Laugh with a Sinner or Cry with His Saints: Life by the Drop

By Robert Ford

What started out as a youthful life of innocence in South Central Los Angeles turned into a fight of the fittest, fueled by a life of addictions and wrong decisions. I called all the shots. I was in control of everything. I was the one who caused people to break themselves apart until in the end, I broke apart from the inside out. My second wife and daughters, I always considered my saints; they were the ones who, for years, held me together!

(This is my story. Laugh with a Sinner or Cry with His Saints: Life by the Drop)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648012808

Robert Ford

Robert Ford is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester. His books include Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain.

Book preview

Early ’60s Introduction

1963

My earliest memories would be at Huntington Park, Watts District!

We lived in Albany and Florence in a two-bedroom shotgun shack. I was maybe three or four years old back then. Not to sound vain but a good-looking little shit at that. I had met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sylvia Morgan. She had two brothers David and Joey and a sister Jaenne. Her parents were Henry and Helen. It seemed like Sylvia and I went everything together. Beatles had just hit the U.S. and made their CBS debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Everything seemed so simple back then. It was two years before the Watts riots broke out. Sylvia’s brother David used to take me on a ride on his handlebars all the time. He was okay at that time, and back then, the LA Dodgers were scouting him. He was a hell of a pitcher. His brother Joey, two years younger, wasn’t bad either.

It seemed like everywhere you turned, the song I Want to Hold Your Hand was playing on everyone’s radio. Rolling Stones were not too far behind. Back then, you were kicked out of the house in the morning and were not called back in until dark and dinnertime. That was summer time, of course. I have a little brother, Jimmy, two years younger. The older he got, he was with our little click all the time. One day, it caught my attention that David was spending a lot of time in his bedroom and was all of a sudden skinny and thin. He wasn’t there anymore. He had passed away from leukemia!

I cried for two days and nights. He was a very nice young man who put everybody first. This was my first experience with heartfelt tears. J. F. Kennedy died and back then, I did not understand why everybody was crying. But when David Morgan died, that’s when I felt hurt from deep inside for the first time.

As time went on, the riots creep in on us; it was 1965 or ’66. I was in elementary school. I had brownish red hair at that time and all the black kids nicknamed me little rooster. They would chase me on the black top but could not catch me. I was a pretty fast little shit. We used to walk back home from school, and the kids who could not catch me on the black top would ambush me on the way home and beat me up. Sometimes, I was able to fight back; sometimes not. Depending on how many there would be, I would try to tell my father, but for fathers in the early sixties, it was all about Get tough or die, kid, or Leave me alone, son, the Dodgers are winning. That’s pretty much where that shit landed. Thanks, pops!

During that time, we lived on the east side of the Alameda Railroad tracks. It separated a lot of whites from blacks, and you could feel tensions building. Why I did not know back then, but it was building that’s for sure.

There was an alley behind where we lived, and one day, I was in Sylvia’s backyard. We were sitting on our bicycles when five black kids showed up on bikes. One did not have a bike. He was walking and asked if he could sit on my bike! I told him no and stuck my tongue out at him. He then hit or kicked me in my chin and split my tongue almost in two and rode off with my bike. Sylvia helped me home. We did not have medical insurance back then, so my poor little tongue had to heal on its own, could have used a few stitches! I have a scar to this very day. I am trying to get tough, pops. How’s the game going? One day, before the riots broke out, my father took me to his work one morning to pick up his paycheck. He worked nights at that time swing shift. I think he worked at Oscar Meyer at that time or CME (California Motor Express), not sure. Well, on the way back home, we stopped at a drive-thru dairy to cash his paycheck and pick up some eggs and milk. Back then, you could do that. I think his check back then would have been about $165 maybe. Anyway, we cashed the check, grabbed the grocery’s, and headed home south on Santa Fe Avenue. We owned a rambler at the time. On the way home, there were some people watching us. They were two black guys in a white pickup truck. They pulled alongside us and stuck a shotgun on the side of my father’s face and made him hand over the money from his wallet. My dad made me crawl into the backseat and just that quick, they were gone, and we were broke once again. I wanted to say Get tough or die, pops, but I just kept my mouth shut. I am not sure, but I believe two LA sheriffs pulled over a black woman. Something exploded and the riots were on.

