James Wiggins is a native of New Brunswick where the majority of his memories take place. James talks about growing up on Loretta Street, his experiences in school, and the importance of his neighborhood in shaping that type of person that he wanted to be. He is a life-long musician who, after helping set up Crossroads Theatre Company, a Black theater company in New Brunswick, became an actor himself. Now retired from truck driving, James narrates his deep love for his family, especially for his wife and his late son.
“Being a parent is, like, the most profound experience that I think a human can have. And– and it’s– it’s sort of weird because it’s going on all around you, as your kid, as you’re growing up. You see all the other kids, you see all the other parents. And he was like, ‘It’s no big deal,’ you know? ‘It’s just life. This is the way it works.’ But when you have the child? My God. It’s like a miracle. Can’t explain it. You basically have to experience it to understand that, wow. This came from us.”
ANNOTATIONS
Annotations coming soon.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Dan Swern
New Brunswick, New Jersey
March 22, 2023
Transcription by Hannah M’Lynn
Disclaimer: This transcript contains explicit language. It is presented as it exists in the original audio recording for the benefit of research. This material in no way reflects the views of coLAB Arts.
Content warning: Suicide
RECORDING ONE
(00:00:00)
Today is Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023. It's 10:17 AM. This is Dan Swern. Uh, we're here at the coLAB Arts studio space. Uh, I'm here sitting with?
James H. Wiggins Junior.
James, thank you so much for giving us the gift of your time and your story today. And whenever you feel ready, please feel free to start from the very beginning.
Okay, thank you. I'm glad to be here. (sigh) The beginning, in my memory, is four years old. I remember, uh, of– I think, I was past– I think that my parents might have been having some difficulty in their relationship or maybe some financial problems. And that resulted me in being sort of bounced around. They lived somewhere on Lee Avenue, near Suydam Street, I believe it was. I– I think. I don't know why. I was with my grandmother who had the family house. Like, I refer to it as the family house, um, and, on 25 Loretta St. And, um, that's where I grew up mostly. My grandmother offered, took care of me, and, uh, sometimes I go to visit my parents at, where they were staying on– on Lee Ave. And, uh, but, uh, it was a pleasant existence. I– I remember that I always wanted to play something. I– I've no particular reason because no one in my family was musically inclined previous to that point. But I had the urge to play something. I asked, you know, like, “Could you get me, get me something like drums? Could you get me some drums?” ‘Course nobody, (laughs) they'd have to be insane. They get a 4 year old drums, a 5 year old drums, either way. But the response generally speaking was, “Oh, well, you don't know how to play!” “Yeah, but that's why I wanna get one! I’ll, I’ll figure it out.” And, um, I couldn't convince anyone. And, uh, I am mentioning this because I eventually became a musician when I was 12, 13 years old. I got a– a paper route. And, um, the, um, that gave me enough money to take guitar lessons and that started my journey of being a musician. And I've been one to this, uh, off-and-on, to this day. So, I always find that amazing ‘cause I don't know why I was attracted to this. This endeavor. Yeah, but it's stuck with me. Um, from 4 years old I went to kindergarten in, uh, at Livingston school. In New Brunswick. And I– I think it was I– I– I know that it was at, at first, during the first grade. My parents, um, moved from Loretta Street to, um, Stelton. Um, it was part of Pistcataway.
(00:03:32)
And I was there for a couple years. I went to, um, the Stelton school system. We used to a thing they called The Farmhouse, which was a big. It was a– it was a barracks, actually. It was some army barracks, and they held some elementary school there, so. It was a– it was a more rural environment than I was accustomed to because I was only 4 years old. I was accustomed to New Brunswick, Loretta Street, and the surrounding area. I was born in Saint Peters Hospital, and to the best of my memory, I probably never ventured more than– out of– out of a twenty-mile radius of that spot. Oh, until, like, maybe my early 20s. So that's– that was my world, New Brunswick. But I knew that world pretty well. I've– just about every street I go down I got a memory of something, something that happened. Um, we were, we were there for about a year and a half, maybe two years. And, um, then we moved to, um, what was the thing called? John Street. it no longer exists. That was, uh, right near Route 18 area now and, uh, the– the area where, uh, I forgot the name of the hotel that’s there on the corner of George Street. Not George Street, Albany Street. And the entrance to Route 18. At any rate, um, might come to me, and there's a big hotel there now. And there was this bis– mostly business district, and they have, now they have another development, but, uh, back then, it was high rises. It was apartments, and you'd have– I think there was about four or five buildings. And they were about, I'd have to say about at least ten stories, probably around ten stories high. Give or take and, uh, it was sort of considered a rough area at the time. Low income, um. You know, it– it was– it was– it was a project. The– the– the standard idea that comes to your mind when you say “project”. That's what it was, you know?
(00:06:20)
Uh, and, and, and I moved on John Street, which was like maybe one block away from that, and I went to the school, Lord Sterling School, uh, there. And, uh, we– we lived there for, I don't know, maybe a year? Yeah, probably a year. It couldn't have been that long. Maybe it was somewhere in the area of a year. Then we moved a few blocks away to, uh, Beal Street. Which, I still was going to Lord Sterling School at that time. Um. (tsks several times) Um. Uh, I’d– I'd have to say in– in retrospect, as I reflect as an adult, these might have been what you call “difficult times.” But it wasn't, it didn't appear to be difficult for me. In– in general. Um, I think my parents were going through problems. I think my– my father tried to, um, open a cleaners. He always worked as– in a cleaning, dry cleaning environment. Uh, he was usually, I– I'd seen him and I could think of just about four or five different dry cleaning establishments over the years that he worked in, and I noticed that they always put him in charge when he was there. He– he knew what he was doing. He got the work done quite well as– as far as I could tell, and, um. So. He– that's what he was doing. Um, unfortunately, I– I guess the business didn't work out and they were having financial problems. My sister was born in, um, I'd say, um, 1962. I'm sorry, ‘61, ’61. And that was in June, and we were living at Beal Street and it was, uh, sort of a winter time. It was cold and my father, he was drinking a lot. And he, um, uh, didn't know was coming home and my– my mother's there with an infant and a kid and she's, you know, she's gotta make some tough calls.
(00:09:01)
Oh, they had– they had been having some issues. I have no idea what they were. But– but, generally speaking, that– they were probably economic for the most part. There wasn't enough money. Uh, there wasn't enough of anything. For the most part, you know, I don't really remember hunger. So. I don't remember being unhappy. That was, I was in a pleasant state of existence, you know? Go outside, play with my friends and go to school. You know? And, uh, just live life day-to-day. Like a– like a kid. I don't recall having any– any trauma thing ever. It was a pleasant existence, that's what I'm trying to say. But my mother decided she had to go. And she took, um, she took myself and my sister back up to Loretta Street. I remember going right there. And, uh, I got to the door. And, uh, got to the door and my– my grandmother opened the door and she was surprised because she didn't expect to see us or whatever. And, um, my mother laid out the story. Um. “We had to leave Jimmy.” That's what my father was called. I guess, “I got this baby and I, we don't have enough, you know, formula. It's just, I can't. I can't take care of my kids.” (clears throat) And, uh, my– my grandmother at that time, living on Loretta Street, lived with my uncle. And, uh, my uncle was, he was a rough, he was a rough guy at that time. Ran the streets. He had, uh, grown up being a hobo for a while. He was in the service for a while, and, uh, he liked to gamble. He was, you know, a real rough guy. And I don't mean to paint him in– in– in a– in a negative light, but that was the life he dealt with and, um, you know, like, he survived any way he could and moved around, and he had been living in Chicago for a while. We had some relatives over there who I– I met at– at one point but now lost track with them. But he was there. And he said, “We can't take those kids all day! Ain’t gonna be nothing but a burden!”
(00:12:11)
(breathes heavily) I am surprised at my reaction at trying to tell this. Um, and my grandmother, who relied on him to help around the house! She was– she's an older person in her 60s or so, and, um, and at that time it was 60s was, like, old. I thought, I guess. Anyway, she said, “Well, if they're a burden, it will be my burden.” She opened the door and we went in. And, um, I pretty much spent the rest of my life there on Loretta Street. I guess I was– I was– this was just before my 10th birthday. This was in June. My birthday is in July. It was before my 10th birthday. And, um, um, they have. They had a– a apartment section, like, in the basement that was livable. It had another apartment there. And, uh, they put us in the– in that apartment and its– its– its got like a, you know, you saw when you walked to the house that you had the street level there's a– there's a few steps down, and you go down to the door there, and one would be the what you call a living room, and then a– a, in line, the, uh, a bedroom. Which was, became my bedroom for that period of time I was growing up, and then the next room was the kitchen. And the bathroom. And off to the sides of the kitchen, you go into, like, what we call the– the basement area? I mean, it’s all basement, but this was the, like, storage area where the furnace was and the room for various, whatever collected there, and stairs to go upstairs. And it was like I lived in the whole house because it was, you know, it was my grandmother. So, um, that's where we lived and I– I grew up there. Loretta Street. I didn't realize what a treasure it was. Until I was an adult and– and, um, I had more, I guess when I became a parent, which was at the age of 31, um. And– and now I had the responsibility of making sure everybody had enough to eat. And, uh, had a good life. And, uh, then I realized how good my life had been because of the (voice breaks) people on Loretta Street.
(00:15:21)
I don't know why I'm so emotional. I'm surprised. Anyway. Loretta Street, you had, and that point, then I was back to Livingston School. And, uh, went to school there for the next, uh, loved that elementary school. For the next few years, I guess it was– it was there in school. I learned that my eyesight was bad. I– I remember sitting in second, third grade, third grade class and sitting in their desks, and teacher’s writing something on the chalkboard and, um, she told us she wanted us to do such and such and such and such, and so I thought she meant do it for homework or something, because I couldn't see what was written. So I said, “Well, I can't see it. I guess she needs us to do it later.” So everybody's doing their thing and she noticed that I'm not doing it and said, she said, she asked me, “Why are you, why aren’t you doing it, James?” And I said, “I can't see the board!” So she got next to me, like. And she's looking. And she says, “You can't see that?” I said “No.” “When you say you can't see, what do you mean? You can't read? I know you're a good reader, so. You're not having a reading problem, are you?” I said, “I don't think so. I can't see it. I don't know what– what letter's there. I can't see it. And she brought me up a few steps to where I could see it and said, “Read that for me.” And I read it, whatever it was. She says "Oh, okay”. She said, “You need glasses.” And, uh, I guess they sent that note home to my mom, and I went to the optometrist and I got glasses. I guess that was probably, (sharp inhale) 11. 11 years old. In the– I have required them ever since. I'm wearing contacts now. Thank God, I love them, but, um, Loretta Street! Was home to me. We knew everybody. Everybody that lived from– from one, that one block area. That’s Straight Street. We knew everybody, you know? And– and– and they knew us. And it was a time when, you know what? You, you couldn’t go within about three, four, five blocks of where you lived and do something mischievous.
(00:18:16)
And try to get home before the news had got home, beat you there. You couldn't do it! You know the– the– the phone call would be placed to that place and said “Do you know what Punchy did?” My nickname was Punchy. Um, my mother told me she picked that nickname for me because she read in a Jet magazine when I was a baby that Joe Lewis's son, who was like, he was like, you know, one of the biggest heroes of– of that, my– my parents era. Um. Called his son Punchy. She thought that was cute. And that name has stuck with me to this day. Yeah, you can tell who know, who's known me from childhood by what they call me. If they call me Punchy, then you know that was one of my childhood friends. They may not know my real name, but they know Punchy. “Hey, Punchy, what's going on?” Yeah. Some people, I think, my associates, you know. They, you know, tried to stop calling me “Punchy” at a certain point, like maybe in my teens, early 20s, you know that. You know, it's too kid-like, but. Um, I tell them, “No, it’s alright! I'm used to it.” I see, that's who I see! You know, I don't, I never had a problem with it. A lot of people think it's funny or whatever, but it's– it's just how I grew up. That's what I know. Uh. So. I was talking about my neighborhood, Loretta Street. Um, I– we had the Morrisons next door, the Lamberts slowed down the street, and then the Mitchells moved in sometime, maybe when I was 13 or so. And the Brownings. Joyce Browning was one of the speakers of this, the event that we had? Um, where you had a few people at the front telling their perspective. And I was interested, I was– I found it interesting when Joyce was speaking and talking about how she saw the world, and, which was essentially saying that she had a nice life. She didn't know that there was really problems in the world. You know, uh, she didn't, uh, you know. We were just having a pleasant existence in– in that corner of the area, of the world, so us kids, we didn't know. Civil rights? What? Uh, protesting? Uh, you know, you might hear something on TV, that kind of thing. I– I do recall when, during the civil rights movement, uh, when Martin Luther King was starting to become known, certain things went to my, like, you know, when they had, you know, scenes, scenes of dogs.
(00:21:30)
Um, uh. They were sicking dogs on, on protesters or marchers, you know. I didn't understand that. How could that be? And I remember that one of the– the Freedom Rides, the Freedom Riders, they would get groups of integrated, um, groups you know. There was black, there was white, there was whatever. There were believing this cause, trying to sort of break down the, um, the social barriers that existed at that time, and they were riding buses together and going to places in the South where this was prohibited. And in one place, I vaguely remember that the newscaster was saying that “The Freedom Riders are headed to such and such area.” Down the road, (trying to paraphrase here), they said like a newscaster would say it. “Down the road at such and such place, there's a mob of people with weapons,” you know, like bats and, and things like that. And there's like, you know, “They're very upset and they're going to, um, they're planning to attack these people on the bus”. I said “Wait a minute. How– how could that be? So, where the police?” This is like, I couldn't conceive of that actually happening without lawful intervention, but, to my shock it did, you know? And a couple, couple busloads of people, if I remember correctly, got beaten up. And, uh, I think some landed in jail or whatever. I don't remember that. The exact circumstances, but it– it can be looked up, historically speaking. But that was when I began to realize, “Okay, there's some sort of social, um, dynamic going on outside of my little cocoon that I don't– I don't fully understand.” Because I have always had a good experience, for the most part, with with all kinds of people right across the street, I've been saying my neighbors like Ms. Thompson. You know? Um, and– and I've forgotten now, but, uh, I know it's Miss Thompson and her daughter Margo. They were white people. And– and Allen, her son Allen. And we, they were a little older. Margo and Allen were older, and Margo was, um, had a developmental problem.
(00:24:23)
Um. Maybe she was, um, she got a learning disability or something in that area, but, you know, it– it– it was not a factor in– in our interaction, our relation. We were just all, we were just all neighbors. That, uh– uh, um, like, I’m– I’m– I’m, uh, pointing to, um, places that were across the street. I’m– my– my– this is my position here, 25 Loretta Street, and I walk out to the sidewalk. Over here, to my right we got, um, uh, another white family, um, from Hungary. They moved in and, you know, it was, uh, they had a Hungarian accent and they had a certain un-American, you know, um, way of carrying themselves and talking. But pleasant and, Old Sam Stellatella, who was an old Italian guy. I mean– I mean he must have been in his 70s or 80s at the time, you know? But he had his– his house and he’d take, and sometimes, um, he’d ask me to go to the store, “Kid, can you get this?” Or maybe he needed some help doing something. Uh, I was always, uh, I won’t say always, but it was not unusual for me to, uh, pick up a few dollars here or there, somebody ask me to go to the store or– or– or help clean out or whatever, you know. Mow the lawn. Any type of help that someone in the neighborhood, the neighors needed, uh, we were all like. Uh, at their beck and call. We, the kids. The kids. We, (voice breaks) we enjoyed all the people of our neighborhood. Right next door was, um, also a Hungarian couple. And I know the woman’s name was Anna. Joe! Joe and Anna. You know? As friendly as– as you could imagine.
(00:27:01)
They had a daughter, um, who was also, had some sort of developmental problem. Um, uh, I forgot the– the term we would use for them now, but she– she, uh. (tsks) She shook a lot, you know? Would bang her head, you know? Uh, you know? But somehow or another, we were able to communicate with her, you know. I don’t remember her name. I remember the other daughter’s name, Suzie. Uh, we all just grew up! Dealing with life that we were aware of and not aware of. Um. So. (pause) I was sort of athletic, just in terms of being fast. I could run fast. I mean, uh, every so often during the summer time, we would have these, uh, track and field events, and, uh, I’d always enter and, uh, get running awards or, you know, first, second, whatever. Um. And, um. Pleasant existence. That’s– that’s primarily how I had an understanding. Uh, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was sort of weird. Uh, I, really, it wasn’t until my 40s that I realized, that I came to an understanding that I am and have always been an introvert. Um, so, I’m– I’m not inclined to speak much. You’re getting more out of me that most people have heard all this year. I’m– I was always an inside thinker. Again, I wasn’t aware of that. I just, you know, it wasn’t until my 40s, uh, somewhere around there. I found a book called The Introvert Advantage and I started reading it. And basically, they do an exact picture of my internal workings. I said, (laughs) uh, I had never thought about it. I– my approach to– to life and the world, generally speaking, as far as socially speaking, was that, uh, when I realized that I was quiet and I was shy, and that these things didn’t work well for these– those qualities didn’t work well for me, so I started to develop, um, sort of a fake, outgoing nature, you know?
