Life Story on a Car Ride Through North Minneapolis

It ain't us if it ain't tough.
It ain't right if it ain't rough.
his grandpa told him.
That stuck with me, he says.

It ain't us if it ain't tough.
It ain't right if it ain't rough.
his grandpa said in an Arkansas drawl.
From a town smaller than a Minneapolis ghetto.
A town, he complains, that don't even have useless billboards to look at.
Just fields.
Fields that make him claustrophobic in their emptiness.

He went back down there 'cause Grandma was sick.
Real sick.
Until Auntie told her, You raised nine kids and you're going to let a little cancer get you down?
(He only counts six aunties and uncles, but doubtless at least three more had found their way from somewhere. Kids know love (and food) when they see it, even in Arkansas.)
Auntie told her, You raised nine kids and you're going to let a little cancer get you down?
So Grandma got up.
Apparently she knew that
It ain't us if it ain't tough.
It ain't right if it ain't rough.

But he wants to buy his wife a truck.

We pass a women in the rain.
She's got an umbrella but she's soaking wet.
'Cause the umbrella's draped over the stroller
so all you can see are little pink Velcro shoes bouncing happily under their cozy canopy.
Bouncing happily while mama's feet
walk and walk
pushing the stroller
getting wetter and wetter
to their destination.
He doesn't want his wife roughin' it like that.
Toughin' it like that.
He'll take the rough and the tough.
He's not afraid to work hard and get dirty
if it means he can buy his wife that truck.
He wants his kids bouncing happily under a cozy canopy of steel girders and airbags.
All things precious to him tucked for safekeeping in a fortress on wheels.

'Cause things happen out there.
And he's got the dent in his skull to prove it.
See, he had a lot on his mind that day.
He'd just donated so he had some money and the baby needed Pampers and he needed something to eat and he had a job interview so he was cutting across the street to get home to his wife to get her the Pampers money and

BAM!

Stay with me! Stay with me!

Hmm. Ambulance. Well, at least I'm in good hands...

C'mon now, stay with me!

But he doesn't like to dwell on the past.
It was rough but it didn't kill him.
Ran up 10K in chiropractic bills after he called 1-800-PAIN but he's ok now.
Cause after all,
It ain't us if it ain't tough.
It ain't right if it ain't rough.