The early years spent in Elberton, Georgia now is a fading memory the
part that I can remember was very nice I started school when I was five years
old and my first day I remember very well I was quite excited and could hardly
wait to get their. I was playing in class with my pencil and stuck it in my
mouth and punctured the roof of my mouth and it started to bleed and I got so
excited and did not know what to do so I just sat there with a mouth full of
blood until recess and then I ran across the street and spit it out. Some time
I wonder how could I be so stupid and not raise my hand to be excused but as a
child you do stupid thing and don’t use your head, I suppose that is being a
child. We use to have Easter egg hunts every year and that was a lot of fun and
I suppose it was because if you found some it was like going to the candy store
My parents did not have very much money so we did not have a lots of things but
it didn’t seem to matter then. When we got some things it seem like a big deal
and at Christmas when we got just a little something we was so happy my parents
always got some fruit and at least one toy and some new clothes. It was the
best of times and the happiest. I had one sister and two brothers, Julia who
was the oldes Herbert and Felix, There was two years different in our ages,
The memories of visiting my Grandparents on their farm was so much fun
they farmed for a living and did not have much either but it was so nice to be
their anyway they had lot of fruit trees and when we would eat some of the
green fruit our Grandfather would get quite upset and yell at us he would
always yell but I do not ever remember him spanking any one of us. Even though
we lived in the south I never pick any cotton but of course I was only eight
years old when we left Georgia and moved to CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, We had so many
relative and they was very close and always visited each other I can remember
having so much fun when we would visit some of them, my grand mother was such a
good cook when we would spend the night at the farm and she would cooked
breakfast for it would be so good, ham and grits with red eye gravy hot biscuit
fresh churn butter you thought you had died and going to heaven. I loved my
grand parents so much. We moved to Chicago when I was eight years old so I
didn’t get a chance to be around them as much as I would have like to, the time
we did was really precious I will never forget the great times we had I
remember once my cousin Bill Mattox hit me in the head with a piece of coal and
it bleed a lot, I was so mad and I wanted to beat him up but my uncle Raymond
stopped me from getting back at him, My parent named me after my uncle his full
name was LETHER Raymond Mattox which I never did like the name LETHER and when
I got older I never would use that name, when I would tell someone that name
they laughed at me so after a while I stopped telling anyone it after I got
older I realized that it was quite foolish to feel that way. When you are young
you think foolish thought but as you get older you grow up and hopefully you
become mature so you don’t think so poorly, Thinking back trying to remember
what it was like in the south I really can not picture what it was like. I was
to young to get a good idea what was going on the south. It was segregated and
they treated black very badly but as a child you don’t see those things, After
I got older you wonder how black people took the abuse that was heaped upon
them. Now that I am older I realized that none of my relative would talk about
their life in the south. They never would tell it like it really was they
suppose like me only remember the good thing and blot out the bad It never
seemed as bad as the book I read when I got older, Some year later I would
travel through the south and see and read what took place and it really stirred
up a lot of interest in what it was like in the south during slavery and after
the Negro was set free, The people in America fought over the issue of states
rights which slavery was The biggest problem in the South so thing are
separated into basically a battle between the north and the south. When the north won Negro’s was set
free I hope to write some more later in this book about slavery in America but
lets get back to a different time in my life when we moved to Chicago it was
quite different and it took quite a lot getting used to urban life the bright
light, street cars and the difference in kid in the north from those in the
south you had to grow up very fast though that created a problem since you did
not have anyone to show you what to do and how to function in a big city, later
in life I realized how Much of a problem that would be in my life. Since my
parent were poorly educated and they were not able to help us in the way we
needed and I did not take the interest in my education that I should have. So
as I grew up and lived my life it was a very dull and boring. The thing I
remember as a child was that I spent a lot of time by myself and found that I
preferred to being alone with your on thought as I grew older I found myself
thinking more and more about girl and almost becoming obsessed with them. I
thought I was Gods gift to women I thought of all the girl that new as young
boy growing up and the thing I use to do and what it was like and how it
effected my life and since I didn’t like school very much so I did not do very
well and it hurt me a lot when I got older, I went to high school in 1948 and I
found a good experience but unprepared so after a couple of years or so I
dropped out and went to work since I was working part time in a grocery store I
started to work full time and thought that where I would make a career in that
business I did not realize what a big mistake that was as I write this story it
remind me of the mistake of not getting a good education you think of all the
thing you should have done as you was growing up and how it possible could have
changed your life and yet some how you think that maybe that how your life was
