The Board of Ed from a Brother’s Mind: Streetology:Elementary School

By C-Allah

"A brother's tale of his brother's real life that he lived
in the street! It is often said that the life that he led is not meant for the humble or meek. To all concern there's a
lesson to learn that the strong can rise from the weak!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462862238

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Copyright © 2012 by C-Allah.

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/23/2020

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Contents

The Board of Ed Elementary School

Sentence: A Complete Thought

Fort Greene Projects

The Chaplains

Son of a Drummer

King Edgar and Queen Isabella

The Stroll on the Strip

Barbara and JFK

The Great Society

Ten and Two

Busted!

The Higher the Top—The Longer the Drop

Rock Bottom

Graduation: The Final Exam

Magna Coombs Laude

The Board of Ed

Elementary School

This is a tale from memories and conversations with my brother, Edgar Coombs. It is not written to glamorize nor mesmerize but, as the title suggest, to educate and reflect on good times and mistakes, not just on his life and his style but on history and its effect on our life for a while.

We often walk in our own world as small or as large as it may be not knowing and sometimes not caring how it may play in the annals of history. We all have roles on the stage of life, not realizing sometimes who may be in the audience nor what effect our act has on them and they on others. Yet the Creator in His infinite wisdom has not placed one iota of life into existence without purpose.

In this tale, some names have been changed to protect the innocent as the saying goes. Some names remain the same because there is no shame and none meant to defame.

I fast and I pray that the truth has been represented as best as I can remember, and if any mistakes cause any harm to anyone, I sincerely apologize for no harm was ever intended. May the peace and blessings of the Most High be with all who do read this book and approve of the sincerity of its contents. To any who takes offense to its contents, I seek forgiveness from the Most High and asked that they be blessed with understanding.

Peace,

C-Allah

Chapter One

Sentence: A Complete Thought

Did you say I got a lot to learn . . . Well, don’t think I’m trying not to learn! Since this is the perfect spot to learn . . . teach me tonight!

—Song by Nancy Wilson.

May 6, mid-1960s, Supreme Court State of New York, 350 Adams Street, Brooklyn, New York.

Your Honor, I request that my client’s sentencing be postponed till next week to allow him to get his affairs in order, Attorney Pellsinger said.

Does the state have any objections? the judge asked looking at the assistant district attorney.

No objections, Your Honor! the ADA responded.

Motion granted! Sentencing postponed until May 13, next Friday! the judge stated striking his gavel.

Attorney Pellsinger turned to his client and whispered, That should give you enough time to get the rest of the money.

His client responded, Don’t worry about the money! You just make sure they stick to the deal: Probation, the street! Arlene already took the weight and is doing the time. I’ll get the dough! I just don’t want no bullshit! The client, Fast Eddie Coombs, wasn’t whispering when he said that.

Fast Eddie Coombs is my elder brother, Edgar Coombs, Edgar Coombs from Fort Greene, Eddie the Pimp! The Captain! The Rev! He’s known by many names in the street. To me he was, is, and will always be Big Ed! Fort Greene’s very own living legend!

That day stands out for me because it was my birthday. My girl and I had big plans. The first on the agenda was to play hooky and do our thing at one of Big Ed’s joints on Carlton Avenue off the corner of Lafayette Avenue. To our surprise, Ed was standing in front of the building when we got there.

Why you ain’t in school? Ed asked.

It’s my birthday, Ed! I responded.

So what that mean? School is closed? And what you over here for? Ed said, looking at me and my girl.

Come on, Ed! I’ll be getting out of high school soon! You know what time it is! I said trying to tell big bro that I was grown.

Yeah, right! Sorry to spoil your party, but you didn’t go to school so you’re coming with me for a lesson in the street! he said while looking up to the window and shouting, Sandy! Come on, let’s go!

So I wind up spending my birthday in court. It was a lesson in the life of the streets where pop quizzes and final exams are held before a judge. The marks you get follow you the rest of your life. Played hooky with my girl to have fun. Big Ed played truant officer and took me before the judge to learn a big lesson in life.

