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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (784905)

5/15/2014 12:10:42 PM

From: koan

Respond to of 1574483

Your link is from 2010, mine was from 2014. However, neither yours nor mine actually shows statistics for early 60s late 50s when you "grew up" there.>>

So what? It was a tough town. We could not have night football games we had so many fights and stabbings. It was true there were not any guns or drugs then though. I had lots of fights, but never got beat up.

In my senior year I had a sort of contract on my head for over a year when I broke up with the sister of the gang leader of the toughest gang in town the "Shockers". I had to be real careful where I went. I always had to be careful where I went.

I met that guy later in college and he apologized. Pretty scary though, although I did meet him and his gang face to face eventually. But they let me go??

My only points were I know the streets, I know what it is to be uneducated, and poor and the African American culture. Half our town was black. My dad was an alcoholic and car salesman and my brother only went to the 8th grade. He became a plumber and has asbestoses. No one in my family had any college to guide me.

It was the community college that saved me as they did not require grades or tests to get in. After high school I went to work in a paper bag factory in Emeryville for two years. Then I decided to go to college and quit. The most popular kids were able to get in to the asbestos union but I did not have enough status until then. It paid about $600 a week?? back then which was huge. Everyone in the union had a car and a boat; and I was poor. I couldn't go to my senior prom for lack of money.

I was offered a job in the asbestos union at a party two years after high school and I told them I was going to college instead. I would guess most of them are dead now. I paid my way through 6 years of college with no help at all by working part time jobs. Some jobs I would work the graveyard shift and go straight to classes in the morning. For graduate school I worked on the Alaska pipeline.

But I also had the most fun of my life. When I transferred to San Jose State the hippie movement started which I joined immediately. I was a good poker player and made a lot of my school money then selling a little pot and playing poker in the card clubs in San Jose and playing house games. The only money game in those days was low ball. I also managed an apartment building.

All in all I had a good life and was lucky. But I know what it is to be poor and I know the streets as well as anyone.

I am proud of going to college but it was hard work, especially in the beginning. I was so ignorant in those days.