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Saints and Martyrs ˜ 289
wouldn’t take up for us. He just left us there to make it on our own with no concern
for us. I guess he figured, “As long as I keep ’em off the streets and put a
little food in ’em, then damn ’em.”
I remember when we first came up from Alabama, she was talking about
adopting us, and I wanted to tell them so bad, “Hell, no! I don’t want you as my
mother!” She put that intimidation in us; she put fear in us, so I wouldn’t speak
up. She wasn’t a very nice person.
I came to Atlanta in 1986 from Florida. In 1977 a lot of bad things happened
to me. First, my father died, and then I got laid off a good job at Dupont. They
repossessed my car and everything else, and I was sleeping on the street in my
own hometown. That aggravated an ulcer to a point where it perforated my
stomach lining, and I had to have an operation. My sisters arranged for me to
go and stay in Alabama with my aunt to recuperate. I didn’t like it down there
because there weren’t any jobs, you know. It was right down at Tuscaloosa. The
biggest employer down there is the University of Alabama—about thirty-five
miles away from where I stayed in Green County. I didn’t have no transportation
to get out and get work. So I called my brother down in Tampa, Florida,
and he came to pick me up. I did a little of this and that down there, but I didn’t
do no good down there, either. I stayed there six years.
I guess the brightest spot for me in Tampa was when I enrolled in school—
an electronics school—really good. I got my GED in the military. I went to college
at the community college in Chattanooga while I was working at Dupont.
I tried to go to school at an area vocational-technical school for air conditioning
and heating and refrigeration. I went there nine months, waiting on the VA to
pay me for going to school. They never did send my money. I was scheduled to
go up to Nashville to have counseling with them so they could release my money
so I could continue with school. I was driving my old raggedy car up there. I
just let it go down when I lost my job. I was speeding, and an unmarked police
car stopped me. I was driving without insurance, speeding. So I blew my appointment
with the VA. They didn’t release no money, and I had to drop out of
school.
The best job I ever had was the one with Dupont. They had a syntheticfiber
production. My job was to put these undrawn, twisted spools of strands of
yarn onto a machine, and we strung it up in an intricate way, and the machine
drew and twisted the fiber at a uniform rate, winding it on a spool. That was
semi-skilled work because it took time to get that touch. I had to string it up
and read a diagram and string it up like that. It was a kind of delicate operation.
I was a military police in the army. I trained security dogs—German shepherds.
Electronics—I have a natural feel for electronics. I’m really proud of myself
for the little small achievements I made in the little while that I was at the votech.
Considering my background in formal education, especially. Algebra and