suppose to be,There is this theory that you make your life what you want it to
be the small town of Elberton was like other town in the south that had their
segregated way but I don’t remember it that well I had to look at it in
retrospect and think back how it was then and how it was when I was older and
compare it to what I know now being so young I didn’t realize how it was at
that time my grandparents lived a long life but I was very young when they died
and I did not have a chance to be around them very much so I didn’t get the
chance to learn a lot from them now that I am older I wished that I could have
had the opportunity to have known them
better, The fact that I knew my parent for a long time and enjoyed and loved
them so much it made realized what I missed in not being around them, That is
the one thing that in my life is the most gratifying of ever thing that I have
had in my life is to have had two wonderful parent my father lived to be sixty
eight years old and I was really sad when he passed away and I have missed him
all these years but I have some real fond memory of him and when ever I think
of him it bring a smile to my face the year I spent around him was some of the
best days in my life after he passed away is when I realized it the most, I wish that I could have told him how much I
thought of and loved him I hope he knew, I tried as a person to show him since
I never could express my self to him in a way that I wanted to the problems
that I had all my life is to express myself to my loved one, My thought was if
I showed it that would get it done but I guess people need to have you show it
in other ways, My Mother was also a
wonderful person all though when I was young she use to whip me a lot I never
did hate her for doing it to me which I have to admit that most of the time I
deserved it I was always into something that I had any business in or doing my
chore badly or bothering my sister and brothers I guess I was the bully in the
family and always wanted to tell ever body what to do and that got me in
trouble because if they didn’t do what I told them to do I would fight them and
since I was the oldies and the biggest I could beat them up I had one sister
and two brothers who I pick on mostly we played together a lot and so we had
plenty of chances to get into a lot fights as young person I did not have much
confidence in myself and no one to help in that area so I think that was one of
the reason that I never reached my full potential. My trouble started when I began to notice
girls and didn’t no how to deal with them I use to do thing like pull their
hair do thing so they would notice me when I was in the fifth grade I took a
young girl under a side walk and tried to do something to her that I had any no
business doing. Today they would say
that I saw it done on television but they did not have any then and as I got
older I became more and more obsessed with them to the extent that all I
thought about and since I thought I was so handsome and they all liked me it
went to my head after I graduated from grammar school and started high school no
one could tell me anything so I lost interest in high school right away and
started cutting classes and not doing much work in classes when I would go to
them and so I fell behind and then I dropped out of school and went to work for
a while and then I went back to school for a while and since I was so far
behind that I dropped out for good. Then I started living in the real world
hanging out with older people and drinking and fooling around with older women
staying out late getting drunk and having what I thought was a lot’s of
fun. I fell in love so many times that
it got to be funny I was so young that I didn’t have a clue as to what was
going I met a lot of new people and for a couple years it seem like it was a
lot of fun, The people was much older and had families and some of their kid
was the same age as I was but I found it very exciting and so I kept on
drinking and staying out late, I think of those days some time and realized
that those year were the beginning of a very long and fruitful life I wonder if
any of those people are still alive I know that Robie is dead but what about
the others the Taubin brothers and their sister Jean and her husband
Irvin,Helen, Sonjia,Carol, Their was so
many and so long ago that I don’t remember their names we all worked in some
grocery stores for the Taubin brother and mostly it was a gratifying
experiencing all the full time help was much older than I was and it is likely
that all of them are dead after all the years after that the only one I saw was
Robie. The part time help was closer to my age and became my good friends they
are all alive at this times although I don’t see them anymore Vesco walker,
Eddie and Lee Caridine were the best of friends and use to be my running mates
The Caridines had a very large families and we got together at lots of families
gathering and I really miss those times. But you can not go back life goes on
and you make new friends and go on with your life this has been a good life and
I have got along in age and have four children who have grown up to be pretty
good kids even though I do not get along with them as well I would like but
it’s been all right. When I was growing up I didn’t have a lot it was much
easier to do thing then than it is now. So when I see the children not taking
advantage of the things that they could have I get angry and we get into a
heated discussion which never get resolved so we forget it for a while and the
next time it come up we started all over again. The real change came in my life
was when my brother Herbert was involved in an automobile accident, He was
riding with our cousins coming back from a trip to GEORGIA, and we had just
buried our GRANDMOTHER. I was still in school and some of his friend ask how
was he doing and that started a very long story which I am still living, One of
his friend was named YVONNE COLEMAN, She came to visit Herbert while He was
recuperating from his accident, She ask me at school how was Herbert doing and
when would he be coming home from the hospital?
