I Never Had It Made Read Online Free

California would help all he could, but he, too, had heavy responsibilities.
    After a long, tedious train ride across the country, we were generously received by Uncle Burton. He took us in, but my mother made arrangements to move soon after we arrived because we were too crowded. Almost immediately, she found a job washing and ironing. She didn’t make enough, however, to support herself and five children and she went to welfare for relief. Her salary, plus the help from welfare, barely enabled her to make ends meet. Sometimes there were only two meals a day, and some days we wouldn’t have eaten at all if it hadn’t been for the leftovers my mother was able to bring home from her job. There was other times when we subsisted on bread and sweet water. My mother got up before daylight to go to her job, and although she came home tired, she managed to give us the extra attention we needed. She indoctrinated us with the importance of family unity, religion, and kindness toward others. Her great dream for us was that we go to school.
    While my mother was at work, my sister Willa Mae took care of me. I went to school with Willa Mae, but I was too young to be enrolled in the school and my mother asked the teacher to allow Willa Mae to leave me in the sandbox in the yard while classes were going on. Every morning Willa Mae put me into the sandbox, where I played until lunchtime, when school was dismissed. If it rained, I was taken into the kindergarten rooms. Everyone was very nice to me; however, I certainly was happy when, after a year of living in the sandbox, I became old enough to go to school.
    I have few early school memories after graduating from the sandbox, but I do remember being aware of the constant protective attitude of my sister. She was dedicated on my behalf.
    We lived in a house on Pepper Street in Pasadena. I must have been about eight years old the first time I ran into racial trouble. I was sweeping our sidewalk when a little neighbor girl shouted at me, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” I was old enough to know how to answer that. I had learned from my older brother that, in the South, the most insulting name you can call a white person is “cracker.” That is what I called her, and her father stormed out of the house to confront me. I don’t remember who threw the first stone, but the father and I had a pretty good stone-throwing fight going until the girl’s mother came out and made him go back into the house. That incident was part of a pattern. Our white neighbors had done unfriendly things before, such as summoning the police and complaining that my brother Edgar made too much noise on their sidewalks with his skates. They had signed petitions to try to get rid of us. My mother never lost her composure. She didn’t allow us to go out of our way to antagonize the whites, and she still made it perfectly clear to us and to them that she was not at all afraid of them and that she had no intention of allowing them to mistreat us.
    I remember, even as a small boy, having a lot of pride in my mother. I thought she must have some kind of magic to be able to do all the things she did, to work so hard and never complain and to make us all feel happy. We had our family squabbles and spats, but we were a well-knit unit. My pride in my mother was tempered with a sense of sadness that she had to bear most of our burdens. At a very early age I began to want to relieve her in any small way I could. I was happy whenever I had money to give her.
    Along with a number of other children in the neighborhood, I had a lot of free time, and a lot of freedom. Some of it I put to good use—I had a paper route, I cut grass and ran errands when I could. The rest of the time, I stole—all sorts of small things from stores, particularly food—and I was a member in good standing of the Pepper Street gang. Our gang was made up of blacks, Japanese, and Mexican kids; all of us came from poor