The "Old Block" Tells All.

  The fort was located at 9795 Garden Drive, in Hanford, California. It was a nice stretch of land with two separate dwelling places, a huge pig pen and a non-functioning well, (hence the need for a neighborhood outhouse). Water was “fetched” in four metal milk cans, and rationed out like some post-apocalyptic movie scene. (Do not ask where the water came from.) The larger dwelling belonged to P.T. Price and his wife O.C. Smith-Price. (Together, they had three children, Raymond, Shirley, and Evelyn.) O.C. Smith-Price was the birth mother of Booker T. Smith, my less-than-illustrious stepfather. When I met O.C., she was already bedridden and as cantankerous and mean as an old female pit bulldog protecting her litter. Speaking of her litter, to her they must have been above menial tasks because O.C. would always call me when she needed something basal or downright filthy done. The Price home was a real house, made of contemporary wood, plaster, and metallic materials. Our “house”, (

  What’s so doggone funny is my former life! “Adult lips on a child” is what’s so doggone funny. Outhouses and picking cotton for a living are not so funny! Growing up in the fifties as a poor, black step-son of an ex-military, migrant worker is also very unfunny. Can you imagine sitting in a man-made, wooden box situated over a temporary hole in the ground, that was full of “your guess is as good as mine”, and smells worse than “who did it and what for”? That is a childhood description of the neighborhood outhouse! “Toilet paper? What is that?” “Here, crumple up this brown paper bag a few times until it gets good and soft.” (Did I not mention the black widow spiders that lived under the seat and fed on the flies that spawned there?) Near the putrid, neighborhood outhouse was the perfect battlefield. It was cluttered with hard dirt, rocks, and various other debris.  Dirt-clod fights were a poor kid’s national pastime. You would launch a salvo of packed dirt at your pre-selected and