The beginning

My name is Ronald Hampton born February 27th 1943 in a little town called Englewood N.J. on Humphrey Street. This book tells about my life, which was a journey that seems like only a little while ago. Now, at 67, all I can say is, "There is a purpose that I am alive today". As you read this book, you may come across situations that you might be in right now, but do not give up on yourself.

I remember my childhood days growing up with my mother and an older sister. We were relatively from a poor family. My mother got divorced and my stepfather stepped into the picture when I was in second grade. There was a time when we lived in a two family house. We lived downstairs with my grandmother and my Aunt and her two children lived upstairs. My cousins lived down the street. We had quite a few colors in our family. For example, there was a cousin whose name was White, then somebody, married into his family that was named the Browns. Eventually, we moved next door to somebody named Mr. Green and down the street lived Mr. Gray, so as you can see, there were quite a few colors there.

The Difference

I knew all along that I was different from the rest of the kids in my family because one Christmas everybody got a brown sled as a gift, and I got a red one.

I don't remember a single day that I didn't get a beaten by my mother or sister. When my sister and I would fight, somehow it would end up being my fault so if I didn't get a beating at least once or twice a day, I would think something was wrong. My mother would send me out of the house and tell me to go and break off a switch. What I would bring back looked like a switch to me, but it was a branch from the tree. If it was too small, she would go out and get a bigger one to beat me with. Why she would do that never made any sense to me. Those are beatings you can never forget, and they just stick with you.

I can remember, also, back when I was five, there was a crawl space in front of the house and no one could see it as it was dark inside, we used to go through a little hole. As we were playing, an older kid told me to pull down my pants which I felt a little weird even at that age but somehow he wound up pulling down my pants and he pulled down his and he was trying to mount me. No penetration was involved but that really messed me around. Of course, I was told not to tell anyone and I kind of shut that out of my mind and that has been a problem through a great part of my life. I truly believe that could have been the cause for a lot of the things that I went through in my life and this is the first time I am speaking it out about it.

Kindergarten

I used to love the times when I was in Kindergarten. The best things I loved about those times were the graham crackers, milk and sleep times. When we got out of school, we played little games like Kick the Can, Drop all Leaves, and another game called Red Rover, I Dare you to Come Over.

At that time, we didn't have a television like now. All we had was a radio and a Victrola. We used to listen to Amos and Andy, Phoebe and McGee and the Green Hornet on radio. I remember people sitting around the radio watching it like we do television now, especially when the Joe Lewis fight was on. I will never forget dancing to those records that were played on the Victrola. I recall those records being very large in size and they were called 78's. I loved to dance and I still do, but I just don't have all the moves anymore. Finally, we got a TV and we were lucky to get one at that time when only a few people had them on the street where we lived. It was something!

The new house

My mother had a house built, and I believe the year was 1951. We moved from Humphrey Street to a place called Shepherd Avenue in Englewood, New Jersey, and we felt like we were doing pretty well. Because of this, I had to move out of one school, which was an all black school, where I wasn't being taught much to a new school. This was a diverse school consisting of both black and white students.

I was in my third grade there and it was a little tough for me. I was not a straight A student or even close to that. I had a problem, and I couldn't keep up with the class the first year. My teacher sent a letter home saying, "If Ron doesn't improve in his studies, he will have to repeat third grade." With that voice in my head all the time, this began to play on my mind. I used to wake up every morning to go to school and just pass by it. I figured I was not going to pass to the next class anyway, and true enough, I did not pass to the third grade. When the kids I used to go to school with moved ahead of me to the fourth grade, I really looked and felt out of place with the next class that was coming up because I was really tall. I felt awful, especially during recess time while playing basketball with kids younger than me. Being older, I also played a little better than they did. This made me take some extra effort to work harder to get to the next grade. The following year it paid off, and I did go on to the fourth grade.

