Hello?
Say MAANE!!! (one of my HYPED friends, everybody should have at least one)
(smiling) Heyyy…wassup?
You tripping mane!!
Tripping? Tripping about what?
You got n'gas all ready to get ‘served up’ and I see the same post you put up Friday!
Yeah..I’m sorry about that.
What’s the d’mn deal? You fading out? Getting tired? Changed your mind about writing? Wassup??
No..none of that. I write everyday.
Well..where its at??
I have several articles written, I just sometimes have problems with the editing.
Editing? You mean like misspelled words and commas in the wrong place?
No, the computer pretty much takes care all that kinda stuff. I’m talking about writing things that hurts or offends other people.
Aww, don’t start that sh’t now!!
Don’t start what?
Mane..one of the things that makes your writing FRESH, is that it stands out from all that regular mainstream stuff. You break your sh’t down on the REAL…everybody can feel real.
Thanks for the compliment.
For real mane..don’t water your sh’t down, keep it REAL. You got us out here fiending, gone and serve it on up n’ga…
Allready!
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By now, I’m sure most visitors to this website know about my love for the Southside of Houston, Texas. As much as this is a geographical specific place on the globe, it is much more than just a physical place to me, its home. Back when Highway 288 was still a grassy knoll and Airport Blvd was a gravel road and the only way out was to take Scott St. or Martin Luther King Blvd to 610, I’ve been calling this place my home. But it really goes beyond these physical boundaries. The Southside is all about family and people living together trying to help each other along in this journey on earth. If your car breaks down on Cullen & Reed Rd., its common for someone to stop and render aid. Of course this occurrence of chivalry increases greatly if the person in distress happens to be a well-built woman in a short tight skirt, but ya’ll know how that goes.
Unlike most other hard-headed boys on the Southside, my world was never constrained to the 713 area code. From the day that I was born, all the way up until my last years in high school, I spent 3 months a year in a small town in Arkansas with my grandparents. At the end of every school year my parents would take my sister and I to the sprawling metroplex of Calion, Arkansas, population 635. There we’d stay with our grandparents and cousins until it was almost time for the school year to start. What’s supposed to be (Kal-yen), most of the folks pronounce (Ka-yun). It’s a typical Southern town with rail road tracks running right through the middle. Black folks on one side, white folks on the other. It’s the kind of town (pictured above) where kids can play all day in the street and you don’t have to worry about them. My grandfather worked at the sawmill, as well as farming several acres of crops. He grew everything, greens, squash, purple hull peas, tomatoes, watermelons, peppers and so on. He also had a full chicken coop and a pigs that he kept in a pen towards the back of the property. My grandmother was always right there working with him, harvesting, canning fresh produce for the winter, taking care of us and cleaning them ‘white folks’ house. I think its good for everyone to spend time with people from older generations, they can teach you things that you can never learn from a book. I’ll never forget one day when my grandfather and I were walking back home one day and he spotted a penny, half buried in the ground.
Lookah dere’ Man..some money.
Aww Papa..that’s just a penny.
Jus a penny?? (He gave me a look of disbelief as he stooped to pick it up and dust it off and put it in his pocket) Boy, don’t you know 100 pennies make a dolla?
That was my first lesson in ’grinding’, and I didn’t even know it at the time. Calion won’t allow you to be fake, because everybody in Calion already knows all of your business, who your mama is, who you THINK your daddy is as well as who your REAL daddy is. Calion is full of folks that are used to living ‘close to the earth’. People who know how to grow their own produce, people who know how to kill and clean their own meat. Texas is known for its gun-toting independence, but Arkansas is probably well ahead of Texas as far as the number of guns per person. Whenever people are put close to nature and all of its animals, they are a lot more comfortable with having firearms close at hand. In Calion, you’ve got to keep a rifle close by in case a wolf or a bobcat tries to get into the chicken coop. It’s the same principle we have on the Southside, except instead of the wolves and bobcats, we keep our eyes open for jackers and crack heads.
As much as I talk about the Southside and how REAL it is, the true fact of the matter is that the spirit of the Southside is everywhere. No matter if you’re on the 72nd floor of an investment firm on Wall St. or if you’re reading this on your cousin’s computer in a double wide trailer in Calion, real doesn’t change. My reality is that I’m committed to Servinemup for at least 3 posts a week (at least until the 1st book drops) and I’m staying real with everything that I write. Thanks to all the people who check out the site at least once a week, even more thanks to the people who post comments and /or email me with their feedback (servinemup2@aol.com). Thank you Calion..Jelly Roll Street.. Fo’ Row, Tat, Red Man, Gub, Pistol, Friendly and all my podnas that was down with me way back when everybody called me ‘Man’. You all taught me how to grind and that Southside gave me the polish to shine. Ya’ll stay real, cuz you know I’m going to do the same. I've met a lot of other 'real' people in my life, from college, in the workplace, in the club, at church, on the basketball court, on the golf course and I'm glad that ya'll are riding with me too. Ya’ll keep kicking it with a player, its only going to get better mane..I’m TELLIN ya!!
I am pleased to announce my first ‘cover’ article titled ‘Irrigation System Slang - The Hook-up On Irrigation A22’ in the October 2003 issue of Turf Magazine.