(00:30:16)
I– it was quite an effort for me. It wasn’t a natural thing for me, you know, wanting to go to parties, social events, church and so forth. Um. I had to make an effort to try and be more outgoing. And it was not easy! I couldn’t figure it out! (laughs) You know? I couldn’t figure it out. What did people want to talk about? I don’t have anything I want to say! You know? That– that’s the real me thinking. But the– the other side of me was saying, “Well, you gotta say something! Just say anything! Listen, listen and see what they’re talking about! And– and try to jump in!” And this worked. And so, for quite a while it looked as if I was normal. Regular. An average person. But, uh, I– I’ve come to realize that I wasn’t so in there. Most of the people of my neighbor was just plain, simple folks, you know? Good Christians. Go to church every Sunday. And, uh, uh, and, and do what they think is the right thing to do. Okay, which is a wonderful thing, and I’m glad that I grew up in it. Um. But I had questions and doubts, you know? Go to Sunday school and, you know, they might say something like, you know, “Jesus loves this, that, and all the people, uh, who aren’t good Christians are, you know, going– going sinners, and going to Hell” and so forth. I couldn’t, I couldn’t wrap my head around that. ‘Cause I don’t think so. ‘Cause I’m– I’m readin’, I was a good reader. I– I started reading early. I don’t remember not being able to read. Um, I mean, even when I was four or five years old. I guess I must have learned in– in first grade, but somehow, certainly in first, by the end of first grade, I think I was reading on like a third or fourth grade level, and, uh, I read a lot. I particularly read comic books, you know? Thor, Superman, Batman, the Flash, DC and Marvel comics. It was a wonderful age for me now that the film has caught up. The technology has caught up with the– the possibilities that was laid out on the comic books. Like, oh! I watch, and just like the comic books, I read them over and over again? Now I watch these, um, superhero movies over and over again. My wife thinks it’s hilarious. She’s like, “No, I’m not watching this again!” (laughs) “Okay! Alright. I’ll wait ‘til you’re asleep. I’m gonna watch it!”
(00:33:15)
Um, I, uh, so, but I, what I'm saying is, I had a tendency to think about the world that was going around me. Now, I must not have been thinking that good because, like I said, well, I– I just wasn't aware of– of the social dynamics so much. I– I existed, you know? Um, Livingston School had predominantly white people in it. I've always, almost always, grown up in a predominantly white, uh, environment, you know? And, but there were enough black people and other kinds of people, so that I didn't feel, uh, isolated or anything. We all got along! This is what Joyce was saying. We all– we all just got along. And that was important. Later on, as I look back, I– I– and I've interacted with, let's say, black people who did not have that kind of experience, who grew up in a isolated black, uh, environment. They had a different approach to dealing with white people. They– they had more problems dealing with white people. They had preconceived notions, or, or, damaged experiences. So, they either, they might have been, they might be angry, or they might, uh, feel inferior. But, and this is something some of my– my friends and I have talked about, that were within our– our area. This is like, we never felt inferior because we were right in the middle of, we did everything together, is, we were just all people. You know? Some of us white, some of us black, you know? I didn't really run into the, to the term “nigger” too often.[1] A few times here and there, you know, but it was so infrequent that it was clear that that was wrong. Nothing was wrong with me. That is abhorrent that– that someone has that kind of– of attitude.
(00:36:00)
I remember once, uh, once, um, I was going to the high school. This is now, oh, this is the high school that's on Livingston there. And it was– it was– it was relatively new at that time. It was, like, maybe I was the third, fourth class to actually utilize, go into this– this building. And, uh, it was my senior year and I was, um, walking into school and I was, you know, concerned about being late. So I'm sort of rushing and I sort of took a shortcut. I went through an area, uh, between Livingston Ave and Joyce Kilmer Avenue. There was a, like, an apartment complex, and I sort of cut through there and I, as I cut through there, there was a group of little white kids, uh, particularly there was two– two or three little white boys and, uh, two or three girls. And they– they came running at me behind me and they were saying, (with force) “Get out of here! Get out of here! You're not supposed to be in here.” And I'm looking and I'm– I'm, you know, I'm about 16, 17 at the time, and they're like 6, no more than 7 to 8 years old. And I said, like, “How did you get like that?” (laughs) It was just so shocking to me. Like, and then– and I had– and I– I'm gonna go to their parents, you know? Because that's the way we would have done it in my neighborhood. You like, “Oh, we're having a problem? Let's go to your parents' house and talk about it.” You know? But I didn't have time. I was trying to get– to get to school, so said, oh, I let it go. But it sticks with me to this day, like, how did these little kids, they– they couldn't– they didn't know me. They didn't know– how did they develop that sensation? And at this point, I can only assume they either got it from their parents or they, they got it from the environment. And I've come to find out, you know. Yeah. That in– in certain restricted areas—restricted in, you know, there's only mostly one type of people. Certain attitudes and misperceptions, conceptions. They arise within. And it gets passed on. It's as simple as that. So, but, um, when I went to, from Livingston Ave, uh, um, Livingston School to, uh, Roosevelt Intermediate School, they called it at that time.
(00:39:05)
They, they just had 7th and 8th grade in it. So I went there 7th and 8th grade. But these were kids from all around. All around the neighborhood, the– the city. So you had, uh, a different section we've referred to as uptown, downtown. Uh, Reservoir Avenue area. You know, you had kids from all over, and this was sort of, well, I had lived, I had lived in downtown myself for a little while. Uh, and I had experienced a little rougher group of black kids, you know? Um. We grew up in the Ready Street and we were like, we were like “nice negros”, you know? We were like, we go to church, we don't curse, we don't, you know. We try to live by God's law, that kind of thing. Um, we were polite. We were taught to be polite. Respectful. And we work for the most part, you know, but then there's some growing up in, like, the outskirts of town in the rougher areas and they, their approach to life was a bit roughter. A bit rougher. In– in fact I remember. Um. The first day that I, when I said we moved from Stelton, Piscataway over to, uh, John St. and I went to Lord Sterling School? We're standing in line. There was a group of us, you know. We were standing in line to do something. And the teacher was, like, just not much further than you are from me now. Maybe, you know, about five, ten feet away. She was doing something or getting, putting people in order and– and this, uh, black guy, I won't say his name, and I remember it to this day. He came and he punched me in the stomach. I wasn't prepared for that, you know, like, you know, knocked the wind out of me. I bent over. I caught myself and I can't, he had a smirk. He said, “That's the way we do it in Georgia.” (laughs) And I– I had, and I'm going through my mind thinkin’, “Am I going to fight this guy now?” Because I didn’t mind. I would. But I– I didn't want to get in trouble. My parents was strict on me about getting good grades and staying out of trouble. You understand? I wasn't so much afraid of getting in trouble, it’s that I was afraid of dealing with my parents. After that ruling, ruling my house was like, “Don't bring me no C's. I could get A's, and we'll tolerate some B’s. I wanna see no C’s, and you bet not D’s and E’s, you know?” That was the understanding that we had, and as long as I did that, my life was good.
(00:42:26)
Uh, so I didn't want to get in a fight, so I just put it up. Okay. And then he never bothered me after that. Um. But, there was this now thing that these are rougher people and you gotta be willing– willing to fight the– the– the– they'll walk all over you if– if they– if they see that you– you can be bullied they will. So, I learned how to fight. Uh, that was a common thing, though. When I say learn how to fight, we boxed. You know, you know, we had Joe Lewis and– and the boxers were among our heroes. So, um, you'd always be boxing and roughhousing, you know? You had to wrestle. You know, you had to, you had to represent yourself. Or else, uh, uh, certain guys would– would try to walk over here, and then later, when we walked to– when I– when we lived back on– on Loretta Street? After I left my– my– my father? The– the Mitchells moved in. The Mitchells, they were, like, a large family. They had, uh, I don’t know, about ten kids. All ages. One, the– the–the youngest was just a year or two older than me. My point is, a lot of them were boys. And they were, like, all– they all look like Schwarzenegger, you know? They, they just had good builds. They were athletic, nice people! But not to be messed with! You understand? These are not folks that you could try to bully, and you could see that, just, you didn't. You know, you didn't have to try anything. You could just see it. Like, you know, these are nice guys that you want to leave alone. You just want to be able to be nice to them because they're friendly. They're okay, but if you want to start something, they look like they can handle. (laughs) So, uh, I thank them, because I was the oldest child. I was the only child until almost 9 years old. Um, I was the oldest child until, uh, 9 years old. Only child, and, uh, I didn't have any backup, you know? If something went down on the street, there was no one for me to call. It's like, I gotta deal with it. Yeah.
(00:45:17)
So, uh. They sort of became my role models of– of how to deal with– with rougher sorts, you know, I– I– I sort of followed that. They were like my older brothers. Um, I mentioned my father? So, once we left him, um, I didn't see him for nine years, I think it was. About nine years. I, you know, he called. He called up to the– to my grandmother's house, and I could hear him and my mother arguing. And I specifically heard on a couple occasions, I, you know, he was– he was trying to apologize, he was trying to get her to come back. And, uh, she was saying no, no, you know, I don't remember what she was saying, but it was not nice. She was– she was expressing her frustration and anger. Um, I, you know, she felt that she had been through enough and– and that we, the kids, had been through too much, whatever, which I didn't feel that same way. My– I love my father. I knew he wasn't, uh, taking care of his fatherly responsibilities to a degree. Um, and that he had a drinking problem. But he always treated me, (pause) he always treated me like his son, so we had a close relationship. Very easy– easy going. He, like me, didn't really talk that much, but we didn't seem to have, we would hang out together. We might say something funny here or there, but we just enjoyed each other's company. So. Um, this was a loss for me, but I understood. I was sort of precocious, if I can be immodest. But I was aware of what was going around. As I said, I'd be thinking about these things. I didn't know, I’d take notice of people's behavior around me. You know? Um, and, um, once I got to the age of, uh, 17, 18 years old, I believe it was, I got my license and I got a car. At that point, I was able to make contact with him and we began a relationship back again. I knew where his parents, my grandparents, lived, and I was able to drive over there to see him when he was there sometime.
(00:48:13)
And so, we sort of kept in contact though, although it wasn't like now, you got your cell phone, you can just reach out, you know, it had to be a landline. And you had to be there, and that, it wasn't as easy to contact people. You know? If they weren't there, they weren't there. You know, there was no messages at that point, not yet. So, it was like a hit or miss kind of thing. But, uh, I– I’d go see him every so often. Talk about things. Hmm. Where should we go from here? Uh, let's– let's say I'm in my– my early teens, like I told you. I– I was able to start some, uh, guitar lessons. Franklin School of Music in– on Hamilton Street in New Brunswick, uh, in Somerset. Somerset, I had to walk. Uh, from, I don't know how many miles it was. I– I'd– I would say, it was at least somewhere between 5 and 10 miles to, uh, from, from the registry, to, uh, to where the Franklin School of Music was, and, uh, and when– when it was cold, I had to leave early so that my fingers would– would warm up. I had time to get my fingers warm while I was there. So, and, uh, that began my music– musical efforts. A year later, after taking, uh, guitar lessons for a year, I heard a announcement over the PA. This was at– this was at Roosevelt School, I believe. It was either at the Roosevelt High School or the, uh, or the junior high school. But, uh, they said if anyone wants to learn to play an instrument, uh, you should come down to the– especially if you– if you have been playing them, you like to play in the band and coming down and try out or– and, uh, and, you know, learn how to play an instrument. And so I said, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” I went down and, uh, they were, you know, the usual band instruments, trumpet, trombone and so forth and, um.
(00:51:00)
I– I wanted the trumpet, but I guess they didn't, they were out of them or they had enough of them and they sort of talked me into doing the trombone and I, um, that's what I did. And I'm very glad that I did. Because there were lots of trumpet players, not so many trombone players. And, uh, it sort of put me in a in a shining light. Instantly, so. “He plays trombone?” “Yeah!” So. So, uh, and that was the beginning of really, um, I mean, I was playing the guitar, you know, but they were just– They were teaching me how to read music, which is important and very good, and I'm glad of that! But they weren't teaching me to– to play what you were hearing on the radio. You know? What, what I yearned to play. That wasn't coming. I had to sort of figure that out by myself. You know, based upon the information and the chords that they've given me. I’d utilize them and listen to records and had to play that way. Um, and then the– in the band at the school, the trombone, my teachers taught me, you know, reading music. And, uh, I would put, I was in all the bands, you know, they have the– the orchestra, the brass ensemble. (police sirens) The marching band. And this became a huge part. Excuse me, a huge part of my– my activities in– in school. So it's, you know, very busy in– in– in school from junior high on up to high school. In fact, I was, I was in an assembly. You know, the, I guess, uh, I don't know if it was the whole school or a large section of the school grades or whatever. It was, it was having an assembly and me and my homeroom class with, you know, our section, and we're talking, this, that, and the other. Something’s going on on the stage. I'm not paying attention to it, and, uh, talk and talk. And then they said, “James Wiggins.” “Who? Who? What do you say?” He said, “You!” “Me? For what?” “Come on up. You have an award for participation.” It’s like, you get points for all the types of, uh, after school activities that you had. And apparently, I was high on the list. (laughs) “Oh, alright!” (pause) I didn't even know existed at the time, but it, um, I don't know! We just had– Had a very positive impact. Like, “Oh. I'm, like, recognized or something. You know, for my effort here.” And, um, and I don't even know why I'm mentioning it, but it stands out in my mind! It always looks like you got the little shining moments that stand in your mind. That's one of them is I'm always amused when I think of that.
(00:54:29)
Um, I was pretty good on the trombone, particularly in high school, and they wanted me to try out for, um, All-State Band. And I did, but I only put, like, half effort into it. I said, I– I can't, because I couldn't see what I was going for me. I see, I had no way to get, because this is like the All-State Band. So if you won, then you'd have to go to rehearsals at certain places far off, and I didn't– my– I wasn't in a family that had a car or anything like, like, how my– if I even– if I get in there, I don't know how to proceed from there. In retrospect, I should have just put my best out there. I could have, I know I could have, uh, had done this. Uh, I don't know what would happen, but I suspect that– that the people in– in– in my community or in the school probably would have made a way, you know? If I achieved this thing. Now I understand that somebody, uh, from the high school or from– from the community would have gotten me– made sure I got there, but I didn't know that. But, um, I continued as a musician. I started to get into bands, uh, outside of, you know, like, uh. You know, kids from the block, we started singing groups. And, uh, then I was, and I was the only one who's playing. I started playing the guitar. I became the guitar player, and, uh, and, uh, I got into a band playing the trombone. We were called the “Soul Wonders”. Soul Wonders. I guess this is about 1968. And, uh, we were like a– a rhythm– in rhythm section and horn man. Like, you might think of the– The Bar-Kays, if you know this, if you know that the band. Or the, uh, or Chicago or, uh, Kool & the Gang. That, we were mo– modeled after that. We had, uh, bass, drums, guitar, three or four horns depending on what and how we played. I became sort of like a minor celebrity in the area, you know, because you go somewhere and you see me and the guys performing.
(00:57:23)
At the time, there was so much talent, musical talent, in New Brunswick. It was just all over the place. I remember, uh, going while I was in high school with a couple girls. And we all went to The Apollo to see a show. The show included the Five Stair Steps, who were very popular at the time, and as we were leaving, I was saying I wasn't impressed. You know, I didn't really do much. And these girls got on me. “Oh, you think you're this, you think you're that.” (high pitched mocking) I said, “It's not me! But have– have you seen some of the groups in New Brunswick perform? I mean, out of the blue?” Um, I can't remember the names now. The Chain Reaction? It was a cool name. Man, when they got on the stage, it looked like The Temptations were in town. You know? They would– the shows were just incredible! So, I– I just tried to explain this to you. “You've gotta go around New Brunswick. We could put on a better show than that. Yeah. I'm not trying to say I'm better than they are or that, I'm just saying when you go to the show and shows in New Brunswick, New Brunswick, talent and– and the area? That's like a high level, high level!” So. Um, I'm– I'm thinking around, about this time as well, what am I going to do with my life? You know? When I get near high school, getting near graduation. What do I want to do? And I didn't really realize it at the time, but I– I do in retrospect. Um, I didn't see much for a black man to do. There weren't that many options that were appealing to me. I didn't necessarily, I mean, I, the idea of, like, getting a job, a factory job, and working it for fifty years or so and retire just repulsed me. (laughs) I was like, “What? There’s gotta be more tolife than that.” And I need something where I have a, the option or the possibility, however slim, of becoming something significant, you know? Um.
(00:59:59)
Make some money, and live well and create– create a family line that continues to– to flourish. I don't know where I got that from, but, ah. Again, in my thought process, I'm seeing that, uh, as nice as my, my neighborhood and environment is, it’s sort of, it's in a poverty line, you know? And I– and I was talking with Joyce’s brother, Kenneth. He passed away, um, but we were at a funeral, which is where we all meet these, so often these days, and we were talking about the same thing of, about our neighborhood and so forth. And he was one of the older kids to me. So I– this– I'm now talking to him as an adult and this is like, well, is the first adult conversations we're having, you know? And we hadn't seen him in years, and now he's grown and I'm grown and, you know, having this conversation and– and talking about how– how nice our– our development was. How our– how our growth in our environment and so forth. And he said, you know, “What the thing was with our parents is that they made it look easy.” And I said, “Yeah, they did.” And they must have had problems! (laughs) They must have had serious problems that there was, you know, there was just simple folks, not greatly educated, you know? Not ignorant, but they were wise in life. They– they knew how to– how to live well. How to behave. How to– how to plan, structure, and build something. All the people on Loretta Street were builders. They all owned, mostly owned, their homes. And this– and this is a big thing. I didn't know that, but as I looked back and I understand within history now, boy, they did alright for themselves! You know, most of them did. They– their roots were in the South. They moved up during the Great Migration. Again, I don't know all of this then. I just, as my awareness of– of– of– of history and social, uh, change has grown that I'm aware. So, “Oh, I see what happened. I see what happened there,” you know? And he said, “They just made it look easy.” Um, my– my mother and father. I– I was– I was the only one who, when she came up to Loretta Street, after a while, she, uh, went on, uh, welfare. And so she would, you know, we got the welfare situation going on. Um, but we were– we were the only, like, welfare family on the block. Everybody else, jobs and houses and, and so forth. And– and in my, you know, my grandmother owned this house, my grandmother and my grandfather.
