1THE GAME

Parkland High School, Winston-Salem

Parkland vs. West Forsyth High

November 20, 2002


It was the first game of my senior season, and I wasn’t even sure if I was going to play. Imagine that, the game I loved more than anything, my happy place, and I didn’t want to touch a basketball.

We were about to play against Parkland High School, where my mom and her sister, my aunt Rhonda, had gone. They were the only two people in our family that went to Parkland. Everybody else went to Carver High School, a “Black” school over in East Winston, which had a reputation for being a lot tougher than other schools. My older brother, CJ, and I were big-time athletes at West Forsyth, a high school on the other side of town, which was pretty much a “white” school.

My grandfather, Papa Chilly, as we called him, wasn’t going to be there. I always looked forward to seeing his smile and his energy when I looked up in the crowd. I had no idea how I was going to go out on the court, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to glance in the stands and see him cheering me on.

Somehow, some way, I built up the energy to attend school that day. Attendance was a requirement for playing, so at least I checked that box, but I didn’t hang around in the gym afterward like I usually did. Instead, I went straight to the house.

I knew my aunt Rhonda would be there, and either Mom or Dad, or both, depending on who wasn’t working, along with a bunch of my family members visiting from D.C. and Virginia. When I got home, everybody was there hanging out on the upstairs deck eating, reminiscing, chillin’, and catching up.

“Hey, Chris, how you feeling?” Aunt Rhonda asked. “What time is the game later?”

“We play at Parkland at seven. We’ll see,” I answered. They didn’t know I was struggling with whether or not to play, but once I saw my family, I knew I had to play. I kept trading hugs and fist bumps with aunts and uncles. They gave me the regular “Boy, you are getting big!” or “Robin, what are you feeding these kids?!” type of commentary that you get when you find yourself in front of family you haven’t seen in a minute.

“I’m glad you’re playing,” Aunt Rhonda said. “He would have wanted you to.”

“Okay, Auntie,” I responded.

“Papa loves seeing you play,” Aunt Rhonda said, with tears streaming down her face. “Why don’t you do something special for your granddad?”

I started to think about a couple of ways I could honor my grandfather. Papa always had taken great care of CJ and me—really our whole family, but I had no idea specifically about what I should be doing for him in that moment. Some guys dedicated games, even whole seasons to loved ones. Others wrote important family members’ names or meaningful symbols on the sides of their sneakers, hid them in the seams of their jerseys, or even got tattoos. It seemed easy for most people to figure out ways to honor the ones they cared about, so why was I struggling? What was mine?



2PAPAI’M BLESSED AND HIGHLY FAVORED.

—PAPA CHILLY

Now listen, I can guarantee you one thing: my Papa had the dirtiest hands you’d ever seen in your life.

The tips of his fingernails all the way down to the ends of his palms were stained with never-ending grease. The discoloration was earned from the years of burying his hands in the grease, oil, and filth that make up a life lived in an auto shop. Most mechanics would wear gloves, but not my granddad. With his bare hands, he would lift whole engines by himself like a gladiator and place them into the cars he fixed, cars that other garages might have written off. My real-life superhero. Papa didn’t write off any cars—he could fix anything that was towed, tugged, or pushed into the shop. Those same stained hands were legendary and had as much if not more of an impact on our family and community than anything I can do on a basketball court. Those dirty hands seemed to bother CJ and me a lot more than they bothered Papa. Day in and day out, he’d soak them in a gallon-size bucket of paste-textured yellow soap and scrub them religiously, all the while knowing good and well that that soap wasn’t doing a damn thing.

You remember that scene from The Original Kings of Comedy? The one where Cedric the Entertainer is doing the impression of the old guy from the neighborhood who’s always talking with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth? Well, that’s my Papa, that is him through and through.

Even if you’re too young to remember or don’t know that reference, if you’re from the South, you definitely know this guy. Every neighborhood had this guy. You could find him out on the block, at your local auto repair shop, or maybe in front of the Pep Boys. You pull up in a car that has a janky engine, and he comes strolling out, wiping his hands with that greasy red rag.

“Can you fix it, sir?” you nervously ask, noticing those filthy engine-fixing hands, thinking how this guy must spend his time resurrecting cars all day. “Can you?”

“Can I fix it? Boy, I been here thirty years. Been here longer than you been alive. Of course I can fix it. Come on, now. I know a carburetor problem when I see it. Bring it ’round here.”

Except it doesn’t sound like that at all, because somehow he’s speaking in complete sentences while smoking a Winston cigarette at the same time. It sounds something like, “Canahfixit? Beenherethirtyoddyearnow. Courseicanfixit. Cmonnah knowadang carburetorproblemwhen ahseeitnow. Brangitinnagrage.”

Cigarette flipping every which way as he’s talking, breaking the laws of physics, smoke flying all around his head, ashes falling onto the ground. That was my grandfather. That was Papa to a tee, and I loved every bit of it.

My grandfather Nathaniel Frederick Jones, Papa, or Chilly, as he was called, was always unapologetically himself, and we loved him for that. Why Chilly? Well, he was the sixth and exact middle child of eleven and his mom always used to call him “Sugar.” One of his brothers, Odell, couldn’t pronounce “Sugar” so he called Papa “Shilly.” Later when he married my grandma Rachel, she had a hard time pronouncing “Shilly” so it turned into “Chilly” and that one stuck.

Papa was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and was always proud to let you know. At six feet two inches, he wasn’t a giant; however, he had a spirit fit for a man that stands taller than ten feet. It showed every time he would walk into a room, giving contagious energy with his magnetic smile, his funny stories—he just had such presence. Everyone knew or wanted to know Papa, and so many people relied on him.

I recall countless occasions where family, friends, or community members rolled up on him like, “Mr. Jones, I need some help,” and it didn’t matter if it involved money for an electric bill, to buy some clothes, to get some food, or whatever they needed to get by—Papa was there. He’d dig those generous hands deep into his pockets, pull out a wad of cash, gladly peeling the person’s problem away, bill by bill. Papa didn’t ask to be paid back or ask you to listen to a lecture before helping, and he wanted nothing in return. He thought it was a blessing to be a blessing.

* * *

No matter what was going on, whenever anyone asked, “Hey, Jones, how you doing?” or “What’s up, Chilly? How you feelin’ today?” one thing came out of his mouth: “I’m blessed and highly favored.” That’s how he went about his life; he truly believed that and felt that every day. Maybe it started in Southern churches because a lot of Black people say I’m blessed and highly favored all the time—meaning that because you’re here living, you’ve been chosen by God, and if that’s the case, then how bad can things really be?

Papa proudly owned Jones Chevron. As far as we knew, his station was the first Black-owned service station in North Carolina. Most people who knew my grandfather always connected him with this, but they didn’t know that Jones Chevron was actually his second service station.

Papa’s original business was called Jones Gulf, and it was located off Claremont Avenue on the northeast side of Winston-Salem. Early on, Papa was just proud to establish himself as a business owner at Jones Gulf, but as he got more into the business and learned how things worked, he became frustrated. By not owning the land his station sat on, he didn’t truly own his business. This was a big problem, and he knew it. For years, Papa tried to buy the land from its white property owner, but that guy was hell-bent on not selling that land to a Black person. Sure, it was okay with the landlord if a Black man rented the property and paid him for that privilege, but there was no way he wanted to give him a chance to actually own the land. Unfortunately, these things still happen today. The great thing about my papa is that no one, not even that landlord, could deny him a chance to do anything. Papa was a worker, a real hard worker who didn’t believe in handouts. He knew that by working hard he could make his dreams come true, and that’s what he did. He patiently waited for a service station to become available, closed the doors to Jones Gulf, and signed the mortgage on Jones Chevron. His own mortgage. And he was damn proud of it.

* * *

My mom and Aunt Rhonda didn’t know Papa was buying the service station. Papa’s wife, my grandma, Rachel H. Jones, picked them up from school like usual. On a normal day, she’d swing past the ice cream shop to treat them and then take them to see Papa at the station. That day, however, Grandma Rachel got the girls the ice cream, but as they were getting close to the station, Grandma made a different turn.

“Wait, why aren’t we headed to see Daddy?” my mom asked. “The shop is the other way, right?”

“We’re not going to the Gulf, baby. And we won’t be going there no more,” Grandma replied with a smile, locking eyes with my mother through the rearview mirror. The three of them pulled up to a new station, where Papa was out front, standing tall and brushing off the shoulder of his blue work suit. He was staring at a huge, bright white sign that read JONES CHEVRON.

