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As I was strollin’ down memory lane, thinking about the old-school hustlers of my youth, I could help but think about They were a lot different than many of these wannabes are today. First, they weren't in it for show. They were hustling to maintain a lifestyle that society was doing it's very best to deny them.  No joggin’ suits, baseball caps and tennis shoes for these brothers, it was Florsheims  and very expensive Brooks Bros. suits all the way, and you’d never see ‘em in the same one for weeks. And they weren't loud and crude cutthroats. While they undoubtedly lived outside the law, they reflected a style that was all their own - elegant, laid back - although, with an edge that said to anyone with anything less than the purest of motives, "I not the one." 
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Billy Dee Williams would have fit right in with these brothers, because he has their persona down to the last digit. Their most pronounced characteristic was class and style, not brutish swagger as they're often portrayed. They were the product of an era where class was everything.  These were gentlemen . . . illegitimate businessmen. And again, unlike the young brothers you see today, they weren't in it for show; they were dead serious about what they did. My father explained it simply - it was all about surviving in a White man's world without having to carry a tin cup. It was about living with dignity.

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He told me that what he and his friends engaged in was no more criminal than what White business men do every day, within the law. He said, crime is robbery, theft, and taking from others what doesn't belong to you. They didn't engage in that kind of activity. What he and his friends did was provide services for consenting adults, just like the White man does routinely, and legally, on a daily basis. According to my father, the only difference between what they did, and what the White man does, is they don't have politicians in their pockets to sign off on it. So the crime wasn't what they did - the crime was not giving the White man his cut.

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I remember how Ronnie, who was something of a hustler himself, would open up his barbershop just for them every Monday so they could get their domes laid. Monday was Hustler's Day at Ronnie's barbershop. The shop was closed for everybody else. What was funny about that, and the hustlers used to joke about it inside, was how the up-and-coming wannabes would try to get in there on Monday through hook-or-crook, because just managing to get their hair laid at Ronnie's on a Monday could make their reputation on the street. It would also allow them to rub shoulders with the movers and shakers, and maybe gain the attention of one of them, which meant a tremendous boost in both prestige, and pay grade.

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I recall how one Monday even a preacher tried to get in there. After Ronnie politely turned him away, they waited long enough for him to get out of earshot, then everybody fell-out laughing. Wakeen, who used to run "the book," said, in his slow and draggin' voice, "You should have let 'em in, Ron. He got more game than anybody in buildin' - and his is Betty Crocker approved." Everybody started laughing. Then the ladies started telling stories about the good reverend. That taught me very early in life that no matter where you go, you just cannot escape politics.

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So every Monday around noon, the whole block would be lined with a row of shiny new hogs, and the beauticians who worked for Ronnie (only on Mondays) were the cream of the crop. They were the most fabulous sisters in the hood, and everyone of them smelled like a freshly picked rose after a Spring rain. I can still smell their aroma to this today. Absolutely, the cream of the crop - they had to be - because they were servicing the royalty of the Black community.

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And these weren't silly wannabes with delusions of grandeur, trying to pattern themselves after someone they'd seen on television. These brothers were the real deal. They were the aristocrats of the darker side of the Black community, those who simply chose not to allow a racist society to hold them hostage. Any one of them could have thrived on Wall Street had they not been blessed with various hues of Black skin. And the community recognized this, so while many "mainstream" Black people weren't crazy about their lifestyle, they understood the rationale behind it, so the community not only accepted them, but they even treated them with a grudging respect and deferment. My father was a part of that lifestyle, but you would never have known it by the way I was treated as a child. When I was a young boy and visiting my dad, the neighbors wouldn't hesitate to whip my butt if they caught me doing something I wasn't suppose to do. I was treated just like the other kids in the neighborhood, because they knew they had nothing to fear from my dad. He reserved his wrath for the people who lived the street life. 

