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As a product of what is now termed "the hood", I've got a few things I'd like to get off my chest. The people I grew up around were hard working, church going, switch toting men and women who believed in family values, disciplined children and keeping their neighborhoods clean. It wasn't until most of the older folk died out that "the hood" started becoming synonymous with what the term conjures up in your mind today. One of the spots that had the greatest detrimental impact on the community was the neighborhood corner store.
I lived right next door to one of these eye sores. As a child, I didn't think anything of bolting over to it as soon as I'd earned some pocket change for doing chores. Buying chips, Lemonheads, Alexander the Grapes, Now & Laters and other goodies were a real treat. Had I known then what I know now, I would have convinced all the other kids to boycott this malignant establishment in an effort to shut it down!
A neighborhood should be a neighborhood – beautiful homes with well manicured yards complimented by a nice park with equipment that's in good repair. That's a neighborhood.
Corner stores and liquor stores have added to the degradation of black neighborhoods for years.
They are breeding grounds for the worst of the worst. A place for slime and sludge to congregate and make life a living hell for those who are unfortunate enough to live in close proximity. Bums and other societal menaces loiter around the sign that reads ‘DO NOT LOITER' scribbled in magic marker and tacked to the filthy window right underneath the half naked woman on the Colt 45 poster!
Women are harassed every time they attempt to enter one of these establishments. Kids are fearful of having to walk by guys that look like escaped inmates with a 40 in one hand and holding their crotch in the other.
Even before unemployment was the huge problem that it is I can remember guys waking up in the morning heading to the corner store to sit and sit and sit – all day long. As darkness engulfed the sky and day turned into night, most of them would stumble and stagger home for a good night's sleep – storing up energy necessary to come back to the same spot the next day and spend their entire day doing nothing again!
I've often wondered what they felt gave them the right. You might ask the right to do what. Well, I'll tell you.
What gave them the right to tear down my neighborhood? Didn't they realize working and making an honest living would have been far more beneficial than standing on a corner all day destroying good neighborhoods!
What gave them the right to think that young boys with no real male role models wouldn't look up to them in some warped way wanting to become a street corner casanova just like them when they grew up?
What gave them the right to think that whistling at me through the 7 teeth they had left would make me feel beautiful and desirable to other men? Didn't they know it was an insult to be serenaded by a drunk, toothless clown!
What gave them the right to urinate in the weeds behind the store and look surprised or even AMUSED when they realized you were looking right at them? Go home and relieve yourself or get a JOB and use the employee's only bathroom!
What gave them the right to use the corner next door to my house to peddle and push drugs to their own people? Didn't they realize how many lives they were destroying!!
As painful as the answer is, I must own up and admit it. We, those of us that lived in these type neighborhoods, gave them the many rights they enjoyed and exercised so freely. We didn't take a stand and demand that these store owner's establish ‘No Loitering' policies and ENFORCE them. We didn't blow up the phones of our local police departments when we saw a drug sale taking place. We didn't stop patronizing these stores which would have forced them out of business.
If we had done these things long ago, the street corner casanovas and the lairs they dwelled in all day and half the night might be just a bad memory. Something you could sweep out of your mind like the dust on your welcome mat. Instead, the reminders of our failures are just a street corner away.
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