Lowes Moore Chronicles: From The Boys & Girls Club To The NBA

By Lowes Moore

Lowes Moore Chronicles: Life on The Narrow Road - From the Boys & Girls Club of Mount Vernon to the NBA, is a unique story about how the Boys & Girls Club changed the future and direction of a young man's life and his dream to play in the NBA. He candidly shares his academic struggles and how domestic violence and substance abuse nea

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sherrill Enterprises
• Release date: Jun 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733204606

Book preview

Chapter1

The Importance of Family

And Family Values

We all have gifts from God when we are born and we all have a purpose in this life on earth. The difference in the journey occurs with the choices we make along the way. When we come into this world we are all subjected to all kinds of distractions, the good and the bad, and are influenced by things we are taught to be right and wrong. Some people appear to have the world; they seem to have everything handed to them on a silver platter, yet they end up on drugs, or even commit suicide. So what is it that happens to those people along the way to cause such destructive behavior?

There are detours and roadblocks along life’s journey; shortcuts and pitfalls and the choices we make, especially when we are young, will and can determine the choices we make when we get older in life. Martin Luther King always referred to it as ‘the long and winding road.’ You see, there is a wide road and a narrow road and on the wide road you will find everything you could ever think of. If you have money, there is no limit to what you can have on the wide road. The question then becomes, what do you do when you have money and have access to all the pleasures of the wide road at your fingertips? Conversely, the narrow road appears unexciting, lackluster and boring. Interestingly enough, on the narrow road, money is not the issue, since you won’t need much money to travel on this road. However, what you do need to travel on this road, and more importantly, to stay on this road is character, strength, fortitude, discipline and God! And this is why a lot of the decisions we make are interrelated to the choices we make as a child. The role of the family is probably the most influential and most important factor on how we handle the wide road and determine if we will ever make it to the narrow road. For the most part, we all grow up believing in God and going to Sunday School and things like that. However, what are we really taught? Is Thou shalt not steal, and Thou shalt not kill, enough? Is Thou shalt not commit Adultery, and Honor thy Mother and Father enough to stay on the narrow road? Obviously not!

When we look at all the heinous crimes, murder, sexual exploits and rampant use of legal and illegal drugs throughout the world, it is obvious that we are on the wide road, which is a road that leads to total destruction for many, if not all. When you look at our leaders, athletes, entertainers, preachers, politicians, corporate execs, teachers, etc., it really makes you wonder, is the narrow road even realistic!

You have on one side, this poor kid from the ghetto who can’t wait to hit the big time, dreaming of becoming that next great basketball or football player. You also have that little girl that can’t wait to be that next great singer, actress, or model, not realizing the odds are probably better if you play lotto. Yet, there is this quest to live in that life, or at least have the opportunity to experience what it might be like, living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. We play lotto, hoping and praying to hit that jackpot, for what? Undoubtedly, to have access to the pleasures of the wide road. So, if the wide road inevitably leads to total destruction and corruption, then why do most people strive to reach it? Granted, maybe if I did get that multi-million dollar NBA contract, the temptation and the appeal of the wide road would have been even greater, considering the opportunities that most athletes experience and succumb to which were lurking in every city where the next game was played. Fame may be the end result of the wide road, however, life is the end game of the narrow road. The lessons taught, that could be potentially learned from sharing life on the narrow road versus the wide road may very well help many of us, especially Black athletes and entertainers, avoid many of the catastrophes that continue to plague us as we seek to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. As adults we take so much for granted and forget about a lot of the experiences that shape us as adults. It is only when we have the time to reflect back on our childhood that we realize how important those events were in the shaping of our lives. When you’re born, your parents know a lot more than you do. Based on what I do know, I was not born in a hospital. I was born in Plymouth, North Carolina in 1957, in a place called White City. My Mom and Dad were very young and my Mom was seventeen when she had me; my Father had to be just a little bit older. My memories are based on the stories I was told and some pictures I saw when I was a little baby. My Grandmother and Grandfather were two hard working individuals. My assumption is that we were in the house with them. My parents told me when I was a little baby, one day while I was on the bed, somehow I rolled off. Everyone was looking for me all through the house, as if I was able to go somewhere; eventually they found me. As a child, I remember I started to lose my hair. I was beginning to go completely bald. My Grandmother was not about to let that happen, so she started to rub my head with oils and all these other kinds of strange ointments. Grandmothers back then just knew things, and believe it or not, my hair started to grow back. In the house, my mom had two other sisters; she was the oldest sister of my two aunts, Aunt Dolores and my Aunt Joyce. Having little memory before five, family pictures reminded me that we moved from White City, where my Grandmother was, to Sand Hill. Sand Hill was a like another village; it was all sand, completely sand. The sand was always hot and there were no roads. I remember, based on the pictures that my Aunt Joyce had. I’m ten years younger than my Aunt Joyce, and she is the youngest of my two Aunts. I remember being happy when I was with her. I also remember being dressed very well in short outfits, with little bow ties and being very well taken care of. I also remember spending a lot of time with my maternal Grandmother, my mother and my aunts. That was kind of the theme throughout my childhood.

