A commiserating and provocative tale, Primacy is an all-important lesson of love, tragedy and inspiration as told from an urban perspective. Propagated in the latter portion of the turbulent 60's, on the outskirts of the gritty streets of Philadelphia, it is the story of a young male born in a 'dysfunctional' household and living in a less than opulent neighborhood. With an adolescent's cognizant awareness of the times and personal events, the prognosticator's life starts out on an anger-laced, emotionally charged tumultuous journey that eventually transcends both the time and the streets of the "City of Brotherly Love" Later in the story as the prognosticator becomes of age you are escorted further into his moral decadence as he takes the reader descriptively fitting into the twenty-first century, meeting with consequences and humility. Eloquently written with appropriate vernacular and speech of the situational characters, this story brings into stark visualization a vivid visitation for the reader. Primacy is an empathetic journey for the many whom have felt that they have been through trying situations and that no other soul could possibly empathize.
Primacy
By Barry D. WadeAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Barry D. Wade
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-6396-6Chapter One
Since there are so many when's, where's and who's, I guess the best thing to do is to just start. On the southern western tip of Philadelphia there is an intersection. I found this intersection to be kind of odd because it had four different street names and basically, I am accustomed to there only being two streets to an intersection. At one point of this intersection is Woodland Avenue, which if you traveled east, it will take you into Center City, Philadelphia and parts in between. At another point of this intersection is Cobbs Creek Parkway, which if you traveled north, it will take you all the way through West Philly towards City Line Avenue and the Main Line. At another point on this intersection is Island Avenue, which if you traveled south, it will take you to Interstate-95. I-95 could take you south as far as Florida or north to Maine or Canada. Oh yeah, and if you could fly and just went straight on Island Avenue, it would take you first over the airport (Philly International) ,and then to the Delaware River, which eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean. These are the places that set the stage for my tome' but the place where it began is along the final point of this odd or 'weird' intersection. At this point, there is Main Street. Main Street takes you out of Philadelphia and leads you right into a little suburb in Delaware County, Pennsylvania called Darby. This town, which I once heard described as 'quaint', is where I was born and raised but as far as I'm concerned, it was anything but.
We have a transportation system in Pennsylvania called the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) that consist of buses and trolleys. The number eleven trolley runs from Center City, down Woodland Avenue and into Main Street at that odd intersection, en-route to Darby. You could jump off the trolley at its final stop at the Darby Depot and catch the bus to 69th street in Upper Darby. In Upper Darby you can catch the Elevated Trains back into the City of Philadelphia. The number 13 trolley runs from Center City through Chester Avenue, in Philly, and after crossing over Cobbs Creek Parkway and down Chester Avenue, you come into a town called Yeadon. If you got off the number 13 in Yeadon on Chester Avenue (the last stop on that trolley) and walked west on Chester Avenue, it would lead you right into Darby. These two trolleys are intertwined to the extent that sometimes, for reasons too in-depth or minute to go into now, you may see a number 11 running on Chester Avenue or vise-versa on Woodland Avenue.
Although there are numerous streets in between, there are seven main streets that really constitute or make up the town where I was born and raised in, called Darby. These streets are: Main Street, MacDade Boulevard, Cedar Avenue, Summit Street, Ridge Avenue, Tenth Street, and Ninth Street. I, and my seven brothers and four sisters, lived with our parents at address 949, on Forrester Avenue, one of those in-between streets. I was the fourth from the eldest.
Space and privacy was something my siblings and I had little or none of, but we were determined to fight for some, and fight we did! 'Right of birth' determined a great deal of what went on in our household and I was often not pleased with what was passed down to me. Briefly I will tell you a little something about each of my siblings & their personalities and my interaction with them, which made for a very interesting childhood.
Charles, the first-born often got what he wanted. And I could, yes, at times remember my mother and father discussing which bills that they could shortchange for a few shakes (because my father would never let a bill go for a whole month without putting something on it), so that they could get him what he wanted. With the bill thing and my father was one of the big things that I did and still do admire about him; his pessimistic and worrisome desires to make sure that the bills were kept up to snuff. Now my mother on the other hand, well, you'll feel what I'm saying as I go along.
Back to the point about us children and our interests, our haves and our 'got nots'.
