I grew up in the Chouteau Court Housing Project in Kansas City,Missouri. These red brick buildings,still existing today, were a noble experiment at giving poor people a clean,safe place to live. The experiment started in the late 50's in KC. Since they still had segregation in those days, the Federal Government had decided to try an experiment. They had a black neighborhood already, TB Watkins, a Mexican area, and a 'white'' community, Guinotte. They built Chouteau and decided that they would intregrate there. My family moved in around 1958. This part of the "North End" had at one time served as the area where new immigrants,such as the Irish,Europeans who were Jewish, and Italians first lived so we 'hillbillies and poor blacks' were following others who entered the American society through Independence Avenue.The 3 story buildings were plain but well constructed. 40 years later they still look much the same.
Who lived in these buildings? Mostly women with their children. Women who had either been divorced or never married and were living on welfare. There were some men-disabled guys who had lung diseases or polio or other crippling diseases and could no longer work. Then there were the "secret fathers.". Since welfare didn't allow able bodied men to stay with their families these guys would either not marry the mothers or were boyfriends. They had to come home at night and not be around days when the welfare folks would come unexpectedly and check around. Not many of my peer group (7 years old at the time) had fathers that they saw. One of my friends did have a dad who came around alot...he was called Guitar Red because he played guitar like Chuck Berry and would get drunk and play concerts on the back steps of their porch. Another one of my friends had a father who was old and physically disabled and so he was allowed to be at home. I had a father who didn't live with my family. He was remarried and I saw him every once in a while. My mother got a check of $25 a week from the child support people,which was then deducted from our welfare check. Summers I would go and stay with his parents on their farm and he would see me on weekends.
Where did we project dwellers get our ideas of what men were about? Well, it was usually from teachers at school. There were some dedicated teachers who seemed to understand that kids needed to know what men were about and they made it a point to stay involved in our lives. The social workers of the area were concerned about it so they got the YMCA to come in and take us on bus rides for swims at the Y. This didn't always work right. Once I was with 5 of my school friends and we had ventured into a magazine store and saw a picture of our YMCA instructor nude on the cover of a magazine with his parrot. We bought the magazine and took it to school to show them what ole Captain Dan was up to and he lost his job. Another of our teachers liked to touch us young students on the ass. Since we didn't know that was strange-still too young-it finally got him fired when he started taking young students home to his house for wrestling matches. Pedophiles,male and female, preyed upon poor kids who were hungry for attention. Church buses,offering free transistor radios and candy bars came on Sundays seeking to fill their youth groups in the suburbs. Still, we did find some good role models for men among some of the teachers and some dedicated ministers of churches in the area who formed youth groups.
What did the idea of father mean to us in the projects? Looking back now it seems to me that a father was the person who didn't live with you, paid money to your mother, and you saw occasionally. He had no place in your family unit except its history. I must have been 18 years old before a man had ever been in a power position around me-when I was working for a summer church program. Still, we survived and grew up to be men ourselves. Some of my fellow project dwellers ended up in prison or dead before we even got out of high school. Some of them ended up dead in Vietnam-the projects was the prime supplier of cannon fodder to infantry units. For those of us who made it out of the projects relatively intact, some went on to jobs in the steel mills and some went on to University. I was lucky that I got picked to go into a training program to be a counselor in a city prison farm-they lacked poor whites who could be recruited into some federal training programs and I got picked. When I went to work in the prison I met the fathers of some of my growing up friends-alcoholics,drug addicts, street hustlers, and some just down on their luck who stole and got caught. I saw many of my friends going through the jail system also. Were they there because they didn't have fathers? I don't think so. They were probably there because they were poor and didn't have many options in life or didn't have the breaks I did.
I don't remember Fathers Day in the projects. It must have been celebrated by some but it wasn't in my neighborhood. When one's father was coming, it meant that you might be going to live with him because your mother couldn't handle you. It might mean that you were getting an ass-whipping. I remember my father but many of my neighbors didn't. That is one of the reasons I continue to work to help men stay fathers or learn to become fathers. That is why I help women with children who are victimized by this system still today, like my mother was. I work that my kids can remember Fathers Day as a positive day. But most of all I wrote this for other kids who are still looking out of those windows at 1216 B. Independence Ave and wondering what life will bring them,like I did. Our society has failed to help alot of kids escape out of those poverty backgrounds. I escaped but I still have the 'memories' of what it was like to live on welfare,depend on commoditiy food that was given to poor people. Education and hard work got me out but I don't forget what it was like.