Big Ed was on the downslide of a real player’s life having been found guilty of a felony drug charge: felonious possession of dangerous drugs. Ed got caught up with two of his girls with some weight in weed. One of his girls (Arlene) took the weight and the other (Spliff) flipped and took the stand. Notice I said two of his girls, because Ed may have been on the downslide of playing, but he stayed up on pimping! Big Ed had girls! He was down, but he was five deep in working girls! No, they didn’t work in any office or restaurant or bar. They were the ladies of the night, and they worked the streets at night. As the saying goes: Pimping ain’t easy but somebody’s got to do it! And Big Ed pimped hard!

This case really had him down though! And the lawyers drained him dry! In 1966, it didn’t matter whether you had heroin, cocaine, or weed! Dope was dope! Drugs was drugs! Penal code 1751, felonious possession with intent to sell, was the charge! So Big Ed was in the big trouble when he took this fall! Yet, Big Ed, thinking big, thought he could pay his way out and stay on the streets. He certainly paid enough to stay in the street. After all, Arlene had sacrificed herself, and Ed paid a lot of money. He overpaid his jive lawyers.

When the case started, Ed would pick his lawyers up in a late model convertible Coupe de Ville Cadillac. On the day of the sentence, Ed was walking, and the lawyers had the car!

Still, Big Ed was glad to get another week to hustle to get the rest of the dough to stay in the street. Though Big Ed was pimping hard, all the dough was going to the lawyers to get this case out the way. So his drive was kind of low. Although he was pimping hard, he was pimping slow. He was giving the lawyers his money, but he sure didn’t trust them! And unfortunately that was all he could think about: the money and this case!

When Friday, May 13 came, Big Ed was in court expecting to be sentenced to the street on probation. Instead he got a terrible surprise.

The judge pronounced sentencing:

By the power invested in me by the state of New York, I hereby sentence you to three and a half years to seven years in Ossining State Penitentiary! Bailiff, remand the prisoner!

What!? Three and half years in where? Did he say Sing Sing? What the fuck is going on here!? What the fuck happened!? Ed exclaimed looking at the lawyers. You, dirty motherfuckers! Took all my money. My car . . . you . . . , Ed shouted as the bailiffs was dragging him away.

That hit everybody hard! It was like a death sentence. It wasn’t a whole lot of time but when you’re expecting no time and you paid to get no time, . . . it was like forever! I was in shock. My brother was going to Sing Sing for seven years. All I really knew about prison was what I saw on TV in the James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart movies. He was twenty-six. He would be an old man of thirty-three when he got out. As a teen, that’s how it seemed to me back then.

Our father, Edgar Coombs Sr., was there for the sentencing too. He was a musician by profession, and Ed was his namesake. Pops had pawned some of his instruments to help Ed pay the rest of the money to the lawyers, thinking it would keep him in the street. He was teary eyed and confused as he asked, What happened? I thought he would get probation. I thought they promised him that!? Ed had been busted before and did a year in Hart’s Island but Sing Sing? You’re talking big-time prison. No one in our family had been sent there before.

I didn’t know what to say. Stunned, I looked around at everyone else’s reaction to the judges’ shocking decree. All of Ed’s girls were crying. Little Jimmy the Cricket, a dark-skinned, frail, dope-fiend girl not much to look at but a money getting booster, she cried like she had lost her baby. She paid Ed good money, and Ed gave her a sense of importance. Without him, she would succumb to her real pimp—dope. What was she going to do now? Sandy cried quietly to herself. She knew she had to stay strong and keep her composure to keep the game up until Ed got back on the street. Sugar gone and Ed being sent to prison even if she couldn’t keep his crew together, she had to keep getting money.

