• About Me
  • Other Writings
  • Interview Clips
  • All About Me: American Racism, American Narcissism, and the Conversation America Can’t Have
  • Video Clips
  • Boy @ The Window Pictures
  • Boy @ The Window Theme Music

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Desperation

Jimme To The Rescue

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

241st Street Subway, 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Abyss, Desperation, Family, Fatherhood, Felix Baumgartner, Financial Rescue, Fiscal Cliff, Manned Balloon Jump, Money, Red Bull Stratos, Relationships, Rescue, Welfare Poverty


United States Coast Guard rescue diver jumps from a helicopter (demonstration), 2004 Seafair, Seattle, WA, June 18, 2008. (Brandon Weeks via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Thirty years ago this week was the beginning of my second relationship with my father Jimme, brought on by the desperate need for money and material support as the Hebrew-Israelite world of 616 was swirling down the proverbial toilet. Our “fiscal cliff” was more like Felix Baumgartner jumping off a balloon into Jupiter’s atmosphere without a parachute (see my posts “The Quest For Work, Past and Present” from August ’12 and “Pregnant Pauses” from earlier this month). This was the determined teenager me, one with a smart mouth and a firm adult sense of pragmatism, trumping any shame or embarrassment I would’ve felt even four months earlier. As I’ve written in Boy @ The Window:

“It was time to do something desperate. We needed money just to eat bread and water, and the water was free. We hadn’t done a full clothes wash since the beginning of September. Me and Darren both needed a new pair of sneakers about every other month. The ones I had were forming holes on the sides and bottoms.

So I turned to Jimme. Mom was always complaining that he didn’t pay child support anyway. And I knew where he lived now. It was 153 South Tenth, not far from the East 241st Street station in the Bronx, the end of the line on the Subway’s 2 and 5 lines running from Brooklyn and Manhattan. There were a bunch of watering holes nearby.

Felix Baumgartner of Austria as he jumps out of the capsule during final manned flight, October 14, 2012. (AP Photo via Red Bull Stratos)

I’d actually started going over to Jimme’s in August, a consequence of my first long walks through Mount Vernon and Southern Westchester County. But this was different. I was going to Jimme’s for money and sneakers. I decided to wait for him at the 241st Street stop after school one Friday at the end of October, figuring I’d catch him just before he started his weekly drinking ritual.

Unbelievably, my first idea for tracking Jimme down worked! I caught Jimme coming down the rickety Subway steps, completely shocked by seeing me there.

“Bo’, whacha doin’ here?”

“We need money, and I need some sneakers.”

“Why don’ you aks Maurice for them?”

“’Cause you’re my father and you haven’t been paying any child support. If you had, I wouldn’t be here!”

With that, Jimme laughed and shook his head. Of course he was also mad. I was in the way of him gettin’ his “pep-up,” virtually anything with alcohol in it.

“Bo’, what I’m gonna do wit’ you? You got me,” he said. I negotiated fifty dollars from him. He promised to get me some sneaks.

The following Tuesday, I went over to his place. Not only did I get my sneakers, a pair of size eleven-and-a-half Nike walking sneaks. I got a brown Members Only jacket to boot. I could tell, though, that they once belonged to someone else. Still a bit hung over, Jimme said, “Man, lo’ at all dese suits! You gotta lo’ like a big shot when you work in the city.” The suits were too big and a bit mismatched. I was just relieved that Jimme cared enough about my feet to get me the right size.

241st Street-Wakefield Station entrance, Bronx, NY, January 18, 2010. (DanTD via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution 3.0 Unported,

Darren would usually come with me on what gradually became our weekly hike from the land of 616 to the near Bronx and the city. Jimme being Jimme, he would grab me by one hand while giving me the money and put his left arm around my shoulder, whispering in my right ear, “Don’ give Darren nothin’,” or “You keep fitty for yo’self an’ give Darren ten.” “You a Collins, don’ be sharin’ nothin’ wit’ them Gills,” he’d often say.

I almost always broke with Jimme around this. Yes, Darren often was a selfish goofball and my 616 family was just a step or two above total chaos. Yet I couldn’t go to eat at a good pizza shop with Jimme and Darren and let them subsist on bread, water and milk. I couldn’t watch them run around in graying underwear and just wash my own clothes. Not as hard as Mom worked, not as long as I lived there. I wanted to help as much as I could and still take care of my needs.

Jimme knew I was helping out at 616 too. So he would say things like “Don’ be givin’ your motha my money. Those ain’t my kids. Dis jus’ for you and Darren.” Or “Don’ give them muddafuccas nothin’,” which would start a brief argument between me and him about the needs of innocent children. Even with that and his drunken ups and downs, Jimme helped save the day for us and me as we plunged into the watery abyss of welfare poverty.”

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

Twitter Updates

  • RT @intersectionist: How can we honor the hundreds of thousands of colonized people whose remains were stolen and are still kept in the mus… 2 hours ago
  • RT @IBJIYONGI: I keep thinking about how before social media some of us grew up knowing that what happened to Rodney King wasn’t exceptiona… 2 hours ago
  • RT @jadeys1986: My child is banned from the school playground/canteen for her hair, its neatly braided in a natural colour, I gave them a l… 6 hours ago
  • RT @DelSchilling: This is absolutely disgusting @BishopChalloner! I really hope this gets rectified. This is a horrible thing for you to d… 6 hours ago
  • RT @PINJNews: “Earlier this month, the owners of the Post-Gazette – bought Pittsburgh’s beloved alt-weekly,@Pittsburgh City Paper (the purc… 6 hours ago
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Blogroll

  • Kimchi and Collard Greens
  • Thinking Queerly: Schools, politics and culture
  • Website for My First Book and Blog
  • WordPress.com

Recent Comments

decollins1969 on The Tyranny of Salvation
Khadijah Muhammed on The Tyranny of Salvation
My Sampling of Super… on The White-Boy Logic of Su…

NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
Notes From a Boy @ The Window
Topics:
My Life, Culture & Education, Politics & Goofyness
 
Follow my blog

616 616 East Lincoln Avenue A.B. Davis Middle School Abuse Academia Academy for Educational Development AED Afrocentricity American Narcissism Authenticity Bigotry Blackness Boy @ The Window Carnegie Mellon University Child Abuse Class of 1987 CMU Coping Strategies Crush #1 Crush #2 Death Disillusionment Diversity Domestic Violence Economic Inequality Education Family Friendship Friendships Graduate School Hebrew-Israelites High-Stakes Testing Higher Education History Homelessness Humanities Humanities Program Hypocrisy Internalized Racism Jealousy Joe Trotter Joe William Trotter Jr. K-12 Education Love Manhood Maurice Eugene Washington Maurice Washington Misogyny Mother-Son Relationship Mount Vernon High School Mount Vernon New York Mount Vernon public schools Multiculturalism MVHS Narcissism NFL Pitt Pittsburgh Politics of Education Poverty President Barack Obama Race Racial Stereotypes Racism Relationships Self-Awareness Self-Discovery Self-Reflection Sexism Social Justice Teaching and Learning University of Pittsburgh Violence Whiteness Writing

Top Rated

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Join 103 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...