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Ronnie was a friend of the family, so during the Summer, every Monday at 11 a.m. I was headed for his shop. That was my hustle. Between working Ronnie's on Monday, and working the candy concession at Mr. Pierce's liquor store after school, I made a young boy’s fortune. At Ronnie's just going back and forth to the store and taking messages around the corner to the various people who worked for these impressive brothers could fill my pockets up.  But I didn’t just love the money, it was a thrill just being acknowledged by these bigger-than-life personalities who made such a huge impression on my life - and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit it. Sometimes in my writings even today, I'll take on the persona of one of them to make a point, because they had a dry, bottom line wit about them that cut straight through all  manner of bullshit. Listening to them taught me to look beneath a person's words and address the motive behind what they were saying. I learn to never tap dance around the edges - get to the point. That's why I call my column "Beneath the Spin."

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One of the reasons I could see through Cornel West and that I'm so relentless against him in my column is due the words of a friend of my father that they used to call "Sweet Willie."  When I was about 16 years old he told me, "Never trust a brother who's always trying to be the coolest thing in the room, because he's using so much of his brain trying to maintain his image that there's nothing left for him to think with. The primary reason he's trying to be so cool in the first place is because he's insecure, which means that inside, even HE knows he ain't shit, and he's trying his best to hide that fact from the rest of the world.  It also means he scary, so if you ever busted with him, he'll turn out to be a turncoat and a snitch every time."  And I began to read "Psych-Cybernetics," and later, majored in psychology in college based on the words of another hustler that they used to call "Genie Boy."  He told me, "The human was one of the most powerful forces in the known universe, so if you don't control it, it WILL control you." Later, as a student of psychology, I found that the words of both men were valid. Carl Jung, a protégé of Sigmund Freud said, everything we do, short of seeking to satisfy our homeostatic (biological) needs, we do in an attempt to reduce our feelings of insecurity.
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The Eulipians
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Some of the greatest minds I've ever known
held court while sitting on empty milk crates
in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores.
At their feet I embraced the love of knowledge,
And through their tutelage defined self-worth
In my own terms.
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These were the "Eulipians" — writers, poets,
musicians, painters, and uncommon drunks —
those shade-tree philosophers who
contemplate the fungus between the
toes society;
Who danced with reckless abandon,
unfettered by formal inhibition
through the presumptuous
speculation of the ages;
Who live in county jails, cardboard boxes,
alley ways, and luxury Apartments.
Insignificant here in Great Bruteland,
but of ultimate significance in the eyes of God.
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While these obscure intellectuals
stood well outside the mainstream
of academy, I watched
with astonished delight as
they sang, scat, and scribed their various
philosophies into the mainstream of human knowledge.
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Their philosophy?
knowledge is free, thus,
will transcend attempts
to be contained through barriers
of caste or privilege,
leaving man's innate thirst
for knowledge free to someday
overwhelm his lust for stupidity.
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The Eulipians
http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-eulipians.html
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So yes, I really admired these people. I loved just hearing them say my name. It made me feel like I was a part of an inner circle, or a world that others couldn't gain access to - and indeed I was.  But I especially loved hearing those gorgeous and pretty-smelling women say my name - "Eric, honey, will you run around to the drug store and ask Mr. Reed to send me a large jar of this?" And then they'd hand me an empty jar of something. "Thank you, baby." How I loved that - especially when Harriett did it, and she'd rubbed her hand against my face or shoulder.

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Harriett was so beautiful that she didn't even look real. She was the finest and most refined of them all. She looked like someone had painted her. And when she moved she was so sensuous that as she walked, I imagined her thighs must've even made one another other feel good as they rubbed up against each other. That's right!  That woman was tough. Yet, she didn't even seem to notice how beautiful she was.  That's where the class came in.  Every man who knew her yearned for her, but they also knew not to cross the line, because Harriett wasn't the kind of woman that a man could just choose - she had to choose you.

