Jeff’s Work at Lebaum:
The very first thing, Jeff had to do was to install new plumbing in two of the bathrooms on Lebaum Street. The water was leaking from the shower and the tap. He removed the shower diverter system and replaced it with new ones. I watched him intently as he did this and was amazed at how proficient he was.
Then he replaced all the faucets. All the valve seats were worn from years and years of use and some of it crumbled when he removed them.
He went to Home Depot and purchased a very nice set that had a nickel color to it.
Next were the toilets, which he replaced as well as the tanks. He showed me the importance of placing the wax rings in place snugly. Then he showed me that it was also critical to caulk around the toilet after it was bolted down.
Jeff also did a lot of backbreaking work. He had to install a surround bath. For the upstairs, there was a lot of tile to chip, so he figured that it would be a lot easier and a make more economical sense to not demolish it and install the surround bath completely over it instead.
For the basement bathroom, he would actually tile it. I requested that he add some nice design to it to give it some style. Jeff chosed the teracotta design which really appealed to me. It was deep red and reminded me of the Mexican tile I see in San Diego, when I was stationed and lived there for 6 years.
Next, the toilets were backing up bad. Jeff bought his K-50, his rigid, all purpose snake.
A K-50 is essentially a long cable that is fed from a motorized reel. It is fitted with a spring-end tip that is usually effective in breaking up whatever is blocking the pipes.
Jeff led out the 5/8” snake out to 50 feet, the max length of the snake.
He continued to put water in the toilet bowl to lubricate and provide some pressure to wash the clog out once it began to break up.
He said that you have to make sure that you keep an eye on the coil so that it doesn’t whip up on you and hit you in the face.
And if you sense that it’s going to get stuck, just jump back from the knee switch, he pointed to the black switch on the floor.
He told me about his days smoking crack as he turned the handle slowly pushing the snake out.
I had nothing better to do plus I enjoyed listening to Jeff’s stories. I found it quite fascinating.
Free Man but Under Bondage:
Jeff was a man of promise until the crack cocaine wave of the 80s pounded the inner cities from coast to coast with such intensity and scale, leaving a string of record homicides in its wake.
Jeff had a sound mind and a steel soul. But when he succumbed to the physical and psychological effects of crack, his inner passions readily reduced to rubble —he started resenting his own mother, had a falling out with his siblings, became an estranged man in every regard. He wouldn’t even acknowledge his old friends unless they were dealing with him, or had something free to offer.
While hooked on crack, Jeff couldn’t keep a job, much less take one. He bounced around from place to place, and whenever it appeared that was hope for steady employment, albeit dim, Jeff would predictably pour it all down the drain like it was soiled kitty litter.
And there were open air markets galore in the Congress Heights Park by Malcolmn X, the former Portland Street, where you could just show up and brazenly deal in broad daylight with no risk or reprisal. There were no cops anywhere near. Law enforcement was doing minimal enforcement at best. Most times, just threw in the towel and let the thugs have the run of the place. The playground was desolate and the swingsets were rusting and dilapidated and whatever was supposed to be a grassy field was littered would crack bags and crack butts and an occasional used condom.
As a crackhead, your whole life revolves around the drug. You don’t work, you are constantly using and your whole life centers around stealing money so that you can use and use again. You break into cars and steal stereo systems and hubcaps to fund your addiction. You break into the basement of houses and steal copper piping, even if you have to tap into their hot and cold water supply. You drastically disrupt lives of innocent families just to buy a single toke of coke or perhaps another high.
“Listen, you hire me for this job, I’ll get you straight. You got my word on it.”
“Alright Jeff. You got it. Bail me out of this shit hole will you. And if you do, you’ll be my Hero.”
And Jeff could not keep a job. He would work at odd jobs at Pizza Hut, at Big K.
He would get a job and be content. But then when it started getting good and he was making money, he decided it wasn’t worth the pain of getting up early, staying on your feet, helping customers.
So just like everything else before, he simply got up and quit.
Sherman’s or Dippers:
And besides crack Jeff had graduated to the next level of drug. Now Jeff was selling cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid called dippers. Used to be called Shermans.
The embalming fluid also contained PCP and gave people a delusionary, “loveboat” experience.
It made the feeling of crack last a litter longer. Another minute, another second to hallucinate before the depression sinks in.
