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The Beginning

The Game of Life

 

The Players…

On March 29, 1959, Easter Sunday at 4:15 am in Cumberland Hospital located in Brooklyn, N.Y. Darren Jay Salter was born to Deborah Odom and Cecil Salter. 

Deborah at the time was married and separated with a daughter (Karen age 10),

Cecil was also separated with two children (Cecily age 9 and Cecil Jr. age 4).

 

My parents separated from their children were torn between love and morality. This would play a major part in my development and outlook on family. I adapted a extended family concept, fueled by my father and mothers relationship with Marion and Marvin Lewis.

We lived in Brooklyn in a house owned by my Godmother, who lived on the first floor, The Lewis’s on the third floor and us on the second floor. This is where I first met my best friend and lifetime mentor the Lewis’s son Charles Derrick Lewis (Chuck), born 4 months before me.

It is my relationship with Chuck, that has been my remedy for a lifetime of sibbling loneliness.

The Hand We Are Dealt…

 

My Mother and Father divorced, remarried and moved to Newark NJ in 1961, we started a new chapter in the Salter Novel.

These were the days of Motown 45’s, card parties and getting to know my grandma’s. We lived this time with my father’s mother, Ms. Geneva Singleton

My grandmother was a church going woman, who was taking care of my bed ridden uncle Herbert Salter, My uncle had MS and a burnt eye suffered from a WWII U boat attack and boy was he a no nonsense type of guy

He was a Veteran, who loved to watch the stories on CBS; grandma washed him, fed and made his life bearable, until his death one Christmas eve.

My mother worked at Bamberger’s and bowled frequently in company leagues, tagging along I learned to bowl at age 5 years old.

My father worked 2 jobs, both located in NYC. He would get up at 4:30am every morning and get home close to 10:30pm 5 days a week.

(He did this for over 35 years) His work ethic was a quality that I learned to admire and hold as a lifetime metric of manhood.

During this time in Newark, 3 things happened that will forever serve as a foundation of my life.  I remember both of my sisters coming to live with us, in our 2nd floor apt, teenage girls and their little brother, I remember loving my sisters because mamma worked and papa worked, they were my light to the world.  Like any other teenage girls my sisters had boys on their mind.  My Grandmother lived on the 1st floor, she monitored the best she could, but they babysat and the 45’s turned all night. 

 

1st my older sister got pregnant she was 16 and had a boy, his name was Daniel.  Although my sister still in high school had a child she was always a reader and she graduated and then married and moved out. 

 

2nd my other sister too had a child at 16; her story wasn’t as American as apple pie. You see my sister came to live with us after her mother who drank more often than most, put a hole in her head, I don’t think that experience ever left her, she was always searching for the love of family.  Given the environment we had to live in, love was commodity that gave way to hard work and survival. 

 

3rd the night my sister came home, my father so tired and frustrated beat her down two flights of stairs, something he never forgave his self for.  You see my father, loved us all, I just don’t think with all that was going on, he knew how to show it, without losing a little bit of himself. My sister turned to the streets and the streets welcomed her, ushered by young men willing to be her guide.  While 1 impregnated her with a cute little baby girl and left her, another fed her heroin, life was never the same from that point on.

 

I was an uncle of two by the time I turned 7, I learned to give love while leaving innocence behind like a worn pair of shoes.

 

Let The Game Begin…