(01:03:28)
Her– her husband. This is her second husband, um, you know. They had moved from– the– the story I heard was the Morrisons next door had found this. Or maybe it was the other way around. They had a group of people, they left wherever they left. I think it was Virginia, and they headed up North and they all stayed in contact with each other. Some went to Chicago area, some went to New York area, some went to New Jersey, you know. And if I understand what I've heard, they were keeping in touch. “How’s it going. How's it going over here? Well, we did this, we did that.” So, “What’s going on over here?” “Well, they got some jobs over here. You know, in– in New Brunswick. It’s a good place. We can keep, you can get a house. And, um,” so. Somehow or another, they gravitated based on this grapevine. And they built a stable environment that was so much better than what they had lived in. What they grew up in. And, uh, it’s really amazing. (voice breaks) (sigh) My, I gotta mention this one thing about my father. Um, when my, when he was called, he was trying to, you know, make amends or get us to get back together. Um, my mother, who I loved dearly, she could be a rough person. Um, and I really began to find this out when I became a man and had to deal with this. Um. She was– she had had enough. She didn’t want to get nothing, and she said, “Listen if you call up here,” she said this a few times, “if you call up here– call up here again, I’m gonna call the police on you. If you– if you call, any, one more time. I’m calling the police on you.” (sigh) It was a number of years later before I realized the weight of that statement. Because, for a black man to have the police called on him at that time, this is about 1960? It– it wasn’t a joke. You know what I mean? You didn’t want that. Your life was not gonna head in a good direction.
(01:06:12)
Get– get the police, you know, came. If somebody called them on you, so. He, you know, he was gonna go to jail. Or you gonna get beat up. You’re gonna get something bad. So, after a while he stopped calling. He didn’t call anymore. I would get little messages here and there from him. Um, as I grew up. He sort of kept in touch. Um. But, um, once I got my license, and, um, I got– I got a car, then, um, I was able to see him sometime, and that was– that was– that was nice. So. So, I was saying how I– I’m trying to piece together, “What am I going to do with my life?” And I thought about becoming a boxer, because that’s one way. And I– I had a little bit of talent. You know, I wasn’t gonna be the heavy weight champion of the world. I’m only 5”6. I’m 5”6 now. I was 5”6 when I was in sixth grade. I was one of the big kids. I was so tall, you know? And then, that’s where I stopped. Everybody just kept going! Yeah, so it was a little bit of an adjustment, thinking, “Oh,” you know, “I’m a big guy”. Oh, I’m a little guy! How’d that happen! (laughs) But, you know. I said, I don’t like the getting' hit in the face part! (laughs) Uh– And, uh, I loved music. And, once they had a, a, uh, a concert, uh, at– at the college, uh, College Hall? (inaudible) There’s a gym, gymnasium on George– not George. On College Avenue. College Avenue gym. And they had a concert there, in, um, I went and the Temptations were there. And that was it. ‘Cause they were just incredible. The Temptations in their– in their early stages? Uh, they were just the most incredible performance group you could have seen at that time. Uh, it was like mind blowing! And the women were going crazy and the guys were just. (muffled crowd noise)
(01:08:58)
This is it! (laughs) This is what I want to do! This is it! And, uh, from that point on, I was determined, uh, to become a miss– a– a musician as, uh, as my, my career choice. So, uh, for, for the rest of my life, to this very day, what, whatever job I had, uh, which was usually driving, ‘cause I just decided that second place would be driving, because I enjoyed driving so much. I didn’t know that then, when I was 14, but by the time I got to 18, 19, I’m thinking, “Driving is my job.” They always need a driver somewhere. I was just thinking logically. You know? This guy, looked in the newspaper, the Want Ads. That’s how you got your information in those days. No iPads or phones or. You read the newspaper, go to the want ad section. And I looked, whole section on drivers. 15, 10, 15 dollars an hour, which, you know, back then, that was pretty good money. Uh, uh. And anyway, while– while I was in college, uh, one summer I saw an ad for a bus driver, school bus driver. And they would train. And I said, “Okay. There’s my opportunity.” I went and, uh, got training, from AZ transportation. And, uh, the third time I was in a bus behind the wheel, I was on my way to take my test. (laughs) I didn’t really feel qualified, but I– I was, uh, I was okay. Really, in truck driving, bus driving, you get some sort of half-assed training, uh, to the point where you can get your license, and from that point you learn. So the new– new drivers, uh, of anything, trucks, uh, buses, whatever, are, they’re in training. They’re in training. Takes– once you’ve done it for about six months, that’s when, you know, you start to feel comfortable. Six months to a year, you start. “Okay, I got this.” So. Um. Um. I– I went to a, uh, a– a special program called Upward Bound in my, uh, late teenage, uh. The thing with Upward Bound is they would get, uh, what were recommended to them as promising, uh, Black, for the most part, Black and Hispanic kids, and, uh, try to put them at a college level.
(01:12:02)
Because, before that, I was taking a, a business course. That was, you know, traveling on business. I didn’t really want to go to college. I– I hadn’t even thought of it because, first of all, I couldn’t afford it. So, uh, I– I didn’t see that as a possibility. But, when this Upward Bound program came. And I think that was largely due to, uh, riots and, you know, social upheaval, and, uh, the inequities that were trying to be addressed as far as education and– and– and poverty was concerned. So, it was called an Anti-Poverty Program. Um. My, I guess, guidance teachers and– I did good in school. I kept that standard that my parents had set for me. And, uh, not because I was really good student, because I was a lousy student. But I was smart enough to, I mean, you know, whatever they put in front of me, I– I consumed it quickly and almost without doing homework. I would do my homeworks at break time or something and get it out the way. Um. I– I did pretty good in English, math, all the way up to algebra, geometry. I never had a problem in school. The closest I came to a problem was completing my assignments. You know, but it wasn’t due to ability. It was just being lackadaisical, you know? I– I didn’t see the full purpose of education at that time. Because, and I think in retrospect, because in my time, there was this limited scope of what you could do. I said, “What am I gonna do with this education?” Um, I had a little clash in– in junior high school. I was taking French, and, um, I had calculated my, uh, points. You know, everything, all the credits you needed, and I realized, “Oh, I don’t even need to bother with this French thing.” I am not proud of this, what I’m going to tell you. (chuckles) But this is what happened. So I calculated that, uh, I wouldn’t, I didn’t have to take French. ‘Cause I didn’t need those credits. I just needed such and such and such credits, so I just did well in the things that I needed the credits for to graduate.
(01:15:01)
And, um, so I wasn’t doing anything in French. I didn’t– I just didn’t bother at all. One day we’re taking a test. The whole class is taking a test. And I’m sitting next to Bella. Bella was a guy from Hungary. Hungary. Came here doing the Hungarian issue in the ‘50s. There was the– they– they had some problem with the Soviets or something. I– I don't. I don't remember right off the bat, but but they had to flee. They– they were sort of like the, um, what's going on now with the– with the Soviet Union? I forget the country. Anyway. Bella and I are cool. You know. No issues. But he's sitting next to me and I'm on the thing and I'm just– I'm just sitting there. Because I'm not taking the test. I hadn't studied for the test. I don't need the test. I don't care about this French business. You know and, uh, you know, I'm just hanging out. And I think I turned over this way and Bella looked at me. And somehow he gets that I'm cheating, you know, and that's– and he starts acting funny, you know, covering up and stuff. I'm laughing. The teacher looks at, sees what's going on. And she’s. She gets the message that I'm cheating. And, um. And so she comes marching over and grabs the paper up, and she's walking over to the trash can and I’m sayin’, “Look at it! Look at it! Look at it!” Uh, because there’s nothing there! I didn’t write anything! (laughs) You know? No! Everybody just decided that I was cheating! And I– I was embarrassed, you know? I don’t know why, but I didn’t– I’d rather think– have people think I wasn’t doin’ than people think I was cheating. You understand? My– my position was the stupidest cheating, but still. That was my choice. It wasn't to try to do something. You know, I didn't, if– if I wanted to pass this course, it was a– it was an insult to my intelligence. The number of times in– in school, you’d run, it was an insult. I’d run into things I felt was an insult to my intelligence. And I didn’t really track it to color, and maybe it wasn’t! I don’t know. But, and so, this was like the only time, like, the most belligerent I got in school.
(01:18:03)
And I won. I sat there for a little while and I was steamin’ and I was steamin’. And then I, I, uh, I got up and I walked over to the trash can and I picked it up and I put it on her desk and I said, “You look at that! And I want you to apologize to me in front of this class.” She took a look. Said, “What, you didn’t do anything.” I said, “Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t do anything! I wasn’t taking the test. So why am I copying off him? Go look at his paper!” I think I maybe, I don’t know if I had put something down or not, but, there was noth– I had– my page was basically blank. And, you know, I don’t know what Bella’s was, but I’m sure he was takin’ the test. He was a good student. And, and she did. And she apologized. Said she, uh, she said, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.” And I said, “Yeah! That’s,” you know, “that’s messed up!” I can’t remember what I said. I was just, I was incensed, you know? And– and the one thing I said, “What am I supposed to do with French anyway?” You know? And by that I meant, with my social status. What good is French going to do me? That– that was my thinking. Again, I am not proud of that, and I– I wish I had a better, better understanding of life. Um, to say that. Uh. Now, I believe that, you know, I wish– I wish I had taken care of every educational opportunity I had available to me. I– I’ve done okay in my– it hasn’t been bad. But I– I was much more talented and intelligent if I had, uh, performed the way I was capable of performing in educational circumstances. I could have achieved much more. Um. So, after, after college, through the Upward Bound program, the way it worked was, during the summer, it was like a summer school. You’d go and they’d put you in a college environment. You’d live, excuse me. We lived on, um, at the Douglass Campus. Um, and it was, it was really such a great experience.
(01:21:01)
You know? And once again, I did not take advantage of the educational opportunity of it as well as I should have. But, still, they had such great impact on me because there were so many, uh, individuals of different persuasions. Black, white, orient, oriental. Who were there to try to lift us up. And it was there that I began to get– to get a sniff of, of, uh, of the social struggle that was going on, that I was part of and didn’t realize. And, uh, that’s where we started to, you know, learn about things going on in, uh, in Harlem and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Why– to understand why I heard so much about that individual. What he– he was trying to do. And I think, you know, it was a surprise to me! Because up until that point, even when I heard him mentioned within the confines of our, uh. Uh. Social boundaries. Um, he was sort of represented as a– as a troublemaker. I hate– am ashamed to even say it now. But, you know, like, my older adults seemed to think that he was a troublemaker, and they didn’t' want me and us kids gettin' involved in any of that trouble. It amuses me now, when I think about, um, the, um, gentleman that just, uh, passed away a few years ago. Uh, wrote a book about good trouble. And I said, “oh, good trouble.” (pause) That was the perfect name for it. Good trouble. But, um, then I began to become a little bit more, uh, culturally conscious and in tune to, um, the social struggle, as I say, that– that I’m a part of but was unaware of. Um, so, went to Upward Bound, um. I think was for about six weeks out of the summer. And you’d study– study college-prep courses. And it was– it was to prepare you for college. They put you in a college environment that functioned in a college way, as far as, you know, the way your classes are scheduled and so forth.
(01:24:08)
Um. Which was great! ‘Cause, actually I went to college and, uh, they helped you fill out, uh, applications. They educated us on how to do this thing, to get into college. It was no longer an impossibility. It was a possibility if you went through these steps. They showed us what those steps were. Uh, I’m very grateful. And even though I had a poor attitude, you know it’s swi– swimming upstream at this point. Because, you already polluted with, uh, the effects of ignorance and poverty. Self unawareness. You know? Just ignorance! You don’t know what's going on. You don’t really know the system. And I was lucky to be in a group that sort of sh– sheltered me, so it was okay. I didn’t– I didn’t get, uh, you know, I didn’t get, uh, victimized by that, that ignorance too great. I mean, bad enough. But in comparison, so many of my friends were in deeper than me, harsher confines than me, you know? They were as capable as me. They were as intelligent. Maybe not as learned. But they were smart. Uh, and sometimes ambitious. They were high spirited. And many of them didn’t do well. You know? They had nowhere to go. They couldn’t figure it out. Upward Bound helped me figure it out. How to, how to advance myself. How to behave. How to navigate through adversity. That’s what I got from them. And– and so, to be put in that environment with all these– they picked these– these, uh, contestants? Uh, the peop– the kids that they chose, not just myself. My age group, you know. They, they were good choices. They were good choices, because people got serious there. You know, we were all fooling around, having a good time, come from inner-city environments and so forth. From Newark, Rahway, Trenton, Plainfield, you know? (inaudible) And it was an enlightening situation! You go take all these, uh, Black kids from these different, uh, environmental neighborhoods. I say environmental. I mean in– in– in terms of what they were subjected to in their particular environments.
(01:27:23)
Then we got a chance to sort of navigate each other, because, you know, you heard about people from Trenton. They’re like, you know. Plainfield. New Brunswick. We always had problems with Plainfield people. You know? But– but you put us together and give us some– some sense of purpose? It’s like, we all became the same. (breathing) We all became the same. And– and even though I didn’t take what they were doing as seriously as I should have, I recognized that this was a valuable experience. And you got to see how certain people interacted, you know? Um. I remember (tsk) there was, you know, a couple guys. You know, some of them were rough! And. Growing up as a Black, young Black man in my age, I don’t know that it’s changed much now. But you had to be prepared for violence. Because there were– it would be coming at you from various directions. You know. You know, you had to be able to defend yourself. You had to be able to to present yourself in such a way that you didn't seem like a good target. You didn’t– you weren’t vulnerable. Uh, to this day. I mean, I’m somewhat old now. Uh, but, uh, I still have that certain, you know, I– I– I'll go to Harlem or lot of places. I go to New York or any neighborhood. I can see the roughness. And, but I have the confidence of figuring that, I'm exuding that I'm not a victim. You know, that if you come at me, you might not turn out the way you expected. And I– I– I saw how certain individuals who had serious minds– the Sharp brothers. There was two– two brothers, the Sharps. And, uh.
(01:30:03)
They– they were, like, culturally aware. Advanced, you know? Still, uh, religious. Um, you know, I think their father was a minister or something like that, I don't know. But they just carried themselves with such dignity. And then you got some, uh, you know, some of the rougher guys. They looked at this and they saw. It– it didn't sit well with them, so they challenged them. So, you'd have these boxing matches and they'd see how these guys, who are intelligent. Who were focused. And– and, you know, they are really trying to accomplish something. Stood up to these roughhouse guys, you know, boxed them back to the corner and gained their respect. And still went about their business. I said, “Oh. You don't have to be a thug. You don’t have to be a thug to– to be strong.” ‘Cause that's what they are making the mistake of in– in their environment they came from. It's like the thugs are the strong guys. You– they are– your– your– your role models. But I had enough smart, intelligent, tough role models to make me, to give me, like, “Oh. I don't like to be that.” You know? With, within– within your– your communities, um, I think, for the most part, black kids are trying to figure out, “Well, how can I succeed? What can I do?” You know? And they get confused by the lack of opportunity. I hope that's ending now, (horn honks) but certainly not to the degree it exists, to the degree that it did when I was a kid. But, uh, you know? They look around and they say, “Well, this drug dealer over here. He look like it got pretty good. He don't have to go to work, you don't have, you know, he's doing some shade,” or whatever. Um. They come to the wrong conclusion of who's a role model. They come from conclusion. I don't know how to stop that, but. Uh, I– I thought about this carefully and I let the people who were trying to do something positive—because I knew like, I don't wanna go to jail. I'm a logical thinker, like. I– it doesn't make sense to me to do something that is against the law. It's like, you're swimming uphill. It– it doesn't make sense.
