each other
and one day amidst moving from cousin's studio
to a two bedroom in Inglewood
a rich white woman in a Buick ran the red light and T Boned
the dyke's little Corvair, my cousin was between
wrecking Mustangs at the time,
in an instant i went from six-five to six foot and my
history of back problems began.

so we got to Inglewood and
i got one of the worst jobs of my life
working alongside many ex cons and miscreants.
this was fall of 1968 and the deal was
we each paid a third of the rent
except
after the first month my cousin and
her thugette managed to disappear for
several days whenever the rent was due,
leaving me to absorb it all.
i was never repaid
and spent that fall and 21st birthday eating
baloney on raisin bread sandwiches with mayo,
which was all i could afford.

so my Xmas gift to myself in 1968
was i got my own studio elsewhere,
$65 a month with a creepy snoop landlord and owner.
so whenever my cousin and her thug returned
they found me gone.
sweet.

so knowing no one and L.A. being L.A.
on Xmas it was like here today in Paradise
in the low 70s. so i took a bus and
a transistor radio to Venice Beach
and lay on the warm clean sand
watching girls in bikinis play
volleyball as Xmas carols played on the radio.
IT WAS WONDERFUL!

i have done a lot of good and bad
in this life and have some major regrets
BUT have never once regretted leaving texASS
for Kali.

MERRY XMAS 
& HAPPY HUMBUG TO Y'ALL.

namaste
mega