The excited new employees, dressed like Papa and happy to be working for him at the new station, were gazing at the sign as well, a satisfied look of accomplishment across all their faces.

“Daddy! Daddy! What’s that?” my mother screamed as she jumped out of Grandma’s sedan, Aunt Rhonda right behind her.

Papa bear-hugged his two young princesses before pulling back to look at them.

“This is for our family business; we own the station, and now we own the land too. This is what I worked for,” Papa said. “This belongs to us.”

My mother broke away and ran her fingers across the huge Jones Chevron sign, poking at the logo, noticing the texture of the smooth, cold plastic. She looked up at him, beaming with pride.

“It’s ours,” Papa said to both of his girls, before looking at the other two guys in the blue work suits. “Let’s get to work!”

* * *

To this day, I can still remember the phone number at the station. It was 723-2232. And every time you answered the phone, you had to say, “Jones Chevron.”

Back then, people thought about gas stations like a rest stop, or a place to get candy, coffee, soda, cigarettes, lottery tickets, or beer, but Papa’s was different.

Being there felt and smelled like home—it was a family business in every sense of the word. Papa employed the best mechanics in the area, all trained by him, and they loved making customers feel comfortable and appreciated. It was a master class in service in a way I never seen from a mechanic or service station before or since. Imagine your transmission slipping and not even being bothered a little, because you knew Mr. Jones and his crew were going to take care of you. They weren’t going to take advantage of you or charge you for things that you didn’t need. “Make sure you check your fluids and keep the oil changed,” Papa would tell clients, whom he treated like extended family. “That’s the best way to protect that engine.”

All of Papa’s employees rotated tires, changed oil, performed tune-ups, fixed alternators, installed brakes and rotors, and even went as far as swapping whole engines in and out. Everything and anything around cars, they did so well. Jones Chevron also performed state inspections, which back then used to cost $19.40. I’ll always remember that price—you know why? Because most people would pay with a twenty-dollar bill and tell CJ and me to keep the sixty cents’ change. Every little bit helped when you were saving to buy a grape soda or a Dr. Pepper to go with your Honeybun from the vending machine around back. If it was a good day, you might even have a quarter left over to buy a gumball too. Back in those days, the money added up quickly because a lot of people came to us for inspections.

At most places, you would never, ever pass inspection if you had windows tinted too dark, but that didn’t bother us, not one bit. We always took care of people with dark tints, so they always came back to us. Because they thought dark tints should be legal, people just threw them on anyway after they passed inspections, and CJ and I needed some way to keep that sixty-cent soda train running.

One of my parents would drop us off at the station, which was about twenty minutes away from our home on the other side of town. Sometimes they would take us to the station as early as 6:00 a.m. We would get all into it like we really worked there, and in our minds we really did—we’d even go so far as to drink coffee with Papa every single morning. Papa’s coffee contained enough sugar to put you into a diabetic coma. There was so much sugar that if you put a spoon in there, it’d stand straight up. It was so sweet that I could feel a cavity as soon as I was done drinking it, but that didn’t matter, I was doing what Papa did. To this day, I still can’t drink coffee and I have no doubt that it’s because I overdosed at the station.

Starting when I was six and CJ was eight, all the way until high school, if we weren’t playing football and basketball, or at church, we were probably at the station. While hanging around the shop, CJ and I gained so many life lessons from Papa and his crew; the opportunity to watch Papa in action paid the most dividends.

When I say, “My granddad owned a service station that doubled as an auto repair shop,” people think of him as an owner, right? You’d think that he would be sitting back in a recliner, chillin’ and watching everyone else do the work, but that wasn’t the case. Papa worked just as hard, if not harder, than everyone else. The way he worked made us want to work.

This sticks with me to this day. Even now, no matter what role I play on a team, one thing is consistent hard work. No matter if you’re stronger than me, taller than me, faster than me, one thing you won’t do is outwork me. That’s all thanks to Papa.

People would pull into the station, and CJ and I would rush up to their cars, next to the self-service pump, and say, “I’ve got this! I’ve got this!” because we wanted to stack up those tips. I even learned how to change oil when I was still in elementary school, because Papa made it look so easy and we wanted to do everything he did. Seeing Papa run the company as both a boss and technician really opened my eyes and laid the foundation to strive for a hardworking reputation. If I think about how that translates into basketball, it resonates in focusing on defense, looking for any advantage, showing up first to the gym, and being the last to leave. These basic principles come from my days of grinding in the shop, trying to work as hard as my grandpa.

* * *

Jones Chevron had three bays and three gas pumps. There was the full-service pump where CJ and I hung out, trying to add enough tips to our stash to one day be able to buy our own Jordans, and then the self-service pumps, which was located closer to the street. Directly outside the service bays was a gathering place for some of Papa’s longtime customers. A little group of old heads would set up shop on these two big old brown bus seats that Papa welded to the ground out front. This crew came to be known as the Jones Disciples. Talk about telling stories from way back: they had a million and one stories of how great it used to be back in the good ole days—and about 99 percent of them were definitely inappropriate for kids, but CJ and I didn’t care, we were all ears, soaking up game as the guys said whatever came to mind.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Barbershop or have been in a Black barbershop, you know exactly the type of conversation I mean. These guys talked about everything under the sun and got real creative with their language. My folks didn’t cuss at home, so CJ and I didn’t either. We’d be pumping gas or wiping something down, and suddenly we’d hear, “And this mother#*$@*!” We’d look right up to try and hear what they were talking about. Usually, they were arguing about football or basketball, didn’t matter if it was local high schools all the way up to the pros; they’d be praising Winston-Salem State one minute and MJ and the Bulls the next.

There was Mr. Kelam, Mr. Ulysses, and Mr. McCoy who loved to come by and Mr. McCoy was always strolling up with his red cup in hand full of brown chunks of tobacco he’d spit out in between sentences. I almost just threw up writing that, it was so vile. There was also a Vietnam vet named Bo, who only had one arm. He’d take the left sleeve of his shirt and fold it up real nice and then place it into the pocket of his shirt so you almost didn’t notice it. Bo will always have a special place in my heart. What I loved about him most was that he never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him. He wanted to prove to us that he could do anything a guy with two arms could do, so he’d lift up huge tires—never taking anyone’s help. CJ and I would always ask him when he was getting his arm back. He didn’t want us to feel bad, so he’d just tell us, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m getting it back for Christmas.” This was enough then to make us happy for him and we’d naively walk away until we’d ask him again next time. And then there was the most famous member of the Jones Disciples, Clarence “Big House” Gaines.

Now, if you’re not from Tobacco Road or aren’t a basketball fan, you might not know who that is, but in his day, for those in the know, Big House needed no introduction. He coached basketball at Winston-Salem State, an HBCU, for almost fifty years, becoming one of the winningest coaches in the history of college basketball; not just historically Black colleges and universities, but all of college basketball. He went on to be one of the few Black coaches to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As a matter of fact, Big House Gaines is probably the most famous coach in the history of Black college basketball, and he would just come by and kick it out front with the rest of the Disciples. When Coach Gaines wasn’t going on about Winston-Salem State, he loved to reminisce about his days in Baltimore, way back when he was a football star at Morgan State. Every time Big House would pull up to the bus seats out front, our young ears would open right up so we could take in all the stories about coaching, living in a different city, and being a big-time collegiate athlete.

As CJ and I started playing more sports, Big House would be curious, asking us about our games, how it was going, and who was doing what on the court. When we started getting more well known, we’d overhear him talking to Papa, saying, “I heard about your grandboys, especially the little one. I know the older one can play some ball, but they talking about the younger one being special.”

One time he even came to watch me play. He made sure to find me after the game and said, “Hey, man, your little butt can play.” It was one of the earliest moments I remember that the hopes and dreams of the NBA might not be that far away. The only reason why I got the chance to share that moment with Big House was because I was Jones’s grandson.

On most days, Big House and the rest of the Jones Disciples, especially Mr. Ulysses, would sit around, drinking coffee, talking over each other, smoking cigarettes, and chopping it up. These guys loved to joke about Papa’s dirty hands and fake teeth. Papa would snap back too, laughing so hard that we heard and saw those artificial Mr. Wilson–looking teeth bouncing around in his mouth. And Mr. Ulysses, being Mr. Ulysses, would never stop.

On most days, we’d order lunch from Ackingna’s Place, a restaurant with a bright blue awning right down the road. I’d usually get some wings, CJ would get a burger, and Papa would get whatever he was feeling that day, usually a sandwich or something that was easier to chew. We’d sit down getting ready to dig into lunch, with the Disciples usually eating with us too. Before he’d dig in, Papa, with his greasy-ass hands that probably just came off somebody’s engine, would pop those hands right in his mouth and take his teeth out. The moment they came out, it looked like his whole face folded up. He’d plop them down right on the table, grab a little napkin, and wrap his teeth there while he ate. He’d try to say something, and his spit, the half-gummed-up food, and his words would get all mixed together.