(01:33:00)
You gonna get busted or something! “Uh, I could do the time!” You know? “I don't even care about going to jail!” Why? Why don't you care about going to jail? There's so much more to offer! Life has to offer! You know, if you just, you know, work toward it! But, you know, Upward Bound, for instance, and my neighborhood, for instance, pointed in directions that said, “No, you don't have to do that. You can do this. Not telling you it's gonna be easy, but if you go this route, you got a better chance of getting to the mountain.” You know? So. Um, I– I, went to Upward Bound for a couple summers, and then on the third summer, they put me in a, like, another program where I was actually a– a student enrolled in Rutgers. And, um, uh, I was accepted into Livingston College, and I went there and studied music. Uh, I didn't do well. I'm ashamed in saying that. I still had a poor attitude. And– and then in college, we weren't welcome. The professors, many of them just, you could see the disdain in– in their faces when you came into the class. Like, “These folks don’t deserve to be here.” And to a degree, they were right. I can’t argue with that. To a degree, we weren’t– we weren't really prepared. We weren't– most of us, many of us weren't prepared, um, for what we had to deal with as students. Socially. You know, living on campus. Some of the adversity you ran into, some of the party opportunities you ran into. It was just a lot for a stupid 18 year old kid. (laughs) To deal responsibly with, you know, it was. But it was sort of like the shotgun effect, you know? Let's just shoot, let's shoot a buckshot, bunch of buckshot out there and– and some of them were going to get through, and– and some of us did. And even my life. I didn't, even though I didn't graduate from college, you know, I learned so much more. Again, it was sort of an– an extension of what Upward Bound did. Give me an environment where there were lots of individuals, good role models, uh. Some of the professors and so forth, and they– the learning experience we had. I didn't comprehend at the time, the value of, of the schoolwork, I didn't get it. I didn't– didn’t know.
(01:36:14)
It still helped me, just being around individuals who had their sights set higher. Who had– making a better effort to– to understand our social, political environment and figure out how to rise within. Um. (tsking) So. Uh, I– I went. Went to college. I stayed at home. I just commuted to– to college for the first semester. I hated that. I knew that wasn't going to work, so I took out– took off the second semester and I worked and I got, um, enough money so that I could live on campus. I got some, uh, some financial aid. I– I figured out how to do whatever I had to do to have just enough money that– that I could make it. And of course I went into debt for it. Quite a bit. Not by today's standard, though. But, then, you know. I remember I came out of college, I owed, I think it was about $25,000 worth of debt. You know? The numbers that I hear them talking now are make me shiver, like, (breathes heavy). So. (pause) Uh. My, uh, when I left college, it upset my mother quite a bit. And, uh, we, uh, sort of began to clash at that time. So, our– our– our relationship was sort of damaged by– My mother was, uh, a bit excited. She was sort of– sort of bitter. She was mad at my father. I, uh, refer to myself as the kid in the middle. You know, once my parents separated. You know, people took sides.
(01:39:01)
And I was in the middle. Uh. It was like my grandparents and my father's relatives didn't care for me because I was with my mother or whatever. And my mother loved me. But she was having emotional– emotional burnouts. For what she had to deal with, and, you know, I look like my father, so I'm reminding her of him. Anytime some of the neighbors came over, they got in the conversation. If it would– would drift to my father, which it often did, because that was her favorite subject. About how terrible he was. And, uh, she’d say what she had to say about him, and then she’d turn– turn towards me and say, “I know you don't like it,” which I didn't. “But I'm telling the truth in the end!” Okay. Uh, fortunately, I, like I said, I was sort of precocious about understanding what was going on around me, so negative stuff didn't really stick to me. It could have scarred me, I think. I've– I’ve heard other people say similar situations, uh, made them emotionally off. But I was more like a thinker and a watcher. So. I understood. I didn't hold it against her. Um, and, uh, finally I got to the point where in college I said, “Look, I'm not doing well. I'm just wasting my time and my money.” And, you know, I had another plan. I was really hoping, before Upward Bound came along, I was sort of developing a plan. I said, “You know what? I think what I'll do is I'll go out and get a couple of jobs.” ‘Cause it, in New Brunswick at the time, it was easy to get a job. You just had to walk up and down Jersey Avenue. And by the time you got back fill out, filling out applications, there’d be couple phone calls waiting for. So I said, “I’m gonna use my youthful strength and endurance. I’m gonna get two full-time jobs. I wanna,” uh, “I’m gonna save up enough money to buy income-producing property. One that I could live in and it would, um, give me a little income.” And then I was gonna focus on learning to become a musician to the level that I thought I could then, um. (church bells ring)
(01:42:05)
Generate income, which, I've– I had done. I mean, even as a teenager. You'd be playing these gigs, you know? There was, like, so many places to play in New Brunswick. Yeah, so that that's why I said it came a little minor celebrity, because you’d be playing in these bars and you sort of look like a star, you know? They were good bands, the bands that were here. Three or four of them, uh, nobody in there should have done anything else. We should have succeeded. But we just didn't have the circumstances and quite enough know how. Know how, you know? And, uh, I don't know if you know much about bands. I mean, uh, outside of the school or– or educational environment. In the– in the educational environment, it's all structured. You have a band director. You have one person that says, “This is what we're going to do.” You do that, you follow instructions, and you do it, and everything comes out right. You know, band off the street? Whatever number of people you want are in the band, let's say. I like seven. Like seven, seven-piece bands. You have three-piece bands and so forth. But the problem is you're coming off the street, and everybody's got their opinion, and musicians are notoriously difficult to get along with. We're all crazy and we hear things! We hear music. We hear stuff! Our imaginations are going wild, and there's all this mental activity going on in our minds that we want to try to produce, to bring out into reality, you know? And if you clashes with this guys’, you know. It could be a violent clash! I've seen more fights breaking out in– in– in a musical setting, you know, just at rehearsal! We’re just trying to work something out! Guys get some, “You can't do it that way! You can’t!” (laughs). And I guess that's part of the fun of it. So. Um. While I was in– in college, I had seen an ad to get– to get a bus driving job. And so I did that. And, um, uh, I did that, like, last year I went to school and I just continued on. I got driving jobs. I– I tried to study music on the side. But, um, usually had to work a lot of hours. Circumstances weren’t well. I sort of bounced around because I had to come home to my– my, uh, Loretta Street home.
(01:45:11)
My mother's all mad at me. And, uh, I had a girlfriend at the time. My mother blamed my girlfriend for me dropping out of school. She’s got nothing to do with it. She got nothing to do with it. So, she was, she was pretty rough on me and, um, I, uh, turns out I'm not the mama's boy I’d always been. You know? Once I had to try to figure out, “Okay, well, what am I gonna do?” I was– I was never an aimless person. I always like, “I got a plan. I got a plan.” And when I don't have a plan, my plan is to make a plan. “Okay, well, okay. We'll figure it out. What is it we’re gonna do? How we gonna get there,” that guy. Uh. I couldn't stay at my mother's house for a while because she was interfering. She was just mean. Uh. And I– I hate to say things like this about my mother because I love her. And I know she did the best she could. And she did a good job. She raised two children on her own, and, uh, and, uh, although my sister and I don't get along too well, um, but we're good. We were good kids. And, uh, I think she's proud of us. Was proud of us. So my– my girlfriend offered me, uh, to come stay with her. She had an appointment with another, uh, young lady. And I thought, “Okay, that would work out.” I– I didn't really wanna go, but, you know, I explained it to her, like, “Look. I'm trying this to save up some money. So, I mean I don't have to pay to live here. I mean, I– I just had to,” um, “contribute to forward and so forth and give my mother money when she needs it.” Again, we were still on welfare. At least, her and my sister were still, so I had to, uh, donate a certain amount of money whether I stayed there or not. And, um, but I– I didn’t work out with staying with my girlfriend. I don't exactly know why. Maybe, you know, staying together isn’t, um, isn’t what people imagine in their minds. And then you find out later, “Oh no, I don't like this.” So, I had to leave there. But, uh, I did find another, another room. And, uh, I, you know, I– I found cheap living in an acceptable environment, but, but cheap living I chose, so that's the most of my money. I was trying to pay off my debt. I was, um, I didn't– I didn't have a car when I left. I'm riding a bicycle around. That's how I got to work, you know? Which, at that time, riding a bicycle at my age, wasn't so, like, socially acceptable. But, it's like, yeah, I did what I had to do. Uh, bicycle was good transportation, and, uh, when I got enough money, I– I was basically building up. Um, my functionality. You needed a car. You needed transportation. So I got that. You need a place today. It's like just, like, trying to work your way out of poverty. You needed all this stuff to have a– a flourishing life, you know? Uh. (pause) Am I taking too long? I wanna–
(01:49:25)
[END OF RECORDING ONE]
[BEGINNING OF RECORDING TWO]
(00:00:00)
So, basically, I've bounced around for a few years trying to, uh, get my, get my finances in order, paying my debts. Uh, getting a car, getting a, you know, maintaining my own living space. Uh, so, I rented a room for about a year and then I ran into some guys, um, who were, uh, renting an apartment on George Street. It was 296 George Street. And it had three other guys eventually, which was me and a guy that was, uh, well, he was studying to be an actor. And he, while we were living at George Street, he, uh, got involved in, um, uh, with the theater. I forgot the name of the theater. That should come to me. So, he was organized– organized in the theater. And, uh, uh, another guy was a guitarist, and the other guy is a pianist, so it was like us artisans living at this, uh, uh, apartment on 296 George Street. It was a time that I find many of our associates reflect on fondly. As in it– it appears as though we were, like, minor celebrities, you know? They were– they were considered cool. We were doing something that a lot of people around us seemed to admire. And, uh, you know, just the fact that we were sort of independent. We were taking care of ourselves. We were, you know, we weren't– we have jobs, we had, uh, sources of income and we had artistic activities. Uh, you know, it was a good time to be young. And, um, I, um. I wish I had not been as, uh, focused on female attention and– and weed as I was, but that was the time. And, uh, can't say I didn't enjoy it, but there's a price to pay, you know? Just in terms of, if I could advance further, I could have advanced further. I could have been more focused. And I'm sort of hard on myself. I realize that.
(00:03:06)
But, you know, it takes what it takes. You know, you can't– if you have a– a goal to accomplish something, you gotta give it what it takes. You can't give, like, half of what it takes, or three quarters of what it takes, and be upset that you didn't get there. It’s like, you chose not to get there. Yeah. You know, you gotta go all out. And that's asking a lot! And, uh, I find myself in that position today. I– I still intend. I'm retired now, but it's still my intention to– to continue that– that– that effort to become a good musician and to develop a musical performance career. I have thoughts and ideas which I'm working on at this time. And, uh, since I've been retired, I haven't gone all out. But I, you know, I've been sort of resting up. I've been plotting and scheming and hopefully I will put more of an intense effort than I have been. (tsk)We had a great time at, uh– uh, we had a great time with that apartment, um, and, uh, we enjoyed ourselves. I– I– after about a year or two, I moved out and I got my own apartment and, uh, I'm driving for Rutgers. During that time, I drove for Rutgers Bus Company. It was not Rutgers’ bus company, but it was the bus company that served Rut– Rut– Rutgers University and I, uh, um. I– I drove the buses. Usually I– I– I drove. I drove there for fourteen years. That's what I say. It's all there for fourteen years during that time. I sort of got my finances together. You know, I got, like, transportation together, I’m in a– an apartment. And I'm saving money. Got to the point where I had, uh, a few thousand in the bank and I'm thinking about,uh, getting a house. I was always thinking about how to build, how to, um. There’s an expression they have for it these days: wealth. You had to accumulate wealth. Um, so, moving along, um. While I was at George Street, um, the guy who was the actor, his name is Kenny. He would occasionally ask me to come down and do something in a theatrical setting. Maybe there was a play going on, uh, on– on the campus or the group needs involvement.
(00:06:17)
Uh. It's a black theatre company in New Brunswick. Crossroads! Crossroads! Boy. That's old age slippin’ in there, I tell you. He was one of the founding members of Crossroads, which I say proudly just to be– have– have known them. Uh, it was a great, bunch of great people there, and they had this dream that was like beyond anything else. Beyond what we had imagined, you know? It was like, “Oh, I never thought of that.” Um, so he'd asked me to come down and do this or do that, in fact, when– when Crossroads first got the– got the okay and the funding to acquire the building, which, uh, is now, uh, covered over by the hotel, uh, there. So, we're cleaning up the space. It was a run-down building and we're just renovating it, you know? Cleaning up, and we got the areas that had– had– had to renovate. Tell, tear walls down, build something else, that kind of thing. And a– a number of people from the community helped. And, remember I was– I was there and I was driving the bus, and I'd be driving the bus, I’d, like, ten hours. Ten hours a day. And then I'd come and I assist, you know, doing like, uh, construction work there. And there was a– a young kid. Young as in he was in his teens. And he was resentful, like, “Oh, what am I doing this for? What am I?” You know, he just thought that this was beneath him. And I explained to him, I said, “Hey, I understand what you're saying. You don't want to be here. You know, I just put ten hours driving a bus and I came here to do this, and I'll tell you why. This is– this is something unheard of. I mean, I don't fully understand it, but I know this is, like, beyond anything that I've seen Black people attempt to do. Young Black folks my age, and I'm just honored to be here. So, I think it's a good idea. I mean, if you don't want to come, don't come. But I'm telling you, you're gonna look back on this and say ‘Wow. I helped. (pause) I helped make this thing happen.’” And I'm very proud to this day. I got a lot of things I'm not proud of myself for, you know. Just being young, foolish, stupid. But helping, helping with Crossroads is so, like. That's a legacy.
(00:09:31)
You know? And, uh, I always feel great about that. But! My reward turned out to be, I became an actor. Uh, after I saw what they were doing, it had never occurred to me. But back when I said in my teens, I said, “Well, what should I be?” To look at acting. Acting never entered for a second. I couldn't imagine it. I could not imagine it, and even, um, even, you know, while I was in– in the beginning era– era of it, when I was going to do little things, they would call me down and do something musically, you know? And be involved musically. But then, um, maybe, “So stand here and say this. We want you to do this.” You sort of became part of the action. And while I was doing that, I was like, I, you know, all seems so silly to me! I was like, “What the heck am I doing here?” This– this is, you know, because I just, it was beyond my imagination! Beyond my imagination. I mean, that's a commonly used phrase, but here's a situation where it was absolutely beyond my imagination that I could do this. That's something sad about that! (laughs) But, you know, that's the frame of mind that was just, like, there were only certain paths available to me, you know? I can't tell you how I got that. But I know that it existed. There was only certain avenues. I had to pick one of those, you know? I could be a thug, a criminal. Uh, I could be a worker, and I could be a driver. I could be a musician. Actor? Took a while, but slowly but surely I began to watch those guys. They inspired me, you know? I began to learn the process for becoming an actor and– and– and the job search process. And once you got into the job search, then you were talking my language because I specialized in getting jobs. You know, if I wanted a job, I go and got a job.
(00:12:05)
I'll get two or three. That's what I'm known for, is working a lot of jobs in my family. I'm sort of a black sheep in my family because I– I've been bold. I did– I renounced Christianity. So, that put me on a bad list. (laughs) But, uh. So I– I started at that point. That's when I was about 28 years old at this time. 29, I start going into New York. Uh, going for auditions and things. You know, like I said, once I found the process, which at that time was there was a magazine called Backstage. And you go in, you get your Backstage, look around and see if there's anything you could do. Whatever you could do. Uh, being a musician helped me, not being an actor, you know? I took– took some classes, you know, that kind of thing, and I auditioned, and low and behold. Um, I– I joined at the time AFTRA, which is the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. They were separate from Screen Actors Guild at that time. Um, my, uh, I– I started going. I– because you didn't, there wasn't a requirement. Only– only thing that you had to do to join AFTRA was to pay your money. So I– I joined that with the intention of getting to Screen Actors Guild and, um, I found out exactly what the requirements were, which was, uh. I forgot what they were. You had to get a speaking role. You, like, if you like, under five, under five, it's like me, five lines or less. If you get one of those and then you've been into actor for a year, then you've qualified to join the Screen Actors Guild. So that's what I did. And, uh, I got a job on, uh, Here and There, but I– I do extra work. I got a job on One Life to Live. One Life to Live. I was there for about two weeks. I had to, uh, I– I had to tell my job I hurt my back. (laughs) And, uh, so I was out for two weeks. I was still driving the buses for– for, uh, Rutgers. And, um– um, I did that, and while I was there, I sort of, uh, I explained my situation to the stage manager. We had gotten friendly unintentionally. I was, you know, uh, open to him and, uh, I explained my situation, and he said, “Okay, don't worry. I'll– I'll get– take care of it on Monday.” Comes up doing, during the time that I was there and said, “I want you to stand here. Uh, I want you to run up, get this to such and such guy. Just nod your head and head on out. And he’s gonna– he’s gonna tell you what to do. You nod your head and– and take out.”
(00:15:29)
And, um, that was my entry into SAG. Yeah. I sent him a very nice thank you letter afterwards. So, but. I'm good at getting jobs, (laughs) you know? If I want a job, if you tell me what the– what the method is, I'm good. And, uh, so then I was in SAG and I started to get SAG extra work as an actor. Um, still reading the Backstage. And then we see a– an ad for Buddy, the Buddy Holly Story, seeking actors playing musicians that play instruments. You know, one or two such and such and such, blah blah blah. There I am. I said, “Oh, wait a minute, I can do that.” And I hadn't played in a while. I had to go home and start practicing on my trombone, for, you know. Every spare moment that I had, which by this time, I now, uh, have a house and a wife and a son. I think I should have mentioned that first, but I'll get to in a second. But I– I– I practiced trombone, got myself back in shape. Lips, so I could do. I went to the audition. Long story short, I got the part and, um, I would start in Toronto. We're gonna rehearse in Toronto for, I forgot how many– two months, I think it was. Sixty days? Three months? And then we’re gonna play at the, the Royal Theater in Toronto, uh, for– for a month. Then we went to Calgary and, uh, San Francisc– Calgary for a week. San Francisco, uh, for a month. And then to Broadway. And I had to fly out to, um, to– to Toronto And it was like I was working, driving the bus. Um, I had the evening shift. I started at, roundabout four or five o'clock. Five or six o'clock, and I drove until two– two in the morning, and so that last night I– I drove the bus. I came back home. My bags were packed. Uh, I don't know how I got to the airport. Maybe my wife drove me. I don't know. Uh, probably she did.
