My mother and sometimes I volunteer at an East Greensboro food pantry. Momma has reservations about driving in any sort of in-climate weather so this morning I dropped her off even though I wasn't working.
This afternoon when I returned to pick her up there was a crazy man there threatening everyone in the building and the parking lot. They were asking him to leave but he was refusing.
I could have packed Momma safely away in my truck and left (That's what I wanted to do.) but at 56 years old I was the youngest person there except for the much bigger crazy man and I knew I couldn't live with myself walking out on a bunch of elderly volunteers, many of them in their eighties, who were only there to help people.
I also knew that my getting too close could only escalate the problem.
The police were called and while we waited for GPD to arrive the volunteers persuaded him out in the parking lot where the others could leave while one 75 year old man stood between him and the people they give food to. I packed Momma in the truck but waited watching everything in the rear view mirror.
As the crowd thinned out the crazy man got louder and braver, more threatening towards the one old man. I saw the crazy man reach in his pocket and the old man do the same. I don't know what the crazy man was carrying but having known the old man since he retired from a police department 30 years ago I knew full well what was in his pocket.
I came out of my truck, my hand in my own pocket thinking, Of all the times to leave my gun on my desk at home, but my bluff worked. When the crazy man saw two of us with hands in our pockets he stood down giving me time to call 911 to tell them the situation has escalated.
Soon thereafter we were backed up by 6 Greensboro Police Officers who did an excellent job of getting things under control. We learned this same man has been previously banned from Urban Ministries and from riding Greensboro Transit Authority Buses. And, as I already knew, he lives just down the street from my mother and I. Whoop-d-do!
While I'm writing this a scrap peddler is removing the steel from inside a sleeper sofa placed on the street at the same address where Reginald Demarcus Wrenn was shot to death in cold blood just outside my bedroom window. Times are hard, I don't mind the scrap peddlers recycling the steel and other metals but some of them make really big messes that never seem to get cleaned up. Especially at rental houses where the neighbors seem to change on a monthly basis.
I'm telling you these things not so you'll feel sorry for me and I'm certainly not trying to make myself out to be a hero. I didn't do anything any other man wouldn't have done. I'm telling you these things to make you aware of what life is like in neglected neighborhoods and to remind you that when you spend a the taxpayers' money on shiny new things to benefit and immortalize the elite you allow these cancers to continue to grow until eventually they spread to where you live. How do I know this? The old folks tell me of a time when East Greensboro wasn't like this, when it was in-fact, one of Guilford County's wealthiest and most upstanding communities.
So when the time comes to vote on the Greensboro Performing Arts Center, ask yourself, can Greensboro afford to continue to put shiny things ahead of the basics? Do you want your neighborhoods to become like mine?
This afternoon when I returned to pick her up there was a crazy man there threatening everyone in the building and the parking lot. They were asking him to leave but he was refusing.
I could have packed Momma safely away in my truck and left (That's what I wanted to do.) but at 56 years old I was the youngest person there except for the much bigger crazy man and I knew I couldn't live with myself walking out on a bunch of elderly volunteers, many of them in their eighties, who were only there to help people.
I also knew that my getting too close could only escalate the problem.
The police were called and while we waited for GPD to arrive the volunteers persuaded him out in the parking lot where the others could leave while one 75 year old man stood between him and the people they give food to. I packed Momma in the truck but waited watching everything in the rear view mirror.
As the crowd thinned out the crazy man got louder and braver, more threatening towards the one old man. I saw the crazy man reach in his pocket and the old man do the same. I don't know what the crazy man was carrying but having known the old man since he retired from a police department 30 years ago I knew full well what was in his pocket.
I came out of my truck, my hand in my own pocket thinking, Of all the times to leave my gun on my desk at home, but my bluff worked. When the crazy man saw two of us with hands in our pockets he stood down giving me time to call 911 to tell them the situation has escalated.
Soon thereafter we were backed up by 6 Greensboro Police Officers who did an excellent job of getting things under control. We learned this same man has been previously banned from Urban Ministries and from riding Greensboro Transit Authority Buses. And, as I already knew, he lives just down the street from my mother and I. Whoop-d-do!
While I'm writing this a scrap peddler is removing the steel from inside a sleeper sofa placed on the street at the same address where Reginald Demarcus Wrenn was shot to death in cold blood just outside my bedroom window. Times are hard, I don't mind the scrap peddlers recycling the steel and other metals but some of them make really big messes that never seem to get cleaned up. Especially at rental houses where the neighbors seem to change on a monthly basis.
I'm telling you these things not so you'll feel sorry for me and I'm certainly not trying to make myself out to be a hero. I didn't do anything any other man wouldn't have done. I'm telling you these things to make you aware of what life is like in neglected neighborhoods and to remind you that when you spend a the taxpayers' money on shiny new things to benefit and immortalize the elite you allow these cancers to continue to grow until eventually they spread to where you live. How do I know this? The old folks tell me of a time when East Greensboro wasn't like this, when it was in-fact, one of Guilford County's wealthiest and most upstanding communities.
So when the time comes to vote on the Greensboro Performing Arts Center, ask yourself, can Greensboro afford to continue to put shiny things ahead of the basics? Do you want your neighborhoods to become like mine?
