New England Patriots' Brandon Spikes and hometown love
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| Brandon Spikes has not turned his back on his hometown. He has just turned a spotlight on what many there have been turning their backs on. |
I don't know Brandon, but I do know his older brother (not younger, as the Herald reported). We grew up playing basketball, first in elementary school for the Rams, then middle school for the Dragons. I was on the girls team a year ahead of him, and he on the boys. He was my little buddy, but at some point in time, between middle and high school we lost touch.
It was not until I was in college or law school, that I learned what happened with him. He wasn't a bad dude, so I was shocked when I found out he was facing life in prison. I was shocked, but I wasn't shocked.
The sad thing is...I knew a lot of guys who weren't bad guys who ended up in prison or dead. Strangely, I saw the turn in the state of our town around the time I started middle school. That was in the early 90s. When alcohol, got replaced with weed. Then weed with 8 balls. And it was downhill from there.
Summers of playing and having fun outside...or going to the gym at Holly Oak or City Park to watch guys play rec league basketball, started getting a little out of hand. Gunshots ringing out where it used to be the sound of balls bouncing on hardwood floors. What floors me now is how oblivious a lot of folks are to what went on right beneath their noses. Oh, wait...no it doesn't.
I was reminiscing with a friend about growing up there the other night. He reminded me how the Klan used to march in the parade when we were in elementary school. I didn't remember. I did remember how they would be Uptown on the square marching. We were kids in the 80s not the 60s.
No, my town was not like Mississippi Burning...LOL. At least I don't think so. Or maybe I was oblivious. But there are different pockets and different neighborhoods that are segregated. I grew up in a "good" neighborhood, but knew of all the "bad" ones. I also knew the places where we didn't go at night that were in the upper part of the county...
In my neighborhood there were churches and schools and the folks who looked like me could have been anything from mill workers to housekeepers to preachers to teachers and some former service members. The same was true for the folks who didn't look like me. Their parents worked in the same mills and were cafeteria ladies, drove the school buses and pretty much lived the same way. In the "rich" neighborhoods, trust and believe nobody looked like me. LOL I guess we weren't completely on the "wrong side of the tracks" but we weren't on the "right" side either.
In the early 90s guys from New York, Connecticut, Michigan and other places "up north" started coming down to our hometown every summer, bringing with them a bigger drug trade. At the same time we had guys graduating from our high schools going on to play for big time college programs and some making it to the NFL. But the "right" side and "wrong" side of the tracks began to change...the line was being pushed further and further...the "wrong" side getting bigger and bigger.
We also had a few doctors and lawyers coming from the same places we were. More than that, we had family structures in place. And the people in our town were making decent livings at some of the mills. You could have parents, who just made it through high school, still make a decent living from working at some of the bigger plants like Copeland, PPG, and Celanese.
When I left our hometown to go to college (thanks to discipline, hard work, stern upbringing, desire to become an attorney, scholarships, a praying set of parents, and some great teachers) things were pretty bad, but not as bad as they would become. Shoot, a lot of the guys I went to high school with had the same chances and choices to leave and go on and do something different, that Brandon had. Our football team won two state championships when I was in high school, and a bunch of the guys got scholarships to play football at small and large schools. It was a way out.
But by the time Brandon reached middle school age, these things had already changed. Many of the guys who left school with me or before me, had come back home without finishing school to no jobs, and got into the drug game themselves. Brandon and my younger sister are around the same age, and went to school together.
A lot of the mills were shutting down...too many people were left with limited resources to provide the choices to their kids, that their parents had for them. The interest in drugs, guns, and money grew higher than graduating from school and getting a good job. Drugs were prevalent, jobs were not.
A lot of the parents, who had been laid off from these plants, were struggling and some got into drugs and drug dealing themselves. The situation changed a lot of the people. There was a period of time when someone was dying or going to prison every other month, it seems like. That's reality. What Brandon said in the interview wasn't looking down on our hometown. He was telling the truth.
Maybe the people giving Brandon a hard time, never witnessed what he witnessed. Maybe their family members aren't the ones who appear in the Jail or Obituary sections in the Star. They want him to be quiet. They don't want to know what's going on right beneath their raised noses? Hmmmm... I don't know. But pretending a problem does not exist, does not mean it does not exist. It just means that you choose to ignore it.
There is still an opportunity for everyone to do better, do more, and have more without risking life, limb and liberty to get it. I love where I'm from. But what a lot of folks realize is, you can love where you're from and that same place cannot love you back. LOL.
In order to know better you have to take chances to leave your current surroundings to get a fresher perspective. So I challenge everyone who has never left their hometown (or their "right side of the tracks" neighborhoods)...to spread your wings a little bit. Get some different air in your lungs, and not just vacation. Go live somewhere else for a little while.
I can say I am proud of some of the people I grew up with, who do go home, and do help out where they can. I have not done so. Not at home anyway. But a few conversations I've had recently, make me realize it may be time that I do. I seriously never wanted to go back to our hometown. EVER NEVER EVER EVER... LOL. And the only reason why I did go back was because my family is there, and hey...I love my family :)
So the same involvement I've had in the communities where I've lived since leaving my hometown, I can take back to where I came from...I guess. But y'all got one time to say something crazy to me or about me...I'm not nice like Brandon. I will light that butt up! :)