(00:18:20)
And, uh, I got on the plane and flew out of there. So, I am flying out of this shit! (laughs) Oh, it was wonderful time. Had a great time. I wasn't really totally qualified or prepared. But I was, I– I got the job. And, uh, once I got the job, I did the job. So, I was just able enough. I could read well enough. ‘Cause what happens is you come to– come to rehearsal when, and the first thing they want to do is start learning music, because you're gonna have to memorize all of it, you know? So you sit, you know, you got your music stands sitting up, and they put the sheet of paper. You gotta read that. You gotta play that. But I could do that. So, uh, thanks to all the time I spent in the high school bands and in the college bands, you know? I was capable. Um, the difficult part was I had to– to leave my wife. Oh, that's right! That's right. No. We all went. We all went. My wife and son and a friend of mine. Uh, wait, we all flew together. To– to– to Toronto. The plan was, um, my wife was going to come back. Was gonna fly back. And she was gonna work. She'd be by herself. And my friend was gonna be, like, our nanny. And she had been experiencing, she's been a friend of mine since I was a teenager. I met her in Upward Bound. And, um, uh, she was gonna watch my son while, um, while– while I was a rehearsal and so forth. So, it worked out. It was just like a– You know, it's– it's– it's almost like when I described to you before, how my– my grandparents had sort of worked their way up with the connections. You know, everybody's calling, keeping in contact, or, “I got an opportunity over here,” or, it was– we sort of helped each other, uh, get this opportunity. Because I didn't know how I was going to make– make it work, but, uh, with her, this plan, it happened.
(00:20:57)
Um, but, uh, I had, uh, I had gotten– all during the time that I was driving the bus, um, I was pursuing my ambitions. But of course, I was also enjoying being that age. And, uh, I had a number of girlfriends. Usually one at a time, but not always. And, um, I engaged in marijuana on a semi-regular basis. Um, It was a regular part of my life, but not too much, but, you know. And now it's legal! Wow. Um. Anyway, one of the young ladies that I eventually had a relationship with, um. She– she ran into some trouble just in terms of– Her– her– her father, in a sense, deserted her in college. You know, I won't get too deep into it, but, uh. She was just sort of dumped off, you know? And we've been seeing each other and, um, she was a very smart young lady and, uh, she had a job, and so she was able to, now she had nowhere to go once the– the college year was out. And she, uh, moved to an area on Remsen Avenue. And I moved her. I have a van. I– I had al– I had the habit of buying a van. Because in– in the early bands that I was in. This, uh, guy named Harold Cooper sort of taught me a lot about functioning as a band, and having a van is one of the most important parts of having a band, he told me. Because you need to transport it. So I always have a van. I have a van now. I keep my, buy a van new. I keep it for about twenty, twenty-five years. Then I trade it in and buy next one.Ten, twenty-five years. I'm on my third one right now. Um, and, um, so anyway, you know, she hired me to– to, uh, move. Sometimes I did, um, when I had the van, I would put up, uh, flyers around the college campus called “Man with a Van.” And, uh, I got a lot of jobs! A lot of little, nice little part-time income. Um, around the bus driving then. And I was just sort of known around the campus, because of the bus driving and then the van, you know? And there was another time I delivered pizza. So I just, I spread myself, everything, too thin. I was crazy.
(00:24:27)
But, um, but so– so, I moved her into this place, it’s on Remsen Ave. Well, I said “Yeah”. It was at, right, the block nearest, um, that George Street. It’s the block nearest George Street. And, uh, it was sort of a rough area. And, um. This is, my wife most– would be what most people consider white and they say, I say it that way because, and this was educational for me too, because, um, her mother was Mexican. Her father was Italian. So she has a– she looks like a white person, okay? (chuckles) But, uh, she hated her father. Or close to it, you know? They, they had a much bigger conflict than my mother and I ever had. And, so, when you listen to her talk, she sounded, uh, more militant than (laughs), than I was accustomed to, you know? I've been around some militant guys and white guys! “White guys this!” Whatever. And she was– she was– she was precious. So it sound funny. It seemed funny, but, you know, it also made me question my perception of, what is white? What is Black? What is whatever. You know what I mean? Because in– in our world, my world, it's, you know, it's Black and white. We don't get all these differences, like. It's very confusing, like. People talking about Jewish people as if they're not white. I don't understand it, you know? Uh. Different categories of– I mean, they're all white to us, you know? I hope I'm not offending, okay, but this is, this is our perception, you know? So, but, so it made me reflect a lot on, you know, this whole color thing. The ridiculousness of it in terms of humanity, which is human. Which is, we’re all human. And, uh, it shouldn't be any bigger deal than, yeah, your hair color or you– your height or weight. But somehow another, it just comes more.
(00:27:12)
But, um, I moved her in, and I– I had to do at– at– at a night after I got to work and, you know, I left her there. And I'm looking at the environment. And I go home to my– to my place, which was only a few blocks down, ‘cause at that point I lived on Livingston Ave. Right over where Crossroads is built now. It was Philippo’s Pizza, and, uh, there’s apartments up there. I lived up there. And I went and I couldn't sleep. I'm saying , “This– This is, she is too vulnerable in this position. I can't– I can't let her stay there.” And so, I– I– I went back the morning. I mean like six– six– six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning. Like, I said, “Listen. This is– this is nuts. You can't stay here. This, you’re just– you're just sitting duck.” And she was there by herself, you know? I said, “If anything happened to you, I wouldn't know how to live with myself.” So, uh, I said, “Why don't you come, you can stay at my place, okay? You don't have to pay any rent. Just save your money up until you can get, you know, someplace that– that's safe.” And, um, and that was the beginning of us! She's now my wife. Uh, she– she accepted gratefully, ‘cause she said she was scared to death. She didn't know what to do, but she didn't have anything else to do. So, I became her Prince Charming. And, uh, I think we lived together for about a year and she saved up the money instead of, um, uh, of getting an apartment. We cooked up a scheme. We was gonna flip a couple houses, you know? So she– she had saved up some money. I had some money saved up and we bought a– we bought a house for $20,000. Yeah, at that time. Even– it was cheap even at that time. Uh, but it was, you know, it was run down and needed some work, and said– I said, “Okay, well, I'll take care of it.” Which, I didn't know what to do. But, I didn't know what a hammer was, is– is as much for hitting somebody in the head as for hitting a nail. You know? Foot. I knew I would learn, you know? And I’d get books. This was, like, before Home Depot came about. They had another store outlet we'd use. I forgot what they're called now, but Home Depot put them out of business. Anyway. Um, we bought the house and in our celebration we conceived a child.
(00:30:01)
And, uh, we just kept growing as a family! And it’s been a very nice family. I love my wife tremendously. Um, the way we work together is, it’s just awesome to– to be– behold. You know, in terms of, a problem comes in, we analyze the problem. We come up with a solution. Sometimes it’s a rough, uh, debate about it. ‘Cause she’s very– she has very strong opinions and I have very strong opinions. I’m a little more gentle with mine, so. But we work it out! And we come up with a s– uh, a plan of, a strategy. Uh, a solution, or steps towards one. And we execute. And that’s what we’ve been doing. As a result, we’ve had a very, very nice life. Very nice life together. (pause) Uh. In there, the middle of that, one of the fortunate things about us getting together was that we both had a similar concept about raising a child. We were clear that, if we conceived a child, that your highest obligation is to take care of that child. Together. You know? And so that allowed us to put aside any differences we've ever had. Not that we've had that many, but. I'm a laid-back guy. I don't really allow things to bother me too much. I just come up with a plan and execute the plan. She's a very high-strung individual who gets upset at the drop of a dime. I mean, she's always worried about something. And I say, “Baby, you don't have to worry about it. Don't worry about that.” You know? Because my logic says worrying does nothing. It does nothing but upset you. You know? It doesn't help. It makes it so, you gotta talk to yourself. Talk yourself out of being worried. And slowly but surely, she's– she's getting better at it, but long way to go still! But, um, I’m just saying we– we– we’ve made a very good team. She's very smart person, and together we've built a– a very nice situation. The biggest pride of us was our son. Um, (sigh) my son is a– always was, um, an amazing individual. An amazing individual. You know? People's kids are born every day. People you know, people you don't know. You see the kids all running around. Somewhere within your life, somebody close to you has a child.
(00:33:39)
You know? But when happens to you. (phone beeps) It's like, it's a new thing. It's like the first time it's ever happened in the world. It's happened, the first time it's happened in your world. And you just, oh, man. I was committed to being a father, but I didn't– I didn't know. I didn't recognize how emotional it is. It's a beautiful thing. And, uh, watching him go up was wonderful. When he was four years old, he saw me acting and stuff here and there, you know? Just little things and, uh. He expressed interest in doing that. I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah!” “Okay.” I'm– I’m talking with this four year old now. He– he’s always had, like, he was an old man. He was always– he was always sort of grown. He was four years old and that was clear. But just in terms of his interaction, he always seemed so mature. You know? He knew what he wanted. He knew what he didn't want. We’d have to negotiate this and negotiate that, but, you know? Um, he was his– he was his own man. And, um, uh, so, we– we took him around. I knew a couple of places. Now by this time, I'm sort of semi-savvy in– in New York, uh, business and, I, um, we took him around, and a management agency lapped him up because he was a good looking kid. And he was smart, and he could read by that time. When my wife was pregnant– my wife was pregnant. I’m sort of a bookworm and I was roaming through a– a book– bookstore and I came across this book called How to Teach Your Baby to Read. And I bought it, and I read it, and it basically was describing how you could teach a child to read from, from the age of, like, one and a half.
(00:36:04)
And so, at one and a half, I began to—we, my wife and I, began to apply this method. And, uh, long story short in that, by the time he was four years old, he was reading on a first or second grade level. Uh, he was doing a lot of things advanced. He– he could swim. He could swim like a fish at four years old. I mean, deep end of the pool, no problem. You know, I couldn't swim. (chuckles) Uh, ‘cause I don't know float. I– I could swim, you know, within limitation. But he was like, he was just like a fish! Anything he wanted to do in the water, he could do. It was wonderful. Um, and he could play the piano. You know, I still look– things on the piano. And he was getting, at four years old, he could play, you know, a lot of, simp– simple place– pieces, and he could read the music. He was a wonderful kid. Which created a problem for us. Uh, ‘cause he's about to, ‘bout to turn, uh, you know, five years old, which is the age for kindergarden? And, uh, so, what are we gonna do now? We can’t put this kid– ’cause by that time, he’s reading, like, second grade level. And, uh, what am I gonna– I can’t put him in kindergarten, can we? You know? We thought about this for a while. I would look for, uh, alternatives and what we came to, ‘cause we couldn’t really afford, um, a private, uh, school situation or whatever. There was– there was some possibilities there, but they were expensive. I said, “Oh, no. We’re gonna have to stop eatin’.” (chuckles) But, um, we, um, we found out about homeschooling. And we figured out how to do that, what was the process. And that’s what we did. We homeschooled him. Um. For me, uh, there was also a sense of, “I’d rather do this,” because I didn’t want to put him in a public school, anyway. I mean, the educational end of it as far as his reading in fifth grade, um, was a factor. Was a– was a– definitely a major factor. But, uh, I began to see that, uh, I had to protect him from everybody, you know? Uh. Being interracial, he’s a target.
(00:38:55)
[END OF RECORDING TWO]
[BEGINNING OF RECORDING THREE]
(00:00:00)
Uh, today is Friday, March 31st. It is 1:11 pm. This is Dan Swern. Uh, and I’m here with? (pause) State your name?
James Wiggins Jr.
Uh, and we’re here at coLAB Arts at New Brunswick. Um, James, thank you again for meeting with me. Continuing your story. Um, whenever you’re ready, please feel free to continue where we left off.
Okay. Uh, I– I think we had, uh, gotten to the point– I was talking about my son and homeschooling? Um, we had taught him how to read. We started teaching him when he was one and a half years old. And, uh, to our shock and surprise, it worked. Uh, when he was four years old, he was reading on a close-to-second-grade level, and, uh, not only that, reading but math. Basically, the– the general curriculum.
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[END OF RECORDING THREE]
[BEGINNING OF RECORDING FOUR]
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So, um, we were homeschooling—well, actually, just started by reading the book How to Teach Your Baby to Read, and then we just applied that, and it just sort of expanded almost by itself. And, uh, when he was, like, three years old, we would read to him at night, you know, before he go to bed and it got to, um, uh, a regular– a regular occurance that sometimes he would read to us. So, maybe one night we'd read a book to him and some, like, he'd read a book to us. And, uh, it was– it was fun. Um, but, uh, when he became four years– four years old, and I'm with– starting to think, “Oh,he has to, has to go into kindergarten next year. Oh. Hm.” It didn't– it didn't seem to us that was a– an optimum experience, of him going to kindergarten having already to read. Uh, at least a– a grade or two more advanced than– than that level, because most kids in kindergarten don't read at all. So, uh, as we thought about it and looked around for options and so forth, uh, we came across the idea of homeschooling. We researched it a little bit and we decided, essentially that's what we've been doing. We're just continuing. We would go to the, um, Board of Education and give them our curriculum each year, just to– just to inform them, this is the process. We wanted to do it, you know, in the proper way, so that there would be no questioning or there would be no issues with it. And I mean it was, it was our right to do so. It was highly unusual, but, um, uh. Turns out the, uh, the person that I had to deal with it was the– the head of the committee. We would go through this committee and– and one of the higher ups in the committee was a guy named Mr. Farkas. Mr. Steve Farkas, who was, at that time, either the principal or the head of the, um, the school board? Whatever it was. What he was, was to me, was my old track coach. And, uh, so, it was nice, uh, having an interaction with him in this, uh, grown up, uh, forum. So. And that's what we did! And, um, we continued that way up, up until he was about really 15, 16. So he– he– we didn't expect to have to go that long. We thought maybe we'd do it, uh, for a couple years or something like that, and then he'd want to go to school. But he never expressed an interest. And we would ask him sometimes. “Well, do you think you want to go to school?” He said, “No.” No. Very casually, like, didn't enter his mind. Even, he's playing with the other kids. I guess, maybe he gets stories from them and he's saying, “You know what? I think I got it better than that.” (laughs)
(00:03:16)
So, uh, he continued until he was 16 and he asked, uh, “Well, how does it end? I mean, what? Where, where is this going?” I said, “Well, you have two options, as far as I know. Uh, one is that you can enter school on the 12th grade, or whatever grade you think you can handle, and then finish out and get your– your diploma. Or you can, uh, take the GED test.” So he said, “Let's look into that.” We did. Uh, we got the information we needed. He enrolled in a GED class and, uh, passed it with flying colors. Close to perfect when he was 16 years old. And, uh, that was a great thing. So, we gave him about a year off. Like, “Okay, you don't have to studies.” Because he said, “I am never studying anything else for the rest of my life.” (laughs) Which wasn't true, He was, he, it took him about a year to sort of look around at what he wanted to do. First, he went to a– a school in New York for audio engineering, and, uh, he got, uh, some sort of a certificate or degree. Not a degree, but, uh, a certificate of completion for that. And he would work in New York sometimes in, uh– uh, theater. Being the sound person, that kind of thing. Um, (sigh) (audio clicks) Um, if– if I'm talking about him for a minute, I should mention what a– a special guy he was. Um, he, um, like, yeah. Like I said, you've told me the reading story. He also could swim like a fish. I mean like a fish. You know? People would just, like, stand around the pool watching him navigate from this, the– the– the deepest end to the– to the lower end and back and, just, he just floated. He dived. He had no– it's– he functioned as well in the water as he did on land. So, which I found amazing because I don't swim. But I took him to the Y. I used to have a YWCA, uh, over there at the corner of New Street and Livingston Avenue. There's a bank there now. And, uh, you know, they– they had like, mostly it was Mommy and Me, but for me, it was Daddy and Me. Uh. And, uh, I just put him in the water. I just stayed with him, that's all. You know? I wasn't really trying to teach him to swim.
(00:06:03)
But he figured that out on his own. He's watching other people and– and once he– he learned how to hold his breath and, uh, and then propel himself and– and float, it was, he was on his own practically from there. It was a great thing to watch. Um, at that time, you're talking about when he was, this is, like, ‘83. He was born in ‘83. Um. Around that period of time, I was doing theater work. It was, uh, sometimes with– within the college. I would do productions with– with others. They knew that I was a little into acting. Um, I also was a part of a– a group called Black Gold Theater, uh, run by a guy named Hassan Salim. Uh, used to have a build– he had a store called Black Gold. Uh, and he, uh, had African-oriented merchandise. Uh, clothing, jewelry, skirt, artwork, that kind of thing. And we did– he had a Black Gold theater ‘cause he was a writer and a poet. And, um, he put on this play about Malcolm X. So, essentially it was the, the story of Malcolm X. And, uh, I had the honor of playing the role of Malcolm X in that. And we traveled around to, you know, a number of the– the schools. Uh, Rutgers and Douglass, of course. Um, Princeton. Trenton. You know, just to mostly colleges. He used to be an employee of, um, of Livingston, if I remember correctly. He was something like, um, some sort of counselor of sorts. Um. At any rate. And so, uh, as my son got older, he would see me doing these things and, uh, and he would, you know, he would ask! “Can you show me this? Can you do this?” You know? I– I first started him on– on piano. And, um, and this is, I'm talking about, again, two and a half, three years old. You know, I wasn't putting any pressure on. Just, I just show him this. I show him that. Next thing I know, he was playing the piano! Then he’d say, “How about guitar? Can you show me guitars?” “Yeah, I’ll do that!” And uh, I– I play a number of these instruments. Not well enough to brag about it, but, you know, I understand the music, uh, theory, of what an instrument needs to do. Um, and, uh, so I basically just showed him those things.
