Crumbs to Bricks...Part II (Sarasota, Fl)

yeah, I know, bout muthafuckin time.......been busy mayne, been busy.......kids, football, all that shit......but I said I would continue the saga, and here it is.........part II.......part II is unlike parts III and IV (yeah, this a four part series.......I was doing big thangs shawty!) as it occurred immediately following part I, plus, I wanted to hurry up and get to the "meat;" Part III occurred ten years later, in 1995, while part IV, the FINALE, occurred in January 1997, and continued til the day I left Florida, for Atlanta, on September 16th, 1999!!!!!!!


We left off part I in Panama City Fl, in the spring of 1985, with me being the Candy Man of Panama City; By the time the school year had ended, I had built up a nice lil nest egg. Don't recall how much, but I was skrait!!!! Had to be, cause I knew the summer was coming, and my clientele would cease.....niggas round the way wuddn't buying no blow pops, specially when they could go to the store and get 'em cheaper....so I had to have forward thinking and plan ahead...which was to save!!!!!!! Even as a shorty, I had a hustler's mentality.......save for the rainy days!!!!! anybody that has ever been involved with hustling, in any form or fashion, knows, rainy days do come......I found out then, and I found out later..........so anyways, I stacked my lil blow pop money......all was cool, it kept me from having to ask granny, or call home to Mom's for loot cause although she had went back to Sarasota, she was still chillin from the surgery......my blow pop money, plus some other lil hustles, like marbles, lasted me til the end of the summer....I knew I'd be going back to Sarasota for the next school term, fall of 1985; Mom's was ok, going back to work, and Granny wuddn't feeling no teenagers..so it was cool.....however, I had a decision to make.......going back to Sarasota meant I would be in 9th grade, high school down there, whereas in PC, they were still under the Jr. High School system, which meant I would have been a Sr at the Jr High level....really, though, that wasn't a choice, I was going back to Sarasota...the decision was rather to play another year of peewee football (in Fl, you can play peewee football til you're 13, and I didn't turn 14 til after the deadline) or play freshman football at the high school level???????? Shiiiiiiiiiid, that was a no-brainer.....I weighed roughly 95lbs soaking wet, I could still weigh in, in full gear, I didn't have to compete for a starting spot, and, I was the shit!!!!! Peewee football here I come!!!!!!!!
A lot of my boys ragged on me for still playing peewee football while in high school, but shiiiiid, I didn't care, I was being realistic about the situation..I wuddnt but a buck o'five, our freshman team fielded 90 players (our school had a student body of 2,700) of all shapes and sizes from all over.....and frankly speaking (Stephen A Smith impersonation), I wanted to play!!!!! the odds were slim to none that I'd get much clock with those odds, regardless of how good I was......y'all know how the state of Florida is when it comes to football.....FSU, Miami, U of F, shiiiiid, them niggas come from somewhere....and my school, RIVERVIEW HIGH SCHOOL, (we're talkin bout a school with a fuckin planetarium, and a damn nuclear radiation lab (yeah, I took that shit...looks good on a transcript!).......can you say 90210!) was a damn breeding ground for talent.....so ya boi wudda just been lost in the shuffle, and my lil ego wuddn't ready for that just yet, not coming off of a euphoric summer of being the man!!!!! Nah, I had to go out in a blaze my last year.......But I needed loot to maintain my rep...........

We weren't broke....but we wuddn't ballin either.....traditional middle class black family, mom, dad, 2 kids......so the folks were able to give me an allowance...not much, basically the change left over from my weekly lunch money.....but that wuddn't enough, and blow pops wasn't gon cut it in high school......so how was I to get loot..or extra loot, as I felt the need for........I ain't gon lie y'all, I didn't have a clue........

