GHETTO SKETCHES, 2021

It’s more than a Black thang yawl. It’s a White, Black, Brown & Asian…thang. An American thang. The “Ghetto Sketches” was written in 1962, published in 1972. The ghettos in Chicago (North, South, Westside) provided the foundation for the novel. As you read these pages, keep in mind, The “Sketches” happened in a time frame when there were few community programs to help people with drug issues, alcohol addiction, racism. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, as indicated in this “Ghetto Sketches, 2021”. Bright Moments, Odie Hawkins Saturday Night Saturday nightany Saturday the main stem sizzles and crackles with the flicker of neon lights, the popping of stale fish grease, the mad aroma of bar-be-cued ribs, steamin’ chit’lins, boiled greens, candied yams, ham hocks ‘n thangs and the horny sounds of people in love with the night. The stem swirls in a straight line down 47th Street, heading for Buttermilk Bottom, the Fillmore District, Crenshaw, or the dusty, crusty surface of Gwinnett Street in deepest Georgiaor to any other place in the New World where the Brother has had to take his chances. A ramshackle, three-story, rim-shot building, stuffed full of people. . .a ramshackled rim-shot neighborhood, stuffed . . .overlapped with people, uncollected garbage, reeking with swift running Black Earth, Saturday night smells. . .on any Saturday afternoon, in any city in this country, in any of its Black ghettos. The people sweltering through the early dog days of late spring. . . not warm enough to stay outside all the time, but too warm to stay inside the cracker box walls. . .and summer has not yet released its asphalt haze. Congestion is what it might be called. . .human congestion. . .bodies stacked floor upon floor, children swathed in piss-stenched blankets, nibbled at by wandering rats, people stretched out layer by layer, a bittersweet cake, overpowering to the taste. A noise, under the circumstances, can be very disturbing, pushed through thin walls, or beaten out on drums being played in the alley. Jim Daniels twists and tosses around on his narrow, sweat-soaked bed, his arms folded across his broad chest, twitching and reacting to every heavy, accented beat of the congas. Finally, unable to stand the monotonous thump bop bop thump of the mediocre drumming, he springs out of bed, dashes through the kitchen of his apartment, ignoring the strange looks given him by his wife and children, and steps barefoot out onto the rotted planks of his second-floor porch. “Heyyyy! Why don’t y’all go somewheres else and beat them goddamned drums and stuff?! I’m tryin’ to get some sleep!” The Saturday afternoon group of Willie Bobos and Chano Pozos, Armando Perazas, clop to a ruffled stop. One of the men in the alley looks up at Jim with wine-soaked disgust splashed across his face. “Awww shit, mannn! What kinda nigger are you? Don’t you know it’s Saturday?” Jim Daniels, past the point of sympathizing with weekenders. . . “Awright now. . . I done asked you dudes nicely. . . stop beatin’ them drums down there. I ain’t gon’ ask you no more! Why you hav t’ gang up down there, behind my goddamned porch every Saturday, anyway?” The dudes in the alley, pausing to pass the wine and the joint around, look up at Jim contemptuously. One of them, a coffee-can cowbell player, sings out, to no one in particular but as a matter of defiance, “Fuck him, man! Go ‘head and play! That’s one o’ them habitual bitches! Don’t nobody never complain about us playin’ down here but him!” The exchange automatically attracts the attention of people living in the building. They lean over the rickety banisters, smiling behind their hands, or actively agitating the situation. “O wow! What’s that you said to Big Jim?” “You heard me! I didn’t stutter. I said. . . fuck him!” He ain’t got no right to come out here and tell us to stop playin’. We don’t try t’ tell him what to do!” “What’s that you say? Say it again!” “You heard me, motherfucker! I said fuck you! And that’s what I mean!” The other dudes, sitting around on milk crates, loaded, continue passing the Ripple around, sniggling at the exchange between their champion and Jim. Jim hurries into his crib, face creased with an angry frown. “What’s wrong, Jim?” What’s happenin” out there?” Lena Daniels asks him. Jim ignores her question and rushes to his clothes closet, pulls a hat box from the shelf, takes out a .38 special and rushes back through the kitchen, murder obviously on his mind. “Jim! Jim! Whatchu gon’ do with that gun?! Jim?” Lena Daniels rushes after her husband, out onto the porch, and jolts his arm enough to prevent the shots fired into the alley from doing more than harmlessly ricochet. “Git offa me, Lena! I told you motherfuckers! I’m tryin’ t’ get some sleep!” The drummers and drinkers look up, surprised to see the figure above firing bullets at them. There is a shocked pause before anyone can get himself together to say anything, “Hey mann! You outta yo’ mind or somethin’?” The men scramble for cover, pulling their champion drums and wine bottle with them. "Man! I told y’all that nigger was nuts!” “You better shut up fool! ‘N haul ass ‘less you want t’ get a cap busted in it!” Lena pulls Jim, calmed a bit after firing his piece, back into the house. “C’mon baby, you know that ain’t no way t’do . . . ain’t na’un one o’ them fools worth doin’ no time for.” Jim is gently led from the porch, appeased but still scowling, eyes rimmed with dark bags from loss of sleep. XXX Saturday afternoon on the street, Sweet Peter Deeder, notorious body peddler, ghetto entrepreneur, lounges casually against the front fender of his burgundy-colored hog, smoking a cigarette, adjusting and readjusting his large, white-rimmed burgundy brim, pinkie ring catching lights and sparkling like stars as he listens, above the noise of rumbling El trains, street noises, and the music coming from “Li’l Mo’s Record Shoppe, to the brother everyone calls Rappin’ Rudy . . . rappin‘, as usual, on the opposite corner.