i landed in Miami. i say landed, but actually, i just got off the greydog bus. have you ever been to Miami? well,...........I'm gonna tell you that is not a good place for a county green feller from bama to wind up in. those people are strange. they spotted me as a hick at first glance also. not that was a difficult task to pull off, because i was out of my element. i was seriously out of my element!!
i would walk through the streets spinning around looking every where, and bumping into those that really didn't care to look at anything. i had never been in a city this large in my life, and i was mesmerized by everything. the buildings were so tall, and close together, and the people,.................o.m.g.!!
i saw folks dressed in every way. i thought that i was in the land of the village people!! i remember seeing people with spiked hairdos of all assorted colors. yep,...........that's right,............i was definitely out of place!!
i guess i lived a sheltered life back home. i sure was green to the ways of the city. my first day there i thought that there was so many people without a home, and their all starvin' to death. i couldn't believe all the folks that approached me asking for money or food. in all of my being naive,i tried to help them all out with something. i actually felt sorry for everyone of them, and i was always raised to help out anyone in need, and this was the worst place for needy people in the world!! i help them until i was right out there with them!!
i was raised right. there was nothing wrong with the values that i learned as a child. the only flaw was that it was right in my area, and i wasn't in my area any longer. i don't believe that i was ever taught the city version of values, because why would anybody be concerned with them? who would ever leave the paradise that i was living in to go to the hell hole that i was in now?
Miami was my battlefield for a new way of life. i stayed there two years, and i learned a lot of lessons. unfortunately, i learned the biggest part of them the hard way. the bad thing was that i allowed those lessons to change me into something that i wasn't at all. i grew cold, and distant from people. i no longer trusted anybody, and i didn't trust God anymore either. i was a man totally on my own in a very cruel world.
i had become mean and bitter. if there was something that i thought that i needed, i just took it, and you had best not say a word to me when i did. the reason being that we were gonna fight, and i had learned to not fight fair. actually, i had grown to love to fight. if you were stupid enough to engage in a fight with me i had no mercy on you!! nothing would stop me short of a gun shot, and if you didn't shoot well it would just make me angry!!
i carried this attitude with me for several years. actually, i carried it until it just became too heavy of a burden to bare. the bad thing was that i carried it all the way from Miami to Jacksonville, and i had several stops in between. i guess it's fair to say that i created complete havoc all over the state of Florida.
i hadn't been in Jacksonville long when i realized that i couldn't act the way that i had been acting, so me and a running partner decided to head out to California. i knew that if i continued to stay here, and act like i was that i would be locked up more than i was free. for some reason the cops in jax had honed their sights in one me. it couldn't have been that i was a walking terror could it?
the day had come to head on out to California. my partner and me were walking down the road heading to i95 to hitch a ride. OK,............i need to back track a little bit, and tell you somethings about my partner. his name was Jessie, or at least that's what he said that it was. once Jessie and me got locked up, and he had 13 different IDs on him at the time. i really don't know anymore about him than he told me.
Jessie saved my life. i met him in Miami. Jessie knew more about conning folks out of money than anybody i ever met, and i had met quite a few of them. they were my kinda people. the folks that i had come to call my family. the kind of people that i thought that really cared about me. i just didn't realize that i had become as good of a con as they were, and they needed me as bad as i did them.
Jessie taught me about doing things that i never thought about doing. I've saw him do things that i never even considered possible, and he taught me how to do everyone of them. once i hooked up with Jessie i never went without a meal again. i was homeless, but i wanted for nothing. in time we could go our own way, and meet back up at the end of the day with both of us with several hundred dollars in our pockets. which did no good for either of us, because we were both addicted to alcohol and drugs.
we left Miami one day, and got separated in new Smyrna beach. we later hooked back up in jax a couple years later, and started our old games. we got a place together, until we decided to head out again. ( I'm not giving details about our adventures together, because most were illegal, and i really don't want to go to jail now, for something that i done back then.)
by the time that we were heading to California i had gotten soul sick. have you ever been soul sick? it's the most miserable feeling that a person can feel, and i had been this way for several days. i was totally disgusted with what i had become. i truly hated every fiber of my being. i couldn't stand even thinking about what i had become. i was a vile creature, and no descent human being could trust for anything.
i told Jessie to just go on without me that i couldn't make this trip with him. i said that i had to do something different. he heading on down the street, and i took a quick right, and watched him walk away. i was truly heart-broken, and scared. i started doing something that i hadn't done in years. i began to cry. i wasn't sure why though. was it the fact that i was on my own again, or the changes that i knew in my heart that had to take place in my life?
i had gone so far from the simply county boy from Alabama that wound up in Miami so many years ago. i went from the big hearted man that felt sorry for all the tragic persons walking the street to being something that i couldn't stand being. i had become everything despicable that my mother always taught me better than to be. i had become the man that mother warned me to avoid being around!!
i didn't know it at the time, but Jessie saved my life again that day. he simply walked up the road, and never looked back. I'm sure if i kept hanging with him that somebody would have finally killed me, or i would have been locked up behind the prison walls. not that i needed Jessie to act like i did, but with him out of my life i had hope for change.
i never saw Jessie after that day, but i think about him often. i hope where ever he is at that he has found some peace in his heart. i think that we all need another chance sometimes to make it right, and this is my prayer for my friend Jessie.
my life started over that day, because i finally made the decision that it had to change, and i called on my Creator to do for me, what i could not do for myself. that was 15 years ago. have it been a smooth transition?.........surely not. in fact it's been pretty difficult at times. is my life the way i always dreamed that it would be?...............not even close!!
the strange thing is that I'm happy today. I've got back to my southern roots, and the way that i was raised. i was raised a redneck boy with a huge heart for people. i might not show it openly, but it's there at all times. i was taught great values, as a child. i just veered from them for a while.
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