Standing in the Shadows of Street Legends

By Vernon Lucas

I have heard it said that we all shall pay for the sins of the father. Someone once told me that when the next generation has it rough, its because they are reaping what the generation before them has sowed. This is what Creole people would call Blood Magic in the Basement (or so Ive been told).
I am Vernon Lucas II and my father was a kingpin in the heroin drug trade. I cant say that my adult life has been easy, but at least as a child I never really wanted for anything. Ive been told that since my family has helped to poison many people in America with illegal drugs, that I was cursed to suffer in my adult life for their sins. I almost believed that for a time. I felt very restless in my adult life and very few goals that I set for myself ever worked out for me. I felt ashamed and even embarrassed by my family, until I began to research the reasons why they did what they did in the first place.
My father and his brothers came from very humble beginnings. His mother, my Grandmother was a field hand/housewife and her husband, my Grandfather was a share cropper as well as a bootlegger. They lived, loved and struggled in the segregated south of the early 1900s. There have been rumors about how mean my Grandfather was, but by the time I had to live with him he was much kinder and gentler.
My Fathers brother, Frank Lucas was at least 20 years older than he was, so it was natural for him to look up to my Uncle Frank as not only an older brother but also as somewhat of a Father figure.
Frank left home at a very early age to make his own way in life and turned to a life of crime out of necessity. He became one of the best at what he did. It was just a matter of time before my father eventually followed in his footsteps.
I am by no means condoning what they did in the 60s & 70s I just want to let it be known that they were not Harvard Educated, to say the least and they felt that they didnt have much choice in what they did. To follow their American dream, they sold narcotics and cut out the middle man in doing so. This allowed them to sell it very pure and inexpensive. Needless to say, it pissed a lot of people off.
Once they made their fortune, they invested within their community, gave an economic boost to many minorities across America, as well as paying back taxes and saving the homes of certain celebrities. These were only some of the positive things that they accomplished.
The real story is that of the Country Boys. Even though there wouldnt be any Country Boys without the help of my Uncle Frank. The Country Boys and Frank Lucas were 2 completely separate entities. It took the help of the Country boys to expand Frank Lucas empire and even though it started out with number running and narcotics, it eventually became so much more. My father, Vernon (Shorty) Lucas Sr. helped run the Country Boys and with the help of his brothers he was able to pull his family and everyone he knew out of obscurity and poverty.
Frank wasnt very proud of what he felt he had to do to make a living so he lied to his mother and told her that he was a business man. When he brought her up north from North Carolina he Lived in New York and set his Parents and most of his siblings up in Northern New Jersey.
This autobiographical tale gives firsthand insight on what it was actually like growing up in such a household. I have decided to share at least the first 30 years of my life to show exactly what I personally went through as the son of an American Gangster. It has been an emotional roller coaster for me and I cannot determine which came first; the chicken or the egg. Meaning: Was my lifes emotional instability inherited, or was it caused by the way I had to live? You be the judge.
I am hoping this autobiography serves some as a manual as well as entertainment through self education.
So in synopsis, what Im trying to convey is that the Lucas family is so much more than this gangster image

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462824908

Book preview

STANDING IN THE

SHADOWS OF

STREET LEGENDS

Vernon Lucas

Copyright © 2010 by Vernon Lucas.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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66148

Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

Dedicated to Mahalee and Shorty Lucas

The Things Better Left Unsaid Should Sometimes Be Shouted in the Course of Educating Our Youth.

FOREWORD

I’ve decided to publish this book to share some of the extraordinary experiences that I have gone through in life. I found that writing helped me to express myself and get a lot of things off my chest that would otherwise fester inside of me, until it gave me the feeling of wanting to explode. This memoir helped me sit back and take a long look at my life and not only see some of the mistakes that I’ve made, but it also reminded me of all of my various accomplishments.

With each chapter, I could sit back and look at these accomplishments and say to myself that through it all, I’ve done well. It took quite a while for me to get up the nerve to publish this book, because I felt as if I’d be exposing myself to the world for criticism as well as rejection. It’s a good thing that the need to want to use this as a tool to help others overcame that feeling. I am confident that others will be able to relate to some of the experiences that I have had.