Fourth Grade

Music was always a part of me. I grew up listening to a lot of jazz and I wanted to learn to play a saxophone because I liked the sound of it. I took up music classes at school to learn to play the saxophone. For some reason, everybody else had an Alto Saxophone and I had to have a Tenor Saxophone. I wanted to be different. The tenor saxophone is quite a bit larger than the alto saxophone, and I had to carry this back and forth home when we had music lessons. This saxophone weighed just about as much as I did. At least, that is what it felt like at that moment. Finally, the only thing I could get out of it was the beginning of Drag Net which is four notes, but it was just not working for me so I gave up on playing the Saxophone

Ten or Eleven Years Old

I was about ten or eleven years old, and I used to like to hang out in the woods. Kids from school, both black and white, played in the woods after school. The new house was built close to the woods. They were all around us, and we used to build all kinds of tree houses, underground huts, trap squirrels and opossums. All of this was different for me. Shepard Avenue was surrounded by woods, and because of this, Humphrey Street was like a different place. I loved playing in the woods. All the people were different there, and I never figured that one out.

My Dog Blackie

I had a dog named Blackie, and we would go play in the woods together and hunt. This dog became a thief. We would go to this little candy store down the street and Blackie would go behind the counter and take a mouth full of candy and run out of the store. You know, naturally, I would catch up with him later and get the candy then give him some. I had some strange dogs. He was a hunter too. When we were in the woods, he would catch squirrels and bring them into the back yard. Every time I looked outside, he would have a dead possum, squirrel, or a couple of baseball gloves. He was just a thief. He would steal everything and bring it in our backyard, making me look like the bad guy. I also built traps for animals. One time, I caught a baby squirrel in one of the traps and kept it as my pet. I have also caught garden snakes and possums which I sold down the street for a dollar each. My mother threw these pets out of the house and, at this time, I was still in the process of getting whipped once in a while for stuff like this, but not that often I guess because I was older.

My Mothers Pregnancy

During the time my mother was pregnant with my little brother, things were different around the house and when he was born, I was given more responsibilities to wash clothes and hang them outside on a clothes line. I couldn't play in the woods after school anymore because there were a lot of chores to do around the house. I also baby sat my little brother because both my father and mother worked and we were basically on our own most of the time.

The Nellie May Black family reunion

My mother had a lot of family reunions. Every once in a while, there would be people from the Hampton and Peterkin family that would gather together and I felt a little strange trying to fit in. They also had parties at different houses and at times my father and mother would host the party at home. She would cook all kinds of food and my father built a dice table like the casino gambling table for the party. They had card games, dice games, and they played jazz music. Mom also sold food to people at the party. That was just there way of having a good time.

During this time, I would go visit my father Connie Hampton, which I came to know at the age of twelve. He was not my biological father. My biological father was Joe Fox. Connie Hampton was my father, and then he and my mother got divorced. She later got married to Drew Black. He was basically the only father that I knew, and I grew up being around him. I would always wonder why I looked a little different than my sister Connie. While some people had no fathers, I had three of them, and sometimes this was a little hard to take in. I also always thought that was weird. That's just the beginning of a long list of things yet to come in my life.

I remember joining the Boy Scout troop. The troop team was named Hass. Our leader owned an electrical store in Englewood New Jersey. I liked the way his troops looked. We wore Monty hats that had a wide brim turned up on one side, and we looked sharp in the parades. I liked being different. I messed up a few times, but still ended up in 2nd Class which was pretty good at that time.

Junior High

I was on my way to junior high now. I used to get books at the beginning of the year. We had to take them home to cover them with book covers to keep them clean because they had to be turned in at the end of the school year. When I had to hand the books back in, at the end of the year, most of the time they looked brand new which shows how much studying I was doing. My reading was bad and I did not get the help I should have. I believe it was because my parents were always working and my sister had her own things going on. She was about four years older than me. Studying just seemed to be hard for me. Science, in particular, was very hard for me, of which I failed many times and merely made it through the eighth grade.

There were a lot of crazy things going on the year before the seventh grade. One time, I saw these sleeping pills lying around in the house, and I took them to school. I was talking to everyone about it, since I enjoyed talking about one thing or the other all the time other than homework. One of the kids in the class asked if he could try one of the pills. By the time we got to the last class for the day, everyone was dropping down like flies sleeping and falling down. The word got around school and all I could think of was my mom. She was going to kill me for sure. She was the one that beat me all the time. Sometimes, I wished my stepfather would have whipped me because I don't think it would have been as bad. Anyway, I was sent to the principal's office, and they contacted my Mom. I was sent home where she was waiting for me. This was the time I remember she beat me with an extension cord and I swelled up so bad that I looked like I weighed two hundred pounds.