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And Harriett was the one I knew best. We had a special relationship, because we had Jimmy in common. She was Jimmy's girlfriend, and how I envied him that accomplishment. But actually, it wasn't an accomplishment on Jimmy's part. Harriett just sort of dropped into his lap. Jimmy was a guy my father hired to teach me to play the saxophone. He had a serious heroin addition at the time, and he used to drink a lot too. So we'd see him nodded out in alleys and behind the pool hall, or getting sick and throwing up in public. So everybody used to look down on him - everybody, that is, accept Harriett. She went to high school with Jimmy, so you'd often see her waking him up, and scooping him up from behind the pool hall. He probably would have died if it weren't for Harriett, because his wife left him for another man, and she and the other dude would walk right past Jimmy nodded out somewhere without even looking down. So he didn't have anyone who gave a damn about him - except Harriett, the finest thing who ever lived. Go figure it.

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Just think about the character of that lady. Harriet was a woman who was so beautiful, sexy, and classy that she could, literally, get any man she wanted, at any station in life - in or out of the hood. Yet, she catered to the needs of a man who had been a dope fiend for years, and had degenerated to the point that he'd become the neighborhood joke. Jimmy wasn't simply at the bottom, the bottom was sitting on him.

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The situation with Jimmy was one of my first big eye-openers in life. Jimmy was a metaphor for the direction that many of our young people are headed for today. But Jimmy turned out to be a guy who had more character, more class, and much more talent than any of us (I tell his story in a link below). But when Jimmy was down and needed us most, we not only stepped over him, but laughed at him as we were doing it - and as young as I was, I was a big part of it. When it came to Jimmy, I was one of the most prolific practical jokers against him.  If I found him passed out somewhere, it seemed that I just couldn't get myself to pass by without playing some kind of practical joke on him, like tying his shoes together or something childish like that.  Harriett was the only one with the empathy to see the inhumanity in the way we treated Jimmy, and she had the courage of her convictions, because she dropped friends over it - and I don't mean temporarily; I mean, permanently!  She got on my ass about it once, but she gave me a pass because I was so young.

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But Harriett had the last laugh, because by the time being discussed here, Jimmy had become one of the most impressive and respected personalities in the community. And while Jimmy wasn't a hustler, he could walk into Ronnie's any day of the week and command the respect of everybody in the place, and everybody loved seeing him coming - ESPECIALLY, if he had his gig bag slung across his shoulder. Harriett helped to make that happen - and not because she wanted him, but because she was a friend. I think the only reason they ended up together was because Jimmy made such an impressive comeback, and so fast, that it made her fall in love with him, as it did the entire community, including his wayward wife - who USED to be Harriet's best friend, until she deserted Jimmy for another man and left him to die in the street. But when she deserted Jimmy, Harriet immediately dropped her as a friend, and due to Harriet's stature in the community, that meant she also lost a lot of other "friends." She went from the A list to the Z list, almost overnight.  But that's another story - and a very good one - but I digress.

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I used to hang on to every word of these ghetto aristocrats. I would listen to their stories, and live a vicarious life through theirs. But what I really loved most was their music. It literally painted a portrait of who they were. They’d fill Ronnie’s juke box up with coins and one monster after another would flow from it’s speakers - Miles, Trane, Bird, and they loved Jimmy Smith.  Areatha was the new kid on the block. She hadn’t really established which direction she was going at that time, but everybody assumed that she was going to be a jazz star, because the only thing by her on the juke box was "Sky Lark."

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Yeah, those were the days, but what I remember most was how suave and gracefully those enigmatic products of adversity would glide across the floor. With diamonds gleaming from their manicured fingers gently pinching the seam of their trousers, and the light altering the colors of their sharkskin suits, they seemed to be dancing on a cushion of air, as they did the "Soft Shoe" to what they seemed to have adopted as their collective theme song - Killer Joe.
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No, we don't see nothing like 'em today, and I don't think we ever will again . . .  because they were the product of a bygone era - an era that I miss tremendously, and one that will continue to live, as long as I do.

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