You Have to Figure it Out
Told by Anonymous
Written by Laurie Grobman
Between the ages of 13-21, Tony, 39, spent most of his time on the streets of Reading. Tony’s mother was 16 years old when Tony was born. Her “form of discipline was to hit you with a belt or smack you around a little bit.” His biological father left when he was 1 year old. He didn’t receive much care and love: “Loving things weren’t said to me. There was no encouragement. I didn’t feel loved.”
When he was young, Tony loved soccer. He’d go out and kick a soccer ball against the wall because he had no one to play with. His mother didn’t let him go to the park, so he had to play in front of his home. Tony didn’t really fit in with the crowd, which was tough on him.
Tony grew up around violence. He spent time with other family members “seeing certain things that you normally wouldn’t see, people carrying guns. I was in a family that was partially involved in the streets in the 1980s through the early 90s.” There was a lot of smoking marijuana, gambling, house parties, and drinking. Family life “toughened him up” but negatively impacted his mentality: “I needed to be in a rowdy setting in order to feel normal because I grew up that way.” So, he’d “scrounge up peanut butter and bread and try to find something to do outside. And no one ever gave a shit because my mom worked second shift and my dad worked first shift and he didn’t give a shit because he was in the bar all the time. It’s like we raised ourselves, but we didn’t.”
Tony knows his mother tried to be a good mom. But “she was only 32 years old with no way of raising a 16-year-old. Had no clue how to do that. So, I can’t blame her. And she was not supported like ‘Here’s how you be a mom.’ She was a kid. No support from her family.” Tony’s mom left her own mother’s home because her mother was always around abusive men. She grew up around violence: “She’s seen a lot, been through a lot.” Tony has no animosity or anger towards her or with the way she raised him. The same is true for his stepfather, who came into his life at 2 years old, is the father to his youngest brother and sister, and is the man he considers his dad: “They did as much as they could,” and even took Tony and his siblings on family trips to Wildwood, New Jersey.
Tony’s biological father was a heavy crack cocaine user. Once when Tony was out in the streets late at night, he saw a friend of his selling drugs to Tony’s father. He said to his friend, “That’s my dad.” And his friend replied that his father buys crack cocaine from him all the time. That’s when Tony first learned his dad was on crack cocaine.
Another time Tony ran into his dad walking the streets and asked how he’d been. His father “just looked at” Tony and said, “Oh, I’m leaving for Florida. I don’t have nothing out here.” That’s when it really hit Tony: “My father really doesn’t give a shit about me or anything. I always wanted to know who he was, just to know who I was. But it never really happened.”
Having seen his biological father on the streets, and because Tony “felt alone,” Tony turned to the streets: “I wanted attention. I wanted to be heard. I wanted people to know me. I
chose violence because of being rebellious of my upbringing and acting out.” Starting around 13 years old, Tony was stealing cars and around drugs, although he didn’t do drugs. At 14, he was drinking a lot and going to bars because he looked older and acted older.
Tony also fought a lot. It was hard to get a gun then, “but the fights, sometimes five-on-one, sometimes one-on-one, were very violent.” Tony describes the streets like the “Hunger Games”: “living in poverty, in the streets, you’re waiting for that opportunity to arise or make something of yourself. You’re just trying to prove that you can make it.”
Tony also had ADHD and didn’t have the drive to succeed in school. He got into trouble at school. He was an Olivet Boys and Girls club kid at Clinton Street and remembers doing arts and crafts and using the bowling alley. But as he got older, he got bored. And the streets were tempting. Another kid would tell him, “Hey, come outside. Forget this place.” And he’d join the crowd outside.
At 16, Tony ran away due to the beatings at home which made him rebellious. He ended up in juvenile placement at Forestry Camp in the Poconos. He and a friend stole a car for joyriding. After getting caught with marijuana, Tony was sent to Camp Adams. He was charged as an adult due to a fight with staff in Berks County Youth Center and was sentenced to a state facility for two years but completed the boot camp program for early release in only 18 months.
But then Tony’s cousin was killed in the streets of Reading. And Tony’s uncle received a life sentence for a different crime: “Two losses. Those two losses were hard.” Tony did a few more stints in prison after committing various crimes.
It took some time, but Tony learned something: “Society doesn’t give you, unfortunately, all that you need. You have to find it. You have to figure it out. You have to make it work. That’s what they used to always say. ‘Figure it out.’ My mom used to never tell me, ‘This is how you do it.’ She’d tell me, ‘Figure it out.’ Because she had to figure it out.”