“Jones, put your goddamn teeth back in your mouth before you try to talk!” someone would inevitably yell.

We all laughed, including Papa. I can’t talk about Papa’s teeth without mentioning that I swear he’d lose them every other day. It drove him and everybody else crazy. He’d just sometimes toss that napkin he wrapped his teeth in right in the trash by accident and then be digging through it later looking for them. If he didn’t find them, he’d have to wait a couple of days to get a new set from the dentist. He’d just kind of go about his day without any teeth in his mouth until he had a new set.

When the guys weren’t messing with each other, Mr. Ulysses would always find a way to keep the humor going. One of his favorites was his steering wheel joke.

Whenever, and I mean whenever, an old steering wheel was lying around, he would grab it, sneak into Papa’s office, and say, “A customer just came in saying their steering wheel wasn’t working right.” Once he got Papa’s attention, Ulysses would take the wheel, put it on his crotch, and start laughing, saying, “He said it was driving him nuts!” with a fluffy cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding his mouth. Even if there were no props available, he found a way to tell his old-fashioned crazy jokes.

* * *

It didn’t matter if the shop was loud from laughter or dead quiet, Papa always had the AM radio playing in the background. Typical stuff kept going on repeat—news checks, traffic, weather, sports, whatever was happening locally, even some oldies but goodies would sneak into the rotation. But no matter what, Papa made sure that we heard the obituaries. They were read at the same time, every day, like clockwork. He’d be off working on a transmission, sneak a peek at the clock, and yell at one of us, “Hey, one of y’all, turn up that radio!”

We’d hear a little humming because these speakers were way past their prime and the radio host would start reading off the names of everyone who had died in the last twenty-four hours. Papa would stop what he was doing, tell us all to quiet down, and listen to the names like it was a Sunday sermon. Maybe that’s kinda creepy, but it was our normal.

“Aw, man, he passed” or “Oh no, not Mr. Such-and-such,” Papa would say before taking his own personal moment of silence.

I swear he knew almost half the people who died and had a little story about most of them. I think he wanted us to know just a little bit about each person to honor their legacy, but part of me knew that he was talking mostly to himself, trying to make peace with another person he knew passing away.

“Oh no, I didn’t know Gary was sick. That’s so sad. He got ALL the girls back when we were in school. He had a mean Jheri curl and never stopped whispering in a girl’s ear,” Papa said of one of his old friends one day, before giving a little laugh, a nod, and then going back to work. He did this for everyone. I wasn’t sure what was more impressive, how many people he knew in town or how much he remembered about every one of them. Papa’s memory was not something to play with. I’m pretty sure that’s where I get it from.

Sometimes Papa would get on us because we’d be out there with the Disciples, messing around, laughing at some of those dirty jokes, asking too many questions, and not doing enough work. He’d come over in his dark blue pants, light blue shirt, big red rag hanging out of his back pocket, trusty cigarette dangling as always, waving his hands like, “Shouldn’t y’all be workin’?”

CJ and I would quickly get up as the Disciples finished smoking and chewing that tobacco, because we didn’t want any problems with Papa. I should mention that having some kind of tobacco vice, whether it be cigarettes, cigars, or dip, was an unspoken rule of the Disciples. This was Tobacco Road after all, and everyone was smoking or dipping or chewing on something tobacco-related. I always knew that wasn’t for me. In fact, I had a fear of tobacco. I saw Grandma Rachel pass away from lung cancer when I was eight, so I always had it stuck in my head that smoking would kill you, in that weird way things affect you from when you were a kid.

We used to get so mad at Papa for smoking those cigarettes. Once, right after Grandma passed, CJ and I took his pack of Winstons and tore it up, breaking the cigarettes in half, and threw them all in the trash. We wanted to make a statement. We were kids, so we didn’t realize how expensive cigarettes could be. Papa was big mad. He really let us have it in a way he never had before. “CJ! Chris! What did you do with my cigarettes?” We froze in fear. The last thing we wanted to do was be on Papa’s bad side. “Y’all know how much cigarettes cost?! Y’all lost y’all damn minds?!”

We thought we were saving him from getting cancer and that we should be getting some type of award for helping him, for doing the right thing, but he didn’t see it that way at all. Trust me, we never even thought about throwing his cigarettes away again. At least not like that. We switched it up on him instead and started taking them one by one when he wasn’t looking so he didn’t notice.

We never judged Papa for smoking. Everyone in Winston-Salem smoked. I remember way back, when we took those drives to be dropped off at the service station and I decided to crack the car window to get some fresh air. The scent of tobacco would instantly creep in, overtaking our car, with the smell sometimes getting stuck into our clothes until we washed them. Back in the forties, 60 percent of workers in Winston-Salem were employed by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which was founded about 150 years ago. Winston-Salem was once the largest city in North Carolina, with R. J. Reynolds being the second-largest tobacco company in America. For a long time, the Reynolds building was the tallest building south of Baltimore. It’s hard to overstate how important Reynolds Tobacco had been to the way of life not just in Winston-Salem, but in the state of North Carolina—for those reasons, smoking, and all kinds of tobacco use, has been embedded in the culture, and was basically the heart of the city. Even my field trips in school were to the tobacco plant to see how cigarettes were made because that’s what drove the local economy.

There were many times when people in the community, family or not, would head straight to the service station because they knew there would be work there for them. There were a couple of times when even my dad got laid off, and when that happened, he went to the service station and worked until he figured out his next move.

No one even considered just taking some time off if things didn’t work out in your primary job, because Papa always had your back. The station meant grinding and doing what you were supposed to do for your family. Even before many of the guys who got laid off went home to share the news with their significant others, they’d hit Papa first, knowing he would at least try and find a way. And Papa welcomed them in with open arms and was ready to teach them a skill that would always be in demand—putting them in a position to take care of their families. No matter how many people were working there, one thing fa sho was that Papa always had to be the one to open and close the shop. And then, after he worked all day, he’d close down the station and come to our games. When he walked into the gym, because of his hands, everybody knew where he was coming from.

It’s because those hands truly represented his hard work, his labor, and the legacy he built for us. Sometimes I feel the same way about myself. I’ve had four hand surgeries. I’ve got the scars to prove it. At this point, my hands are evidence of the work I’ve put in and what my hands have helped me achieve on the court and in my career. They’ll never be as grease-stained as Papa’s, but they’re for sure tested in their own way. I guess it’s a bond we never knew we’d have. It’s a little different, but it all means the same thing: HARD WORK!!!



3

RELENTLESS

HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING.

—MARTHA BECK

At this point, I don’t know that I have a truly signature thing like Papa’s hands, but I damn sure know that we share our work ethic. Papa was relentless in the garage, and I’ve taken that to the court. You gotta be relentless. What else you gonna do?

I’ve always prided myself on doing the work. That’s who he was and who I believe I am. At the end of the day, people like Papa don’t need to look flashy or require any kind of special attention outside of what a worker should get for the work they do. Papa didn’t have ten service bays like one of those auto repair supercenters, but he had the ability to provide the highest level of service. I guess I knew I wasn’t going to be seven feet tall, but I always figured that my work ethic could make up for anything I lacked in height.

Of course, I’ve always wanted to be explosive down the lane and dunk on everybody. Who wouldn’t? But I learned from Papa to be scrappy, to use my perceived disadvantage as an advantage. How do I find the edge on guys without using physicality? I’m not necessarily tall for an NBA player, but I learned early on to be creative and to know how to pass, score, and win using whatever methods I could. I think the game. The energy I have now is the same energy I had in the backyard or at the YMCA playing with my boys, it’s just on a different stage. I get that feeling now when I watch my fourteen-year-old son, Lil Chris, and my ten-year-old daughter, Camryn, play.

I always focus on doing the work because it makes you succeed in whatever you’re trying to do. The work says way more about someone than all that meaningless talk, hype, or anything that only shines on the surface. Hard work is my preferred language, and I try to speak it fluently. I could talk about hard work day in and day out; it’s all I know. Lord knows I hope that the results of that work show every time I step onto the court. Like for real, I will not stop. It’s why I’m always saying, “Can’t give up now.” When I got traded from the Houston Rockets to the Oklahoma City Thunder, many people wrote me off. The first song I heard the next morning heading to my workout was a gospel song by Mary Mary called “Can’t Give Up Now.” The media gave us a 0.2 percent chance to make the playoffs that year. We ended up as the five seed and ironically lost to my old team, the Rockets, in seven games, but I never stopped believing in our team. I live by that song now and I write it on my shoes every game to this day.