(00:09:02)
And (inaudible) of the guitar and trumpet and for– by that time, he was showing himself bass. Um, but, but he asked me, you know, if he could do the acting. And I said, “I don't know.” The education was more like, uh, he directed us, you know? He basically informed us of what he was interested in learning, and– and then we tried to figure out how to teach him that, or how to get him that information. And you know, I think we did quite well! Um. So. I said, “Okay, well, um. You know, it involves a lot of going into New York and things like that.” Because at that point, I was attempting to get, uh, you know, like, professional level, uh, theater, TV, film. And I– I get jobs doing extra work in films and then I, uh, made it into, uh, the Screen– uh, AFTRA, which is the– was, is American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Because you could just join. You've give’m your money, you are a member. SAG, Screen Actors Guild, uh, required more than that. But, uh, if you were in AFTRA for a year and you did, uh, at least what they call a “Under Five”, which is just a few lines, which is at least one line. Then, after a year, you were qualified to join SAG, which, uh, uh, I did. However, before I got into SAG, he was in. ‘Cause we started to take him– take him to a couple, uh, like, uh, agencies, to casting directors and next thing you know, he was getting jobs! He got commercials, you know? He's been on a Life cereal commercial and a couple others. Made a good piece of money for himself and in terms of, for– for his college education and that kind of thing. It was– it was a great thing. And he was in the Screen Actors Guild from– as a result of the things that he did. He was eligible, and he joined. And then when I became eligible, I had to go in with him to the, uh, SAG authorities and ask him, in their presence, if I could use my name, because his name was my name. He was named James Harris Wiggins the Third and I– I wanted to be James H. Wiggins Junior. So, I had to get his permission. That tickles me. Uh, um, and, um, he– he would get jobs here and there. Then he got, he was on, um, One Life to Live. He originated a part. I don’t know if you know One Life to Live. Back– they used to have soap operas. Uh, daytime soaps that– that came on during the day.
(00:12:20)
Uh, in the morning, in the afternoons, and most of the housewives or ladies that were at home for whatever reason, like my mother. Uh, this– this was like, “What's gonna happen next?” You know? They– they would follow these things religiously. “Oh, I gotta go in and see my stories!” I was like, “Ookay”. So, uh, and, uh, when he was, uh, nine years old, he– he got a part on– on that, on– on the show. So that lasted for a few months. But, uh, it was great! Um. So that what was happening was with– with him. And then I got lucky. I got cast in the Buddy Holly Story. During this time, I was still driving buses. I mean, my main source of living was driving buses for Rutgers College. I'd been there for, uh, fourteen years, I guess, I think. Yeah. Um. And, um, I would be going in for auditions this, that, and the other and, um, they– they saw an ad. So, it’s a magazine called Backstage. Or at least it was then. Now it's online. But, uh, they would have auditions and information for the aspiring actors, singers, what have you. Uh, “This, this production needs this. Uh, these, uh, this casting directors looking, these type of people.” And the perfect, perfect gag came up! I said, “oh, wait a minute, I think that's me!” Uh, I didn't expect to get it, but I, I was hopeful. I said, “That's as close as I can get,” which was, they wanted actors who could play musical instruments, and they named the different musical instruments, and I could play two of them, which was a guitar and trombone. And I went, uh, to the, uh, audition. And, uh, it went well. I don't remember if there was a second audition? Uh. Yes, yes. Yeah. No, no, I can't. I'm getting a little mixed up. But either way, I went to the audition, and long story short, I got the role. I got the part of just the background and nothing major. I was part of a band and, uh, part of, uh, what you call the– the chorus, in a sense. I was in different scenes. When there was a band I'd have to, uh, play the trombone or sometimes the trumpet. And, uh, it was great! We started out in Toronto. As I was saying, I was driving a bus at the time and I had a late shift. I usually get off late at night, I guess around somewhere between 12:00 and 2:00 AM.
(00:15:20)
And, um, um. Got off, I went home. Um. They were all packed. Uh, it was me, my– my son. And, uh, a wife and a friend of mine. We'd been friends since we were teenagers. We met in Upward Bound, in fact, and, uh, we had made an arrangement. She was going to come with me. I would have my son with me, and she was going to sort of like, be a nanny. Didn't call it that at the time, but, you know, she was going to, uh, take care of him during the day while I had to rehearse. When– whenever I had to rehearse. And so that's what we did. And I found a nice little apartment in, um, in– in Toronto. And, uh, that was a great experience because, uh, I had really never been out of New Brunswick, the New Brunswick area, for more– I– I had never! (chuckles) For any length of time, so, uh. That was a– that was a great thing and, uh. Go to rehearsal every day. It was, like, five, six days a week. You go to rehearsal. They’d put a sheet music in front of you, and they’d say, “Well, we're learning this. You have to memorize the– the sheets,” and whatever your lines were. I didn't really have lines. Um, although a couple of times when somebody got sick, maybe I had to step in, uh, for that person. Um. And it was just a great experience. It was, like, I thought I was in heaven, like, wow. And, uh, we were smart. We used our money wisely. Um, and I say that because many of my co-actors did not. So, when the show ended a year, uh, a little over a year later, they were not in– in a better financial situation than when they started, whereas we were. There was, um, the, the apartment I– I got. If I remember. It was, like, $500 a week. Uh, I mean, uh $500 a month, you know. Whereas the others bought these really nice, um, you know, luxury apartments. It was, like, $2000 a month. And, uh, they would, we would get what's called a per diem. So they– that paid for that. So, I didn't use all my per diem. I got $1000 a– a– a month, uh, per diem, if I remember correctly.
(00:18:04)
And, uh, I– I was only using half of it and I sent the rest home. So it– it built our financial situation, uh, in a good way. Uh, and we just, we rehearsed the show for about a, about a month or two? Yeah, I think for about two months, we rehearsed the show. And then we put it on. I forgot the name of the theater there, but it's the Royals something or other. And, uh, um, people seemed to love it. From there, we– we did that show. We ran the show there for a month. Then we, uh, went to, uh, Calgary. We were there for a week, ran the show. In between Calgary and, uh, and Toronto, we stopped in New York for a party, you know? And, um, Paul McCartney was there. We met Paul McCartney, ‘cause he was, uh, he owns the rights to Buddy Holly music. And Buddy Holly's wife was there, Maria Elena. So, it was just, “Wow! I'm in history now!” You know? It just felt so, (inhales) uh, meaningful or something. I don't know. (laughs) And, um, from– from– from Calgary, went to San Francisco. We stayed there for a month and I had my– my wife and son come out with me. So we stayed, uh, together in the San Francisco and, uh, ran the show and during our off time, uh, we’d go sightseeing. We would go down to the Wharf and, uh, everything there was to see, you know? We had a– we had a wonderful time. It was a very nice, nice, um, portion of our lives. We're flying around the country and, uh, it was good. And it came to Broadway and, um, it was going well. Then the Desert Storm broke out. The– the war in Iraq, the first one. And it– the night that– that it started? It was like a funeral inside the theater. Uh, it's just, there was just such a, a gloomy feeling from everyone! In the audience, the performers, the people in the background who handled the– the– the curtains and the, you know, the stage crew. It was a– it was– I had never really felt that before. The gloom of war.
(00:21:03)
You know, I do recall the Vietnamese War, but, uh, which they didn’t call “war,” but. Um, I– I wasn't there, sort of, in the beginning. I wasn't really aware of– of it. This, I'm sort of now grown and I got responsibilities and I'm aware of, you know, the impact that it can have. So, and, uh, from that point, there weren't many theater– the whole, not just Buddy Holly Story. Much of the theater began to close down, similar to how we had the COVID situation. It's just, like, we held on for a while, but then, um, then they couldn't take, carry the– the weight, the financial weight of putting the show on. So we– we, um, we closed. And, uh, they offered me a– a role to go on, on, um, on the road with them. And, uh, it was like $100,000. Per diem included hundred– $100,000 a year, which was, like, very good money for me. And I said, “Oh boy. I can't do that.” Uh, as much as I wanted to, but I couldn't. And– and my wife encouraged me to. Actually, she said, “Well, yeah, we'll be okay.” I said, “No, no. I can't do that.” I– I couldn't see, uh, leaving them alone. I mean, I'd be out on the road having a great time, and they're sort of, if not struggling, um, it would be a huge inconvenience. It takes an awful lot to raise a kid and keep a household going, and that would all be on her. It was our own house, and if anything happens to it, she has to figure out how to address it. If he has a problem, she has to do it. Uh, she, she did have a job for a while, like, I told her, like, “We gotta let it go.” And she worked. She worked out a situation where she could come in part time, because they valued what– she– she worked as a– a lawyer’s– lawyer’s office and, uh, she sort of ran the place. So they worked out a situation where she could come in part time. Um. And then I got back, back to, uh, New Brunswick and, uh, we did the show until it ran. I got lucky and I got another show. It was a Off Broadway show called Return to the Forbidden Planet. And again, I had found this niche that I fit in, which was, I'm an actor that can play, uh, different instruments and, uh, um, I didn't realize this until much time later, but there was some recognition given to these shows, as they were sort of like the beginning, as I understand it, the– of– of this process of getting actors who could perform the music on stage themselves. Usually if you go to a– a Broadway play, there– the musicians are in the pit. They're separated. They– they just focus on playing the instruments and the actors on do the performing.
(00:24:35)
But now you have the actors acting and– and, uh, and performing the music and it was– it was high grade, you know? The guy who– who played Buddy Holly? Paul Hip? You, you couldn’t pick them out of a blind lineup. And we said, “Well, this, you have two guys playing Buddy Holly, is one of them. And the other guy is Joe Shmoe.” You had to pick out which one. You couldn’t do it. It just, the– the music was just impeccable, so, that was a great experience. And it was a thrill every night. Uh, coming out. Um, the scene I was– first came out in, I was, um, part of a band at the Apollo. There’s this– there’s this set of scenes that take place at the Apollo. And, uh, we come out playing this really high energy jamming horn song, three horns, trombone, sax– two saxes, trombone and two saxes. So, um, it was a thrill every night, every night. Never got tired of it. The best part of my working life, uh, to date. And, um, then the same was with the, The Return of Forbidden Planet. And, uh, that lasted for a little over a year, so if– if any of, either one that I had been in had been able to last for longer, I think I– I would have been able to jump up to the next level. And I was getting a little TV and film here. I do background work. And since right now my son was in– in the SAGs, sometimes we do it together, you know? Uh, did background work in Ghosts. And, uh, with Patrick Swayze. Um, Goodfellas. I can't remember them now. Uh, Independence Day. Will Smith. You know? When I, an extra work, that's just the people in the background. You don't see them, you– you know? They don't get credit for it or whatever. But that's, they create the aura of– of what's happening around the main characters, so. Um. Uh.
(00:27:01)
When that show was over, I didn't have to decide, “Well, what am I going to do?” So, um, I didn't– I didn't– I wanted to focus on my son's education, you know? And I had to get a night job, um, so I could work at night and my wife could work during the day. So, we would just be passing off the baton to each other and handling our different duties of– of caring for him and– and– and education. And that's what we did for quite a while. I got a job at Saint Peter’s Hospital. Uh. Really working as a– in housekeeping and– and about a year after I was there, I transferred over to the security department and, um, I was there for about eight or nine years. Um. And in– in security. It was nine years. And, um, that's when my– my son got older and he said, “Well, what are we gonna do?” And I explained about getting his– his GED and he chose that method. And, uh, after he finished that, uh, we didn’t, didn't have the– and he was old enough now, he was– he was 16, 17 you know? He could be home by himself and he was very responsible. Very, never had to worry about that kid. Man, we just, he was– he was like, so– (pause) He was so innocent. From childhood to teenage years. He got a little rebellious here and there, maybe at 17, 18, you know? There was some difficulty, some disagreement, about how life is supposed to be led, (chuckles) lived. But, but no major, no major eruptions. We– we got through it. Uh, he did quite well. Um, we decided that he wanted to be, uh, he wanted to…he, he did this sound, sound engineering training as I said in this place called AF? AFI, I think it was. AIF? Audio Institute of America, AIA. Who knows? And he did that for a while. And– and then he decided he wanted to become– get it involved in computer animation and– and gaming, game simulation. So, he– he plotted a course to go in that direction. He decided where that could be done. Uh, and he– he did it in the most strategic way that he could in terms of not costing.
(00:30:13)
Costing the least that it would. And, um, he took all the classes that he could take at Mercer County College and he graduated from there and continued on to DeVry Institute. Which, there's one in, or was one in North Brunswick, which is not far from us. He take, took that for a year. And in order– the– the main classes that he needed to– to complete it, which were the most difficult ones, were all in, um, Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia. And, uh, he said– and this was against his counselors advice. Uh, they said, “Well, you shouldn't take all these heavy classes at the same time. It's gonna be– it’s gonna be really, really overwhelming.” He said, “No, no, I'll do it. I'll do it.” You know. So he took the– all the easiest classes. Because that, they had them there, available. And then he took all the ones that they only had available in Atlanta. He took those. We moved him down there. Uh, I went down, uh, over the weekend– over a weekend previous to him getting there, and I found a nice apartment for him. And, uh, then, um. He and my– my wife flew down and we set them all up. And then we drove back! (pause) (heavy sigh) (voice breaks) Being a parent is, like, the most profound experience that I think a human can have. And– and it's– it's sort of weird because it's going on all around you, as your kid, as you're growing up. You see all the other kids, you see all the other parents. And he was like, “It's no big deal,” you know? “It's just life. This is the way it works.” But when you have the child? My God. It's like a miracle. Can't explain it. You basically have to experience it to understand that, “Wow. This came from us.”
(00:33:00)
I hadn't even given any thought to being a parent previous to it happening. You know? Never did. I thought I was gonna be like my– my uncle. My uncle Carl. Who, by the way, is 102 years old now. And, uh, he– he never married. He was sort of a wild, hell-raising guy. Spent some time in– in Chicago. He was in the World War II. He ran numbers for gangsters. He drank a lot. (laughs) And– and we would talk. And he says, “I never would have thought it would be me.” He had two brother– yeah, he had a brother and a sister. Sister being my mother. And, um, you know, they all were, uh, just God-fearing, family people. Trying to do their best to raise their– their children and so forth. Uncle Carl never had any children. He never had a wife. He still, to this day, he was driving up ‘til he was 100 years old. (laughs) Sometime this summer we'll get together, we'll– I'll take him up to the track. The– the Freehold Track. He– he just lives and he's just enjoying his life. Just, like, amazed that he's still standing, as we all are. But him? No one’s more raised than him. Anyway. (sigh) Um. Uh, it's– it's just an amazing thing. It's just a– a beautiful. You then become a growth– up to that point, you're really thinking about yourself all the time. “I want this. I want the other. I want everything.” You know? And then you come into conflict with your– with your significant others because they want this, they want that, and then the one that was fortunate enough to– to– to partner with– with someone who felt the same way I did, which is, if we have a child– and I hadn't planned on having a child! But if we have a child, um, especially since I grew up without a– without my father. It’s like, we gotta– we gotta be good parents. We gotta stay together. We have to do this together. And she felt the same way, and we were always able to work out, uh, whatever, uh, disagreements or opinions that we may have had about whatever, we'd work it out. And he was always our world. Actually, when he was, like, two years old and we’re getting to see his– his personality really coming out. We nicked and named him “Sun,” like the sun in the sky. Because, like the sun in the sky, uh, our world revolved around him and he brightened up all our days.
(00:36:10)
(sigh) I guess I should continue just– just to put– put a– a cap on the– my conversation about him. The important things to know is that, uh, he– he did well. He graduated summa cum laude. Um, he was– he understood the process of– of getting to, um, computer simulation wasn't a straightforward path. He had to do some other things to get some experience, uh, before they would– he– he sent out a number of, uh, applications for– for the different types of jobs, but the– the same man says, “Well, you need a few years experience in this and this. Need something in that.” And, so, he just was going about getting in, and he got a job working for the state as a computer tech. I have his business card in my pocket. He came home one day and said, “Hey dad, I got a business card! I must be somebody now!” (laughs) He had such a great sense of humor. Anyway, um, he was there, he was doing well and sort of marching in place to the next marker, recent marker. And then he passed away at 31. (voice wobbles) (sob) (pause) I won't get any more specific than that. It was, to this day, the hardest. The hardest thing that I have had to deal with as a human being. (voice breaks) (deep breath) And, uh. (sigh) My wife and I did what we always do. We pulled together. (pause) And, uh, made arrangements. (shuffling) Sent him to his next life.