Tony “figured it out” once he spent too many years incarcerated: “I never feared the penalty until I experienced it, to be a part of a system, to pay a restitution, to report to a probation officer, to pee in a cup, to be monitored up to that extent. I’m not going back to that.”
Tony’s path to “figuring it out” actually began in 2005 when his daughter was born. She was the reason he began making important changes in his life. He didn’t want his daughter to be influenced by all the things that led him to the streets and to prison. He began going to school and obtained his GED. From 2005 to 2009, Tony worked two jobs, one at the Giant Food Stores, the other in his uncle’s home remodeling business.
In 2009, Tony was given the opportunity to learn a trade. He “grew up fast.” He didn’t know what a trade was. He had worked in construction his whole life, remodeling homes, doing plumbing, heating, and all types of things. He saw an ad in the Reading Eagle for a $10 aptitude test. He went with a buddy and learned it was HVAC, Sheet Metal Workers, Local 19 out of Philadelphia. He failed the test. But the instructor offered Tony an opportunity to
work as a limited apprentice for a company in Blandon. He took it. A year and a half later, Tony got into the local union for sheet metal workers.
Tony’s mother encouraged him to work for one of the bigger companies to “start making money and provide for his family.” By then he also had a son, who was born in 2012. Tony went into his apprenticeship and “made it to head of the class. I’d actually seen more potential in myself than expected. And then I realized like, ‘This is it.’ And to this day, I’ve been working two jobs.”
Working in the HVAC trade means regular layoffs due to the economy and the amount of construction going on. That’s why Tony also works at the DoubleTree Hotel in Reading as a banquet server. He’s a hard worker, and his manager gives him the flexibility he needs to continue working when he’s laid off. This is what he wants, even needs: “It keeps me busy and away from getting into trouble, which was happening when I was collecting unemployment. I hated it. I wanted to work.” Tony appreciates that the DoubleTree is there for him. Craig Poole, President at Reading Hospitality, asks him all the time, “What do you need? How can I help you?” Craig has offered full-time opportunities to Tony over the years, but for now he’s not ready to leave the HVAC industry. But “once I’m ready to let go, I’d want to be at the DoubleTree. I like the environment. I like being around people.”
Tony turned his life around for his children: “I wanted to be a provider and a father. I wanted to raise my kids differently so they wouldn’t go through what I went through. They live a completely different life, and I protected them from my lifestyle and my ways.” Tony’s kids are doing great. His daughter, 18, attends Kutztown University. His 11-year-old son is on the same path. Tony gives a lot of credit to their mother: “She’s put my kids in the right direction, kept them out of a certain environment, doesn’t expose them to the things that I would have exposed them to because of my upbringing and my family. And they’re completely different people. Completely.”
Tony also feels strongly that because his kids live in a local suburb, his kids aren’t “seeing people hanging out, drinking, and smoking weed and selling drugs.” They don’t face the hardships of poverty and the temptations of street life. They don’t face the daily threat of violence. Some days, the contrast hits him hard: It’s “mind-blowing. My son is nothing like I was. It’s something I think about when I look at him and think ‘Where the hell was I at his age? What was I thinking at that age? No way I was thinking what he’s thinking. I was doing shit. And he’s nowhere near that.”
Tony knows that many kids and their families can’t or don’t want to leave Reading. He has a message for them about life in the streets: “I was around a lot of older men, most of them from outside Reading. And I guess people would say that I was being groomed in the street life. It made me feel a sense of power. It was more interesting to me than what I was learning in school.” They were also father figures that filled a void. What he didn’t understand then was the ways he was being manipulated, “used for certain things.” He always thought “somebody was trying to help me out. But I realized later in life that it was more of a setback. I had good influences too. They weren’t always bad. But it was definitely
different to come to the reality that I could have been further in life if I didn’t involve myself in the streets because many of those people are still in the same boat to this day.”
Tony was vulnerable to this grooming and this sense of power from street life because of his circumstances: “I was just a good kid with bad parenting. Most of my life, my behavior led to a lot of punishment, but it started at home. I liked the attention, just the wrong kind. It was something about being tough and bad that attracted me.” It started with alcohol and led to marijuana. Tony and his younger brother “started out jokingly smoking rolled up paper, lighting it on fire, inhaling it, and blowing smoke out. I thought it was just cool watching the smoke come out.” After eighth grade, Tony and another kid started smoking weed, and “from there, it was history, and the gateway drug entered my life.”
Tony is proud of and humbled by what he’s accomplished, given all he’s gone through: “I’ve overcome a lot of that, and I don’t say I’m special. I just was given the opportunity and took advantage of it.”