Not giving up means having an edge. I quickly understood why the players who did all the little things were so important to teams. Sometimes guys are more concerned about what they look like than working hard, or become too focused on material things and completely forget about winning. For me, being a basketball player is not so I can have nice things and be well known; that all just comes along with it. What really drives me is the grind—how hard you have to work to perfect your game. The late nights, the early mornings. I truly love the game and I want to be the best at it. I proudly learned that from Papa, my mom and dad, and CJ. They molded and shaped me to be relentless in the pursuit of success, and in turn, I aim to do the same for my kids.

It can be a challenging balance sometimes to ensure that my kids appreciate the grind and earning the things that they have. One thing that being a parent made me realize is that my past is important in shaping their future. If I want them to value the process then they must know our family’s history and how it taught me work ethic. This is why I feel it’s so important that we continue to spend time in North Carolina to see where they came from.

My wife, Jada, their family, and I try to talk them through that now that they’re a little older. Beyond the talking, and me telling them “back in the day” stories, I believed it was important to physically experience the energy at Papa’s station. Smelling the air, inhaling the fumes, seeing where the pumps were, and just feeling East Winston. This would add a different layer to the values I try to teach my children. The service station was Papa’s happy place.

“Y’all have to see Papa’s service station. I don’t even know what it looks like now, but we’re going to take a trip back there soon, and I’ll show you.” I’d said that many times to Lil Chris and Cam.

It bothered me that we hadn’t done that yet as a family. Sometimes my schedule makes it hard—a long season, travel, their school—but now they’re at an age where we have to prioritize going home. They’ll graduate high school before I know it and life is always just happening. I was crazy excited to show them the service station, and not just in a picture.

* * *

In the summer of 2021, there was finally a chance to do this. We were surprising my dad’s parents with a home renovation. We took some time to show the kids the service station and where I grew up. I wanted them to understand and see why our family’s roots are embedded in the soil of Winston- Salem.

Everyone is expected to work hard, starting with Papa, who opened his shop at seven in the morning every day. The world could be ending, but you could depend on that garage door sliding open right on time. Papa would even come in extra early on the days when CJ and I had basketball and football games so he could close up a little early to come and see us play; he tried to make sure he didn’t miss us in action. Papa was an iron man who didn’t take sick days, vacation time, or family leave for any reason. I still don’t understand how he did it. Monday through Saturday, clock in, clock out, work. This didn’t change until my grandma passed. My mom couldn’t stand that he didn’t take a break, but it was all he knew.

When my grandma Rachel died, it was my first experience with death so up close and personal. It’s crazy talking about it now because of how it has affected me my entire life. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, I was just eight years old, but I still vividly remember when they closed her casket. We were sitting in the first row on the left side of my church, Dreamland Park Baptist Church. I was sitting right next to Papa and he put his arm around me and told me not to cry because I needed to be strong for my mom and Aunt Rhonda. Who knew that I would carry those words with me for the rest of my life? He had the strength to say those words to me in that moment when he had just lost his wife. That’s the type of strength that only certain people possess.

As I looked over to the right, my aunt Rhonda was screaming at the casket in tears. The finality of death hit her, it hit us all. When that casket closed, it meant my grandmother was really gone. I’ve never gotten over that. I think that’s why I have a hard time dealing with death and attending funerals to this day.

After Grandma’s funeral, Papa finally gave in and decided to go on a cruise. He would try to do other stuff such as family gatherings and whatnot, but he always made up those missed hours at the station. Losing my grandma woke him up and allowed him to realize that he couldn’t just work all the time. There was more to life than just working. I mean, he used to always stay open to 7:00 or 7:30 or later, but after our grandma passed, he made sure to close up by 6:00—which may not seem like a huge deal, but, to us, it was.

The hard work didn’t begin with Papa; the DNA of our family’s Winston-Salem roots goes as far back as chattel slavery. Peter Oliver, a skilled and ambitious potter and farmer, walked into a Pennsylvania courthouse in June of 1800 and demanded his freedom. The beauty of the story is that it wasn’t a battle between him and a disgruntled slave owner; all of the Moravians worked together to secure his freedom. Oliver had figured out a way to trick the system, by selling his pottery until he earned enough money to pay a white man named Peter Lehnert to purchase him from his then owner. Oliver’s owner probably thought that he had made enough money off his labor and then could turn a bigger profit by selling to Lehnert, and it worked like a charm. What the owner didn’t know was that Lehnert and Oliver came up with this plan. As soon as Lehnert received Oliver, the two went to Pennsylvania to file for Oliver’s freedom. This plan wasn’t just done by two men, though; it was a group effort by the Moravians to help Peter pay for his freedom. The collective did it, not just Peter.

Once Oliver was free, he relocated back to Winston-Salem, where he married, had two children, continued to be a potter, and enjoyed his remaining days until he passed in 1810. Peter Oliver is my great-grandfather six times removed. I am so inspired by him, because he didn’t come up with excuses; he created a plan and executed it, all based on hard work. Peter Oliver was relentless. My mother is currently working to have a park created in his honor and named after him in Winston-Salem. I truly believe that Peter planted the seeds that continued to be passed all the way down to Papa and eventually us.

When CJ and I started taking basketball more seriously, we couldn’t put in the same time at the shop, but Papa didn’t mind. He was just excited seeing us do our thing on the court. Looking back, it was such a big deal that Papa was willing to shut down his business a couple of hours early just to watch us play. I’m sure he lost money at times, but his priority—his family—was more important.

He took it down to the minute, though. You’d think someone doing that kind of work all day would want to go home, shower, change clothes. Not Papa. He didn’t have any time to do all that. He’d walk right into the gym, work clothes on, grease everywhere. The only thing he changed was his shoes. He’d get rid of those black work boots and slip on some church loafers, as if that made a difference. Papa in his dirty uniform and shiny hard bottoms would slide to every game ready to cheer us on with a back pocket full of money. That cash was such a source of pride for him. One thing about Papa—he loved to make money, but helping people in the community with it was just as important to him.

I think he knew that people paid attention to him. He didn’t put away every penny he made because it mattered to him that young kids would see a Black man with hard-earned cash. Those same kids who watched him earn were also able to watch him share with the community. He’d talk about the power of having your own money and how you had to work hard for it and earn it, and once you did, it was yours. His goal was to make sure we understood the value of a dollar.

Papa loved to be paid by his customers in cash. He accepted cards, and checks from some people for obvious reasons, but he loved cash. He used the cash to make change for customers, tip us, or buy whatever he wanted. For years, I sat back and watched him dig deep into his blue work pants and just peel through stacks of tens, twenties, and fifties like a human ATM before rolling it up and stuffing it back into his pocket.

I wanted to have cash like that.

It wasn’t about the money itself for Papa, but the idea that money came from hard work and sacrifices. If that green paper was the by-product, then so be it, but the work that allowed him to provide for his family and help his community is what drove him.

I remember my first job outside of the gas station, when I was hired as an after-school counselor at Southwest Elementary School right next to my high school. I was beyond excited to get my first real paycheck—because Papa normally paid us in cash, and getting that envelope with my earnings all sealed up inside made me feel like I was grown as hell. My boss passed it to me, and I went outside and ripped open the envelope, only to be confused when I saw the amount. It was way less than I’d expected. This was my introduction to a little thing called tax deductions. The local government, the federal government, Social Security, and Medicare all took their cut at the same damn time! I was sick. Sick as hell. Papa never took taxes out of our checks, unless he was shorting us for some basketball shoes we wanted—which was a tax I was always glad to pay. But the check I got messed me up. I still cashed the check and folded the few measly twenties I received at the bank into a tiny roll. My little wad of cash was a joke compared to Papa’s. Baby steps, though, baby steps.

My mom laughed when I went home that day hot about my check being short. She always ran the books and did the accounting for Papa and the service station. She knew just how bad tax deductions could be, and she knew the only way to learn that lesson is to learn it the hard way and see it for myself.