She and her sister came to visit Herbert and the rest is history.
That was the beginning of the story of my life, I will only tell you at
this time that I married Yvonne and I will tell you the rest at a later time in
this story. In high school was a lot different than grammar school you could be
the big guy in grammar school but in high school you were just a little fish in
a big river, The fact that I was unprepared for high school made it very hard
for me to find my way, It was a mixed race school which the grammar was also
but it was quite different, The white kids didn’t want us there and there was a
lot of fight and the tension was quite high all the time. When school was out
and you was ready to go home you had to make sure you did not get caught alone
and you got on the street car and went straight back to your neighborhood. We
lived in the Cabrini projects it was really nice, When we live in the south the
house we lived in was not to bad but it was nothing like the home that we lived
in Chicago. When we moved into our new house the had just open the projects up
and we was one of the first family to move in, There was a lot’s of kids to
play with and you had a lot’s of fun, But it was rather hard to adjust to a big
city since you came from a small southern town and you talked with a southern
accent and some time the kid made fun of you.
So you had to learn very fast to lose that southern drawl, My cousin
Wille said that I learned very fast because after a short while when he would call
our house he did not recognize my voice he said I sounded so proper he didn’t
know who I was. Willie Jerome Banks who is my cousin was one the first relative
that we met when we came to Chicago, He stayed with his Grandmother in the
projects on the south side, We would visit them almost ever weekend, Our first
two weeks we stayed on the south side in the building where aunt Ella huff
lived. When wille’s grandmother died Aunt Ella move in with him, Since he was a
minor he had to have some adult supervision. Willie had a nick name which we still
call him Sonny, He was such a nice person and still is fifty-six years later.
My parents depended on Sonny a lot in the early years they would get him to
take us places since knew the city quite well and was older enough to take care
of us. As the time pass I gradually learn my way it got better and I made some
new friends and started to be accepted by the boys in the neighborhood thing
got better. What I realized year later was that the lack of knowledge of big
city was to play a big part in my life. My parents because they were country
folk did not understand big city life was not able to help us deal with lots of
the problems that we faced and so we had to find our way. What I realized later
how important it was for parental guiding and especially under the
circumstances we were in. As I think back to those day they were good and bad
the thing that you did not learn while you had the chance you paid for them in
later life. The school we went to was named Edward Jenner, We had some very
good Teachers. Most seem to care if you got a good education and made a very
good effort to education us. What we had to learn was about race relation the
relationship we had with white kid was quite different in the north than what
it was the south as I think about it we never played with white kid in the
south, Now that I am older I see what some of the problems was not dealing with
white folk in the south and trying to learn to deal with them in the north.
