The Reinvention of OJ Smith - From Ghetto Streets to Corporate America

By OJ Smith

This book deals with
Growing up poor on 93rd and St. Clair in Cleveland, OH. Living with fear. Seeing crime, drugs and prostitution ruling the neighborhood.
Navigating my path from a life of crime to attending college, working in corporate America and raising a middle class family in suburban America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098302122

Book preview

me.

Chapter 1

(0-10 years)

First Home—780 E. 93rd Street

When you first meet me, you may think I grew up in a typical middle-class family. We didn’t live in a suburban area. We didn’t have a house with a white picket fence. We didn’t have our own transportation (a car). There was no dual income. There was no four to five bedrooms with three to four bathrooms. To use a common phrase, nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is, I grew up in what I call the ghetto.

I describe our ghetto a little different from a common description. Outside and surrounding us were all the components of an inner-city ghetto. Not as bad as living in the projects or on Scovil but still the ghetto. Inside our home was a healthy safe haven and a paradise. Momma always made sure we were well taken care of. For many the ghetto was a monster that had to be dealt with 24/7. For us, as insecure as it could have been, we always had our needs met.

When I describe the part of the ghetto where I lived, everyone is poor, but I always believed my family was better off than most. All we had was momma taking care of things and there were many families that had a daddy in the home, and we appeared to be living a better life. That’s just the way it was. I remember there were roaches and rats, but I also recall seeing much worse infestations at different friends’ homes.

The combined chaos and conditions in the neighborhood created their own current which ran all the time. In broad daylight, or cover of dark, people scurried around, looking for opportunities to make a buck, or sometimes simply for a place to hide. Others engaged in placid activities like watching television or playing with their kids. We always seemed to have fun amongst ourselves. We enjoyed each other as siblings and unlike most sibs we never had sibling rivalries. Some nights the soundtrack playing in the background was gunfire, some nights it was domestic violence and other nights it was too settling their beef in the middle of the streets. It always seemed somewhat remote and distant, but almost always noticeable.

The energy hummed along within this backdrop, but never dissipated. It was contained within the boundaries of the hood until it demanded a release. So it erupted into street fighting. One minute people would be hanging out, minding their own business and the next thing you know a street side brawl ensued. Sometimes it would be bad enough for the cops to bother coming out, but most of the time in my hood matters handled its own. When the fight was settled, everything would return to a pre-fight state as if nothing had happened. In our home there was always a calm peace and a feeling of safe