Everybody knew it was cool to have a pocketful of money, but Papa made it real, and more importantly, he made it exciting to earn it, on your own and for yourself. Entrepreneurship meant everything to him and put that same drive in me. The beauty of it is that he did it all with a smile on his face. Every time he opened the station, greeted a customer, he did it with a smile. Then he’d happily do it all over again the next day and the next day and so on. It’s one thing to be forced to do hard work, but the vibe is completely different when the hard work makes you happy. That’s why I credit Papa for giving me that mentality that I’ve strived for on the court—the ability to grind out from the opening tip until the final seconds of any game. It’s about the work, being in the moment, laser focused on the task at hand. And it’s about being willing to work harder for hard work’s sake. Because that is the job—and completing that job makes you relentless, like Papa. These teachings are what I’m trying to show Lil Chris and Cam by bringing them back to North Carolina and by showing them Jones Chevron.



4

GOING BACK

A MAN WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF HIMSELF AND HIS HERITAGE IS LIKE A TREE WITHOUT ROOTS.

—DICK GREGORY

“Dad, is this it?” Lil Chris said as we pulled into what used to be the service station’s parking lot. It’s like I could smell the gas pumps all over again. My mind was instantly wrapped in nostalgia, with memories of me running in and out of this place when I was no bigger than Lil Chris—getting my tiny hands dirty, changing filters, and rotating tires flashed on repeat in my head. “Is this Papa’s station?”

“It is,” I answered, a little distracted. I took a deep breath. “It is.”

My mind immediately raced back to the days when I spent so much time learning lessons that I would use forever, that helped me face some of the most difficult parts of my life. I felt the energy immediately. Teenage memories were on repeat, of me walking across the lot or playing on the same concrete with CJ, on the same corner, seeing the same trees off in the distance that haven’t changed in twenty years—and might be there for a hundred more. It was almost like stepping out of a time machine. But it wasn’t a time machine, because the JONES CHEVRON sign that Papa adored was long gone, and the building has been painted over multiple times—and the altar of cocoa-brown busted bus seats on which sat loyal customers is just a memory.

My wife, our kids, and the future of my family also flashed through my mind. Home. It was so nice to be home. Lil Chris and Camryn jumped from the car and began to look around. I followed them, looking at all the new people, the unfamiliar faces, the businesses that have popped up out of nowhere, and realizing how much Winston-Salem has changed.

Man, it felt good to be back. I hadn’t stepped foot in this service station in a real long time. I was always on the move playing basketball, but I also wasn’t rushing to revisit some of these places. There were some mixed emotions for a while. I wasn’t ready, and even though the good outweighs the bad, there are still elements of trauma deep down that are tough for me to deal with.

As I saw Lil Chris, Cam, and Jada looking around, getting their bearings, and I heard them starting to ask some questions, my mind found ease in the good, as it usually does. Old stories I hadn’t thought about in years emerged.

One of the coolest things to us as kids, before we could make tips from inspections, was knowing that because my granddad owned the station, we could pop the register and hit that change drawer at any time to take loose change for sodas, chips, candy, and other snacks—basically, whatever we wanted. In the second drawer on the left of Papa’s desk was a huge black box full of change. CJ and I knew about that box, and that was a problem for only one person: my uncle Hubert, rest in peace. Our uncle Hubert, one of my grandfather’s brothers, would always catch us going for that black box and say, “Y’all know you ain’t supposed to be in that drawer!”

Of course, we’d play it off, “Oh yeah, yeah, Uncle Hubert. We was just making sure it’s all there,” or whatever excuse we could come up with. Then we’d slowly walk away, only to hit the box again later on, as soon as Hube was out of sight.

Other than Uncle Hubert and the Disciples, there were some real special characters at the service station who will live in my heart forever, like Happy.

“’Aye Chris!” I yelled over to my son. “Let me tell you about this guy named Happy.”

“His mama named him that?” Lil Chris asked with a confused look.

“No, let me explain.” I laughed.

Our official name for him was Happy, and that’s what everyone still calls him to this day. We knew he “had seen some things” when he was fighting in Vietnam, so Papa always encouraged us to let certain things slide, and we did. Happy had perfect attendance at the service station, he was always around, and it didn’t matter if it was a hundred degrees or below zero. Happy would be there, ready to help with any and everything.

We called him Happy because he laughed all the time, with an explosive, jittery chuckle that would allow you to see all thirty-two of his teeth, even those molars tucked all the way in the back. It didn’t matter if we were depressed, angry, frustrated, or as happy as Happy, he would just bust out laughing. It was nice to have him around. When you were feeling down, his constant giggling and chuckling had a way of brightening your day. I remember hanging my head around the station after I had bad games, where I didn’t play well, but I would see Happy and say, “What’s up?”

“HAHAHAHAHAhaAAHHAHAhHaHAH!”

And then I would join in and laugh too, because why not? If Happy can be happy, then I can too. Together, the two of us, and usually CJ, would be laughing so hard but had no clue what we were laughing at. And suddenly, the bad game didn’t seem so bad. When I got a little older, I found out that some terrible things had happened to Happy when he served our country in Vietnam. There was no talk of things like PTSD back then, and many Black soldiers like Happy didn’t receive the aid, support, counseling, and love from that same government that they had fought hard to protect. They were expected to come home and resume life as if they hadn’t seen fellow soldiers have their limbs blown off, witnessed mass murder, and buried dozens of their friends. The government failed to support Happy, so Papa was glad to step in, making Happy a fixture around the station.

Papa knew Happy just needed support but wanted to make sure we treated him like everyone else, even though we knew something was a little off. I thought about this a lot as president of the National Basketball Players Association, when we prioritized negotiating for better healthcare for retired NBA players. We needed to protect and support those that came before us, those that helped build the platform that we are part of now. Just like those players who came before us put the game in the great position it’s in today, Happy gave us something and we needed to give him something back.

Generally, I wasn’t raised to make exceptions for people or treat anyone differently, but in this case, Papa was the boss, and what he said goes. I later realized that though Papa was such a stickler for hard work, there was a reason Happy was the only exception. Papa had made it extra clear to us. It was a good exercise in being empathetic and meeting people where they are.

A few times I even went in to clean the bathroom and Happy would be in there sleeping. I’d run out and say, “Hey, Papa, Happy’s taking a nap in the bathroom. I can’t clean it right now.”

If this were anyone else, Papa would be in there banging on the door, but with Happy, he would just pat me on the back and say, “Don’t worry about it, Chris. Let him get some rest.”

Things like this happened all the time at the station. Lessons were taught every day, not by telling, but by showing, which I think is one of the best ways to get things to stick. With this in mind, I wanted to give my kids a little history lesson about the neighborhood.

“Right now, where we are at is called East Winston. It’s pretty much the Black side of town,” I told them. “Papa took care of this community, and it took care of him. We didn’t live over here, though; we lived on the other side of town that was mostly white.”

Looking back, it was helpful for CJ and me to see the divide between Blacks and whites every single day right in our own backyard. This wasn’t the first time we’d talked about race, of course, and we continue to educate our kids, especially in tough moments.

* * *

George Floyd’s murder was obviously one of these tough moments. The day it happened, we were all sitting in the bathroom at our house in LA. I decided to show the entire video to Lil Chris and Cam. I know it sounds heavy but it was necessary. About halfway through the video, Cam began to cry. I thought she was crying because of what she was watching, which was partly true, but she was more so scared for her brother.

When I started talking, this was really when Cam started crying. “Daddy, is this going to happen to Lil Chris?”

That crushed me. There are times as a parent where you just don’t know what to say, and that was one of them. Of course, I consoled her and told her it wouldn’t happen, that all of us were together as a family and loved each other. That went a long way, but I know in my heart that this is a real problem, and that I won’t always be able to protect them as they grow older. Even with the life we have, a different life from where I came from and different from those of a lot of people growing up in Black America right now, our life is not immune to situations like this.

Back in 2020, the same year George Floyd was murdered, I was quarantining at home in LA. Once meetings started happening again, I was out driving to meet a business associate. Keep in mind here, at this point, I’d been in the NBA for fifteen years, six of them right here in LA, playing for the Clippers. My little cousin AJ was with me, and we were driving on the 405. I was driving, and AJ was sitting next to me. All of a sudden, we heard sirens go off; an LAPD officer was pulling us over. Now, I’m rarely one to get too nervous, I can thrive in high-pressure situations, but you would not believe how hard my heart was beating as I guided the car off to the shoulder and saw a white cop step out of his patrol car and approach my window. I was scared to death.

Before he even got close, I did exactly what I thought I was supposed to do in these situations. I took my hands off the wheel and showed them to the cop. I kept them up in the air and even put them out the window just to be sure he saw them.

“License and registration?” he asked.

“Officer, I’m about to reach into the middle console.” The moment I said that, I realized that he moved his right hand to his holster, so I said it again to be sure. “Officer, I’m telling you, I am about to reach inside this console and get my registration for you. Is that okay?”

