(Part 2) - "G" - "The Way Life Is"
"I had a good childhood, I was just bad, man. You know? I just - I had - my momma - I ain't always live with my momma growing up," says "G."
G is incarcerated in Ventress, and has been doing time in Alabama prisons for about four straight decades, since he was a child. Early July, he interviews with HTR for this series.
"My momma gave me to a lady to raise me up - you know - till I got old enough to know that I had a momma. I went and started staying with my momma when I was about 12 or 13. Then I just went to stealin, and doin all this other stuff," says G.
"I am an only child," he adds.
Asked to elaborate on the good parts of his childhood, G continues, "Well, the good part was - you know - I had somebody to raise me up. I had a place to lay my head. I had food to eat. I had clothes on my back. You know. So, that was the good part of it."
He "was not out in the streets like a lot of kids. They was out there in the streets - you know - just living wherever they could. But I had a roof over my head. I had hot meals. I had clothes on my back. I had all that. But it was just me. I was just rebellious, just bad, man."
G first met his mother at five or six years old. They had a good relationship and he was aware she was his mother growing up, even though he did not live with her until his teenage years.
His mother "just wasn't in no shape to raise me - you know - because she " my momma was a prostitute. So - you know - she did whatever she could to take care of herself, and feed herself. So, she put me in a good environment to [get] old enough to be able to do for myself. You know?" says G.
Asked what it meant to G to be a "bad" kid, he elaborates, "Like I said, I was just bad. I ain't go to school. You know? I quit school in the ninth grade, and I just went to stealin and robbin " I just took to the streets," at "about 15" years old.
"Like I said, I had pretty much everything a child could want growin up, but I was just bad," he repeats.
The woman who raised G for his mother until he was around 12 years old "worked all the time, man. You know? She worked, we raised animals, and we had a garden. It was good, man. She was a good lady, man. She was great," G remembers.
Asked about his relationship with his father, there is a silence, then G continues, "Yeah, well, I didn't know who my father was till I got a lil older. But he was never in my life. You know? I had never been around him. And now he's in a nursing home."
They still don't have a relationship or keep in touch. "You know. I been locked up a long time," G explains. Neither has written or called the other since G has been in prison.
"That's why I'm hoping to make it out, where I could see him before he die," says G.
He doesn't have the contact information to write or call his father, "and I really don't want to write to him, or nothing like that, because I'd rather just see him in person," he says.
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