Chicago was a segregated city and where the neighborhood met there was always
tension, There were time when the black and white kids got along fairly where
we lived. The projects was low rent housing and both races live their, There
was a war going on then and everyone was concern about it at that time, But
when the war was over thing began to change and the project became all black
and when we went to high school it was in a all white neighborhood and they did
not want us to come in their area. So there were a lot of problems at the
school that I went to. The school is located at 936 n. Ashland, Wells’s high
School. That was the beginning of race relation in American, The years that I
went to Jenner School was some of the best memory that I have, Growing up in a
big city and going to a school like Jenner was a lot’s of fun, There are lot’s
of good memorys, One of them was when I was in the eight grade at that time I
was so girl crazy and I thought I was such a hot shot and thought every girl
was in love with me it was such a wild time. One of my favorite story in wnen I
was in the eight grade this girl who was new in the school got into a fight
with one of my so called girl friend and it started a riot after school, Some
how I got involved and I got in a fight with a friend of her, It turned out
that she started to brag to my friend that she was my girl friend, One that ‘s
when the fight got started, She beat up this girl and the girl’s friend came to
her rescue and beat her up, Then she said I kick her while she was on the
ground and then one of her friend started a fight with me, She was able to get
one of her friend to go get her brothers and they came up to the school and was
going to beat me up, Lucky for me that the teachers was able to prevent by
taking me inside the school, They called the Police and they drove me home
since the girl brother thearten to beat me up. Only year later did I find out
the rest of the story, Which I will tell you about it later. In 1943 my Uncle
and Aunt and their three children came to Chicago and they stayed with us, We
all went to the same school for about six month, Then they moved to the
westside of Chicago, Our family was very close, My Father and his brother
married two sister and that seem to have made a special bond between our
cousin’s. We use to visit them a lot’s of times especially when we was out of
school in the summer. The cousins were named Thelma and her two brothers Clois
and Robert. When we went to school together and when the bigger kid would pick
on Robert and me Clois would protect us, Clois was the oldes of the boy and he
was rather tough and could fight real well. But when they moved to the westside
we had to fend for our self, So I became the so called leader of my sister and
brothers, So I had to toughen up and be the defender of the Collins clan, As I
look back I realized that where I pick up some of my evil disposition and it
carried on into my later years, I was quite hard on my brothers and sometime
rather mean especiall if the would not do what I would tell them to do, I think
that what put a strain on our relationship in later year, My brother Felix was
the worst of the group, We never got along even up to his death which was at
the age of 48 years. He was short in stature and he always carried a chip on
his shoulder and dare anyone to knock it of. He was married twice and had lots
of children and never seems to want to take any respoability for any of his
action. We had some very good teachers my favorite one’s were Mr and Mrs Rapp,
Mr O’Grady, Ms Friedland,
Ms Wilkerson, Ms Starks. Mr Rapp was my favorite one, Mrs Rapp seem to
care for me the most, Mr Rapp was the english teacher and I think he taught me
the most, He taught us how to use the english language properly and how to
memorize poems and get up before the class and recite them, I wish I could
remember them now, The two that i can recall but not recite is IF. And O,
Captain my Captain. I wish I had payed more attention at the time because he
really tried to teach us a lot, I would have trouble turning in my assingments
and he would make me stay in for lunch and make them up. We would stay in Mrs
Rapp’s classroom and do the work. I think because Mrs Rapp like me so well Mr
Rapp was not as hard me as he could been and gave me lot of chances to get my
work done. We on both black and white students and we were not aware of any
raceial difference at that time and we got along with the white kids fairly
well and we got older and went to high school you really started to learn about
how thing was in the big city. We use to have problems with the white kids as
we grew up but I really did not understand what the problems were. The thing I
remember in grammar school was some good time and wished that I had received
the help that I needed, After I got older I realized what you can miss without
the proper guidence and when I got married and had children I tried to give
them what they needed. The life in the project was a lot different than life I
led in Georgia and it took sometime to ajust to the house. It was all brick and concrete and the floors was
also concrete and if you fell on it you could get hurt, Some of my duties was
to clean the floors you had to scrub them with a hard bristle brush, My Mother
felt it was important for us children to help keep the house clean, So she gave
each one of us thing that we had to do each day, But I always’s got into
trouble because I would not mine or if I did them it was not very well. On
Satursday we would want get thru with our chores early so that we could get to
the movie theater before would start. Some how I would always get a whipping
before we would leave because I could never do mine right and my mother
made me do them over. We loved to go to
this show because they would show the serial and they would leave you on the
edge of your seat each week so you want to get back to see if your hero would
get out of trouble and usealy he did.