(00:39:12)
(blows nose) That was eight years ago, and it feels like today. It doesn't get better. It doesn't get easier. I guess I learned how to deal with it a little better, but. It is, oh. The terms “grief stricken,” “heartbroken,” were just expressions in the dictionary that I’d come across every so often until that day. Now I– I know what it is. And it's, uh, pretty damn unbearable. But, we go on. Other than that, and I'm a blessed person. I’ve had a good life. (shaky breath) I've lost loved ones before. Friends, relatives, but nothing compares. Because what happens when you lose your child is, you were not prepared for that. You can't prepare, even if they were sick. Still, it's like, you don't conceive that! You don't! You can't conceive it in your mind. It just wasn't supposed to, supposed to happen that way. You know, they don't have a word for a parent to lose a child. You know? Um. If you're married, you can be a widow or widower. If you're a child, you can be an orphan. When you’re a parent, there is no– no category for you. I thought that was weird. But. (pause) (sigh) Anyway, back to the story. Um. As I mentioned, uh, I was working the night job at Saint Peters Hospital. Uh, I guess when he's like, uh, when I left. Uh, when I was when the show closed, Return to Forbidden Planet. When it closed, um, I was able to get some other things, but I couldn't make enough living. Just being, I could– I could have gone on tour. I– I just refused to, to leave my wife and son. So I said, “Look, no matter. We’ll just, uh, I'll go get something.”
(00:42:21)
I never have feared for getting a job. There was no, there's been no, uh, period of high employment that I feared, you know? I always could get a job. That's my talent. (laughs) And, uh, so, I– I worked at Saint Peters Hospital, mostly in the security department until, uh, my son, uh, got his GED. And from that point on, uh, I said, “Okay. I guess we've gotta go trying to make some money now” And, uh, I, uh, I went out and got a driving job, which, you know at the time, they always– driving jobs pay well and they're plentiful. It's like, if you can, if you have a CDL, it's commercial driver's license, you've got a job if you want one, as long as you take care of it. You know? You have to drive carefully, and you have to avoid accidents. Avoid tickets. Traffic violations of any kind. Um, and I was good at that, so. I got a job with Poland Spring. I, uh, stayed with them for about a– about a year. I really wanted that to work out, but, uh, it didn't. The– the route that I got was just a monster route that had sent two other guys running out the door screaming before me, and I saw the one just before me. So, when they told me they were giving me that route, I said, “I don't know about that.” But they said, “No, no, Jim! You're– you're a hard worker. You're smart! You're going to take care of it. These other guy, they were just,” uh, “they, they just weren't,” uh, “they didn't have it.” You know, “You're gonna be fine!” I said, “Okay.” Sure enough, that route at the Poland Spring is, at the time, you sort of manage it. You get a route and you manage to route. Just like you're like the owner of a business, practically, you know? You know, you're keeping the– the paperwork. You're getting new customers, you're servicing the customers and so forth. This route was just messed up. And I, you couldn't make it. But I said, “Okay, I want to keep this– this job.” And the reason I wanted to keep that job in particular was because I was in a band at the time called the “World Famous Gashouse Gang.” And we had, you know, a– a good number of gigs, practically weekly. And I said, um.
(00:44:59)
I– I wanted this– the Poland Springs job would allow me to make it to the gigs. You know? It was, it worked in the schedule. Um, so, I really worked for over a year and I re-engineered this route. I brought in maps. I put in pins and I'm just, “This would be shorter and this would be better, right?” I rearranged it so that it could be done within the t-time that was allotted, which nobody had accomplished before me, and they were younger guys, and now I'm starting to get, you know, I don't know, I guess in my 50s at this time, something like that. And, um, and it was going well, and you have a– you have a notebook that you keep your cards in your route, your customer cards, and all the reins so that if you were out, you just hand this notebook over to somebody and they can do your route. Um, but it has everything. Instruction. “Make a left turn here, make a right turn there. This is that customer. They get it right at the back door.” You know? It just had everything you needed to know. You could follow it. So after all I had rearranged this thing so that it could work and it could be done in the time, they say, “Oh, we're gonna be,” uh, “reengineering the routes,” and this, that and the other and so forth. That's okay. Um. The day they– they gave me back was a– was a Tuesday, I think. If I were correct, if I remember correctly. Uh, they gave me the– the book back, the route book, and it was in the same order that they had given it to me in the beginning. So all the work that I had done to rearrange this and they would say, “Well yeah, you can just put it in– put it back in that order.” Exactly! I was disgusted. I said, I didn't say it to them, but I said it to myself. I said, you know, in fact, I– I called my wife, um, while I'm looking at the book and I said, “Look baby, don't get mad, don't get upset. I just want you to be the first one to know I'm leaving this place.” You know? Everybody– “I wanna come home and write my, uh, letter of resignation. I'll give it to him tomorrow. Not Friday. Tomorrow. Wednesday.” Just, like, I was just fed up. And, um, that's what I did. I said, “Don't worry, you know I'll find another job no problem,” which I did. Uh. So, I left there. And, uh, I took– I went to driving school to– to learn how to drive tractor trailers. I have driven buses and– and straight trucks, but I had never driven tractor trailers. I didn't really want to, but it was driving straight trucks, where I was at. Like it was at Poland Spring. I was– would have made like $39,000 a year. That's like the– the basement for tractor trailer drivers, you know? That was the– that was the base, the floor.
(00:48:16)
And, uh, tracker trailing would get me up to the ceiling of what I could earn. So, it was really about, uh, trying to make more money and get myself, again, in a position so I could start some sort of performance or– or music, uh, situation. That's always been the– the plan. Any job that I had that was not, uh, music or acting, that was what I referred to as “survival job.” You know, we just did this to survive. But soon as I can, we'll– we'll get back. To this day, I'm still plotting. Um. Uh, so, I– I– I took about a– a month's worth of– of driving. I got my tractor trailer license. (sniff) In– in fact, the– I had already gotten a job, which was, um, they had straight trucks and they had, uh, tractor trailers. This was what was called AFI. I don't know what the FI stood for at this point anymore, but they were a supplier, food supplier, food supply to, uh, (tsk) to restaurants and delicatessens and various eateries. So. And they had both straight trucks and tractor trailers, and the reason I got that job and– and out of luck that it was available. Um, when they interview, they said I told them that I was getting my tractor trailers. “Oh, okay, that’s good! Well, once you get your license, what you could do is come and, uh, practice in our yard. So, you know, like on the weekends when you're not working.” I said, “Oh, that's perfect.” So that's what I did and, uh, I– I would work five days a week. What was it six? I don't remember. Five or six days a week. And, uh, on Sundays I would come in and just drive around a lot and mainly practice backing in, because that's the trickiest, you know? Um. And I– I knew, I believed, uh, correctly, that eventually if I continue to do this, um, one day I'd get that call, like, “Jim, can you do this? Can you do that?” And sure enough, one day after I had just delivered all through Manhattan and, like, you know, anytime you got to go into Manhattan, it's like you really want to finish, you know? When you're heading home. It's like, “Oh, I made it through another one!” And they called me, I'm on my way back to the, back to the, uh, warehouse and said, “Jim, somebody broke down in a tractor trailer in such and such place. You think you could finish the, uh, the route for us in it?” I said, “sure!”
(00:51:34)
You know? I wasn't so sure, but I was like, “Yeah! Yeah, sure, sure, I'll do that!” And, um, they told me to go somewhere in New Jersey. I don't remember. Thinking maybe around Paterson, New Jersey. Somewhere in New Jersey and, uh, switched. Switched vehicles and, um, that was the beginning of my tractor trailer driving experience. I did that, I stayed with them for a year. Each year, what happens in the driving business, particularly in tractor trailers, is that some places require no experience. Some places require a year, some two years, three years. So I would hop up each time I got the– the minimum that was required for the next level, that there's usually more money involved, so. Um, I hopped around a couple places, um, ‘til I landed at Redington Farms and, uh, Redington Farms is a milk company, um, a milk processing and– and delivery company. They, uh, delivered to Shoprites. Yes, Shoprites and– and a few Pathmarks, and for all over the– the Eastern, Northeastern area. So, like, from Delaware to Connecticut and, uh, Pennsylvania. New York. And, um, I– I was there for a couple months and they asked me if I was interested, if I could do them a favor, actually. The guy that they had hired to do the yard truck. The yard truck is a– is a particular cab. So with a tractor trailer, uh, you know. You have the tractor, you know, which pulls the– the trailer, um, and in the yard, they have yard trucks that are special type of– of tractor, which allows you to hook up quickly to the– to the trailer, lift it up, and haul it around to somewhere. And this, you needed that for the operation to– to work, so.
(00:54:11)
They're loading up truck. They're loading up trailers. If you had to take trailers in and– and pull a loaded one out, bring another one back, you know, and put it in the yard. They stage them so that the drivers who are going to run the routes can hook up to them. You– you basically manage, uh, that that’s how– that operation– the, uh, the yard guys and, uh, it– it– it was– it was– it was a demanding job to a degree because you, you're getting information over the radio about who needs what and everybody wants it yesterday, you know? So. You know? Uh. And you still had to be careful because it was dangerous. You know? Trailers drop. You know, accidents happen in the yard! You know, especially if you're– you're– you're– you're being too– too fast or too careless. But, uh, I said “Sure.” And the funny thing is, now, I, at that point, I had– had my, um, tractor license. I had my tractor license for four years. You know, so. I had tractor license for four years. And, um, it had never occurred to me, this position that was available. I– I mean, I see yard guys in there, but I never connected me being one of them. But they offered me this– this position and I said, “Sure, sure, I'll try it.” You know? Turns out it was the greatest job I could have within the driving world, in my opinion. You know, it was like, “Wow, this is nice! I just have to make it here and just drive around these same circles,” you know, “for ten hours or so and then go back home. I like it!” You know, because being on the road is, it's demanding! Tractor trailer? Oh! There's all kinds of challenges and– and– and potholes, danger! You know this, you know, this stuff. It's– it's not an easy job. But if you enjoy it, it– it seems okay. And I was– next to being a musician, uh, being a driver, uh, is– is the closest thing that I– I wanted to do. You know? Because I just enjoy the sensation. It didn’t feel like I was working. It just feel like I was cruising around. “I think I’ll get a couple of Joes and drop this off.” And, you know, it’s like, cartin’ my friends around or something, you know? So, um.
(00:57:01)
I did that, again, for like twelve years. And, uh, it really was a boon to my wife and I. Um, just in terms of our financial situation, because we had sacrificed, uh, much of our earning power to, you know, to arrange home schooling and– and help with college. You know, all the things that happen, you know. It’s– it’s like, there’s always money going out the door. “Oh, we gotta go over there. Oh, oh, you need this? Oh, okay. Um, how we gonna raise that? Well, we have a bunch of money going out there. Oh! And the house is falling apart.” So. (laughs) All these things have to be taken care of. And, uh, we did them pretty seamlessly. But, um, that was like about the most money that I had made. I was averaging, uh, 100, now, $100,000 a year. I put, you know, I worked six or seven days a week, you know. Um. Uh, but it was a way to make up for what we lost. And– and sure enough, it put us in a position where, uh, finances were okay. You didn’t have to be concerned about the money we were putting out, because we had– we had a– it worked within our budget, and we were still adding to our, uh, to our accounts at the same time. So, uh, I’m grateful for them. For– for that purpose. Um. All the time I’m plotting and scheming to get back. And so I developed this plan. I wanted to retire. Really, I wanted to retire in 2017. And I got all the statistics together and the financials and the plan, and I worked it out in a presentation that I was going to give to my wife, that I– I did attempt to give to my wife. And I– I thought it was really reasonable! I said, “This is gonna work. Because I’ve addressed all of the questions she’s going to have. And,” you know, “I’ve got all answers right here.” And so I, and it was in a notebook. (laughs) Written out so good! Drawings and everything. Um. Financial, um, graphs. (laughs) And I guess I got into maybe about one or two paragraphs into it? She said, “Are you crazy?” (laughs) “You must be insane!” I said, “No, man!” Like, you know, this, “I think I can pull this off.” It was a daring plan. You know, which is why I went through so much trouble to– we went back and forth. We went back and forth. And, um.
(01:00:08)
We came to a compromise that neither one of us was happy with, which is usually how we do things. (laughs) Uh, we’d have to– have to come a little bit later. Um, I said, uh, “2018. So, okay, I’ll leave in 2018. I’ll retire at the end of such and such.” At that point, my– my plan was to go, I wanted to take some courses at, uh, uh, New York Film Academy. Film production. And, uh, acting. It was really, in my mind, I was gonna get back into acting. I really wanted to focus on TV and film, and so I felt that going to a film production school would give me a better, uh, command of what to expect on– on the set. Which, I’d been to a number of sets, but mostly as an actor. I mean, uh, as a background, uh, uh, actor. So. Not a great deal of experience, but you’re there. (inaudible) So, I did that and I decided to, um, enroll. I– I went there. My wife was never more angry at me. It was a slightly difficult– it was tense. (laughs) You know. ‘Cause she just, this was just too risk-adverse for her taste, you know? It’s like– I understand! She was right. She’s not wrong. You know? It was a daring plan, to– to. You know, I had set aside the money– in my mind, I had set aside the money for– for this purpose, and I was going to retire. If I had the time, I want to do this full time. And, um, I was going to go from May. From May until November. At which point I would have come out, um, knowledgeable in the film process and production process. I studied, uh, film production. They were like, eight– eight or four week classes. I saw– I did a film production course for eight weeks. Um. Right behind, right in– next to, uh, an editing course. For four weeks, I did the editing course right after I finished the, uh, production, and then immediately following that, I did a eight week, uh, acting. Acting for film. And, um, my plan was, when I finished in November, then I would start going after background work. And, uh, I was thinking and hoping that I’d be able to create enough income from that so, um, so that, you know, we could– we could progress in the direction that I wanted to go.
(01:03:21)
Um. Actually, it worked really well. The production course, at, uh, they have– New York Film Academy is just. (sigh) It is demanding as they said it would be. They said, “Look. You can’t do anything else if you take this course. If you gonna have other things that you’re required to, you know, we can recommend another course. But this full time course is absolutely full time. Uh, you’re gonna need seven days a week to put into it.” And we did our own productions and, you know, we were, um, taught on every aspect of film and production that they could squeeze in in that amount of time. And we were doing it, so. Uh, you had to be there from nine in the morning until six in the evening, and I live in New Brunswick, so I had to add on the commute time to that. And, uh, that’s five days a week. And then on the sixth day, they usually, you had to come in for a project, um, a group project. Um, but never more rewarding experience. Because the environment was just electrical. Because everybody there was dedicated, serious, focused individuals. It’s like, I– I had never been in that environment before. Even going to college, like, you know, half of everybody (including myself) was there to party. It was, like, this was, we all knew why we came here, and this was, like, essential to succeed. Essential. There’s no fooling around. Everything needs to be done right. So, it’s a refreshing, to be in that environment. That, to find those people. You’re all dedicated to the same thing. Um. And I– I did well. The bottom sort of fell out right, the last week, just before I finished the course, my wife lost her job. This is now, uh, COVID is just about to, uh, no. This is just a little before, ‘cause that was a little–’18. Just a little bit before. Um, but, uh, she lost her job, and it’s– it’s a little more difficult for her to find the types of jobs she– she does. Or at least, in the– in the, uh, the pay raise that she works at. Uh, but I said, “Okay, well, uh, we have this. I’m– I’m gonna be doing the– the extra work.” And I started doing the– the extra work. And I started doing extra work, and I was starting to get jobs anywhere between– it’s– it’s, you know, it’s irregular, but.
(01:06:20)
Let’s say, an average of one or two a week. One or two days a week, you know. And I didn’t need a full income, ‘cause I had pension and– and other things comin’ in, so, I just need, needed to, uh– uh, sort of supplement my– my income. Uh. But, uh, finally she started panicking. Um. I guess, maybe by April, I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll go get a job.” And I– I did. Uh, actually, she got it for me, ‘cause she just got on the computer and (laughs) started sendin’ out applications for everything that I qualified for. That– that was in the– the, um, the income range of her expectations. Um, and– and I got a job as a garbage truck driver. Uh, Republic Services. You probably see their– their signs around, you know, on the garbage cans, and, uh, particularly commercial outfits, so. Um. (sigh) Garbage man! And– and the interesting thing is, I got there and I’m seeing what it’s about. I didn’t want to drive. Uh, of all the different jobs I’ve had, driving jobs, this is really one of the most demanding. That was a surprise to me. Uh, not because of the size– well, the size of the truck to a degree is as much a problem, but you’re starting out at night. Black of night. You can’t see what’s going on. And you– you have a lot of challenging sort of, uh– uh, you know, treacherous situations you have to navigate through. Driving down, uh, narrow alleyways. I mean, and it’s dark and you can’t see everything, and you have to watch out for things hanging down. And the way the truck operates, there’s just a lot of things you have to be wary of, ‘cause if you’re not, you could lose a finger or a foot or something like that, you know? And there were guys there who could– you– what they were talking about! (laughs) Oh! These were men! These, like, were, like, these were men!