Dean Hughson is an eggman in his present life. . He is a proud graduate of the Class of 1969,NE High School, and received a BA from UMKC. E-mail: deanhughson@gmail.com
P.s. I know of one guy who came from my part of Independence Avenue who made it out. "Big Joe" Turner was a singing bartender at the Hole in The Wall Bar on Independence Avenue. Born in 1911,he became a blues legend Click here to hear him sing 'Corrine Corrina' (and imagine the Independence Ave of the old days. Big Joe died in 1985. The song you hear when the page starts is "Singing the Blues" by Marty Robbins. You can read the words here.
P.P.S. Here is what I looked like at 49 years
old with my wife,standing in front of our then house in Las Vegas. I am living proof that you can find love again. We now live in Omaha Nebraska/Ftn Hills Az.
Memories of my brother-in-law 5-24-03
If you grew up poor,you can never escape it in that all your memories are of that time. I share this memory in honor of my late brother-in-law.
This week I was called and told that my 56 year old ez-brother in law,Ronnie died of a heart attack. I must have been 11 or 12 when I first met Ronnie. He started showing up visiting my sister,Bonnie, in the Chouteau Housing Projects I lived in for poor people in Kansas City. One day they announced that Bonnie,at 15, was pregnant and they were getting married. They rode the bus downtown to the Judge, got married and came home and spent their honeymoon at our house. Ronnie grew up on the West Side of KC which was even more poor than the Northend projects I lived in. He had 2 brothers who were always in trouble. His mother was married to a younger man who would have been a skidrow drunk but he had a job. Monday-Friday he stacked 100 lb bags of flour and on Friday/Saturday/Sun day he stayed staggering drunk--when he drank he often had hallucinations and thought there were elephants in the yard,etc. Ronnie was glad to get away from his step-father. For my brother,Jim, and I, it was like getting a new brother. Ronnie was still a kid in many ways. Ronnie played tough and you had to be careful. I remember once he had us dig a foxhole and he peppered shots from a 22 rifle over the tops of our heads. But one thing that did happen was that he helped us quit getting beat up--word got out on the street if you messed with the Hughson brothers you had to fight Ronnie Forbes also. Bonnie and Ronnie had a baby 6 months after they were married. Ronnie was down at the Airport parking lot breaking in cars with his 2 brothers and the police came--the brothers were faster and dove into the river and got away but Ronnie got caught and ended up doing 12 months in the County jail..the only jail time he ever did..it cured him after he ate bologna sandwiches for 12 months straight. His two brothers Vernon and Butch pretty much were in jail from age 20 on--Butch died in prison apparently while trying to escape and fell on his head. Vernon is still in prison today. When Ronnie got out he figured out he needed to work so he got to working. He worked for a long time for a flower company. Later he worked for a funeral home. Ronnie bought an older hearse with few miles and we used that as a family car for a while..my grandmother loved to ride in it because in her small town of Braymer Mo people thought she had died. Ronnie was good with my mother and grandmother--he treated older people with respect. He loved to visit our family farm in North Missouri. One thing was that he didn't have good sense about hunting..he once shot a cow on the next farm over,thinking it was a deer. My brother reminded me that once he had got beat up at the pool hall on Van Brunt and came home. Ronnie saw him and asked him what happened? When told he went and got his rifle and was going to go back up and 'talk' to the boys..Jim ended up begging Ronnie to forget about it and never went into the pool hall again. Ronnie loved to eat and would always be up to going to Rosedale BBQ on SW BLVD or Bryants--he could eat 5 lbs of potatoes in a sitting. Sometime in the early 80's Ronnie and my sister started having marital problems so they went to a counselor/minister. It didn't help them any but my sister took the minister from his wife of 38 years and married him. Ronnie ended up with a variety of women..he was married 5 times in his life. He ended up starting a trucking company and was doing well economically the last 7-8 years. He was a big part of my growing up years and I appreciate what he did for us. Goodbye, Ronnie, you'll be missed. I hope there are lots of potatoes and gravy and bbq in heaven because that is what he always liked on earth. Ronnie rose up from a very poor family and lived a good,honest life. Dean