Sandy was all class. She was built like a brick house with an hourglass shape with most of the sand still in the top. Pudding came over to me crying and threw her arms around me, squeezing me real tight as she cried uncontrollably. I was just helpless. These were streetwalking ladies of the night. How do you comfort them? I needed comfort myself. It wasn’t a whole lot of time, but he wasn’t supposed to get any. We wasn’t prepared to see them taking Ed through the doors and send him up north. We expected him to walk out the court with us.

We were all messed up that day! Ed was taken through the door of the courtroom that led to the cages in the back. The lawyers eased out the courtroom through the backdoors, and we were left there in a pool of tears. They didn’t try to console or reassure or even apologize for the way things went down. It was as if they knew Ed was going to be sent away, and I was sure they did. They were just trying to get the money and didn’t really care what happened to Ed. Friday, the thirteenth, really proved unlucky for Big Ed.

Ed’s story didn’t start there in the courtroom nor did it end. It began way before that, not in a court room but in the projects. The projects with a history of it’s own, Fort Greene Projects in the head of downtown Brooklyn, the Head of Medina in the shadows of the bridges. This is not just Ed’s tale of the fort but a tale of a time, a time of change, a time of awakening, enlightenment, a time when the world was asking where is God. Come on and straighten out the affairs of man ’cause he sure got it all fucked up! Yet it was a time when the streets had everything—money, fun, gambling, women, excitement, trouble, sorrow, and, most of all, knowledge. You could learn a lot in the streets. You just had to be careful what you learned and how you valued it. There were teachers, instructors, professors, scholars, scientist, you name it, and they were hanging in the streets in the darkness of the night. To graduate in the streets from the night school of life, you had to be a student enrolled in the science of everything in life!

Fort Greene Projects

The Fort

It was 1941 when Edgar Coombs Sr. and his wife Rose moved their young family of four into Fort Greene Projects. Their two sons, Earl and Edgar, were toddlers, smart and inquisitive. The family was getting a fresh start in a federal housing development. It was wartime, and it was a sense of security and protection to live in a development called the Fort. The Brooklyn Navy Yard was a punched ball away. You could see the ships from the window, showing the military strength of USA.

Fort Greene was fresh, nice, and clean. My mother often talked about how when they moved in there was only three other families in the whole building, 9 Monument Walk apartment 4B. There was eighty-eight apartments in the building. Imagine only four apartments occupied. So the building as well as the development was quite empty. In fact, it was not even part of New York City Housing Authority then. It was federally owned and built for the naval personnel and civilians employed by the Brooklyn Navy Yard located along Flushing Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, a block to the north of the Fort. Fort Greene Park, America’s first park established by George Washington after the revolutionary war was on the southern border elevated the confident, secure, and proud residents of the Fort.

The other three families that lived in the building were white. One family had two boys about the size of Earl and Edgar, perhaps a year or two older. They were all playing in the hallway on the fourth floor, throwing a ball back and forth. The ball went out the window. The younger boy said he would get it, and he started heading down the stairs. Earl followed behind him while Edgar just watched. The older boy, Little Bobby, climbed up to the open window and jumped out after the ball, shouting, I’ll get it! He got it! An early death. The first casualty of Fort Greene. My mother said immediately after they put these bars that were chest high to an adult to prevent more little Bobbys. Imagine Fort Greene Projects in the 1940s—wartime and post wartime! It must have been something. Hitler and the Germans, and the Japanese had the nerve to bomb Pearl Harbor causing the United States to not only to retaliate, but they gathered up and locked up Japanese and other people from Asia in concentration camps.

The music wasn’t hip-hop. It was bebop led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, and a young Miles Davis.

These young musicians began experimenting with more complicated chord patterns and melodic ideas in a combo setting. This group included Dizzy on trumpet, Charlie on alto sax, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk along with drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach. A dream team of jazz musicians, a hall of fame in music! The style they developed became known as bebop or bop. It was similar in style as the hip-hop of today without the lyrics. It expressed the feelings of the hard-core soul of the ghetto and underprivileged. It was like saying it’s rough down here but we’re gonna enjoy ourselves while trying to survive. Through instruments, it was shouting the same message that today’s rap does although not as blunt. (No pun intended.)

