Damn I hate that I couldn't have been on the collection team for you. As it were, I did collections for my mother's music store while I was at Auburn. You would be surprised at the motherfuckers that would write a shitty check for $50 of sheet music being used in the middle or high school band.
I was a son of a bitch. You couldn't be nice.
I remember this woman out on the projects in Tuscaloosa. Hays Court. I wouldn't go there at night now to save your life, but I used to regularly patrol out there. Black trench coat, black boots, long hair slicked back in a ponytail. Locked and loaded because I almost always had at least a grand in collected money on me at any given time. Cash.
She'd come in like in August and rented a television set (32" big for the time) and paid the first week down on it. She only had a government check as source of income and company policy said minimum of a month, but Maurice let her go with a week. $17, I think, with the promise she'd come in next Friday and pay the rest of the month.
She did not. September came. Halloween passed. Then Thanksgiving. Still nothing. I made it my personal mission to get that back. I bribed neighbors to tell me when she got home. If I saw her on the road I'd try to follow her back to her place and catch the door open. I went mornings, afternoons, nights. The neighbors would give me a knowing look and say "She up in there..." But she'd hide behind the door.
Christmas Eve. After 6 pm. I parked two blocks over and walked through the hood. Her door was open. She was having a Christmas party. I knocked and a little kid let me in. Stood in her kitchen in my trench and ponytail until she walked by. She looked startled and said "Who you?" I told her I was there for the TV. She gets all apologetic and says she had been meaning to call, she was going to come up there Monday and straighten it all out, so I could just let them know. I told her nope, I didn't want her rent I wanted the TV. She said just wait a minute and she'd get me half of what she owed and then she'd come Monday with the rest. Nope. TV. Now. That elicited a "well fuck you if you think you can get it and get it out of here, just go on ahead." And I did.
As I was unplugging the thing, a little kid came up. Maybe four or five years old. Mad because he was supposed to watch the California Raisin Christmas. I didn't care.
The people I dealt with doing that shaped a lot of how I think and feel these days.
I will never ever forget Ethyl Lee telling her 16 year old daughter that she couldn't keep living with her in her project house unless she had another baby because they needed the extra check.
I also won't forget Black Bertha painting her feet green because she hoped that would convince me she had money coming and I'd let her slide for another week. Or Bertha offering me her 16/17 year old high yellow daughter (who was actually pretty damn hot) because she wanted her "broke in proper by a white man." And of course a break on her rent.
Nor will I forget an older married white woman who I actually sort of liked and respected before this, blowing my then-72 year old business partner in the back room of the store because she was $28 behind on a dining room table she was trying to pay off. And then blowing him every week thereafter instead of paying the $12.95 she owed.
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