I don’t know why this upset him, but he got real mad. “Of course you can reach in there! Why are you even acting like that?” He started trippin’ a bit and more forcefully telling me to show him my license and registration. It really seemed like he had no idea why I, a Black man getting pulled over by a white officer in 2020, would be a little hesitant and careful with what I was doing and what I was saying. Thank God this situation ended up okay, but I know it’s not the last time CJ, AJ, Lil Chris, I, or millions of Black men in America today will be faced with something similar.

As much as people see me on TV wearing a jersey with my name on the back, as soon as I step out of that arena, I am no longer Chris Paul, the NBA player, I’m just another Black man like any other, especially to a white cop.

It’s a good thing that a lot of kids may never truly understand the realities of the divide in this country, but it seeps in every now and then. Let me give you another example of how ingrained culture can be … and trust me, I know little kids are innocent. We moved to a place where my daughter was the only Black girl in the class. Other young girls would talk about and touch her hair in fascination because she was the only one in her class with braids and the texture of hair she has. She didn’t always understand why, but we had to explain to her that she was different and that’s okay. Jada and I have the difficult task of teaching our kids the role race plays in our divided country, cities, neighborhoods, and schools.

* * *

Back at Papa’s station, we continued to explore our family history. We had done this same trip in Jada’s neighborhood years earlier. “You need to know your roots,” Jada chimed in.

Cam and Lil Chris walked around, slowly examining the walls, the register, the chairs, imagining what the place was like back in the summers when I’d worked there daily.

“What’d you guys do all day, Dad?” Cam asked.

“There were no iPads, baby, and we didn’t spend all day with our face in a screen,” I told them both, watching their eyes spread in amazement. “You worked and figured out how to have fun without the crutch of technology.”

The kids laughed, but I let them know that I was serious. We couldn’t watch TV or play PlayStation all day. CJ and I went outside to play. We just played anything to make the time go by, we just figured it out. In the beginning, CJ would win like he always did back then, but that competitive edge was real. So real that sometimes we didn’t even finish a game because we were fighting so much. We fought about everything, all the time. Everything was a competition, even who got to sit in the front seat on a drive with Mom or Dad. We’d go as far as sitting in the car an hour before a ride because you did what you had to do. If you wanted the front seat, you had to get there first. Losing to CJ at anything, big or small, constantly pushed me to always try to be better. No matter what we were playing, he forced me to get the hang of things really quickly and earn my own wins. Solitaire on Papa’s computer was the closest thing we had to a daily video game, but we didn’t care for that—we were too busy living, creating our own fun. And when we weren’t making that fun, we were working or learning another thing Papa taught us over and over, especially as we got older: becoming self-sufficient.

I know this is a different world we all live in now, but I cringe when I think about how sometimes technology and access make it more challenging for my kids to learn those lessons as easily. I see all the tools they have in their classrooms. I also know how many classrooms and school districts lack that kind of support. That kind of education should be available for everyone, so one of the biggest missions in my foundation, the Chris Paul Family Foundation, is leveling the playing field and making sure all schools have access to the same technology and learning tools. This is why Jada and I make a point to take trips like this when we can and have them seeing, feeling, and experiencing the world, not just their bubble. It’s crazy that by exposing us to everyone in the shop, this is what Papa did for us. And we don’t water those lessons down, just like he never did. Papa spoke to us like we were his peers; he gave us real advice that we can apply in real time.

“I don’t ever want to have to answer to anyone! Especially a white man,” Papa would sometimes say, reminiscing on the days he worked himself to the bone at the milk company or for the landlord he had at Jones Gulf before he owned his shop. “Nobody owns me. I’m my own boss. A white man is not going to tell me where to go, when to be there, how to dress, or what to do. That’s for damn sure.”

Everybody brags about being their own boss now, but Papa was hip to it a long time ago. He owned his own business in a time when many Black bosses did not exist. He was born in 1941, seventy-six years after slavery allegedly ended in 1865. He, like Black Americans today, really felt the inequality. He knew he was going to change the status quo and having complete control was not common for Black people at that time. He was a pioneer and we celebrate him for that. By being in charge, Papa was also in the position to make sure that all the people around him were making their fair share of money as well. And it was such a family business. Both of my parents benefitted from his example of being hardworking, successful in their own careers, and putting in hours at the shop.

My dad worked at Aigis Mechtronics, where he oversaw the robotics assembly line. This was way back when robotics had first come out. He started as a machine operator and continued to get promotions because he’s a quick learner. Before you knew it, he was teaching other people how to do it and running the whole assembly line.

While my dad was working at Aigis, Papa had reached out to him because as times were changing and more things were going digital, Papa needed someone to learn how to input the state inspections data and emissions tests that were now required to go into a computer. My dad agreed, of course, so he was now spending a bit more time around the station even though he had a full-time job and his hands were full being a husband to our mother and a father to us.

Papa saw this as an opportunity. While at the shop, he taught my dad how to change brake pads. He believed that changing brakes and doing other things on cars would be easy for my father because he already knew so much about robots. He was right. Dad would be working at Aigis, and a coworker would approach his desk like, “Hey, Charles, my money is funny right now, but I need some new brakes. Can you help me out?”

My dad would go right outside on his lunch break and knock it out.

Fixing brakes is actually a lot simpler than it seems—I still remember how to do it to this day. So, my dad would gather up the necessary tools from his car before getting started. He would need some mechanic’s gloves so his hands wouldn’t be permanently stained like Papa’s, a lug wrench, a nut remover, a jack, a jack stand, a plastic tie, a C-clamp, the new brake pads, a can of brake fluid, and a baster used for drawing out any overflowing brake fluid.

I now imagine my dad carrying these items over to his coworker’s car, assessing the vehicle, cracking the door open, and then pressing down the emergency brake, which is very important. Papa always said, “Never, ever forget to make sure that emergency brake is down. If you don’t, you are going to be in a world of trouble!”

Before you prop the car up with the jack, you want to take the nut remover and loosen each nut—trust me, it’s a lot easier while the car is on the ground, as the weight gives you more leverage. After that, you can prop the car up and get to work by taking the nuts completely off, removing the wheel, and then the slider bolt.

Identify the caliper, which is the part of your disc brake system that houses your pads and pistons—you’ll see it on the side, and you need to pivot it up, so that you can slide out the old pads and retract the pistons. Check your brake fluid level; if it’s too low, add a little, but don’t top it off, because the fluid level naturally goes down as the pads wear; if it’s too high, use the baster to take some out, because you don’t want it to overflow. Pop the new pads in and reposition that caliper. Put your slider bolt back in, put your tire back on, and tighten the nuts after lowering the jack. Do the exact same thing on the other side, collect your money, and you’ll be good to go. The whole process takes about an hour—forty minutes if you were as good as my dad and Papa.

My dad took advantage of the situation and was able to pull in money from the set of skills he learned from Papa and apply them at his nine-to-five. The best part about it is that my dad loved working on cars as much as he loved helping people, so it was a win-win—as a matter of fact, my dad still could change the brakes if he needed to. Y’all don’t get it. My dad really loves cars.

My mother worked at Wachovia Bank as a lead tech analyst. Back when Mom was in high school, she had gained acceptance into what was called the co-op program, which allowed talented students to attend classes for half the day and work for the other half. Many students had the opportunity to start their jobs at 1:00 p.m., but my mother’s bank job didn’t begin until 5:00 p.m., so she had a little extra time every day for her studies. Numbers always came easy to my mom; fractions, equations, and all kinds of theories danced around in her head before she scribbled them into her notebook, always solving the problem. Mom was like a human calculator, which made her stay in that program until she graduated from high school.

My mom ended up being so good that the bank offered her a full-time position the day after she graduated. She had to make the decision between going away to college or taking the job at Wachovia. This wasn’t a difficult choice, because she had fallen in love with my dad and had no plans to leave Winston-Salem.

Over the years, my mom continued to advance at Wachovia, working her way up to the position of a managing tech analyst. My mother used all the skills she learned at the bank to take care of all of Jones Chevron’s accounting needs—by managing everything for Papa, controlling the books, and making sure everyone and every bill was paid on time. Everybody worked all the time—we’re relentless, remember? As the oldest child of his, she was a driving force behind Jones Chevron, and it was amazing to watch.

* * *

When we were really young, Granny, my dad’s mom, would also drop us off at Papa’s on the days she had to work. This taught us that the grind was real on both sides of our family. Granny would be up early getting to her job, and when we pulled up at 6:30 a.m., Papa was already dressed in his jumpsuit, ready to get cracking. We’d usually have a little breakfast first that Mama packed for us, a sip of that sugary coffee, but as soon as we finished, we both went after the red rag.