Caught Red Handed:
So after that, Jeff switched from selling and using PCP to crack. An enterprising young man, he quickly found that the clientele base was wide open. Unlike PCP, almost anyone—mother, son, daughter, young, rich, poor – were all his potential clients. And because a dose of crack was so affordable, he had a lot more traffic.
He knew he shouldn’t have done it. He was not only negro, but looked shaky and completely out of place.
At 22, Jeff was caught red-handed selling crack to a white guy named Rick from out of town.
It happened in DC's most notorious neighborhood, Barry Farms.
The guy, stood out like a crook in a choir and was easily caught and cuffed. And
caught and as part of plea bargain snitched on Jeff.
caught and as part of plea bargain snitched on Jeff.
Neon headlights slice through the dimly lit street, passing Birney Elementary and the Softball field on Shannon Road with purpose.
It darts past rows of quiet two-level project colonials with curtains drawn, revealing only a flickering television light hugs curves and speeds by dogs being silently walked in and out of shadows at street’s edge.
Turning onto Stephens past the battered railroad tracks, the sporty Mazda RX-7 stops just beyond the bright lights spilling from the Anacostia Naval Station. While the car is still running, the driver’s door opens and Jeff pops out with a big smile on his face.
So far, so good for Jeff. The weekly crack delivery is going as usual.
But before Jeff takes another step, his car is boxed in by five unmarked police cars that suddenly dropped out of the sky.
A brief shout of frustration from Jeff rises above sounds of feet running across pavement and car doors slamming.
He looks left and right frantically, searching for an escape as police close in, but finds himself already trapped, surrounded by a half-dozen undercover officers, parked cars and a set of dumpsters. There’s nowhere to go but face down on the pavement. A half-dozen sets of eyes are staring at Jeff’s back while handcuffs are tightened around his wrists and flashlight beams dance around his head.
It all takes place quickly, within a matter of minutes, almost like a kidnapping. Before anyone in the nearby apartment building stirs, or peers from behind a curtain, the undercover cars have disappeared into the darkness again.
And Jeff, who arrived a free man with nearly $2,500 tucked in his pocket is now on his way to a cell in the DC police station, facing the possibility of a minimum five-year sentence.
He’s a big catch for such a young kid. In Jeff’s left front pants pocket, police found a plastic bag containing a yellowish, rock- like substance - one ounce of crack cocaine.
The arrest is the result of about one month of police investigation and planning, and went down smoother than most do.
But elsewhere in Barry Farms and in the surrounding community on that crisp night,
perhaps in dozens of other places, deliveries of cocaine, heroin and marijuana took place as scheduled.
Jeff was charged, convicted of possession of crack cocaine and was sentenced to the Maryland Correctional Institute of Hagerstown for 5 years.
“I would shape up,” Jeff admitted. “I stopped using altogether. I didn’t have to worry about no withdrawals.“
“I wasn’t on no dope like heroine. I was on coke, cocaine, crack. Didn’t have to worry about no withdrawals.”
“Shooting heroine, you get withdrawals, but not crack. I went cold turkey and within a few months, I was alright.”
“But I wouldn’t let my young ones see me. Not at this place with all these hoodlums. That’s one that I promised and stuck with.”
“As soon as I was released and saw my daughters, it was the happiest day in my life.”
“I did 5 years, clean. Didn’t smoke or drink or do nuthing. Came out on the street like a free man, but I wasn’t liberated—I was still hooked and started the whole thing all over again. I had just wasted 5 years of my precious life.”
But Jeff put it to good use. Instead of drinking coffee and getting high, he studied hard and finished his GED.
But when he got out, he was back on the streets using it again, without skipping a beat.
Prison:
He knew prison life to be tough. There was drugs rampant and if you didn’t pay, they would get you: a shaved off piece of a toothbrush or several pencils bounded together could serve as a venerable weapon on your neck.
He saw things in there that would blow your mind away. The inmates made wine out of old fruit saved from jail lunches. Either a moldy peach or an apple or grapes were mixed with mess-hall punch and sugar to create a potent mixture of “Hagerstown Wine”.
Jeff stayed away from the other inmates and their usual going-ons and focused on his books. Hagerstown offered many vocational training programs. There he studied welding, pipefitting and plumbing and he studied hard for five years.
