I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [12]
Mom and Grandma
My grandmother has always been the rock of the family. She’s really strong, assertive, aggressive. I’ve always been just like my grandmother, stubborn and strong-willed. I’m 100 percent like her. My grandmother was the father-figure in our family since my father wasn’t there. She took charge of all the important situations, made the difficult decisions. She handled all the discipline. The funny thing is, my mother is just the opposite. She’s really passive. My mother is overly sensitive and easily offended. Her personality is very, very different from mine and from my grandmother’s. Because of that, whatever grandma said, that was it. It wasn’t up for a vote. There was no debate. I don’t know how many whippings I had. Let’s just say they were numerous. My grandmother would use a switch to whip us, a stretch of Hot Wheels track, anything.
Grandma worked at a meat-packing factory, and it was hard work. Mom was a maid. There was nothing glamorous about it.
And we bootlegged. We sold alcohol. That’s the way we made ends meet: selling alcohol. It was hard raising three young boys, with no husband and father. John is seven years younger than me, Darryl is four years younger. How much money can you make working in a meat-packing factory? Or working as a maid? So we sold alcohol. The house was like a casino on the weekend. Guys would come on Friday and drink and gamble until Sunday.
One of the fascinating things about growing up poor in those projects was that a guy who fit the description of being a bum, a guy who drank all the time and didn’t amount to much, would most likely be protective of you. Back then, some of those guys who were drunks or bums would be the first to tell you, “Hey man, don’t screw it up!” I don’t think that’s the case anymore. The culture has changed. But back then, the guys who didn’t amount to anything were very supportive. They would go out of their way to keep you out of trouble. They knew full well which kids might have a chance to make something of their lives if they stayed out of trouble, if they stayed away from drinking and drugs and crime. They’d tell you, “No, we ain’t havin’ that; you’re getting out of here. Put that alcohol down.” It’s true. They might have screwed up their lives, and some of it might have been beyond their control depending on how much education they had or what kind of job they could get. But they didn’t want to see the cycle continue. I think a lot of those guys knew how difficult it was to turn your life around if you got started in the wrong direction. And they didn’t want to see that hopelessness continue. That can be some depressing stuff. But at least they wanted you to do well. They didn’t begrudge you the chance to make life better for yourself or your family. They didn’t want to see you fail just because they failed.
It probably sounds strange for people who didn’t grow up in those kinds of circumstances, but that’s just how we lived. The sad thing is, in poor communities now, the drunks and addicts are the ones pulling kids down, not pushing them out. That’s why I started going back to the neighborhood and spending time with kids. Derrick Stafford, the NBA referee and now one of my good friends, grew up in Atlanta, graduated from Morehouse. He once said to me, “I know how involved you are in charity work and how often you speak to kids at schools and camps and things. But have you spent much time with the kids in their neighborhoods?”
It was something I needed to hear because my view is that you can make it—that anybody can make it—if you just work hard enough. I tend to believe hard work can overcome almost anything. But now you’ve got thugs and drunks pulling kids down and these kids live year to year without any encouragement. There’s nobody steering them away from trouble. In fact, somebody’s bringing trouble right to them, handing it to ’em.
I realize now how much support I had from outsiders, but mostly from home. There were three important men in my life: my grandfather