Read Online The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones by Amiri Baraka - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Amiri Baraka
Tags: Biography, Non-Fiction
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though sometimes she listened with me. Hop Harrigan, Jack Armstrong, Captainnnnnnn Midnight, Tom Mix (and Wash White). And then later sheâd be into Beulah, Andy and Amos, and them. When I was sick and had to stay in bed I heard all those soaps along with her while I sprawled. All had organ music and a voice-over telling you what was up. It was a crazy world of villains in civilian clothes.
Plus when my grandmother was working up at those Fortesâ house and the other rich white folksâ, when sheâd come back, Jim, sheâd have a bundle of goodies. Clothes, books, I got the collected works of Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, and random books of Pooh Bear, Sherlock Holmes, and even an almost whole set of Rudyard Kipling, if you can get to that! They were gifts, is what she told us. The white folks was just giving stuff away. I guess they had better stuff, or they needed room. Some of the stuff she brought my sister would have âAnna Marie Forteâ sewn on labels in the collars. I always wondered about those goddam Fortes, how they could have all that stuff up there in Essex Fells, how they looked and what they had to say. But I never found out.
My grandmother also had gone to Poro beauty school and she talked about that. She was a hairdresser. The shop she worked in in Newark still sits there on Norfolk Street. So sometimes Elaine and I would be out in front of the beauty parlor, weekends, running around, but connected to the hot curling irons and pressing combs of Oraâs beauty parlor and our grandmother sitting there talking and straightening hair with that hunk of grease on the back of her hand.
If I have ever thought seriously about âHeavenâ it was when my grandmother died because I wanted her to have that since she believed so strongly. I wrote a poem saying that. Iâd been writing for a while when she died, mostly poems in magazines, and I always regretted that she never got to see a book of mine. I had the dust jacket of
Blues People
in my hand aroundthe time she died, a few weeks later it came out. And I wanted her to see that all the dreams and words sheâd known me by had some reality, but it was too late. Sheâd already gone.
I wrote a story about my grandfather in a magazine my first wife and I published called
Zazen
. It was called âSuppose Sorrow Was a Time Machine?â Sheâd seen that and my mother told me sheâd liked it. But it wasnât a book. I wanted my Nana to see that Iâd learned Practice Makes Perfect. But she was gone.
My uncle was the exotic personality in our house. On the road, and when he came home in checked sports coats. He was a man about town, like they say. And once he took me downtown Newark to a quality restaurant on Market Street, the Novelty Bar & Grill (so you see how long ago this was). And I felt slick and knowledgeable walking with him, and with that pastrami sandwich on the plate, I was dressed up myself, that was a new high in my life.
G.L. was my uncleâs name, he didnât have any other. But pressure from Americans made my grandfather come up with George as a name to cool out various institutions who defied Southern mores with their chromeplated cold shit.
They tell me my uncle got married once, to some light-skinned babe, but I donât know anything about that. But, whatever, it didnât hold and he was a bachelor when I started knowinâ him. Uncle had his own stuff and it had a certain aura to it, of strangeness and sophistication. He had some quality things he had and he was no stranger to money, he just didnât believe he could take it with him.
The railroad job let him travel and gave him that air of urbanity and sophistication. He had a porkpie hat he wore sometimes with the brim snapped down. He went to New York and did his shopping and spent a lot of time over there. Plus he thought up a scam that seemed like a hip idea the more I got to understand it. G.L. sold the sandwiches on
Plus when my grandmother was working up at those Fortesâ house and the other rich white folksâ, when sheâd come back, Jim, sheâd have a bundle of goodies. Clothes, books, I got the collected works of Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, and random books of Pooh Bear, Sherlock Holmes, and even an almost whole set of Rudyard Kipling, if you can get to that! They were gifts, is what she told us. The white folks was just giving stuff away. I guess they had better stuff, or they needed room. Some of the stuff she brought my sister would have âAnna Marie Forteâ sewn on labels in the collars. I always wondered about those goddam Fortes, how they could have all that stuff up there in Essex Fells, how they looked and what they had to say. But I never found out.
My grandmother also had gone to Poro beauty school and she talked about that. She was a hairdresser. The shop she worked in in Newark still sits there on Norfolk Street. So sometimes Elaine and I would be out in front of the beauty parlor, weekends, running around, but connected to the hot curling irons and pressing combs of Oraâs beauty parlor and our grandmother sitting there talking and straightening hair with that hunk of grease on the back of her hand.
If I have ever thought seriously about âHeavenâ it was when my grandmother died because I wanted her to have that since she believed so strongly. I wrote a poem saying that. Iâd been writing for a while when she died, mostly poems in magazines, and I always regretted that she never got to see a book of mine. I had the dust jacket of
Blues People
in my hand aroundthe time she died, a few weeks later it came out. And I wanted her to see that all the dreams and words sheâd known me by had some reality, but it was too late. Sheâd already gone.
I wrote a story about my grandfather in a magazine my first wife and I published called
Zazen
. It was called âSuppose Sorrow Was a Time Machine?â Sheâd seen that and my mother told me sheâd liked it. But it wasnât a book. I wanted my Nana to see that Iâd learned Practice Makes Perfect. But she was gone.
My uncle was the exotic personality in our house. On the road, and when he came home in checked sports coats. He was a man about town, like they say. And once he took me downtown Newark to a quality restaurant on Market Street, the Novelty Bar & Grill (so you see how long ago this was). And I felt slick and knowledgeable walking with him, and with that pastrami sandwich on the plate, I was dressed up myself, that was a new high in my life.
G.L. was my uncleâs name, he didnât have any other. But pressure from Americans made my grandfather come up with George as a name to cool out various institutions who defied Southern mores with their chromeplated cold shit.
They tell me my uncle got married once, to some light-skinned babe, but I donât know anything about that. But, whatever, it didnât hold and he was a bachelor when I started knowinâ him. Uncle had his own stuff and it had a certain aura to it, of strangeness and sophistication. He had some quality things he had and he was no stranger to money, he just didnât believe he could take it with him.
The railroad job let him travel and gave him that air of urbanity and sophistication. He had a porkpie hat he wore sometimes with the brim snapped down. He went to New York and did his shopping and spent a lot of time over there. Plus he thought up a scam that seemed like a hip idea the more I got to understand it. G.L. sold the sandwiches on
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