By now, all hell had broken loose! The sky was lit up orange every night. One evening, my little brother decided to explore the world on his own. He disappeared. We looked for him everywhere in the whole neighborhood; sheriffs were called. My father finally found him. The national guard had set up tanks on the Alameda Railroad tracks as a barrier. And there he was, this little white boy, sitting with the military men eating M.R.E. rations, Meals ready to eat. I believe that was the first real ass whooping I ever witnessed. Back then, kids did not have lawyers to follow them around. We were disciplined in the right way with a belt, or you got your own switch off a tree. That’s just how it went down.

By this time, Bill and Lydia Reeves had come into our lives. They had two girls, Beverly and Brenda. They were either at our house, or we were at theirs. Back then, Friday and Saturday nights were poker nights. The Morgans and the Reeves would come over smoking cigars/cigarettes and drinking Oly beer (Olympia beer). Us kids—my brother, Beverly, and Brenda—were allowed to run around crazy, as long as we stayed out of the way.

I remember one Christmas I got a set of tiger-striped drums. It was a nice little complete set. My brother and Brenda snuck into the bedroom and poked holes in all the skins with the drum sticks. They were never punished for it, and I hold it against the two of them to this very day.

Some of the older kids in the neighborhood were getting into trouble themselves. One night, Joey, Oggie, Raymond, and Rueben jumped the fence to the lumberyard and, Oggie flipped a forklift over. That night, my mother and I were sitting on our porch enjoying the late hot summer evening. All of a sudden, we saw all of them young boys running home, but Oggie was the only one limping; the forklift he flipped over nearly cut his foot off!

Later in life, I heard he became a multimillionaire in the laundry business.

The riots were still on, and I remember young men were coming home from Vietnam. They would sit on their porches at night with them being not afraid of anything, and the black people seemed to know it. They stayed off our street, but that being said, one night, it got close enough. My father loaded my mother, brother, and I in the Rambler with us kids on the back seat with rifles on the floorboard, and we went to the Reeves’s house in South Hollywood and stayed there for a few days until things cooled down.

As things subsided, we returned home although I did not want to. Beverly and I, as well as my brother and Brenda, had become inseparable when things got back to normal. Nobody was killed in the riots as I recall.

They had put a McDonalds on Florence Avenue near Albany Street. Back then, you could buy a cheeseburger for seventeen cents or hamburger for fifteen cents. One evening, my mother gave me a five-dollar bill and sent me up to McDonalds by myself to get dinner. I left with a sack of food and Cokes and some money left over. Across the street were five black boys asking, What you got in that bag, white boy? I was scared and took off running for home. Nothing was going to happen with my McDonalds burgers. I was once again too fast for them. It seemed they never traveled alone; they always outnumbered you.

I ran so fast. I actually hurdled over the top of Sylvia’s head, who just happened to be sitting on her bike. They had stopped chasing me. I got dinner home and ran back to see if Sylvia was all right. Everything was good. McDonalds made it home safe. Getting tough, pops!

My father back then always took us fishing. One weekend, he took us to Lake Henshaw in San Diego County fishing. We cleaned up the catfish, put them on ice, and Sunday afternoon made it home. There was an old women who lived directly across the street from us, and she owned about thirty cats. Like I said, we lived in a shotgun shack. They could see directly through our front door kitchen or the back door. A few of her cats were missing. When we got home from fishing, my father went to work in the kitchen sink, cleaning the catfish. The cat lady was watching our father, called the police and told them that my dad was cutting up her cats in our sink! Two Huntington Park police officers showed up and knocked on our door. My dad, who always smoke a cigar when he cleaned fish, stopped working and walked up to the door with his hands full of blood and said, What?

The officer said, We got a call that you’re cutting up cats in your sink.

My dad said, Yes I am. Would you like to see?

The cops looked at each other and reluctantly said, Yes, we would.

