Book Description

Born on a snowy night in January 1938, with a drunken father who refused to take his pregnant wife to the hospital, Kenny began his existence in Scotts Addition, a poverty stricken section of intercity Richmond, Virginia. Two years later, his father leaves a sick Kenny with a temperature hovering over one hundred degrees to go hear Glenn Miller play in Philadelphia. While his father is away, only the intervention of a Negro midwife saves the two year olds life. In 1941, Kennys father again leaves, divorcing his mother and leaving her to raise Kenny and his older brother Keith on eighty dollars a month. A loving mother teaches the young Kenny proper moral values and the importance of relationships, but much of his learning must come from the streets, where a boy must fight to survive. Humorously told in personal stories and anecdotes, Kenny gradually develops from an undernourished kid to a teenage product of the rock and roll fifties. On the way, he discovers the meaning of friendship, love and relationships with others. Living with a stern grandfather, Kenny quickly adopts an aversion to garden spiders and shaving straps. Pride and prejudice reign even in the poor community of Scotts Addition as Kenny learns even in church, where Gods love is proclaimed from the pulpit, that prejudice is alive and well. He comes face to face with prejudice when, in his first year of junior high school, the mother of a friend from an exclusive neighborhood refuses to let her son play with Kenny because of where he lives. Kenny and his friends go on escapades searching for fun and excitement. They take an all night camping trip on the James River and traipse through a railroad yard of moving trains. Kenny learns about girls from Della Mays first kiss to his placing an engagement ring on the hand of Kay, his future wife. He experiences all the excitements and depressions of a growing teen in between. At fourteen, he barely survives his first seduction by climbing out of a three-story window. When all is said and done, it is the people of Scotts Addition that have given Kenny the tools to face the world outside. Scotts Addition is a fun look at the forties and fifties and a tribute to the spirit and fortitude of an individual, proving that you can grow up poor and still be enriched.