When I got back to Sarasota from PC at the end of the summer of '85, it was like I had stepped into the twilight zone or sum'in....everything had changed, my neighborhood didn't even look the same, nor, did it sound the same......Sarasota had gotten LOUD!!!! real loud.......the BASS revolution had begun...Jam Pony Express DJ's, The Original 2 Live Crew (when Luke was "Luke Skywalker") , DJ Majic Mike....was all you heard comin outta niggas' cars......the cars....lawd hammercy!!! Cutlass' and Regals'.....that's all niggas seemed to be drivin...with rag tops, trues and vogues, that was the shit!!!! Them 9 months in PC put me way behind the 8-ball...I had to get hip all over again, this was new to me, but I wanted in...somehow, someway!
So the school year began without a hitch.....same ol, same ol.......bout round October, one of my boys started missing a lot of school...not like him....although he lived with his grandmother and 3 other siblings, it was a tight knit group, they had an uncle that would beat the shit outta of them better'n any father could, so they weren't lacking for a father figure.....But D (won't reveal any names, cause some of these niggas still in the game.......yeah, 20 years later!!!! (definitely 10 years later in '95, as you'll see in part III)), just stopped coming to school all of a sudden...he'd come maybe once a week, twice if he felt like it....teachers would ask me about him because we were so tight.......shiiiiid, I didn't know my damn self......one saturday afternoon at the peewee field, everybody came out, that was the spot on Saturdays...regardless if they ragged or not, niggas came out!!!! I saw D....I was like, "nigga where you been?" D was just grinnin......I'm like what the fuck is so funny, yo ass done damn near quit school in the 9th grade!!! (which was unheard of back in tha days) D was like, "man I'm gettin paid".......Huh?????? paid????? How??.........D said...........dope!!!!!! Huh????? Mind you, I'm fresh off the "wack" boat...(wack was the term for "lame' back then) so I had no clue what dope was.......hell, I'm only 14.......D said dope was cocaine...crack cocaine.....and he was sellin it.....14 years old as well....sellin dope! He had the pockets to prove it........I was like damn.....eyes wide open.......but I knew damn well, I couldn't sell no dope, not with my pop!!! Shiiiiiid, there were parts of town I couldn't even go to, let alone call myself sellin dope....I knew that was out....D did too....so he stopped me short of even askin how could I be down......."Boy yo Daddy 'll beat yo ass"......and he would too!! But I needed a pocket like D's.......swole!!!!
I couldn't get that knot outta my head.....had to have been a coupla hundred, if not a "g" that nigga had that Saturday afternoon. As luck would have it....D came to school that following Monday....the cool part about it was, we had 3 classes together so I saw the nigga damn near all day....and you know what I had on my mind.....that knot......how you get on? where you get it from? what yo gram'ma say? all kinds of questions.....by 6th period (remember it like it was yesterday!) D was like, "what's up then nigga? you trynna get in the dope game or sum'in?" I was speechless...cause I wasn't expecting that...I was just curious about the "game" itself......but ego took over, and I was like "yeah, put me on." "But you know I can't be out late and shit, how I'm gon sell dope with a curfew?" "And what if somebody sees me, you know they gon tell my Daddy!" D was like don't worry bout that.....you still get an allowance? (that too had been the butt of jokes....gettin an allowance.....niggas wuddn't gettin allowances, that was white folks shit)...I said yeah! He said how much money you got? I had $20, he said lemme hold it........I didn't know what the fuck that was all about....I was square to the game.......he said, "I'mma 'flip' it for you, you ain't gotta do nuttin but bring $20 to school every Monday, I'll flip it, and give you your money on Fridays." I was leery, cause hell, I was lucky to even see him that day, let alone DEPEND on this nigga.......but D was my boy, so I said what the hell, and gave him the $20........Friday came, no D....I was mad as hell...damn near in tears.......thinking my boy done got me!!!! I just knew I'd see him Saturday at the field, where I usually saw him as of late......No D......dammitt man!!!! the next day, Sunday, I forget where I was, but here comes D...ridin up on a bike....smilin.....I'm not, I'm mad as shit, ready to swing on my homeboy over a dub......"yo mama told me where you were, I just left yo house.......yeah....(my mama loved his funny lookin self) ....yeah, she said you'd be up here........but check this out dawg....I'm waitin on a sob story....here you go....and handed me a $50 dollar bill.....my eyes lit up!!!! You made this offa that $20 I gave you? Nigga, that ain't shit, I knew yo ass was gon be trippin when you ain't see me at school Friday, but this all I got on me...you can take this $50 and take it as a come-up, or you can reinvest....you see I'm good for it.....and he was......this was my dawg I was talkin bout....so I said, let me keep the $50, but here's $20 more, keep flippin this..........It was on y'all.......I took that $50 and put it in my wallet and carried it around like teens carried old, faded rubbers in their wallet......that $50 was my status symbol.....but I had a problem....couldn't spend it.....folks knew how much money they were giving me, so I couldn't just go out and splurge like I wanted to, so I had to hide my money; same principle applies to the game today; Money Laundering would be the appropriate term (as I would come to learn in part IV)..........besides the football field on Saturdays, and the local arcade on Sundays, I had nowhere to floss my cheese!!!!! Then it hit me.......I told y'all what kind of school I attended...nuttin but rich white folks, and I was cool with them, in fact had some real close friends that I had played peewee ball with throughout the years, and we remained close througout high school as well...However, they had outgrown me by leaps and bounds, and they would give me a lot of their shit that had gotten too small for them...it didn't make me no never mind cause it was always nice, name brand shit that was always practically brand new......white folks was always givin me shit.....I ain't turn it down either! Bugle Boy, Jordache, Calvin Klein, you name it.........so what I started doing was, after, or sometimes during school, I'd go to the mall down the street and go shopping; I'd put my clothes in my locker at school, wear em' and have my white friends wash 'em at their house, and by the time the "newness" wore off I'd take 'em home as just sum'in else "one of my white friends gave me."
"Pretty Tony" was born. My very first purchase were a pair of burgundy penny loafers! yep, I was rockin the penny loafers.....with no socks at that! Oh, I loved to dress preppy! Penny loafers, no socks, bugle boy jeans that rolled up at the bottom, and a button down shirt! That was me! On Saturdays I would come to the field in my penny loafers and shorts...couldn't tell me shit!!!! As opposed to collecting from D every week, I'd just give him $10 every sunday at the arcade, and collected every other week, which usually amounted to about $2-300......I had to save alot because wuddn't that much clothes givin in the world, and I didn't want the folks to get suspicious...so I stacked!!!! The folks didn't find out, but somehow word got out on the streets, and at school, that me and D were partners, and I was frontin him my "lunch money" to come-up.......ain't nobody trip though......in fact, I was gettin props....Sr's were noticing me and even speaking to me....back then, freshmen didn't fuck with Sr's, let alone, Sr's fuck with freshmen.....I mean we were cool 'cause of my peewee days, and everybody knew my pops, but we weren't that cool.......then I found out why all the attention......Me and D kept our partnership going for most of the freshman year, til he just finally dropped out of school all together in the spring...but hell, I had made a lot of money, and the thrill had worn off, plus I was gettin tired of hidin shit from my parents (I was a good kid back then.....cocky, but still a good kid).....so when D left, I got out......the folks who knew of us, knew D had dipped....and they pretty much knew that he was my "partner in crime."............til one day in the hall way........"Shorty McKay, ya boy gone now, who gon put you down.....(smirkin).......won't you ask yo DADDY....he got all the work!"..........................What the Hell?????????

To be continued..................