Although parts of my life may seem pretty remarkable, I assure you that they are relatable for most people. I truly believe that most of the mistakes that I’ve made and heartaches that I have been through could have been avoided, if I had picked up a book like this one. Unfortunately, I’ve never found anything similar. It is my sincere thought that in my youth, the path that was chosen for me was the right one. I think that most young people suffer from a feeling of wanting to belong and also succumb to peer pressure from time to time. I hope that by exposing my experiences, other young people may draw lessons from it and see that they are truly not alone. Even though I have gone through more life-changing situations than the average person, I still believe that there is a common thread that I share with most.

I will also ask that you keep in mind that this is my first attempt at writing and publishing and I did not use a ghost writer to help me prepare this. So every thought, idea, typo and creative mistake is my own. Done by my own hand.

I was diagnosed with an emotional illness at a young age and it has taken me many years to overcome. While going through all of the trials and tribulations that befell me, the most noticeable thing was the fact that others had also gone through similar life-changing events. The only difference was that a lot of these adolescents self-medicated to cope with some of the issues that they were having. I also noticed that there was a distinct difference between how people of color dealt with their issues as opposed to the way most white families handled similar situations.

Case in point: If a black parent found that their child was acting out in school, a common response would be, All he needs is a good ass-whooping and he’ll straighten up. I had the benefit of being raised in a predominately white neighborhood and noticed that most white families were not handling their children this way. If their child acted out in school, or did something out of the norm, their first repose was to talk to that child and then seek professional help. It seemed that most black parents were too proud to even admit that there was anything wrong with their child.

There is a stigma that goes with being mentally ill that we as a people have yet to overcome. We tend to be embarrassed by it and we are the first to say, My child isn’t crazy!!! Well, being crazy has nothing to do with it. Just because a child or adolescent wants to be understood does not mean that they are crazy. Most of the time, they just need someone to talk to that they can relate with. Therapy has come a long way since the early and mid-1980s and things have gotten a lot better. Back in the early and mid-1980s, most doctors and therapists would medicate their patients first and then try and figure out why the patient was depressed or acting out. They would put people in nice and neat categories giving names to everything that seemed out of the norm—names like, hypoactive, ADD, manic-depressive, etc., etc.

The majority of these people did not need medication, but I will admit that sometimes they did. I still believe that seeing a doctor, counselor, therapist, or even your pastor is much better than ignoring these ailments and falling into a destructive pattern. Destructive patterns can sometimes mean hanging with the wrong crowd and/or even self-medicating. Some young people would self-medicate by drinking or getting high. I found this to be surprising at first, yet also very common.

What was more shocking was the fact that most parents would tend to look the other way. They themselves would be in a state of denial. I call it the Not my child syndrome. Most parents would lie to themselves about the fact that their children were running the streets drinking, smoking, and/or popping pills and becoming genuine menaces to society. I thank God everyday that my parents saw beyond this and sought help for me.

Based on a very true story.

CHAPTER I

I once heard it said that the right word in the right season can produce miracles. As a youth, I was fortunate enough to be given the right word in the right season. Still scared straight, I thank my family and all the street legends and dons that helped me along with an education that I couldn’t possibly acquire anywhere else.

Coming home from military academy in Huntington Long Island, all I wanted to do was fit in. I thought to myself that I was much cooler than the rest of the kids my age and that I could handle anything.

At ten-years old in the fifth grade, I had already been to places that kids my age only dreamt about. Yes, I was about to come home to The suburbs of New Jersey, and not only would I fit in, but with all I’ve gone through in my ten-year lifetime, I was going to take this small town by storm.

My grandmother Julia Mahalee Lucas ran a powerful family with an iron switch, and what Grandma said always went without question from any of us grandkids. Being the absolute favorite, I was raised without fear and thought that I could do no wrong.

I wanted to be in the military academy, because I felt that it was the right thing to do. After all, my father had already been incarcerated and now they would take away my mother too. The only one I had left was Grandma Mahalee.