When released, he would utilize his new skills and turn things around, or so he hoped.
…..There was a lot of demolition upstairs. Jeff even experimented with plaster instead of drywall for the closet behind the shower.
He also installed shut out valves in both bathrooms, which would come in handy in case there was ever a water leak.
In a mere three days, Jeff, had completely “turned and burned” and I was feeling more and more self assured that maybe we would be able to pull this out. We needed a strong appraisal so that I could qualify for the loan.
Invite for a Drink
It was getting late on a Friday night and we had made amazing progress in one day – more so that we did almost the entire previous month. The appraiser was due to come Monday and we had the rest of the weekend to finish up. I asked Jeff if he wanted to get a drink
“Thanks for the invite, but I don’t drink,” he insisted. “I’ve been bone dry goin’ on now for 8 years plus.”
“What’s wrong with drinking socially and after a long, hard day: a glass of wine, a cold mug of beer, a cocktail with a dab of vodka here or there,” I suggested.
“Nothing wrong with that. It’s all good Chito. But I know better. You see, when I drink, I turn into a clown—a big fat, freaking clown.”
“What’s wrong with that. We all like to cut loose every now and then.”
“But when I get drunk, I revert back to my old days. I act silly and then I let my guard down. When I let my guard down, I may smoke a little crack. And if I do that, I’ll turn into a clown – a big, fat, freaking clown.”
I stared at Jeff in amazement.
“Then after turning into a clown, I do stupid things like burn my lips, my hair and walk around with funny looking shoes. Then I’ll want more but wouldn’t have the cash. And when I want more, I’ll turn into a beast.”
“Why a beast?” I was amused at his interesting use of analogies.
“A beast will do anything for drugs, even to the point of jumping over other people’s fences and stealing their food and putting their hands on the grill just to get a taste of a burger and some dogs.”
“Speaking about burger and dogs, how about we go out to grab something to eat. Promise I won’t drink a beer.”
“No problem Cheets, you can drink a few if you want to; I’ve got strong willpower. Just don’t get drunk in front of me though. I wouldn’t appreciate that.”
Believe it or not, the nearest decent place to eat was in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
There were no decent sit down restaurants in Ward 8. But we agreed to go someplace close so we drove to Mama Cole’s Cafe in historic Anacostia.
As we drove by the Big Chair, Jeff mentioned that he remembered as a child, that he would play in the chair.
We would try to jump up with a ladder, but the cops would stop us and we would run away.
“Sometimes we would run out to the sewer pipes and spend a whole day down there. One day I got lost and it took me a whole day to get out. My family was worried sick.”
The chair was huge: 30 feet tall. Along a wall, turned over on its face, was the seat, 9 by 8 feet and tattered at the edges.
In Anacostia, people still talk about the 42 days a women lived up on the big chair, high above the Avenue, waving to the crowds who came to see her.
The chair was built as a promotional ploy for Curtis Bros. whose warehouse, showroom and offices were located in Anacostia.
The attraction was an immediate hit with customers, but Curtis came up with another idea to draw attention: Someone would live on it.
A glass company constructed a 10-by-10-foot cubicle, furnished with a bed, shower, toilet, heater, air conditioner and balcony. It was placed atop the seat.
On Aug. 13, 1960, a forklift raised Ms. Kirby up to her new home, where her meals were delivered every day and where she watched TV, read books and talked on the telephone.
Every few hours, she would slip out onto the balcony to wave to crowds drawn by newspaper and radio ads that invited them to see "Alice in 'Looking Glass House' " and guess how long she could remain up there.
For six weeks, she had no regular visitors except for her 14-month-old son, Richard, who was placed in a dumbwaiter for the ride up to his mother. Then, she said, with her earnings approaching $1,500 and her growing tired of life above, she decided to return to earth.
Kirby eventually moved away, but the big chair remained in place, surviving the 1968 riots, the demise of the Curtis furniture business in the 1970s, and the neighborhood's dreadful and devastating decline.
The Curtises went into the real estate business but remained at the address, where they converted their property into offices that are the headquarters of the D.C. Lottery. They continued to maintain the big chair, which for a time became home to an oversize Santa Claus and lights at Christmas.
Over the years, the cycles of rain and snow frayed the chair, and the Curtises took to patching holes with cement. Then it was painted in brown automobile paint that could withstand the seasonal changes. Metal braces and fiberglass were added over the years.
