Audio File
Transcript
My name is John Krall. I’m 12 years old.
My name is Keylen Kenney, I’m 12 years old.
My name is Xzavier Rodgers and I am 11 years old.
We interviewed. Neil Williams on June 23rd, 2016.
My birthday is 7/21/63. My childhood…I came up in Garfield. I moved from Homewood in 1973 to Garfield. And some of the things that we’ve done as kids, we cut the fire hydrant on and just have fun in the water. When I was coming up, there was predominantly all black people up here in Garfield. But now that the Urban Development that they have in Garfield have brought different color of people of different races.
I went to Fort Pitt from the 5th grade. I graduated from Arsenal. Then I went to Peabody, then went to Westinghouse. I was more or less a class clown. I was always the jokester, the prankster. In my day in town, we fight, I was a fighter, but that got me in a lot of trouble. I got kicked out of Peabody. That’s how I ended up at Westinghouse. I was a boxer coming up as a youth and I also played football. I used to box for the K Boys Club on the Hill District. If you know anything about boxing, you have to go train and then you have to go run. So I would go run, and by the time I’d be so exhausted, I would never make it to my first two or three classes in the morning, except my mom made me quit. I was flunking class.
I’m a licensed chef, also I’m a licensed barber. When I was coming up in high school, basically I took up culinary learning how to cook and always had a niche for cooking because of the way I was raised in the household. One of my chores was before I go outside, pick greens and I used to always be like “Oh my goodness. I gotta pick these greens” and turned out one day, I was cooking greens and I’m like one of the best green cookers around, you know, and baking cakes, baking pies. Right now, during the holidays, I would sell sweet potato cheesecake and sweet potato pies. I do that as a little hobby. Also, barbering. I cut hair. I had my own Barber shop in the basement in Garfield. As we was coming up, I was the only barbershop in Garfield at the time. So during the time that we came up, I started cutting hair probably about ‘78. I wasn’t licensed, but I was the Big Lake Barber at Garfield, so I had a little Barber shop in the basement, set up had chairs, had lights and everything. I had three businesses before. I had a pizza shop. I had two convenience stores. I also had the first tour bus in Garfield for at least three to five hours a day. I would go back and forth from Cornwall, Columbo, and Fern.
I’m the youngest of three. My brother, we’re six years apart. When I was 10, he was 16, and he was off doing, I guess, what teenagers do. So he wasn’t there to help mold me to who I am today. You know, I learned from my peers and different adults in the neighborhood, but I had a sister. She’s in the middle. She’s four years older than me, but she was into school and her things with her friends. So I wouldn’t say really the household was busy. It was just that, I kinda in a sense you say, I raised myself, you know, I mean with my mother there. But, you know, I raised myself to develop into a young man.
As a young adult, I got into selling drugs, and the consequences of that, I did seven years in the penitentiary. During the seven years, that was a big change in my life. That wasn’t something that I really wanted to do. When I was incarcerated, I never knew what exactly what I was going to be. That wasn’t my goal, to be who I am now. I had other goals, but me doing time in the penitentiary, it helped me become a better person and a responsible man that accept responsibilities.
Well, as far as the community, I can now honestly say that I’m a Garfieldian, meaning they’ve been in Garfield for over 10 years. I help support different things and programs that they have in Garfield. I also coach football. My main thing I tell most children respect your parents. I’m big on that. I’m 52 years old, be 53 this year. To see a kid disrespect his mom, he might not see me right in front of you. But I could cry. I still, “Yes ma’am” my mom, “No ma’am” my mom. And my mom is my everything. When coming into mentoring, I understand that I cannot get everyone’s attention and I can’t get everyone to listen. But if I get just one person to listen and I can mold and shape that one person, that would really mean something to me. Because it’s just that if you all just step outside of yourself, or step away from yourself and just look at the dynamics of the communities, not just Garfield, throughout the whole city of Pittsburgh, or throughout the world and just seeing the different murders just going on and senseless killing, drug selling and stuff like that. And I just wish that I could let a kid learn from the lesson that I learned from being incarcerated and hoping that I can make them a better child to become a better young man.