During the drug era, late 1970's and during the 80's, selling drugs was the illegal norm.  In every state, drug houses was going up.  Drug Lords would travel from their home state, to rent houses to sell illegal drugs out of in other states.  

After a trip from Chicago, as I was living in Dallas, Texas, the devil approached me with a proposition.  It is always a so call friend and/or associates that have your life tied up in a bunch of bullshit, that   Yeah!  Blame it on a friend.  When I think of the word "friends."  I think about how Jesus' so called friends did him.  Nothing's changed.  Anyhow, Ms. Mary Smith, a so called acquaintance of mines, met a man, we call "Mr. Bradley, from Amiarilla, Texas. He was married, but estranged from his wife, I later learned.  Ladies be ware, just because he looks like a man, looks can be and are deceiving.  However, when I met this man, I never thought to think, on what Ms. Mary told him about me, he was so good looking until, I didn't ask,what he was seaching for.  As time went on, we got close and the closer we got the more  crack I smoked!   On a drug selling journey, and so very full of energy, I remember our very first trip was to Witchta Fall, Texas.  He rented a hotel room.  Yet, it was more like I was the man and he was more like the woman, because I went out and sold the product, while he stayed in the hotel room, what I thought he was doing... RELAXING.   I later learned that every town we, he and I and the driver went, his supposed to be estrange wife had a hotel room somewhere on the premises as well. 

It was like I was having a mid-life crisis.  My job had become boring.  Well, it was always boring, but I could go there and work all day without any problems.  But when I met Mr. Bradley, I didn't need to work anymore, because somehow I felt in my heart, he was the drug man, and I was his woman,and we can make it happened with "dirty money."  Wow!  How foolish I was.  While in I was out of the hotel room in Witchita Falls, Texas, I phoned back, no answer.  I thought well, maybe he's in the shower.  So I hung up, and a few minutes later I called back, still no answer.  Now, I am wondering, where could he be and what could he be doing?  When I arrived back, he was in the room. Apparently and according to I know realize was a lie, he was downstari getting something to eat.  When he was in another room with his suppose to be estranged wife.  Whom he claimed had bankrucpted him and was causing him to loose his construction business in Amiralla, Texas.  

After a while I thought Mr. Bradley and I was doing okay. I later learned he ws telling me sweet nothings.   He'd introduced me to his son Curtis, who would visit and bring the goods sometimes for the market.  Once Curtis drove a 1957 Red and White Chevrolet, antique, and I kept it out all night, getting back at Mr. Bradley, for his deception.

When I met Mr. Bradley, I had a full time job, working for the Department of Defense, DOD, just up the street from where I lived on Loop 12.  The club, just off Loop 12, Mr. Bradley met Ms. Mary is called the "Cliff Club."  What  a swinging good old time I would have at this club.  The 1980's to me was like the roaring 20's or during the Harlem Renisseance, a New Birth of something.  The Drug scenes, Oliver North, President Regean and the Iran-Contra was a highly publized political era, because it was all about drugs, and I was a part of the game.  Most of America was part of this drug era.  Where powder and crack cocaine was widely used as a high potent and addictive drug, that killed millions of people during the Iran-Contra.   At any rate, after meeting Mr. Bradely, I"d already been dipping and dangling in smoking "crack laced with marijana" which is highly addictive, with a guy named Randy.  Infact Randy, is whom we would sometime cop from.  The drug habit got so bad, until I was sitting at home on the floor, with a shot gun by side selling this stuff out of my apartment.  This is how sick I was.  Yet, Mr. Bradley, had become my supplier, and I had become addictive to the point I didn't feel I had to work anymore.  I call this "planned behavior."  I am sure there is a more professional name for it....Maybe a psycho-therapist's name.  I  don't know!  Yet, I thought this man loved me.  I was only in my late 30's.  But had begun messing up my life!    Mr. Bradley came with a duly truck.  It had two tires in the front and four tires in the back, two on each side.  The truck was so very nice and cozy, a lot difference from that little 'o Volkswagon GTI, I was driving... So I got a kick out of driving that big truck.  Once I told him I wanted to drive it to Mississippi.  He said to me, "that truck can't be seen going up and down the Interstate highway by his estrange wife."  So I never bothered to ask to do that again.  Never did it seem to be a problem for me to drive it around Dallas.  What a life!  As I think back on some of the most not so wise decisions I made to put myself in  harms way, I had no sense of direction.  It's true !  How come I was not conscious of what danger I could and did bring on myself.  

Ms. Mary had already told this man about me and the drugs, how I ran them and sold them.  Too much to tell someone, if you want to keep it a secret. Some how during my drug addiction, I managed to not tell anyone when I was going to pick up.  I guess this is why when I went to prison, I went to prison for myself.  For the drugs I had for my own sales, and not anybody else.  Mr. Bradley soon grew jealous of me and my friends, and wanted me to stop being an asset for other drug kingspin, and sell  and help myself.  It made sense to me.  So most of my male friends, a few I was intimate with, was so very jealous of Mr. B and my relationship, because now another man had moved in and now Joe Ann is head of heels in LOVE!  It surely seemed that way for a while.  

When Mr. B saw what I could do and how addicted  I was to crack, to keep up my habit,  any proposition made when it came to selling a quantity of drugs, besides selling my body,  I was the lady to get it done.  AFter all I was well known in Dallas, on the drug scenes, mostly to the West Indians.  What a TRIP!  Thank you Lord for saving my life as many times as you have Jehovah.  I thank you over and over, more and morer. 