I was cool all right; I had always been a part of the in-crowd. Even in the projects, in the beginning, everyone knew my name Coco!!!!

That’s right, Coco, they shouted it from the rooftops of just about every building in the projects of Newark, New Jersey. (Most of the time they shouted, somebody whip that bad little boy’s ass!!! He’s throwing rocks off the roof again with those other bad ass little boys!!!) I was a prince of Prince Street, born in all the upheaval that the Newark riots produced in 1968.

You see, I am the son of an original American gangster, a kingpin, so to speak. I am a native son—the son of a Country Boy. This beautiful country, America and for what it’s worth this is my story . . .

My earliest memories of living in the projects of Newark, NJ were when I was about four or five years old. I was pretty sheltered then and didn’t even know it. I got all the attention as a only child until I got a little baby sister that took up most of my parents’ time. That was cool with me, because it gave me more free time to explore and do my own thing. I can remember being told that at age four or five, I walked off and disappeared. My mother had a fit and looked for me everywhere. When she finally found me, I was about three blocks away at the local fire station, playing with the fire trucks. I guess I was just drawn to the firefighters were really cool. They let me play inside the trucks and wear the fire hats. Back then, even our neighborhood in the projects was a close-knit community. They all looked out for each other (which is probably why no one snatched my little as up). Sometimes, that wasn’t a good thing when you were a kid growing up, because your parents knew just about every transgression you made before you even got home (with or without a telephone). The neighborhood grapevine was no joke back then. Sometimes, you would get a spanking from people you barely knew if you were caught misbehaving. There were times when some folks would even bring you home to let your parents know in person exactly what you did. That was worse, because, then you would get embarrassed in front of company as you got scolded.

Back then, my baby sister worshiped the ground I walked on. She did anything I told her and I made sure she was protected at all times (at least I tried). Come to think of it, most of my cousins that were around my age pretty much did whatever I told them. I can recall being a kid and organizing all my cousins and my sister in whatever games that we played. I guess there’s really some truth in the saying that true leaders are born, not made.

In 1972, all the older kids in the projects went to karate school and Bruce Lee was the latest rage. My uncle Jose (we called him Uncle Bud for short) was a martial arts master. Because he was the only boy on my mother’s side of the family and grew up with all sisters, he studied martial arts and got involved with the high-school band.

As a kid, his parents never had the money to send him to a traditional school for karate, so he made up his own style of project—street fighting. When word of this got back to some guy who was some sort of a black belt at a regular karate school, he challenged my uncle Bud to a sparring match in the park. My uncle whooped his ass. I guess no one ever told that black belt that project karate was a bit more resourceful than school-taught karate. After that my uncle gained the respect of a lot of people and he would always try and teach me moves, even at four years old.

Since I didn’t have any brothers, I would always try these new moves on my cousins. Back then, I didn’t have any cousins on my mother’s side of the family, so most of the kids I played with were on my father’s side. I used to try and keep up with the older kids and some of my older cousins would all try Bruce Lee moves on each other. Everyone wanted to be just like Black Belt Jones, Jim Kelly, or Bruce Lee.

We always thought that guns were for cowards and that if you really wanted to gain any respect you had to knuckle up. My favorite TV show at the time was the Green Hornet and we all loved Kato; he was the Green Hornet’s Chinese chauffer. The show was a spin-off from the Batman and Robin TV show and everyone knew that Master Bruce Lee was Kato and he was the greatest. While all the other heroes on TV fought so unrealistically, Kato fought with all the skill and expertise of a project martial arts fighter. It was true; everybody did love kung fu fighting back then.

My mom wanted to channel my reckless energy, so she finally agreed to enroll me in a real live karate school, when I was about five years old. After about a year of formal martial arts training, I excelled but it didn’t stop me from always trying to take it to the next level. I would add what we later called ghetto gymnastics to all my moves. My friends and I would practice back flips of any and everything that we could find. If we ever found an old discarded mattress, we got even more daring.