Many bop musicians had an exceptional technique. They played long, dazzling phrases with many notes, difficult intervals, unexpected breaks, and unusual turns in melodic direction. On slower tunes, they displayed a keen ear for subtle changes of harmony. Like hip-hop, only extremely skilled musicians were able to play bebop well and only a few select listeners at first appreciated it because they could relate to it.

Our father had a combo of his own and played with quite a few of these popular musicians. Our house was filled with the sound of bebop, jazz, rock and roll, and rhythm.

You cannot even speak of jazz or music, for that matter, of that era without mentioning the First Lady, not the wife of the President nor Diana Ross who played her in the movie but Lady Day, Billie Holiday—the most moving jazz singer of her day. She’s been described as a blues singer, but she’s been often called an interpreter of popular songs. Her story’s been told a thousand times over, but it’s never enough. Her voices filled the rooms of 9 Monument Walk

Charlie Parker and Miles Davis

007.jpg

Bebop revolutionized jazz in the 1940s. Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, left, was a leader in the movement. He teamed with trumpeter Miles Davis, right, in an important bebop combo.

as well as 8 Monument Walk from the radio or the old hi-fi, playing one of those glass-like seventy 78 rpm records. I thought that she favored our mother, just not as pretty as Moms. I guess that’s why I liked her so much. I came at the very end of the 1940s, yet it feels as if I was there because of the sound and events that filled the atmosphere of our home. What a time it must have been!

In the early 1940s, there was basketball, but it wasn’t the NBA. It surely didn’t have the interest of the two other major sports baseball and football. No big TV contracts ’cause there were very few TVs in households. But professional basketball was being played. It was called the BAA, and it was all white. There wasn’t a lot flair nor entertainment to the game. They didn’t shoot jump shots until Joe Fulks playing for the Philadelphia Warriors popularized it in the late 1940s. Basketball without a jump shot? The Harlem Globetrotters were jump shooting, hooking shots, and kicking the ball through the hoop long before that. Joe Louis was the heavyweight champion for the whole decade! And Jackie Robinson was getting ready to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

In 1944, Fort Greene became part of New York City Housing Authority. It was predominately white then and into the 1950s. Yet we all lived and grew together. The ethnic makeup changed gradually to become predominantly non-white. Even PS 67, sitting in the heart of Fort Greene, the historical colored school number one, was also predominately white. Being a child in Fort Greene had to be something! Being a colored child of the 1940s in the Fort must have been something else!

Edgar Coombs was something else! There’s got to be some place for him in the Guinness Book of Records or just some book of unusual things. Our mother would always get a good laugh when she recalled how little Edgar was the only child in the history of child rescue that had to be rescued by the same fire department twice in the same day within hours of each rescue. It happened first at the corner of Navy Street and Park Avenue. I’m sure every little boy, like a curious cat, has had the urge to stick his head through the iron bars of a fence, whether to see if he could squeeze his body through or just to see if his head would get stuck. Some boys squeezed through. Ed got stuck. There he was, his head stuck in the bars, screaming and crying. Mommy tried to pull him out but she couldn’t, and she began to panic.

The fence surrounds Commodore Barry Park, known in the community as City Park. It sits right across the street from the projects along Park Avenue. As my mother screamed, Edgar! What are you trying to do! Why did you stick your big head in between them bars! A crowd began to gather and tried to help her but to no avail. Somebody called the fire department, and they rushed to the rescue. They came with some pre-Jaws of Life tools and bent the bars apart freeing Big Ed’s big head. He was scratched up and bleeding, so they rushed him to Brooklyn Hospital not far from the scene of the incident.

After being treated for minor scratches and cuts, Ed was released. As he left the hospital, he grabbed his bike that my mother had carried along with them and peddled down the hill leading from the hospital. He sped down the hill and headed straight toward the iron-gated exit. Attempting to stop suddenly, the bike flipped over sending Ed flying head first right into the gate. His head got stuck