CHAPTER 2

After living in Milwaukee a few years, my mom moved us back to San Antonio. I was in the second grade and we lived on a street with exactly four houses on it. Across the street was aMrs. Baird’s bakery. Every morning we would wake up to the smell of fresh bread. My mom would send us to the bakery to pick up milk and bread occasionally. Because the store workers knew us, we’d leave with bags of “day old” pastries, bread and rolls. Sometimes when we were outside playing with the other kids we would sneak off to the bakery knowing they would send us off with plenty of goodies.

Before we left Milwaukee my mom married Clarence, Tyrone’s father. Clarence was real cool. I cannot remember Clarence ever giving us any whooping, but if he did, it wasn’t anything serious because I have had some horrible whoopings! Clarence was a big kid who liked to sit in front of the Nintendo and playSuper Mario Brothers for hours. Sometimes he would even let us play with him, but most of the time we would just sit and watch. My dad would come by and pick us up all the time. He would either take us to my grandmother’s or my great-grandparents’ house. My great-grandmother, “Nan-Nan,” was a saint! She used to spoil us crazy. When we went to her house we would all sit with her and play Keno for pennies. She always put dollars to our pennies and we played for hours. After letting us win the money she was going to give us anyway, we would sit and watch television and/or crochet. My great-grandfather, “Granddaddy,” really was a character. He was a World War II vet. After being discharged from the military he became a chef on theSouthern Pacific Railroad. He did this for forty years. This man could cook. He loved cooking so much that if he asked if you were hungry and you told him no, he would curse you out. I mean he did not care who you were or how old you were. He would curse you out as if you stole something from him. After he finally calmed down and stopped cursing for about ten minutes, he’d ask if you were hungry again, as if you didn’t say no the first time. This might have been a part of hisPost Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the war and the cooking probably was therapy to him. This time when you answered you already knew the consequences of saying no, so the best thing to say was yes and let him do his thing. This started a whole round of other questions. He asked what you wanted to eat and you had better think of something or suffer his next flurry of verbal blows again. The best thing about his meals was that he spared not one ingredient in his recipes. If he made you some gumbo you would have the whole sea in the pot and it was all finger-licking good. Plus, you would lick the bowl without a care in the world even if someone