Now it just sat, there, lonely and silent, serving as an iconic fortress to historic mainstreet, Anacostia as thugs and car thieves strolled directly under, dealing and trading, oblivious to the meaning and messages shown from the reflections of the floodlit Capitol dome just across the river.
If tourist shops sold postcards of Anacostia, the big chair would be in it. Not that they would--some maps of DC even purposely excluded showing any parts of the neighborhood streets at Anacostia or Congress Heights – as if you would drive straight across into Virginia or Southern Maryland.
We arrived at Mama Cole’s, a local diner, wasn’t glamorous but I had heard from the regulars that the food was quite tasty.
Outside the store was a sign that read “The Best Soul Food in Town”.
Mama Coles, co-owner of Coles Café, greeted us with a very warm, “How are you doing baby, what are you having today boo?”
Her regular customers that stop by to partake in the southern, home cooked meals lovingly refer to her as “ma.”
Coles and her husband, Pop Coles, have owned and operated the café on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. for more than 30 years, and they have survived the many many years when drugs and crime had taken siege of the city.
But now there was a glimmer of hope. There was talks of building a gateway center at the corner of Martin Luther King Ave and Good Hope Road.
Jeff ordered ribs and collard greens. I ordered fried fish and macaroni and cheese.
“Macaroni and cheese—excellent choice, dear,” Mama Cole assured. Just like the Big Chair, she was a fixture to this neighborhood and would say a word or two that would make you smile or whip up her southern-style potato salad with a dash of yams that would warm your tummy.
Jeff added a tall glass of ice tea and a plate of corn bread which was also my favorite.
As a joke to Mama Cole, Jeff said I would like to order a drink, “A glass of water, straight and on the rocks.”
I asked Jeff how long had he been dry.
“Eight years,” he stated proudly. “Eight years no drinking. Eight years no crack. Eight years of not acting up. Eight straight years. My only vice now is my unsatiated appetite for food and naturally for some suck and fuck action every now and then. But if that’s a vice, I’ll take that anyday.”
“That’s amazing that you got eight-straight years,” I said, but a part of me questioned whether he had been honest to me.
Jeff told me how drinking spurned his crack habit. That’s why he had to quit drinking altogether.
“It go so bad that I had to get admitted to a six-month detox in Bladensburg, Maryland,” he added.
“Crack made me feel strong and powerful. I felt like I was on the top of the world. Problem with crack is that it makes your really wired and doesn’t last long. So there is a temptation to have another go at it. So crack made me waste many years of my life and it costs me a fortune.”
There would be girls there doing tricks just to get a hit. They would sometimes do 20-30 guys a day just to get high. And when the high wore off, they were back to ground zero. Nothing to show for.
Jeff did everything except use needles.
“I smoked pot, crack, took PCP. But I wouldn’t shoot heroin. Heroin was dope and you got withdrawals so bad that it make your stomach tie up in a knot if you quit,” he said.
“And only if I had known what crack would do to me, I would have never tried it. Thanks to my old girl, Patricia,” he said.
You couldn’t get enough of it. You spent $10-$15 for a rush which satiated your appetite but only for a moment. And you spend the rest of your life chasing that rush, that high.
The food was served promptly and Jeff wasted no time eating his pork ribs. The waitress with long dreadlocks smiled widely while she overhead our conversation.
You go to crack houses where there are over 20 people in the living room and bedrooms smoking. The smoke got so thick that you would get a buzz within a few seconds from secondary smoke. There were people of all types-- some giving blowjobs for crack, both guys and girls. Crack made you hungry, made you desperate. You would do anything just for that 10 seconds rush.
There was no running water. No electricity. People were lying on filthy, pee-stained mattresses. A few candles burned throughout the house, the smell of the smoke quelled the rancid smell of the house a little. The toilet and tub was filled with crap. It stunk so bad, but nobody cared. They were getting high on crack—that was the only thing that mattered.
Jeff remembered going to Galveston Place to buy his crack. You didn’t have to go into people’s houses. All you had to do was drive down the road. The pushers would stop you and ask you what you needed. They showed good customer service. It was easier and quicker than driving to McDonalds and buying a value meal. And it went down a lot faster too. A dime or twenty could be consumed in minutes and it didn’t fill you up. You were high but you wanted more. Your whole life revolved around crack. It was depressing.
