ADEEM THE ARTIST - WHITE TRASH REVELRY VINYL

I was born in Gastonia in 1988 a few months after my grandpa Booge died. He no longer remembered dad because of the Alzheimer’s and I can't imagine how painful it must've been for my father.

I don't know what their financial situation was like, to be honest. I know that my grandfather had his little garage and that he didn't charge people very much to work on their cars.

I know that he worked his daddy’s farm and then as a machinist, then managed an auto-parts store, that they owned a house in Mecklenburg County. Booge was blue-collar and my dad was blue-collar. I can't say if we were ever people of means. I just don’t know.

My dad dropped out, got his GED, and started running the lathe when he was a teenager. One time he told me about running away to the beach with a girl he’d pined over. He described it wistfully as a teenager’s dream. She soon grew lackluster, though, and one day she was just gone. I don’t think he ever told me her name but I remember it as Tiffany.

My parents were young. Dad was 23 and mom was 19 when they found themselves expecting me. They couldn't afford me. They didn't know each other. They did the Christian thing and we became a family- a package deal.

The first place I can remember is the trailer on Thomas Fite in Belmont. I must've been a little over a year old when we moved in there. I played Power Rangers in the yard.

Their friends would come ‘round still in the early years. I remember nights of drinking and partying and I remember these as the fondest years. There is warmth there in the trailer.