(01:09:02)
There was a guy, he, uh, crushed his thumb. I think it was his– one of his fingers. I think it was his thumb. And he– he didn’t call it in! He just kept, continued his route until when he was finished! And he came, brought the truck back, did what he had to do, and then he went to the hospital! (laughs) I said, “No! I can’t. I will not.” A great bunch of guys! And it was, uh, it was an interesting experience! Uh, being on there. ‘Cause I sort of became aware of– what shall I say? (pause) Uh, my attitude towards garbage men. This is, you know. I would never do something like that, you know? I had to come down, I had to, you know, find some humility, you know? And– and what I found was a group of guys who were a lot more intelligent than you would expect. They had all kinds of backgrounds, just like myself. They didn’t all– and– and some of them, I was about to say, they didn’t all, uh, come there because they had nothing else to do, but because it worked within their particular situation. And there was a group of guys, who, this is like, generational! It’s like, their fathers were, uh, garbage men! And they started doing at a young age, and they just continued! And this was– they– they weren’t ashamed! They were proud of it! They were like, “Yeah! I’m a garbage man! This is what we do. The money’s good!” And so, you couldn't say, for most places, the money was good! Um, as far as a medium-educated person could– could come up with. It was not like me, it was nowhere near the minimum wage. It was, you know, good, good pay. And if you put in more hours, you got more money, so, uh. Um. I– I learned a lot. I learned a lot. And, uh, I had to grow up a little bit more. You’re always growing up. You’re always growing up. You know? You’re always just a kid. From the time you started, when you were four or five years old and you had consciousness, you’re just continuing to grow up. And I– I remember speaking to, uh, when I was maybe in my 20s– no. Late 20s, early 30s. Uh, I was working at the bus company and there was a guy named Deek. Deekam Butler. Uh, he was a father of some friends of mine, and he had come in, and I showed him how to drive the bus. You know, I– I trained him. And we became good friends, and he was, like, 50 something. 50, 58 at the time.
(01:12:06)
And, uh, he would give me pearls of wisdom all the time. And he told me, “Look, you’re– you’re always growing up.” Uh, he said, “I’m 50 something years old,” whatever it was, “and I’m still learning stuff every day. To my surprise.” He was like, “I didn’t see it coming. It’s a new lesson. Like, oh! I didn’t know that.” He said, “Never stop that.” And I’ve tried to follow that. So. Um, I worked there at the garbage company. I avoided driving. As a matter of fact, I had a reputation there. Like, everybody knew I didn’t want to drive. So they would start to, um, schedule me to be on the back of the truck. And, you know, a lot of guys thought that was funny. “Why would you be on the back of the truck?” You know, “doing back– backbreaking work when you can drive?” “Just don’t worry about it! I– I’m happy.” And I just would rather do it because there was less risk. You know? There was less risk. Um. An important thing about having a CDL is you need to protect it. If you’re having accidents or, you know, things happen, violations, which are very possible! You know? Uh, it’s like booby traps all over just waiting to get you. You can do your best, you can be most careful, and boom! “I bumped into this. Uh oh. Oh, I didn’t see that. Oh, nobody’s– this thing wasn’t hangin’ that low before!” You know? (chuckles) I didn’t want to deal with it. I just didn’t– didn’t want to deal with it. I like just driving down the road. Anyway, I stayed there for three years. And, uh, last Nov– August. Last July, end of July, I, um. I was going, end of July, I– I– I retired from there. And, uh, that’s the state I’ve been in since. Um, most of my days involve doing whatever comes to my mind. Uh, I don’t really have that big of a plan, other than, I, (creek) you know, I– I try to put in at least two to three hours, uh, study, practice all my instruments. Trying to determine, uh, what I need to accomplish what I want to do. The thing that, um, New York Film Academy did for me, which I did not expect, I didn’t see coming, was it gave me another avenue that I– I really wasn’t aware of, to be truthful. And that is, uh, content. Uh, con– becoming a content creator. You know? I now had an inkling of an understanding of the process, so. Um. What my ambition is at this point is that I have some work around the house. I have the– have to get done first, I think, in order, so I can have a more efficient operational environment.
(01:15:36)
And, um, I want to continue my studies, or– or, take them up again. I can’t say continue because they stopped, but, um, I’d like to start again. That I– I wanted to get some of the equipment that I need. You know, computer, uh. Software. AVE and Media. Are you familiar with those? Oh, okay. Um. What I need for audio production and film production, editing. And, um, just let my imagination go from there. My– I’ve– I see all kinds of things going on in my mind and I try to bring them forth. Um, in the form of, uh, online content and– and– and, uh, doing a YouTube channel. That type of stuff. I– I don’t know enough to speak intelligently yet, but I have an inkling. I– I have to get some skills together. Get some equipment and get some skills together. And, uh, then manifest whatever they manifest. Uh, I still– I’ll start doing a– the only reason I’m not really doing the extra work right now is because, uh, New York has just gotten too wild for my taste, you know? In the– you’re– things– people being attacked in the subway, like, every day, or other day. (tsk) And, uh, you know, I’ve– I’ve been there and I know, like, that could be a scary situation, because, like, uh, you might be there at any time of day or night, you know? And I– I feel sort of cocky and confident and I– I’ve come up with a few thugs here and there, you know? Not that I am or want to be, but, uh, I’m not a timid guy. I’m not a good victim. However, you know, the way things happen with these, uh, individuals– I’m about to come up with a category, but none of it fits.
(01:18:04)
But the individuals who are inclined to victimize people, you know. I would appear to be a victim level. So I don’t need to want to put my, uh, defensive skills (laughs), uh, into motion if I don’t have to. Uh, and lots of times, you know, to be truthful, it’s– the odds are not even, you know? You’ve got a big guy, decides, “Oh, little guy like you. You can’t put up much fight.” Or maybe there’s three or five, uh, individuals. They’re roamin’ around, and there you are. They’re just, like, uh. Decide that you’re the target for the day, you know? And I– I’m not, this is not my imagination. I’m– I’m talking things that I’ve experienced, you know, and I’ve had to handle, and I’ve been successful, but I’d rather avoid coming, putting myself in that position yet, so. Um. I don’t– and I don’t like moving around out when it’s– when it’s cold either, so I’m waiting. When it gets a little bit warmer, gonna take some– some scouting trips into New York. Maybe hook up with some of my acquaintances there. Just get a lay of the land. And, uh, go from there. So. If, I would like to do the extra work. It’s fun. When you– when you’re chasin’, uh, acting work, uh, the, the standard way or the usual way is you have to meet casting agents, casting directors, uh, agents, and, um, and a few people that are in that position of, uh, of, um, finding– finding the– the cast, you know? So you have to begin to get known by them. And the, um, audition process can be grueling. You’ll be going into auditions, like, couple times, two or three times a week or more. I don’t find that– I didn’t find that to be as, uh, profitable. You know? You’re spending too much money just to go see somebody. You know? So, uh, whereas the background acting is, you have a phone hookup, you know? They know that you’re available. “Oh, you’re available? Okay. We’ll,” next thing you know, you get a– you get a text. Uh, “We need such and such and such at such and such and such place at this time. Are you, are you interested?” “Yes, I am.” “Okay, we’ll call you.” And so you– you get the job. You get the job from home and you go do it and you come. And after you, um, do that for a while, you develop a relationship with those people who now begin to trust you, like, “This– this guy gets here when he says he’s gonna get here, and he does what he’s gonna do. He’s very professional. Let’s use him.” You know, and– and just like, sort of like with the truck driving thing?
(01:21:19)
You’re waiting for the opportunity. ‘Cause one day, they’re gonna need something from you, and they’re gonna ask. “Oh, well, can you do this part? It’s just like a couple lines, that’s all. But we need somebody, like, right now.” I’ll say, “Okay, I’m on my way.” You know? And that’s– that’s the approach I intend to take as far as acting is concerned. But, um. Acting, to me, is similar to truck driving. Which is, it’s not my favorite, you know? I’m– I’m– I’m not really passionate about it. But I enjoy it! It’s a lot more fun than, you know, working in a factory or being a security guard, you know? Uh. I– I– I do it and it doesn’t feel like I’m working. It feels like I’m enjoying myself, you know? So, um, but, uh, music is– is where my passion is, and, uh, I’m disappointed, uh, in myself for not achieving the– the level of musicianship that I set out originally to. And I’m still– still committed to reaching for it, so, uh, I’m– I’m– I’m just as happy staying in my house. The days I, when I don’t go out the house? Like, maybe two, three, four days in a row? Oh! I’m just like a pea in a pod, man. I just, I enjoy it, you know? I know a lot of people, they get– they get, uh, stir-crazy just being in the house. I– I haven’t noticed that problem. I’m like, “This is great! I don’t have to go out? Ugh!” You know? And then when I go, do go out, it’s– it’s even more enjoyable because I haven’t been out in a while! “Oh, wow! The sun is out! It’s warm!” And, you know, everything is amazing! Uh! I think that’s where I am now! I might have given you the whole story as, that comes to my mind. (pause) What do we do now?
(laughs) Um, one question I did have–
Okay.
That you casually brought up earlier was that you ran track!
Yes!
You never talked about your athleticism.
Okay! Um. That’s true. Uh, I was fast. I– I mean, it seemed as though I was fast. When I was a kid, whenever, you know, we’d have races or we’d be outside, I was always one of the fast– I– usually I was the fastest.I mean, the– the person who was faster than me was someone who was, like, a couple years older.
(01:24:02)
But in my age group, uh, I was always the fastest one. And, uh, back in our day, you had to do a lot of boxing. You know, it’s like, everybody had to prove how– how– how good their hands were, you know? And, um, I was sort of capable at that. In fact, when I was, (tsk). When I was considering, in my teenage years, of what I was going to do, boxing, being a boxer came up in my mind as– as a possibility. I thought, “(tsk) I might, might be able to do something in that, that category.” But, uh, I said, “(tsk) I don’t like the getting hit in the face part.” You know? Gotta take the good with the bad. Uh, at any rate, um, throughout– throughout, um, elementary school and when we were performing, like, in the gym, I just was always one of the best. You know? They had rope climbing and, uh, gymnastics and, uh, dodge ball and whatever was physical. Um, I was just always one of the– one of the best! Uh, didn’t think much of it. I just was. There was one time, it was in Stelton. When I was going to school in, uh, Stelton, we had this game we played. It was a big field, ‘bout the size of a football field. And I don’t remember what it was called. But, um, you had one– one side had, I don’t know, a number of– of runners. One side was “it” and they needed to be tagged, and the other side– the objective was to make it to the other end. This side makes it to that side, this side of people makes it to this end. But this side is– has to tag as many people as they can, as they run, and then those people have to join the taggers. And so the ones who were, um, the hunted or whatever, they got smaller and smaller, and usually when we played this game, I turned out to be the last, or near the last. I was always able to dodge or outrun or, you know, avoid being tagged. And, uh, so I had a reputation for that. Uh. They called me some names, but I can’t remember what they were. Um, and then, sometimes, uh, as I get older, when I was livin’ on Loretta Street, um, they have different, uh, track meets, uh, community functions? Uh, usually at the high school. And you, they’d run these races, track races, for the younger kids.
(01:27:11)
And, um, you’d get medals for them. That and I would always come home with a– with a bunch of medals. I’d, you know, beat everybody. But, so I thought I was just the greatest thing in the world as far as running was concerned, for sure. Uh. When I got to high school, uh, then I– I went out for track. I went out for track. And, um, you know, in the JV (truck backing up), uh, section. Um, so you still have the seniors and the juniors and sophomores. Coming in as a freshman, you know. So there’s guys that are faster. Faster than me. Um. But, it always was recognized that within my group, I was one of the fastest. Um. And so I– I ran. And then I wanted to run the turn– run the hurdles. And, uh, coach wouldn’t let me. I don’t know, he just, ‘cause I was short, you know? I’m the same size I was in high school right now. I was 5’6” up until sixth grade– no, no. No. At sixth grade, I was 5’6”. And, you know, I’d been continuin’. I was like, you know, one of– one of the taller guys. You know, not hugely tall, but I wasn’t one of the shorter ones. I was one of the taller guys. I ain’t sayin’ six feet, 5’6”. But then everyone kept going, and I stayed there! I said, (laughs) “How did this happen?” (tsk) But, um, we would– we’d compete in these– these games, and, um, I would always win– win medals. When I got to the high school, you know, I was sort of on track to become, you know, when I got to the highest grade, that that would be the fastest. It was during that time that I discovered, “Oh. I’m not the fastest.” ‘Cause there were a few other guys who left me in the dust. It was very humiliating. I couldn’t believe it, like, “What! What is this?” (wind blowing) (laughs) ‘Cause I’m not used to it! So I came to understand that, I was not in the category of “the fastest.” Uh, I was in the second category of “very fast”. But the fastest, the most elite guys were, psew! They could run right by me. There was no question. It was only, uh, there was only two of them. I was the third fastest in the school. And I was expected to be– expected to be the– the fastest hurdler in my senior year.
(01:30:06)
However, I– I declined to go out there my senior year as much as I wanted to. Um, because I got a job at St. Peter’s Hospital. I’ve had a job at St. Peter’s Hospital ‘cause, it’s been a– a recurring theme in my life. And, um, so I had to go there after school and, uh, work in the kitchen. And the coach was, like, so upset with me. Not Mr. Farkas, this was another coach. They were so up– and I said, “Jim, you’re missing the boat! What’s going on? This is your year!” Blah, blah. It’s like, “Coach, I know, but I gotta get a job. My– my– my mother and sister– there’s hunger involved. I gotta do something!” So. (pause) So, ah, we don’t know what I would have accomplished there, but, uh, my sister is now married to the– to a guy named, uh. Donald Highsmith. Who has the record, or at least at that time, had the– the– the record in– in, like, the hundred yard dash and– and so forth. And, uh, he went on to become a football player. Now, I was not going to accomplish anything in football. I liked playing football, like, on the– on the, um. On the streets. We– we played on the streets or in the park. You know, not really tackle. More like touch. And, uh, I was good. I could throw. I could catch. I could run fast. I could, you know. So, folks liked to have me on their team. I went out for football in the high school for one day. I am well known for this. I– I’m infamous for this, you know? “Oh, here’s the one guy! Our one-day football player!” (laughs) Um. They thought, you know, maybe somebody had, you know, hit me really hard or whatever, but, uh, really what it was was, like, that was the first time I had all the equipment on? When you’re practicing in the equipment, and it was a hot day, and I was sweatin’, and I was like, “Ugh! This ain’t no fun!” You know, I just didn’t like it! And then it occurred to me, “Wow! I’m gonna have to be like this in the winter when it’s cold! No! That’s not gonna work for me.” I– I said no. I said, “I don’t want it that bad. I really don’t. I was just experimentin’ and it’s not working.” I turned in my– my uniform one– after one day. (laughs) Oh, I took a lot of ribbn’ for that. (laughs) “Here he comes, one-day football!”
(01:33:04)
Um. Yeah! So that, that was funny. Um. And– and also, I had the alternative. “I’ll just– I’ll just be in the band.” You know? So, I’d go to the football game. I’d be in the band, you know. We’d do the halftime show and that kind of stuff. And I’m dressed as warm as I needed to be to be comfortable, but that’s a theme with me. I like to be comfortable. I’m not into, invested in pain, discomfort. I don’t see the point of it, so I’ve been good at avoiding it. And I continue to be, even at this age. I’m, like, I’m comfortable. You know? Um. I like to be a certain– I like warm temperatures. Like, 74 degrees and up. It can get as high as it wants. I mean, within human limits. After that, but that will just determine how slow I move, you know? Or where I spend my time. I’ll try to find something with air conditioning or shade, but. And that was– that was– that was it for the, um, I did, remember, the first time the coach let me run, uh, the hurdles, low hurdles, and, um, I was– I was running down the track and I saw the guys up there, and they were, like, starting going wild. And, um, I didn’t know what was up, but I just, you know, kept runnin’. And, uh, turns out the, the coach’s track was timin’ me, and he said, “Looked like he’s gonna get the record!” I said, “What?” I didn’t find this out ‘til later, but. So– so they were all like, spurring me on. Like, “Run! Run!” You know? A lot of– lot of good times in– in the football. I mean in the– in the track locker rooms and so forth. Lot of good friends. You know? I remember this guy, uh, Rusty. He’s called– his name was Rusty. He had red hair, and, uh, white guy, and he was, like, from North Brunswick. Uh, I think, or Milltown. And, uh, I don’t think he had been around Black guys much before. And, uh, I– I came in and I saw something of his. I don’t even remember what it was. And I said, “Hey, is this yours?” ‘Cause it looked like he was forgetting it and what not. And I said, “Hey, hey, is this yours?” And he said, “THAT’S MINE!” I said, “Okay! That’s what I thought!” (laughs) Said, “Here you go.” And then he sort of realized, I could see on his face. He was sort of embarrassed, you know? Like, it was a little overreaction. Anyway, we became close friends after that, and, um, (tsk) his father was a big, bigwig in the educational department. He was either the head of the Board or, uh, yeah. Some, somebody, uh, the head or the president of the educational Board.
(01:36:32)
So. And, um, it sticks in my mind because, um, Rusty committed suicide. Like. I couldn’t understand that. The– this was after we’re out of high school. I– I read it in a newspaper and, you know, some of the people we knew. Uh. I’ve lost ‘bout four or five friends. I mean, I couldn’t count’m up here. I don’t wanna do it. But four or five friends, you know, from– from high school committed suicide. I don’t get it. I don’t really get it. (pause) Yep. That’s it. (pause) Anything else?
That’s it.
Mhm hmm.
Thank you, James. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Okay!
(01:37:48)
[END OF RECORDING FOUR]