And while many of the shops in Congress Heights and Bellevue were shut down and boarded up due to a myriad of reasons: bad business being the bottom line, these slingers knew exactly what they were doing and how to make a huge profit. The demand was high and they could sell all their inventory in a matter of hours. There was no excess, no overhead, just the ubiquitous risk of getting busted by the Metropolitan PD.
Examples of People of Victimized Southeast:
And there were customers, the married man driving from St Charles Country from the south, the contractor coming over the always-congested Woodrow Wilson Bridge from Alexandria. The Washingtonian coming across the Frederick Douglas Bridge, looking for a cheap high. There were the local Anacostians who knew which corner had the best shit and which slinger he could trust. Occasionally, the military man from Bolling would spring up the hill and turn left onto Galveston.
Normally, day or night, they would be met by a street-level dealer who would be standing out on the street and literally waive you down.
You tell him what you want and he whistles to his runner who would retrieve his coke stashed somewhere behind the buildings, perhaps inside an empty tire.
“Now these crack houses are mostly gone,” I mentioned. “Developers are now starting to take a keen interest in those garden-style brickstones.”
“You’re dead right about that Cheets. Both Galveston and Forrester next door used to be some ugly some few years ago. Now most of these crackheads have left, are incarcerated or are just plain dead.”
“Yeah, you know, I have a friend who just purchased one of the buildings on Galveston. It’s boarded up and you need a good pair of shoes, a strong flashlight and a great sense of adventure to explore those abandoned buildings.”
“Yeah, cuz you never know what you’re going to run into: a dead cat, rat shit all over the damn place, crack turds piled knee high in the bath tub.” I listened with discomfort as I worked on my macaroni and cheese. I was beginning to get squimish.
“And the phone number to a security guard who will chase down squatters with a big ass bat,” Jeff added.
“My biggest problem now. I stopped using, but I like to bust out my credit card and max it out, you know what I mean.”
“Spending money?” I asked inquisitively. “On what.. your gold rings, your trendy clothes, your wheels?”
Tricking
“Tricking.” He said bluntly. “You know tricking. But not the kind that those white boyz engaged in. I go around all those high society bitches and get me one of those ghetto rats. It don’t matter they got no sweet-smelling perfume or fancy jewelry. As long as they’re stacked and they have a wet pussy for me to penetrate -- That’s all I care about.”
I listened in utter disgust but I have to admit, Jeff had picqued my interest and likely the interest of half the restaurant, including the dreadlocked waitress.
“Well what’s the price for admission?”
“I ain’t giving a girl, no $50, $100. Ten dollars is the limit. $5 to blow and another $5 for the hoe”
“Where do you find them, just down the way on South Cap or King Street?”
“Sometimes, but usually I like to pick them up along the strip on New York or Rhode Island. Like I said, I’m a tightwad with my earnings. I get them cheap and slutty streetwalkers who need an Abe or a Hamilton to get a quick hit.”
“Is that right. So I see where you like to hang out when I’m looking for your ass to come to work.”
“Well I ain’t lying to ya Holmes. Sometimes when the boss man like you pays big, I might want to treat myself to spend a lil bit more. I’ll shoo one out of those strip clubs down the Naked City on Georgia. Some come out of the Macombo Lounge where the girls are hot, intimate and friendly. And they got a great sex drive, too.”
Sometimes, Jeff would drive his 1961 Black Impala down Georgia Avenue. It had a sporty look and a nice interior. In the back seat, he had a bar where he would enjoy a drink with a girl on a warm summer night.
Here, let me show you my pictures. Jeff took out a thick package from his bag.
Busting at its seams, pictures of naked girls in all kinds of poses poured out. Girls of all type and sizes. Most of them were thin -- crack heads. There were White, Black, Hispanic. Some were old but most were young. A couple fat; most were skinny.
My face turned red. I wanted to grab them all from Jeff’s hands and throw them on the floor and stomp on them with my boots, then run and wash my hands.
The waitress came over to check if everything was ok. Jeff quickly hid the pictures under his napkin and smiled softly.
I also smiled at her, nodded that everything was ok and waited for her to leave. “You protect yourself, right?”