Charles's interests transcended from model airplanes and model likenesses of Dracula and Frankenstein and the other campy horror flick stars that were popular around that time before Freddy and Chucky , to exotic fish and reptiles, yes, alligators, lizards and snakes (big ones to boot!) and art. To this day, he still loves those snakes and is a very good artist. Charles or, 'Big Jank' as our father sometimes called him, preferred as his choice of dress, the economical and casual fit and feeling of just plain old Wranglers, sweatshirts and sweat socks. I knew then, as I know now, that I could not fit any of them, but that did not stop me from testing the waters just the same. I started off small with the sweat socks and gradually and painfully graduated to the sweatshirts and one or two times, I tried the Wranglers. I quickly learned a couple of valuable lessons about 'Right of Birth' from my experience with 'Testing the waters'. From my experimentation with Charles's belongings I soon discovered the meaning of the expression, "the beat down." And I also learned how to run fast.... very fast. Often times this 'beat down' would take place while my mother was running errands until she came home and sometimes, not even her coming home would stop him and so off I was running again with him in hot pursuit. I have to admit, he was hell on the straight run but around and between cars, I'd smoke him irrespective of the fact that this would only prolong the inevitable. I then learned this trick where I would take off the socks before I got home. As we grew older, he found other things to beat me down for, and looking back now, I have to say that I probably deserved a lot of them. This was also the same guy that bought me my first pair of leather basketball sneakers too!
Now Frankie, the second oldest was the splitting image of my father and I guess in being so, that was one of the main reasons that I would say that he was also spoiled rotten and got pretty much what he wanted too. Now although I too have often been alleged to having been spoiled, I would not resort to the tactics that Frankie used, which were to whine and cry until he got what he wanted and believe me you, whenever he got it, he had no inclinations on sharing it either! As if that weren't bad enough, he also felt that, if someone else had something, that he was entitled to that as well. We fought too (well, with Charles it was pretty much he fought me), but the difference between he and Charles was that with Charles, it was always for some just reason, and each blow he hit me with seemingly had the force of God himself behind it, and would leave me thinking about not wanting to get hit anymore, let alone getting even. But Frankie liked to lash out on a whim and often for no reason at all. Whenever he would hit me, since he was a little bit closer to me in size, the only thing that I could think of was the sweet and tasty lukewarm desire of revenge. Did you ever reflect back on when you were younger and you fought with your siblings and what it was that you mainly fought over? My guess is, and I am assuming that a lot of people would agree, that it was probably more often than not over clothes. Our mother, whenever she went shopping, usually bought Frankie and me, in addition to everything else the same size, even the same size Fruit of the Loom briefs. Back then I often wondered how, if our mother bought two packages of briefs, one for Frankie and one for myself, containing three pair each, then how in the name of all that is good, did I get only one or two pair back when laundry was done? I never figured this out until one summer when Frankie came back from this camp that we had in our community called Camp Sunshine, with his newly acquired nickname, "Chief Yellow Water".
Not all of Frankie's qualities though were of the negative sort. This is a fact well evinced by the skills that he possesses in playing the drums as well as his taste in clothes, a very dapper dresser indeed! In fact, the majority of my brothers possess musical talents. Frankie loved playing the drums and had a high admiration for the talents of James Brown whose dance steps and styles he emulated. He even played drums in church when we attended services due to our mother's ungentle prodding that we accompany her. When we became older, the prodding ascended to manipulative persuasion and then to subtle subliminal request. My fondest memory of church was when I played the part of the pastor in a Tom Thumb wedding one year. Yeah, that was cool! My finest hour in the church was one time when I was fifteen, and my mother asked me to go church. I told her that I did not have anything to wear and she told me that, "The lord doesn't care what you wear, just that you attend!" So, I went with blue jeans, sneakers and a shirt that read, 'Devil's Toenail'. I heard a couple of years later that that moment was eclipsed by another guy when he walked into the church stark naked shouting,
"Lord I'm here! Cleanse me Lord!"
Now about my sister Sissy, who was the third eldest and the oldest girl, I can attest to the fact that we never had a fight about clothes! In our house, Sissy was like the sentinel/covert co-conspirator. She would know to whom every piece of food, cake and candy belonged to. In being and knowing such, she would often act as a double agent as situations warranted. A prime example was like when our mother would leave a Pepsi in the refrigerator and Sissy would see one of us drink out of it. When I say us, I mean Frankie and myself, mainly because when Aaron and Caine came along, figuring out who took what became a mystery that even Sherlock Holmes or Perry Mason would have a tough time solving. She would sit in the living room and act as if she wasn't paying attention until that first sip was taken and then all of a sudden, from the living room, it would be like,
"Oooh! I'm telling!"
The only way we could buy a reprieve from the inevitable whipping would be by promising to bring her something from Ms. Orr's, a family store on the corner of Tenth Street and Forrester Avenue, or from the The store down the street, another family store on the corner of Ninth Street and Forrester Avenue. It was when that sensational feeling of the belt, switch or extension cord radiated from her mind to an area of contact, usually the back, butt or thighs, that she sought out refuge on the other side, taking our bribes with her. Last that I had heard about Sissy was that she was driving a school bus in the state of Delaware.
Now, I am the fourth child, and since it is I who is doing this writing, I'll hold off speaking about myself for the time being.
