You want to talk real, let’s talk Mr. Mills. I grew up on the streets of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now for those that have been there, the streets of Ann Arbor ain’t that rough. But, as the homie Jadakiss says, “every city has a hood.” In Ann Arbor, my favorite hood was Huron Hills. Let me tell you why.
While growing up, every crew of guys has their favorite dad. My crew’s favorite dad was Mr. Mills. His son Chris grew up rough. It’s not that they didn’t have money. He just didn’t have much support from his parents. His dad would let us do whatever we wanted. He was a grown up thug. I had, and still to this day, have never seen anything quite like him. Later in life I learned that he had spent some time in prison.
One summer day, between 8th and 9th grade, my crew went to Chris’s house. The crew this day consisted of, Chris, Alex, and me. We had plans to make one last trip to Huron Hills Golf Course. We had been terrorizing golfers at Huron Hills for years. We knew our window of opportunity was closing. I mean we were almost 14. 14 year olds can’t be terrorizing golfers. 14 year olds are half way through puberty. It was time to grow up.
We met at 2 P.M. This was the only time we could do it. All of my friends were playing football and were between two-a-days. The golf course was about a mile away from the Mills home. To there you had to walk through a forest. The path was confusing and long. It took me a full summer to learn it. This was my third summer. I had it memorized. So did my friends. As we walked the path we pulled down trees so that the ranger couldn’t chase us on his cart. We had heard that we would be fined $50 if we had been caught. That was money we didn’t have. That type of debt would have sent a young playa to the streets trying to earn a buck.
Once we got the course we knew exactly what to do. Good old hole 14 had been treating us well for years. Hole 14 was a short par 4 with a blind tee shot over a hill. Once golfers teed off we would run to the fairway, grab the ball and toss it through a line to the green. Whoever was on the green would place the ball in the cup. Then we would hide in the woods.
When the golfers came over the hill they would look for their ball. Golfers know when they hit a good shot. You could see it in the golfers face every time. First they were confused. Where was their ball? Then they would move closer to the green. When they still didn’t see anything they would sneak onto the green and look in the hole as their friends searched for their ball. I say “sneak” because they wouldn’t want their friends to see them checking because they would clown since there is no chance to get a hole-in-one on this hole.
You can imagine the excitement of the golfer when he found his ball in the hole. He would jump around and give high fives. Once the celebration died down, we would stand up and laugh, point and say, “Ha ha you idiot. You really thought you could hit the ball that far? We put it in the cup!”
This generally made them really angry. Some would just yell and flip us off. Others would hit balls at us. The best were the ones that would chase us. Sometimes we would just run. Most of the time we were loaded with roman candles and would fire at them until they relaxed and headed back to their group.
The reality is we knew how to keep it real even as kids. I would never had imagined that later that day I would learn the greatest “Keppin’ it real” lesson of my life.
This August afternoon we were having no luck. It was a slow day on the course and no one was coming through the 14th hole. The few people that did come through were not reacting to our immaturity. This made us more frustrated. The common golfer at Huron Hills was white trash. White trash are usually quick to anger.
After a few hours with no success we decided we would retire after one more group. We waited and waited until we finally saw a twosome on 13. Finally our grand finally was going to happen. The group consisted of two stalky, 5’8 guys in their thirties. They were wearing short jean shorts. Perfect targets!
The only problem was they couldn’t golf. These idiots both hit their balls short of the hill. This means they were right out in the open. Chris encouraged, “Travis, just go grab the ball anyway.” I had no choice. I couldn’t let our last experience go down like this. I ran down right in front of them, picked up the ball, waived it in the air and threw it back at them.
This pissed one of the guys off bad. He dropped his bag and started chasing me. He was 100 yards away and had no chance to catch me. I ran up to the path, turned around and saw nothing. My friends were behind me and said, “Let’s go back.” The excitement was in the chase. I walked back confidently until I turned the corner. There he was. Five feet from me. I turned, screamed and started running.
This is where our planning backfired. I found myself hurdling the trees we had laid down to prevent the ranger from chasing us. I could feel him behind me. I knew he was close. I could feel his arms reaching. I heard him breathing. It motivated me to run faster. But he was a grown man. My friends were ahead of me. They were in shape from football and I had been doing nothing but played golf all summer. They yelled words of encouragement.
A half mile up the path I could still feel the guy right behind me. We finally got out of the forest and onto the street a block from Chris’s house. I cut through his neighbor’s lawn. Big mistake. He dove at my legs now that I was off the pavement. I hurdled. As my feet came down I thought I had done it, but just as they were about to touch the ground he got my right foot.
He jumped on top of me and began to backhand my face. I was in shock and really didn’t feel a thing. With each slap he got out another word. “Punk” slap “kid” slap “where” slap “is” slap “my” slap “ball?” I tried to respond that I had thrown it back but he was not in the mood to listen.
At this point, my friends had gathered around. Chris exclaimed, “That’s enough dude, he is just a kid.” The man was not having this. In rhythm he backhanded Chris before getting right back to slapping me. I can still see it to this day. The slap this guy put on Chris is in slow motion. As his hand made contact, Chris’s Raiders hat, that he always wore, went flying. I found myself half laughing for a second before realizing that this guy might slap me until I die.
Finally the Asian family who’s yard we were in came out of the house. I thought, “Finally this is done.” The father walked toward us and said, “Excuse me, can you take this off of our lawn.” The man smiled, “gladly.” He picked me up, put me on the street with my head against the curb and started slapping me again.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the man got up and started walking back to the forest. We turned, with our heads down, and started toward Chris’s house. Then Chris yelled, “Come back and get some now.” I looked up in a craze, “Chris, what are you do….” then I stopped. The man said, “Gladly.” What he didn’t see was Mr. Mills walking up the driveway.
He had been playing catch with Chris’s little brother in the yard and had heard a commotion. As he walked by us I gained some extra confidence. Mr. Mills was about 6’2, 220 pounds. He walked toward the man and angrily screamed, “You like to hit kids. Pick on someone your own size!” The man, who obviously didn’t know Mr. Mills background, answered, “Relax old man, I am not going to fight and old man.” That was the wrong thing to say. Mr. Mills walked up and hit him with 5 round house open hand punches. I jumped in the background excitedly encouraging Mr. Mills. Payback is a bi$@&!
When we got back to the house Mr. Mills told us to wait in Chris’s room. We sat silent, not saying a word. Inside, I just kept hoping that he wouldn’t call my parents. Finally he walked in the room and said, “I hope you boys learned your lesson.” I immediately replied, “We have Mr. Mills, we are never going to Huron Hills again.” Disgustedly he shook his head and scoffed back, “I don’t care if you go to Huron Hills. Don’t ever let that happen again. If one guy ever attacks you like that again, you all need to jump him. I don’t care how big he is! No one could take all three of you at one.” Then he turned and walked out of the room.
This story stills blows my mind. Not because Chris’s dad was wrong. It blows my mind because I can’t believe how soft I was. It took a real role model to teach me the most important lesson I could learn in life. No matter how scared you are, or whatever odds you face, you have got to keep it real. If a clown ever comes at my crew like that again he will get straight dealt with. Thank you Mr. Mills! If you ever read this, you are the realest thug I ever knew!