The whole while I was smoking the crack, I could sense something was not right with my relationship with Mr. B.  He'd gotten a car dealer's licenses and had begun selling vehicles off a lot, he said he was renting.  Renting?  Where did you get the money from to have a car lot filled with car, suv's and trucks.   This whole situation made me think and not lightly.  Even though I was smoking crack, it was like shifted my brain to a mode where I could tell Mr. B. what he was doing and what he was about to do.  This made him very uncomfortable, me too.  

Once I did a drug run for some West Indians.  I drove all the way from Dallas, Texas with one to make a pick up of cocaine.  infact he introduced me to popeye's chicken on Interstate Highway 20, leaving out of Shrevport, Lousiana.  What was I doing to myself.  I had no conscious, and never thought of the consequences behind disobeying the law.  This is what a drug mind does, some have a conscious and some have no conscious.  They just be enjoying the HIGH!  The I drove with to Miami, told me before I left the hotel room to me to fill up the car at the last island on 75 or 95 North up through Pensocola.  I heard him say this to me, but I didn't listen.  As I was driving on I-75 North, it was getting darker and darker, and the gas tank in the rental car was going down lower and lower, until it was on empty.  So I drove into this rest area, called the police, told them I was pregnant, and was about to run out of gasoline, and asked them to bring me some. When the arrived with the gas, they could see I was pregnant.  Yet, we'd tied two kelloughs of mixed cocaine around my waist.  One of the highway patrolman asked me, "where are you headed?"  I told   him I was headed to Miami.  When in actuality, I was headed back home to Dallas, with two Kelloughs of Cocaine wrapped around my waist. These policemen thougth I was pregnant, because this is what I told them.   I got by, but I didn't get away  Believe it or not, these types of runs were challenges for me, until I was caught!

Growing bored in Dallas, I need and wanted to get away to sell drugs.  I had had an accident on my job, and it had my neck, lower lumbar an sciatic nerves in pain.  So I was going to see all sorts of doctors, who just made me sicker.  I am still having back problems today.  At any rate, Mr. B. and I would have discussion, and I would tell him my business, thinking this would make him like me more.  Girls, this doesn't work.  The more of your secret life you keep aside from people who wants to use you, the more we need to practice keeping our mouths shout.  Life have taught me to self-check yourself.  It works for me!   

During this time, my daughter was in  high school a high school senior as a matter of fact..  I was on sick leave from my job and Mr. B was plotting.  I'd mentioned, that I'd just come from a funeral in Chicago, and had relatives there and also friends, and that I sold drugs there before I left and move to Dallas.  He'd didn't know I 'd been renting houses running and picking up drugs for the West Indians at that time.  We even sold drugs in Mississippi.  As time went on, I became bored with life and thought I needed to hustle a bit more. Before I was with Mr. B, one of my male friends fro Trinidad, trused me with 50 LBS of weed, I took to Chicago on the Air plane and sold it, brought the money back to him for Xmas in a Box, so that security could not detect what was in the box.  There was a total amount of $11,000.  This was just my first trip there. One of my so called friends assisted me.  She and I helped one another.  I didn't know later on, she would have become Mr. B's mistress.  When I saw that Mr. B needed me only to hustle drug money, "a drug addict doesn't see things clearly.  They can't for being under the influence. However, we'd agreed that he would join me in Chicago. I was to go there, rent the house.  Infact, the house we rented was on of the singer's "the Dells'" mother house. Located just of 159th Street in Harvey, IL..  So aggravated by the fact that I'd gotten myself into something I'd become uncomfortable.  I never thought I'd be selling drugs for a man, who was showing, I don't want you for a woman. I want you as a "runner."  In a way, I didn't blame him.  It's just like being married to an alchoholic.  The bad breath, the body ordors, feet smelling, clothes dirty and the "alcholic look where the lips are pink, indicating something is seriously wrong on the inside.  I was a "rock star" and I'd begun to feel and think to myself that I was a drug addict.    In interim, I kept complaining to this one so called friend, Oh' but what a friend we have in Jesus.  Telling her my business about Mr. B. and myself.   I didn't know she was a witch.  Yet, when a face is smiley, there are deceptions and lies.  I would tell her things, like "Mr. B. thinks I am an idoit, which I was, selling the drugs and he comes and picks ups the money and party with it etc.  I am leaving him rite here in Chicago.  I can't take any more of his s_ _ t!.  I had a gun with me, so I asked her to keep my gun, not knowing she and Mr. B. would be sleeping together.  I told her I was going back to Dallas, Texas, so I packed up everything that was mines in the house I rented, and took a flight back to DFW.  

Two months after I'd flown back to Dallas, I called this so called friend's house.  Something was amist. I noticed she would hardly talk with me, and when I asked about Mr. B. she had nothing to say.  It was sorta a dry conversation.  Once I asked about Mr. B, she was so non-shalant until, my gut feelings told me  she and Mr. B. was having a "a drug loving affair," and I was RIGHT!  When Mr. Be saw my true potential. Not only did I have a little streets smarts, but I also had the intelligence, he never knew I had, until it was time for me to let him know I was no fool, even if I was a "crack head."  They say, once a drug addict, always a drug addict," but this is not true .  Not if you really deep down within want something better for your life.   This is my motto.  When it was all said and done, I desperately needed something better for my life.  Thristy became my first name.  Starving became my last name.  I was thristy/starving for a purpose.  But I didn't know this at the time. 

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Mr. B. was a handsome good looking older man.  I thought.  Yet, as time went on, I did to. 

While I was