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My name is Christian Thomas Watkins. I Am 13.
My name is Robert John Taylor the Third. I’m 14.
My name is Devin Igles. I am 17 years old.
We interviewed Lamar Griffith on June 14th, 2018.
My date of birth is 2/11/82. My childhood was very fun. We was outside all the time, the winter time outside, summer time outside. If we didn’t have a baseball, tennis ball, or anything, we’ll wrap rubber bands in a ball and we’ll put duct tape around it and then wrap the rubber bands around the duct tape and put duct tape over that so you get the bounce. We rode bikes and fixed bikes. Saint Stephens even had a bazaar. It was a carnival. Big fun, families come over and enjoy themselves. Flea markets is downstairs, food, raffle games. Childhood was great and what Hazelwood is, it’s family and that’s how the neighborhood was back when I was coming up, so the village raised the neighborhood, and what I mean by that is, if you were throwing a rock at a bus, and somebody seen you that knew your mom, they can beat you and then they’ll tell your mom. So when you go home, you getting another beating. You seen an adult, you automatically respect it, you got out the way you said, “Hi. How you doing? Do you need me to do anything for you? No?” You was riding your bike somewhere else. Family morals, family structure.
My grades were good. I was a bookworm, dude. Still am kind of a bookworm. I read books all day. My grade point average was a 3.3. I’m gonna tell y’all like this. This is how it was about school. If I missed the school bus, I was crying, because school was everything. School is your experience with your peers. You go there, you say “What’s up? Hey, man, what’s going on? What you do last night?” You get stories, you get things that happen. Plus, there’s a lot of girls in school. I was cool with the girls. I liked girls. Me, I was a prankster. I always was on my homework. I always came home. I changed my clothes. Got my play dirty clothes on and did my homework. Made sure my room was clean. Made sure the house was clean so my mom don’t have to holler out the door “Lamar!” And now you’re around your friends. You’re like “I’ll see y’all later, man.” I wanted to go to school, man. School was everything to me. Grades was great, man. High school, football, I ran track, I even tried to be in the chess club. I always wanted to play chess and be the master at playing chess.
There’s so many mentors and people that I look up to. It’s the whole neighborhood. We grew up under them guys, you know what I mean? So those guys was there to point us in the different direction. And so all my uncles, all the people that’s in this neighborhood, they inspired me because they were there for us. They raised us when our dads wasn’t there. They got me to where I’m at right now.
When I got out of high school, I was in the Army, 4 1/2, almost five years. And then, right then and there, I was 22-23? And I’m now PPS custodian over at Pittsburgh Obama. I make some good money. So it’s great.
I have a daughter, two years old. I can’t keep up with her, right? But it’s cool being a first time father and man, I can’t believe it still, sometimes I pinch myself. I’m really a dad and I’ve really got a baby girl, and it’s like, wow. And, you know, when y’all get to that age and you got your kids… Look, man, take it with a grain of salt. Please don’t put pressure on yourself cause you’re gonna go crazy. I wasn’t married. We was gonna get married, but things took a way south, and we just said, “We’re going to be there for our daughter.” We’re best friends. We’re teammates.
It’s getting to see everything that’s changing about this neighborhood is great because we’ve been through some downtimes. Our steel mill closed. That put us through a depression. After that, we was really trying to rebuild with storefronts and things like that. But some of them didn’t come through. And now that we see this new area about that happened down here with-with the steel mill plant and all that, the Uber thing they do over here with Carnegie Mellon, with the Volvo trucks, they got the little city down there that got lights and things and buildings and people that kind of cross the street. It’s better now, that I see it now.
Growing up, we had each other and that was a good thing. Now, we still do got each other, but let’s put some new things in the neighborhood for the kids here. Like, I know y’all want to play baseball. I know y’all want to do other stuff. Like put some programs in. You know, some of y’all might wanna build go karts and build dirt bikes. Some of y’all might wanna be video game developers or designers. You guys are the future of our neighborhood. We gotta stay key to our neighborhood. We gotta stay key to our family. We must build this neighborhood up for the future. So when your kids is born, they got things to do here. Keep your goals in front of you. Please, don’t listen to the negativity. Somebody’s out there and you’re trying to be positive about what you want to do and you’re talking to somebody about it and somebody say “Ohh man, don’t do that. No..” Don’t let that person get to you. Please, man, honor your mother and your father. It’s in the good book, man. I want y’all to become whatever tycoon you want to become. If you want to be a rapper or you want to be a-an engineer, do it. Y’all should want every bit of information growing up cause y’all so young. That’s what I want y’all guys to do, man. I want y’all to live. Have fun, do your job.