Everywhere I go at some point i wanna get away - pt. III

my uncle came to visit me today cuz he wanted my mom and a friend to come to the cemetery for my grandma. because she kept showing up in his dreams and he wouldnt visit her before she died so he felt guilty. but anyway he showed up and i showed him all the pics of our neighborhood. that was the 2nd house he grew up in until he moved out after graduating college i think. he told me a lot shit about our neighborhood and i want to write it down.



this right here was our storages. each family in our apartment building had 1 storage. so when my uncle was a kid he'd climb up on the roof of the storages and go inside the school building that had a whole bunch of supplies like wood and stuff. he'd steal whatever he needed and climb back out on the weekend. he said that they moved in our house back in 1957 (will edit after confirm with my mom.) when he was around 10, he'd go out hanging out with his friends all day until like 11pm. and one time his mom, my grandma (R.I.P.) was waiting for him at the door when he came home late and was all screaming and yelling. then took the radio he put together himself, and threw it at him.

across the street from our building there was a house that Greeks lived in. one time a little girl from that house went missing. and later on somebody found her dead in this park not too far away called "The Botanic Garden" (will confirm with my mom about the name.) they found her raped and stabbed about 20 times, so ever since then all the kids' moms wouldn't let their children out on the street. and my uncle told me they were all scared to go anywhere, especially near that house, because they thought it could be them next. but after a few days everything went back to normal. and when i was living there, i remember one time we had a cannibal that ate some woman in an elevator on another side of the city. the police were looking for him, and we were all shook going out at night. i was even scared to cross the street when visiting my dad after dark. i'd sneak in slowly to our gate, and then when there were no cars on the street i'd cross as fast as i could.

another thing he told me was that we had this neighbor that had cats. dude would have so many cats that whenever he'd feed them in his storage, there were like 20 cats all over mewawing. it was crazy, and also he said that at night cats would make noise, they would have sex and cry like babies do. and i personally remember this. we were so tired of cats making noise at night that when i had a dog, one time he wouldn't come home and ran outside chasing and barking at the cats so the neighbors got even more pissed. but anyway when my uncle was growing up he said that they'd complain to the government about the problem with cats but no one gave a fuck. so him and his friends would throw big rocks at cats whenever seeing them trying to kill them. then at the end that old man took all the cats to some animal control shelter or whatever it was called back there, put them all to sleep and made hats out of them.

and it's funny because i asked him if he remembers Uzbeks coming around trying to mess with young guys in our building, he said he doesn't remember that. and that it was "probably" like that when i was growing up there. i guess when the government converted the school we stayed next to, things changed for the worst. i still feel like i live there sometimes because no matter where i go, at some point i wanna go somewhere new and forget everything and everybody from the past. it's like i wanna start my life fresh but when i go somewhere new, my old ways of doing things get the best of me.