*Jeralene Williams is Miss Geraldine Williams, a neighbor of Mama's who lived on the same road as Jerusalem Church. They were involved in a number of quilting bees.

Ahmose Zu-Bolton, Yusef Komunyakaa, and I remodeled a huge fish market on Piety Street  into a community arts center. Yusef and I built a stage and a bar. I bought a few of Mama’s quilts and hung them from the ceiling for visual and sound effect. To make the project work I even moved into the building so that the bills could be paid. We had a juke box and a pool table. Couches we found in alleys I had them restored. Unable to get a liquor license, Ahmose sold liquor illegally, which made Yusef nervous. Yusef eventually backed out of the arrangement and so Ahmose was unable to get cosigners for a grant to support the center further. It all folded. because of his excessive drinking. Then Ahmose, who first developed the idea of the center, became antagonistic toward me because I had gained power in the deal and he was unable to pay the $500 I gave him as a loan. He hired a band which I also paid out of my pocket. That money I also never recuperated. But I did not have a problem with that.

Ahmose became more and more belligerent. Eventually, I had to take the money out of his hide. In this matter, however, I was not the aggressor. But I have my limits. We began to duke it out. Every time I knocked him down he would pop right up and come for more. And I gave it to him. There was blood everywhere. I almost put his eye out from blows to the head. He was bold. But rather stupid from my point of view. But booze will make a person behave that way. Yet I gave him what he desired, a way out of paying his monetary debt.. I hate myself when I lose my temper in this manner. As a child, Daddy used to whip me terribly for my temper, my beating up on my cousin Norman.

The whole matter blew over and the law was not brought into it. His wife, a dramatic actor and a good one I am told, threatened to have me locked up. But she was just blowing off steam. On a later occasion, I visited Ahmose, who is an excellent but rather undeveloped poet, at his community center in the community of Marigny. We shook hands and behave as if nothing ever happened. I didn’t go there especially to see him. I went there with another New Orleans poet named Yictove, who published an excellent volume of spoken word poems, D.J. Soliloquy (1988).