“My name’s Grace. I live in the senior center up on Fillmore. I’m 72 years old. I’ve lived here since 1972 and I stayed until 1976 when I moved to Richmond because I didn’t want to raise my kids in the projects, but that was before there were all the drugs and foolishness going on out there. Me…I just liked to work, go to church, and raise my kids but a lot of people out there were into that other stuff.”
"How many kids do you have?”
“6, I raised 5 of them. 1 was kidnapped when he was 6 months old. His father took him and told him a bunch of lies. He told him that he was found on a doorstep. He didn’t find out about me till he was 23 years old. Then he came out and met me at the train station. I remember he said he was going to be wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt, but then it was too cold and everyone had jackets on. But I just went on up to the person I thought looked like my kin and asked, "Are you wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt?” and he gave me a big hug and said, “You’re my mama!”
“That’s a great story.”
“That’s San Francisco, when I was back in Lufkin, Texas, that’s where I’m from, I told people I wanted to go to San Francisco. All that was there for me in Texas was picking cotton, the KKK and people telling me I wasn’t shit. They told me if I tried to leave I’d end up dead on the street. But you know what I told them?”
“What?”
“Dead is dead, but before I die I’m going to see San Francisco!”