They followed my dad into the kitchen and there they were—all those catfish cleaned and ready to fry. The cops looked at each other and started laughing hysterically and said, There’s been some sort of mistake. They politely left, and we never heard from the cat lady again!

One day, when my mother had gone back to work at an insurance company, the babysitter let us go outside to play, and we all managed—four or five of us kids—to come up with the harebrained idea to push my little brother off our roof on his tricycle. So we did. Only Rueben and I made it up there, but we did it. I don’t remember what damage it did to my brother, but it did affect him and to this very day, I still see signs of it.

You know, way back then, they would deliver milk to our doorsteps every Saturday morning—two milks, one chocolate, one orange juice. My brother and I used to snatch the chocolate milk up and drink it, watching Mighty Mouse, the cartoon show on a black and white Zenith TV. There was also the helm’s man who came by driving a yellow panel wagon and sold fresh doughnuts. He would stop and pull out a long wooden drawer full of wonderful fresh doughnuts; you could smell them a mile away. There was also a little Mexican lady who came by, pulling a little red flyer wagon and sold tamales two for twenty-five cents. She kept them warm, wrapped in towels—best tamales I can remember. My first taste of Mexican food, best ever.

One Sunday afternoon, I was out in the graveled alley doing my junking. I used to go through the trash cans to see what I could find. And that afternoon, I got broke of that habit really quick. I reached my hand way down into the trash can and my finger in it. A double-edged razor blade cut me open. I whipped my arm out, spun around, and slipped on the gravel. At that split second, an old Chinese man was taking a shortcut through the alley in a country square station wagon and drove completely over me without touching me. I jumped up and took off running. He got out and took chase, thinking he had just run over a little boy.

With him in chase, the faster I swung my arms running for home. More blood drew out of my finger onto my egg white shell JCPenney T-shirt. It must have looked horrible. I was running for the safe house home! As I rounded the corner, my father was cleaning down our front yard dirt smoking his cigar, and all he saw was his little boy running away from a Chinese man with blood all over. It’s amazing how a little finger cut can bleed like that. My father grabbed the hose and tackled that man. My mother, me, and the neighbors got involved and somehow, it all got sorted out. It was my fault. My first real ass whooping. I have never forgotten that one, and I never dug in the trash again.

1966, Kindergarten

I had made it to first grade. My brother was in first year of kindergarten. Back then, it took two years to get out of. Anyway, I was in first grade and had a beautiful teacher. I do not remember her name, but what I do remember is she used to wear a white blouse with no bra! I knew this because every time she came over to help me, she would bend over my desk and you could see her breast clearly. You could see her nipples. She had beautiful breasts. They looked like coconuts split in half, just floating through the milky way creamy white breasts. That’s the first time I felt that funny feeling in the Johnson department if you know what I mean.

In that school, black kids would not let you use the restroom. If you had to use it, they would slam you around the walls if you were white. I today hear all this racist shit, and you can kiss my white ass. I hear I am a black kid with all these white people looking down on me. What about me in an all-black school? I hope one day this story makes it out there because there is a whole different side too this racial shit, and I can tell you all about it as a white boy in an all-black school. Kiss my white ass! Anyway, enough of this crap! My last memory of first grade—I did not want to use the restroom because I was scared to do so. I sat there and pissed myself, and Miss Milky Way Coconuts sent me home!

So when you talk about poor black kids being looked down on, I will say it one more time, Kiss my white ass. Maybe this part should not make it in this story, but the street flows both ways people. It’s not a one-sided world.

Well, we finally moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the next street! It was very clean and smelled a new breath of fresh air compared to the shotgun shack, cockroach-infested house we lived in. I remember my brother and I used to collect the cockroach eggs and play our own poker games, betting with the cockroach eggs. So tell me about being poor. We could never find the poker chips!

1967

The apartment was short-lived. My mother used to walk us down the alley to the corner Laundromat and give us ten cents to buy a Coke out of the Coke machine, paper cups and ice. You don’t see that any more. Well, we finally moved to a town called Rosemead. What I forgot to tell you was that Lucy Kiner lived in the next town over