Uncle Bud became so busy with his school band and the music that they were making that he didn’t have the time to train me anymore. His hard work and dedication paid off, because he and all the guys in his band went professional. The group was initially called the Soul Knights and they played their own instruments just like Earth, Wind, and Fire. I remember being told that they had real talent and wanted to make an album and that their current manager wasn’t able to get them a record deal. This is when my uncle Jose asked my mom if she could help. He knew that she had a really good head for business. My mom, being the eldest of her siblings, helped to raise her younger sisters as well as my uncle Bud.

By the early 1970s, my parents made enough money for my mom to put college on hold once again and choose her own profession. At first, she started small, with a hotdog truck. She eventually moved on to Laundromats, day care centers, bars, pool halls, etc. She had a knack for business management, and ultimately she chose to manage the soul group of which her brother was a part of as well. The group auditioned for her in the early 1970s and she really liked what she heard. Their current manager either wanted them to stay local or wasn’t able to get them a record deal, so my mom took them to California to be produced by Quincy Jones. The group changed their name from The Soul Knights to simply The Nights once my mom officially took over managing their career. It was so very exciting and it happened so fast that even my head spun. Quincy never produced the album, because the band was tired of waiting. While Mr. Jones was busy on another project, he recommended another producer, Mr. H. B. Barnum, and the rest was history. H.B was/is a producer and a musical director. Today he works mostly with the Queen of Soul; Ms. Aretha Franklin.

My father asked H. B. Barnum what could be done to make the group’s album happen immediately. Mr. Barnum told my father that he would have to pretty much own his own record label and produce the records for himself. Needless to say, the Nights were talented enough to be an overnight sensation. Not only did my father front all the money for the album, he paid for the record label as well. The first album they produced was dedicated to my mother and they called it Country Girl. It was released under Little Star Records out in California in about 1974. My mother’s brother was a percussionist as well as one of the lead singers in this group. So as a kid, I got to tour with them sometimes on the Budweiser Super fest with the late great Lou Rawls. Their label, Little Star Records, had been a subsidiary of ABC records, which eventually turned into MCA records. MCA records eventually got bought out by Universal Music Group, which in turn now owns Def Jam records and is also part of Universal Movie Studios. Universal Movie Studios would eventually brought part of my family’s story to the big screen in a movie called American Gangster (based on the true story of my father’s elder brother Frank Lucas). Talk about a thirty-year full circle!!! Life is truly universal.

As a teenager, I would reflect on what my parents did with the music industry in the early 1970s and I couldn’t help, but to think that with enough money anything is possible. Whether you have true talent or not, money is power. As an adult, one of the last things my grandmother taught me was that money is not as powerful as most people would tend to believe. That woman never went senile and got wiser as she got older.

My father was always working and traveling on various business trips, so I spent a lot of time either with my mom or with my father’s parents. My grandmother would babysit for all of her grandchildren. She and my grandfather lived in one of the newest high-rise apartments in Newark. It was the prettiest high-rise that Newark had to offer at the time. What made it stand out was that it was a white building among many brown and concrete structures. It was called Hill Manner and that’s just what it was, a Manner among projects.

I would go from preschool and even first grade straight to my grandparent’s house to wait for my parents to come and pick me up.

All my uncles would drop their kids off at grandma’s house. My cousin Lee and his brother Troy lived there for some reason, but every time we would all get together at grandma’s, we would have so much fun.

Grandma’s apartment had wall-to-wall carpet all over, but our apartment didn’t. Whenever I was home, I took full advantage of this by practicing my kung fu slide with every chance I got. The floors in the projects were always smooth and easy to slide on.

I vividly remember my mom always telling me to stop sliding around on the floor. I wouldn’t listen, so one evening while sliding through the hall with my socks on, I couldn’t stop. I watched as the glass coffee table in the living room closed in on me. By the time I gained semi-consciousness, I was in the backseat of a Cadillac, with my head on Grandma’s lap while she helped to stop the blood, as they frantically rushed me to the nearest hospital. I forgot how many stitches I received that night, but I did learn a valuable lesson . . . . watch out for furniture, while sliding around in my socks.

In 1974 or 1975 when I was about six years old, we moved from the inner city of Newark, New Jersey, to the suburbs of Bergen county, New Jersey. Even though geographically