Growing Up in The Hood

I spent my high school years in Paramount, California. Paramount is nestled among Lynwood, Compton, Downey & Long Beach. Like many lower income cities, it was known as The Hood to those of us who spent our childhoods there. It's also where I made some of my best friends. 

Growing up in Paramount, my school's lunch time entertainment could consist of anything from a football rally to watching the vatos drive their cars, tricked-out with metallic paint jobs and hydraulic systems, bounce up and down Downey Avenue as they blasted tunes from their trunks full of over-sized speakers. 

It was standard fare to see police helicopters overhead, shouting instructions from their loud-speakers either to residents or suspects. If it was at night, you got the added bonus of giant lights flashing across your neighborhood as the police located/followed their perps. Graffiti generously peppered our city. It was home to gangs like Dog Patch, Daughters of Samoa (DOS) and Sons of Samoa (SOS), all sporting their respective signs and "rags." Ours was a unique community full of almost every ethnicity. It was a community blind to skin color, on the one hand, while racial tensions existed on the other.

It was where family lives typically suffered from more-than-average dysfunction while the not-as-common, less dysfunctional families attracted the rest of us like ants to sugar. Those families, and their homes, were our safe-havens, our hang-outs. And, beautifully, the moms and dads in those homes embraced their kids' friends and made us feel like we were their own. 

It was where children saw too much, too often and knew from experience that life was harsh. It was where most of us grew up very fast. 

It was also where, in 1984, the Olympic Torch was carried down Alondra Blvd., where oranges and lemons dripped from their trees, and endlessly-blooming bougainvillea adorned the cinder block walls. In Paramount, low-paid teachers taught their hearts out, local store owners gave tasty freebies to the neighborhood kids and, mere minutes away, sandy beaches beckoned. Its immigrants worked hard and earned little just to send most of it back "home" to help support their families. And it was where kids, though sometimes harshly, learned the valuable lesson so lacking in today's society: life doesn't revolve around them. 

Shawn in the Request Line Boyz days

Back in my day, part of growing up in Paramount was hanging out at Jack-In-The-Box and Steve's Burgers. It was going to backyard parties with our favorite DJ. It was music. It was dancing. It was harmony and rhythm. It was where some of my deepest friendships were formed. Friendships that over the years, have transcended the title friend and become family. Growing up in Paramount was safety and security for my friends and me, not because our neighborhoods were safe, but because we had each other. 

Not much is expected from children of The Hood. Yet, there is so much good that has come from the very people whom others might consider the most unlikely people to succeed. Paramount and Paramount High School have birthed West Point grads, major league baseball and football players, community leaders, stellar teachers, highly decorated veterans, nurses and doctors, police officers... all people who give back to their community. 

One of our own

And perhaps most important of all, in an under-privileged, underdog community, Paramount has produced whole families who value marriage, children and education. We, the underdogs, have overcome our circumstances. 

My Paramount days were a lot of years ago. Some of us remain and some have moved away. When asked by out-of-staters, "So, where'd you go to high school?" those of us who've moved away answer, "Paramount High School," with a little chuckle because we know the question-askers, upon hearing our answer, have stars in their eyes as they associate our Paramount, our PHS, with the glitz and glamor of the famous Paramount Studios and think we were children of privilege. In a way they're right. We had something dear and precious in having each other, something that to this day makes us family, and you can't put a price tag on that.

Feb 2012

Cherished friends