Seventh Grade

During my seventh grade, I was working on mechanical drawing. I didn't quite understand what the angles meant, but I could do it. I guess I was leaning a little bit towards Arts. Now, being in eighth grade, it got harder, and they said if Ron does not improve, he is going to be left back. These were the exact words I heard spoken when I was in Third grade and it was all coming back to me. I could not take this anymore and I thought I was going to end up being the janitor after a while because of the years I would spend in school. I worked from a very young age. I worked on paper routes and later got a job at the bakery on Palisade Avenue in Englewood helping them make cakes and pies. Well, unfortunately, I got left back again in the eighth grade. This was too embarrassing. I thought my brother was going to catch up with me if this kept happening. He was only four years younger than me. I was determined to do better and work hard to somehow get through to the ninth grade. When I went back to school, they decided to put me on a trial basis and if I improved my grades they would promote me. I really worked and studied to the best of my ability so I could be promoted to ninth grade and it finally paid off.

Ninth Grade

Ninth grade was entirely new. I was in high school now. I got here with a lot of prayers and effort, but I was still on a trial basis so they put me in a slower class. This was a class for kids that couldn't keep up with the normal standard of studies. Everybody was learning about history and other things while we were taught about airplanes and things. We were labeled right away, and I could feel it. By this time, I got involved in sports. I was pretty good in sports and learning how to run hurdles and high jump, but they only used me when they ran short of players. They would use me to run the quarter mile relay, the 120 meters, the hurdle, the high jump, or wherever they needed a person to fill in. I won the track event a couple of times, and my name was in the paper for winning first place. I remember there were very few times that my parents came to see me play. I recall them coming to see one of my basketball games, but the coach never allowed me to shoot. There were other players for that. I only got the rebounds. At the same time, I was trying to impress the girls, who came to watch the game. I was trying to win them over. Afterward, I would go to the dance and dance my heart out, but at the end of the party someone else would take the girls home. I guess my game wasn't strong enough. I was shy and being in the slow class brought my ego down, so I thought I wasn't cool enough to get the girls.

Tenth Grade

By the time I got to the tenth grade, I continued to run tracks and hurdles. During the winter, the coach asked me to run cross country and I agreed although I did not have any experience in it. This was like running over and around brooks and hills, and almost halfway around the city of Englewood. When I ran my first meet, I got a sweat suit with a shoe engraved on the back with wings. I didn't want to come in last place no matter what so I was determined to stay focused and finish the race. There was this one guy from another school that I was racing against, and we were the last two, but we were neck and neck. There were two people that had already dropped out, so I was hoping this guy wouldn't because that would make me the last one. We were cruising around running for a long time and everyone else had finished, showered and was out there cheering us on by the time we made it to the finish line. That's how long it took for us to get to the end, but I was determined not to come in last. He gave up in the end and I paced myself to the finish line. That was my first and last track meet cross country. I took off that sweat suit and I said to myself, "I am done!" I decided to stick to my regular track which was running, hurdles, high jump, sprint and relay.

Eleventh Grade

As I went on to the eleventh grade, I did not run track anymore. As I mentioned earlier, I was still dancing. I was one of the best dancers in Englewood. I won a couple of trophies for dancing, but I always had problems with girls. I would wine, dine and dance with them, but again at the end of the night, someone else would take them home. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me so I continued to play basketball for four years especially after school in the park. Well, I ran across a few girls out there and, all of a sudden, I had a fan club in the park. There were about six or seven girls, however, I never messed around with any of them. We hung out at their houses and just had a good time. I was Mr. Nice Guy, which meant, something was wrong somewhere. I was beginning to get very frustrated with my manhood and with thinking that something was wrong with me.

I had a very good friend that I met in the eighth grade and He had moved into the neighborhood from New York. There were three kids, and He was my age. We became very good friends. We hung out together all the time and stayed at one another's homes like it was our own. Now, he could pull women! I guess he had the gift of gab since he was from New York City. Sadly, he passed away about seven to eight years ago, and I didn't even get to say goodbye.