“Most of the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I take a good look at the girl. I stick my nose in her crotch and take a whiff. I look to see if she has any genital warts. If she looks healthy, then I go bareback. And if I’m feeling good, I might even lick her clit for a minute or two. And if she looks scazzy wazzy, then I just might decide to go home and and whack off.”
What immediately came to my mind was the number of HIV cases in the African American community especially the women are bearing the brunt of the epidemic.
A government study just released shows that 1 in 3 young gay black males is HIV positive. This raises concern that prevention messages are not reaching the African American population. It also suggests that gay males are dismissing prevention messages, instead relying on the belief that available meds diminishes the need for safe sex practices.
And Jeff could get a girl at anytime. He would see a girl high on crack and ask her what she was doing and said that he wanted a piece and if $10 was enough.
Half the time, they would say “yeah”. The other half, they would say, “How about $20”. Then Jeff negotiated on $15.
Jeff had the eye. He could look at a person and tell whether he or she was on crack. It served to his purposes, because he got pussy cheap, desperately cheap.
“You ever get busted?” I asked.
“Yes once, on New York Ave and W. Virginia.”
On Thanksgiving eve, when the decoy police officer asked if Jeff wanted to get his dick sucked for $10 and Jeff nodded and asked her to come in, several Metropolitan DC police officers swarmed on him like he was America’s most wanted.
This immediately brought back images to when Jeff was busted for selling and possession of crack cocaine in the early 80s that sent him to jail for 5 years.
Jeff was immediately frightened of the possibility.
“Luckily, I didn’t get charged—not for first time offenders. I had to go to Johns school and pay $300.” If only they knew that Jeff prowled the streets looking for crack hoes almost on a nightly basis.
“what kind of women do you like?” I asked inquisitively. “Black, White, Asian, Hispanics?”
“I like them all, no matter what race or color. I don’t discriminate. But what I like most about my women is the ones who are thick—BBW (Big Beautiful Women)--with thick butts and big boobs. The ones I can just titty fuck and get a woody.”
“I’m not too fond of skin and bones, but I’ll scrog them anyway.”
“Big, thick, skinny, pretty, ugly…I’ll screw them all. After all I don’t have to look at them, it’s just a piece I’m after and some ass.”
“I’m dating a girl now—Sherry. But she’s not a girl that I spend too much money on. I fuck her most of the time, but I still stroll the streets looking for a fresh piece of ass when I’m done. I need it all the time and can never get enough.”
The Sex Party
In fact, last week I was at a birthday party at my friend’s house in Upper Malborough, Md. We paid $50 at the door and there were three girls, butt naked. If you paid the price for admission, you could shag all you want. I went there to watch, but I ended up banging all three of them and them some, getting my danky dick sucked, one at a time. I must have busted my nut several times in one night.”
“Dang, In a private room, I hope.”
“No in the living room, out in the open, for all to watch and enjoy.”
“How do you stay hard three times in one night?” My face turned beet red.
“Man, Chito, I need to tell you a thing or two. Ever heard of Mojo?”
“Mo what?”
“Mojo – you buy it at a health food store.”
“I’ve heard of pomegrante juice you buy at the GNC.”
“You can’t find Mojo there. You have to go to my favorite health food store at Iverson’s Mall. You have to go behind the counter to get it though. Brothers sell it, it’s to keep you up when you’re doing multiple hoes.”
Taken back by the debauched discussion of Jeff’s crazed sex life, and noticing some of the patrons turning their attention to us, I tried to change the topic.
“So what motivated you to make a change and get up each morning and work two high-intensity jobs?”
“My daughters. I knew I had to turn the corner. I had to make amends for my 3 sweethearts: Tiara, Tamara and Tara – TTT I call them—thus the name of my home repair company—Triple T.”
They’re all very smart. Two are in college. One is studying engineering. The other is in architecture.
“I wanted to make money so they won’t be caught up with guys for money. So they would be alright.”
“On top of that, I have become highly spiritual. I’m not religious, but I talk to my God on a daily basis. I pray and believe that if you do right, right will come back to you.”
“I go to church twice a year. I normally go to ‘The Soul Factory in Marlboro Pike. But on a regular basis, I go to my meetings. I especially like the ones at Howard University – to me it’s like going to church—you fellowship, witness and you always get a blessing.”
If there wasn’t a God, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I would still be locked up or buried 10 feet under. I know somebody prayed for me.