The red rag was everything, and you couldn’t do anything without it. You had to put the red rag in your pocket before you turned on the pumps, turned on the lights, or refilled the gas that was in the ground. Papa helped us mature a lot earlier than most kids. When we got a little older, even though we didn’t have driver’s licenses, Papa let us move the cars around on the lot of the service station. This was my first unofficial driver’s lesson—and I enjoyed whipping everything from big Cadillacs to old Oldsmobiles around the lot. We constantly worked, and we loved it—from that first sip of coffee in the morning, to the fatback sandwich from Ackingna’s we enjoyed for lunch, we worked.

“We got it! We got it! It’s hot out here. Let us take care of that for ya,” CJ and I would say, with messy faces having just drunk some Welch’s grape soda, as we’d catch customers coming toward that full-service pump. We’d try to guide them away from the self-service ones so that we could pump their gas with a smile, thinking of the tip we’d get off them. Do that enough times over a summer, we’d have enough money for some nice sneakers, maybe even a pair of Jordans, come the first day of school.

Work was actually fun. Not to get too spiritual, but as the Buddha says, “You should be able to see a person work, and play, and not be able to tell the difference.” That’s what we had at the service station, the opportunity to play all day and get paid.

I stood outside what used to be Papa’s station, remembering all this, when I heard a voice.

“Yo, Chris! Chris?” an excited, raspy voice howled. “Chris Paul? Is that you?”

I looked up and squinted my eyes, focused on the familiar silhouette coming over my way. At first glance, I couldn’t tell who it was, but I soon realized it was a familiar face I hadn’t seen in so long. That’s the way it is when you’re at home.

Once we got done talking, both of my kids had a thousand questions apiece. “How many cars used to come through here?” “Did you ever see cars smashed up from getting hit?” “How did Papa learn how to do all this stuff?” “Did you wash the cars too, like they do here now?” There were so many more, they were rapid-firing questions the way only kids can. I was eager to answer them all, but first I had to give them the official lay of the land, because a lot had changed since the gas station belonged to my family.

For starters, the gas pumps were gone. The building operates as a car wash now. We loved those gas pumps because Papa didn’t make the family pay for gas—it was a perk of the job.

Most normal everyday working people are not used to free gas. My family, we didn’t know what it felt like to swipe our cards at a gas pump, because Papa owned the station. Both sides of my family went to Dreamland Park Baptist Church, and it would have made sense economically and environmentally for us to carpool, but we didn’t—as a matter of fact, we all rode solo with big smiles on our faces, because we knew Sunday was free gas day in our family. Some of our family members—the generous ones—would even try to pay Papa, but he wouldn’t have it. Everyone would just pull up to the service station right after the pastor gave the benediction and church let out, men still in our suits and ties, the women still in their beautiful hats and well-crafted dresses, and we would all graciously fill up our tanks.

“So Papa could afford to just give the gas away?” Lil Chris asked.

“Only to family,” I responded. “Giving it to everyone for free would be bad business.”

Back in the day, gas was only a dollar—but it wouldn’t have mattered if it were five dollars, because we got it free. Sometimes friends of mine—or friends of CJ’s—would say, “Hey, can we swing past the gas station—you know, to fill our tanks up?”

“Oh, sure, you could come by,” we’d say and laugh. “But you ain’t getting it for free.” Every now and then he’d let me bring a homie or two by but it wasn’t all the time.

Once the kids and Jada and I had walked around the outside enough, I swear I saw some of the same weeds sneaking through the sidewalk all these years later, even with all the other changes the new owners had made. We kept going and went inside the service station. It had undergone a series of changes too. Imagine walking into your old childhood home and feeling like the rooms had shrunk—everything was rearranged, misplaced, or simply damaged. I shook off the feeling of déjà vu as I walked in there and attempted to quiet my mind. I had been guilty of going into my head since we’d hopped out of the car, but I wanted to remind myself that this wasn’t really about me reminiscing on how the shop used to be, but about Lil Chris and Cam getting the opportunity to experience a huge piece of their history.

“So the desk was over there, and your uncle CJ and I would post up over there for breaks or in between completing whatever task Papa gave us that day,” I said as I pointed to different sections of the room. “We had a soda machine—it sat right there—and whenever we made some extra change, we’d blow it on grape soda or Dr. Pepper.”

Lil Chris and Cam were taking this in. I could tell they were getting a little bored by Jada and me doing this, but it was important, and they knew that. I think they also saw how comfortable I felt around the station, even all these years later. I was happy, but, as I said, we faced some hardships here too.

Beyond some of the trauma that I still deal with when thinking about Jones Chevron, some of the jobs Papa would give us were also frightening. Cleaning the bathroom comes to mind. Imagine scrubbing up after a guy who couldn’t find the toilet in a small bathroom smellier than a pile of shit. That was the job, so I did it. Not happily, but I did it. And I kept that attitude throughout my playing career. Sometimes it’s pretty, and sometimes it’s doing the dirty work that no one wants to do, anything to help the team win—even if it means scrubbing a nasty-ass bathroom.

Changing tires made up for that. I love changing tires. I’d walk up on the car, hike up my jeans, get down on my knee, and rotate as many wheels as Papa told me to. On some of those days, my hands would look like small, dirty versions of his. I would go off and try to scrub them clean with the same soap Papa used. The only difference is that it worked for me, but I can’t say the same for Papa. Every time I saw some grease on my palms or under my nails, I got excited because I knew I was getting a little closer to my hands looking like Papa’s.

I also enjoyed performing oil changes, a skill I still have to this very day. The habit of buying a new car and checking the oil, or the fact that it takes six bottles to fill an oil pan, will never leave me. I’m proud of my service station roots and the fact that I can rotate tires and change oil with the best of them.

We really bonded with Papa over those summers, spending a ton of time together—from early in the morning when we arrived, to the beautifully delicate process of setting up, and then grinding until it was pitch-black outside. I loved it and, believe it or not, I miss it. And maybe that’s another part that I wanted for Cam and Lil Chris, not necessarily to learn how to change oil and rotate tires, but to pick up skills and values from home, from our family—skills that they can use on their journey, and maybe even share with their own kids someday.

“I’m good on fixing cars, Dad,” Lil Chris joked.

“You think you are until you go on a long road trip with your future wife and you don’t have the first clue how to change your flat tire.”

While continuing our tour, I started to really think about Lil Chris’s and Cam’s futures. The feeling of being back home, in the shop, and the influx of the countless childhood memories CJ and I learned from made me wonder if I was spoiling them too much. I want the best for them, they deserve it, but where do you draw the line? I’m sure I’m not the only parent who struggles with this.

Lil Chris and Cam have a lot, but Jada and I are constantly trying to make sure they appreciate the little things and work hard on that. CJ and I didn’t do everything around the house, but at least we had to fold the clothes and clean our room, and if we didn’t do those things, we definitely would be in trouble—with both Mom and Dad. It was our responsibility, and we learned from it. We try to instill this same work ethic in Cam and Lil Chris. It’s not exactly the same, but you’d better believe they have a list of chores they have to do before they can do anything else they might want to be doing. They get them done too. We limit iPads and video games to just the weekend, and only if they do all their chores the week before. There’s so much to learn from giving kids responsibilities and instilling that work ethic in them, like my parents and Papa did for CJ and me.

The kind of life that my children enjoy is very different from what we defined as luxury growing up—namely, Jordans. I’ve been part of the Jordan family for so long, we have an insane amount of Js around our house. It’s crazy to put that into perspective, even for my son, because Jordans used to mean something totally different from boxes that just show up at the house whenever we want them. We’re blessed. We’re better than blessed. Growing up, we not only valued Air Jordans for the style, we valued them because we had to work for them. We could look at our shoes and physically see the work.

For CJ and me, like any young Black kids in the ’90s, Jordans were it, you had to have them—end of story. Back when I was in sixth grade, the Jordan 13s were it. The ones that Denzel rocked in He Got Game had dropped. I earned the money to buy them, getting hands dirty, working at the station, it was only right. You should have seen me chasing down people, boxing CJ out, and making sure I got every full-service fill-up to add to my tip jar. Finally, when I had enough cash saved up, I went to Foot Locker to buy them.

I skipped the black-and-white pair and settled on a navy blue pair, with the hologram on the side. The first time I cracked the box, the smell of success, made up of fresh leather and crinkly wrapping paper, brushed against my nose. They were perfect, I did not want to take them off, but I was too smart to wear them in gym class. I still remember getting changed for gym that day. All the other students were just watching my feet as I slowly pulled the shoes off and carefully placed them in my locker. Like I said, I wasn’t crazy enough to scuff up my new Js in gym class. I’d be a crazy person to run around in those Jordans, and nobody was crazy enough to steal them, at least I thought.