Then there are my fifth and sixth brothers, the twins Aaron and Caine. The one thing that I can say about Aaron, Caine and myself is that we did fight, and we fought about any and everything. Also, if you laid anything down with Aaron around and turned, not your back, but your head and blinked, it would be gone! This is no exaggeration. And you would have to be ready for a fight if you caught him and accused him. I think the latter was due in part to the fact that he just liked to fight for the sake of fighting. The former, I think, came about because he surmised that if you wanted whatever it was that he had taken, then you would not have laid it down, or that you would have made a better attempt in hiding it. I guess it's pretty safe to say that when Aaron and Caine were born, being twins and all that, our mother usually bought them the exact same thing, which to Frankie and I looked like an after Christmas sale. So, since everything they got was doubled, we figured that they wouldn't miss one and we would often feel compelled to make them share.
As they grew older this was an act that we should not have been performing, as life would later dictate, but who can tell with babies? I mean, you know how it is with babies when they are all small and enthralled mainly by colors. You know how you can't really tell what their eyes are focusing and concentrating on. Well now, knowing what I didn't know then, I would liken Aaron and Caine's stare at that time to that of Michael Myers, the character in that movie 'Halloween', where it seemed as though they were not so much looking at you but through you, as if just watching and waiting. I mean really, who could have fathomed the terror of those two when they became older and decided that they wanted to play? Now I have already expressed some of the attributes that I had observed in the twins but especially Aaron, which could lend some credence to the reason why in his adult years that he probably went into professional boxing. Caine on the other hand, when he was younger, was always hauling some piece of junk home (more often than not, two or three times his size) figuring to enhance the already illustrious and beautiful condition of our spacious home. Of course, when I use the terms 'illustrious', 'beautiful' and 'spacious' in describing our 'humble' abode, I use them as euphemisms of its true state. This, he often times did under the zealous encouragement of our mother. Caine took such a liking to this task that we nicknamed him 'Fred Sanford'. Again, none of us in our young minds would have ever imagined that, one, there was so much profit in hauling junk and that two, Caine had the mental fortitude to foresee that, and three, in doing so, that he was subliminally paving the way for his future as a world class weight lifter and body builder.
Now my sister Beatrice, who we called "Pebbles" has always been somewhat of an enigma to me. Save for the fact that her buttoned nose has always literally reminded me of a Pebbles rabbit, she has always maintained an unassuming low profile in our home. I don't know whether this was because she thought that we were jealous of her, or because she felt so confident in the fact that, if we subjected her to the normal rigors of our home life, that we would be severely reprimanded by our mother. Whatever her reasons were though, I feel confident in saying that I don't think that any of us have ever harbored any ill feelings towards her. Still, be that as it may, Pebbles was the one that excelled smoothly, both academically and socially. Communication between Pebbles and I during our childhood and now, has always been just minimal.
Now after Pebbles there is another set of twins, Ray-Ray and Antoine. I have to let it be known from the beginning that by the time they were born, I was pretty well on my way to traveling in 'Hyperspace', in search of my own identity and individuality, as is the nature of the male species. At that period of my life I had very little interaction with them or my two sisters and brother born after them. So although they would play some part in my life in later years, at this juncture of my story I can only comment slightly on my primed observations of the differences in their physical appearances and not so slight nuances. For example, Ray-Ray used to suck on his thumb and middle finger unlike most children and some adults too, who would only suck on their thumbs. Also, as he was still a baby and wasn't very well expected to speak the language of Harvard, if he wanted something, he would make a sound not unlike that of some crude television depiction of a Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon man which came out sounding sort of like,
"Ugh!"
So our father, being the jocular person that he oft times was, nicknamed him Uggo, as he had done with the rest of us who he called something other than our given names. Ray-Ray's twin, Antoine, on the other hand, oh wait, did I neglect to mention that Ray-Ray and Antoine were paternal and that Aaron and Caine were maternal twins or vise-versa, whatever that meant? Anyway, Aaron and Caine looked alike but Ray-Ray and Antoine, well, for now, you do the math. Ray-Ray had sort of brownish hair and Antoine's hair was pretty much jet-black. Also, Antoine's eyes were sort of similar to that of an old beagle, all round and sad looking and stuff, and Ray-Ray's eyes were, well, just eyes. Now Antoine on the other hand, had this little problem with pronunciation and identification. Fortunately though, this problem only existed when it came to any kind of fried edible meats you know like, chicken, beef or pork, although he did alright when it came to hot dogs. His problem was that he called all fried meats 'chicken' which was'nt so bad except that when he pronounced it, it came out 'Shicken'!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Primacyby Barry D. Wade Copyright © 2010 by Barry D. Wade. Excerpted by permission.
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