I would assume it was hard to find work and so people were making the move from the south to the east or up north. The industrial age was in full effect, going from the fields to the factories. We moved to Mount Vernon when I was roughly four or five years old and we lived at several different places, the first being on Fifth Avenue. It was just me, my mom and dad and we lived in the attic. They were married by then. I had a lot of memories in that house, good and bad. I also had the measles and chicken pox in that house. Shortly thereafter, my mom had my brother Doug in Mount Vernon Hospital. Then we moved to Union Avenue directly behind the Post Office in Mount Vernon. Next to that big building behind the post office, is this building on the corner, then right next to it was the house. We went from living in the attic to living in the basement. And right after that, my brother Curtis was born. He had complications with hearing, so they thought he was going to be deaf. Eventually, all those complications with my brother Curtis worked themselves out. I used to go to Edward Williams Elementary School, it was Robert Fulton back then, maybe until the second grade. I remember walking to school and walking back home and in the midst of that, I found out that I have another sister, an older sister and her name is Evelyn.

Not only did my Father move this way, his sister Penny, her husband and my paternal Grandmother moved to Brooklyn. My Aunt Penny and Uncle Aaron began to have kids. It was a family thing, that every weekend, we would pack up and get in the car to go to Brooklyn and stay with my Aunt Penny and Uncle Aaron all weekend, then go back to Mount Vernon on Sunday. We always used to travel and as I got older, my sister (who is a few years older than I was) and I would visit our paternal Grandmother, who lived in the Projects in Brooklyn. My entire family would always meet at my paternal Grandmother’s house in Brooklyn. We shared a lot of good times together as a family. My younger brother Doug was still a baby. We eventually moved from Union Ave. to Franklin Ave. on a dead end street where we stayed in the corner house. My cousins the Mann’s also lived on that street. The Moore’s had a lot of family that came to Mount Vernon. There were the Overton’s, Frank, Avilla and Linda; they came to the Projects in Mount Vernon. A lot of my family moved with us. Everybody had moved here. We moved from Union Ave. into the Projects and that seemed awesome, especially after living in the attic and in the basement. Times were good for our family, living in the Projects. My cousins started to move up here also. There was Bobby, he was real cool, and he used to hang with me all the time. Another real cool cousin Reggie, Milton too was cool. They also lived in our building. They were all from Plymouth as well. My cousins Craig, Clayton (who was a gymnast), Bobby and I were around the same age. My cousin Clayton, his father was my Grandmother’s brother and they were up here living in the Bronx. My Grandmother’s brother had four boys and a girl. One of my cousins died of AIDS. He was into the whole drug world and hanging out. He was a bad dude. I had another cousin who was out there and all that stuff was going on around me. I had a lot of family who were into that lifestyle. When you see the movie, American Gangster and people getting turned on to all that stuff, there were people just like that in my family who were out there. I had a lot of cousins who were out there on that wide road, which led to their self-destruction. However, my cousin Milton was a gymnast; my cousin Clayton took after him and Clayton eventually became part of the acrobatic team on the Ed Sullivan Show. Even though all these negative things were impacting our family, we would always go back home to North Carolina for