We hooped in gym, and I did what I normally did on the court, hit some jumpers and worked on my game, the usual, while thinking about my shoes the whole time. When the bell rang, I jetted down to my locker, only to see it flung open and my belongings scattered.

“Who was near my locker?!” I yelled to anyone brave enough to come near me. “Where are my shoes?! Y’all got me all the way messed up!”

My brand-new, navy blue, barely worn Jordans were stolen right out of my locker. To make matters worse, I had to wear my regular-ass gym shoes for the rest of the day and then go home and face my dad.

“Why would you leave those expensive shoes alone?!” my dad yelled after he heard what happened.

“I put my lock on, Dad,” I said.

“You know people break locks all the time,” my dad said angrily. “Maybe you need to be punished for being careless.”

“But, Dad—”

My father cut me off with wide, furious eyes, and I knew to shut my mouth, even though I thought it was silly to punish me for having my shoes stolen; after all, I was the victim. My Js were gone. Mom and Dad were hot about that, but it didn’t make much sense to me at the time. Someone stole my shoes that I saved up for and bought, and I had to suffer for that? We had put so much weight on that one pair of shoes, and it puts it all in perspective for me now.

I know it’s on Jada and me to instill the value of hard work in our kids because they’re not growing up working at the service station, or cutting grass in one-hundred-degree weather, but we are teaching them the same values in different ways. We work hard to teach them that same self-sufficiency that Papa taught us.

As we were wrapping up and heading back to the car, I saw Lil Chris checking out the neighborhood—the lack of resources and seeing things like worn-down cars that looked very different from the ones in the neighborhood we’re accustomed to now. I imagined that this reality seemed impossible to him, that he couldn’t believe people lived like this and that his family came from here. He could only compare it to his reality and the many privileges that the game of basketball has afforded our family. That’s why this trip was so important to us. Showing the kids perspective and having them understand the importance of hard work had really sunk in. You can only appreciate where you’re going if you know where you’ve come from.

Lil Chris looked around. “Dang, Dad, I can’t believe this is where you grew up.”

“I love it here. It’s just different. That’s all.”

One of my group chats is made up of my homies that I grew up with, many of whom still live in the area, and they always keep me up to date on what’s happening. One of them posted a video of a fight that broke at Hanes Mall back in Winston-Salem one night. I pressed Play and witnessed a group of young Black boys, probably all from different parts of Winston-Salem, chaotically throwing punches at each other until one pulled out a gun and broke apart the crowd with shots. “It’s like someone gets killed every week,” another friend responded. This kind of stuff happens not just here but everywhere. I think about this when trying to toe the line of educating and preparing my kids but not scaring them.

With Papa, working hard was about giving yourself choices. If you have means, you can make choices about things you want and things you want to do. When it comes to my kids, it’s hard because your choices don’t mean as much when you have all the options in the world. It’s easy to instill being relentless in a kid when you can’t afford to mess up. If I was going to make it to the NBA, I had no margin for error. And knowing that forced me to not take anything for granted.

We all smiled as we pulled out of the lot of the service station. As we did, I put my hand on Jada’s knee. We gazed out at those streets I had seen for the millionth time, finally with our kids here with us to share the experience, and it felt like we were seeing everything we knew with a fresh perspective. It also had me remembering when Jada and I first got together.

* * *

Let me tell you a bit about the foundation and most important part of our family, my wife, Jada Paul. She laughs at me, because one thing she always tells me is how I’m too hard on Lil Chris, but I literally will do anything Cam asks me to do. I’m a girl dad, what can I say? Jada knows this all too well because she has the same effect on me. Always has and always will. It’s been that way ever since the first time I laid eyes on her in the LJVM Coliseum.

Funny enough, I met one of Jada’s friends at church prior to that and she thought that we would be a good match. She said something to me about how I should call Jada but I didn’t really pay it no mind. I never had to call a girl. (Don’t tell her I said that.) So, even though I had heard about her prior, Jada and I actually first met at the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic. Our high school rivals were playing in the championship against one another. After my school won (which I obviously must mention), we were standing on the stairs before leaving and that same friend of hers just put it on the table: “Why you ain’t call my friend yet?” What she didn’t realize was I thought Jada should have been trying to call me.

After meeting at that tournament, I saw her friend was probably right to try and set us up, so I decided to finally call her. What really attracted me to Jada was the fact that she was so real, and she loved that I was so driven for our age. As you can probably guess, by this time, everyone loved what I could do on the basketball court. I was used to that kind of praise. But she was excited, as she says, that I was a good person because of where I came from and my ability to show affection. I credit my parents and Papa with that. Although I was a McDonald’s All-American, I didn’t go to college knowing I would wind up in the NBA. I went to Wake Forest to get a great education and finished my communications degree at Winston-Salem University as I wanted to finish at an HBCU.

When we met, Jada was a sophomore at UNC Charlotte, about an hour or so south of Wake Forest and Winston-Salem, but when she was not in class, she spent most of her time at Wake with me. Her presence made everything around me easy, like an escape from the anxiety and pressures that come with being a Division I college basketball player. I felt like she instantly understood me because she was from the same area as my family and me. After a few months of dating, I had become so connected to Jada that I wanted to take the next big step and really introduce her to my family. This had the potential to get real ugly real fast, LOL. Like they say, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Now remember I was the baby boy, so my mom wasn’t too crazy about any girl getting close to me. As a matter of fact, I tried to bring a girl home to my parents once and it didn’t go over too well. And I had never brought a girl around my entire family. That alone let Jada know how serious I was about our relationship. I imagine Jada was nervous as hell that day. I know I was, but she’s the one who had to go sit in the stands with fifty of my family members while they all watched me play. Unfortunately, I didn’t even get to introduce her myself because I had to get ready for the game so she was really getting tested. It’s crazy to think back that long ago, two kids and eleven years of marriage later. Her family, my family—now it’s all one big happy family. When it comes to Jada’s family, her parents have always treated me like the son they never had.

After a few years of dating, I got a phone call from Jada that she was pregnant with Lil Chris. It was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, but I’ll never forget how scared I was to tell my parents. This wasn’t ideal by Southern Baptist church standards, but it was our story and I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Becoming parents and growing together, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Jada, so a year after Lil Chris was born, I proposed.

In order for her not to find out what I had planned, I had to do a whole lot of sneaking around to create the perfect memory for us. The most difficult part was the planning process because Jada is not the easiest person to surprise, but I was up for the challenge. Jada had spent so much time with me during our college years, especially at Wake, that I thought the perfect place for us to get engaged would be at LJVM Coliseum, the site of the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic where we first met.

This wasn’t going to be one of those typical Jumbotron engagements; I had to think more creatively. First and foremost, I asked her dad for permission to take her hand in marriage. Next, I went out, bought a ring, and recruited my assistant coach at Wake, Jeff Battle, to help me out. His job was easy. All he had to do was answer the phone and act like I was coming to talk to the team and join their meeting.

As we got close, I pulled out my phone. “On my way to the meeting now, Coach B. I’m almost there,” I said into the phone.

We pulled into the back of the Coliseum, and I thought Jada started to suspect something, because a curious look came over her face. She was confused why the team would be meeting in the off-season and why they’d be meeting so late at night. Neither of those things made sense.

“Where are all the cars?” she asked.

“Well, maybe everyone parked in the front,” I replied anxiously. We entered the arena.

“Where are we going?”

“The locker room,” I said, trying to reassure her. We walked through the locker room. No one was in there.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Oh, they must be out on the court.” At this point, I knew she’d probably figured out that something was up, but it was almost time. I just had to keep throwing her off a little longer.

“Just follow me,” I continued. We kept walking and finally got to the steps where we first met. When she cocked her head and fixed her lips to ask another question about what the hell we were doing there, I quickly spun around and got down on one knee and told her that I wanted to be with her for the rest of our lives. I asked her if she felt the same and if she’d do me the honor of being my wife. She happily said yes. Well, first she burst into tears and I lost her for a minute, but then she said yes.

I was thinking back on that moment as we drove through Winston. I fixed the mirror and looked in the back seat. We now have these two beautiful kids and are charged with the task of making sure they are receiving everything they need, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and financially. And I know for certain, I wouldn’t want anyone else on this ride with me.


Copyright © 2023 by Christopher Emmanuel Paul and Michael Wilbon