The Once and Future Thug
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2014 by T.J. Seitz
Arthur Pennydraggin was the leader of the legendary Rownd Crew. Most everyone though knew him as ‘Bundles.’
Bundles was admired and respected by peoples on both the East and West sides of the City. To honor him his niggas often made copies of the homemade tattoo on his right forearm (three hat crowns, inside a diamond shaped shield) on all sorts of surfaces around town. I once even saw a train boxcar in Boise, Idaho with the symbol spray painted on it.
His name also held weight in more distant places like Little Rock, Las Vegas and Milwaukee where he visited old friends and relatives from time to time.
He was so Facebook famous that Mylie Cyrus recognized him walking around Miami Beach one year, during Spring Break, and asked to have a picture taken with him.
I was asked during his funeral to write some of his life down because it needs to be remembered; in the lines of those old school prose poems by Troyes and Malory, except from an inner-city perspective versus the Middle Ages.
My name is Jeffry. Back where I grew up they used to call me Monday Mouth because I was so talkative on Mondays about what happened over the past the weekend. A football coach gave me the name when I was twelve. He said it matched my personality.
I am one of the rare few who escaped life in The Hood by graduating early from high school. Afterward I enlisted in the Marines for three years. I’m now in the reserves and working on an associate’s degree in communications from Monroe Community College.
Instead of just talking about stories I write them down now.
The Rownd Crew
The Rownd Crew were a loosely knit group of neighborhood kids from the Dutchtown and 24th Wards who liked to fight, fuck and steal stuff.
Bundles officially founded The Rownd Crew when he was in the ninth or tenth grade, though they’d all been hangin’ together long before that. He thought the idea would help manage beefs and scrappin’ over common things like selling shit or bitches.
The majority of the gang (who were still in school) attended Edison Tech; either the STEM or Robert Brown academies.
Dwaine Dreadlocks though was recently transferred to LyncX for never going to class and threatening to chop off Principal Green’s ‘ugly fucking bald head’ with an ax. Green initially gave Dwaine three days of in-school suspension for shouting, “Shut the fuck up Uncle Ben!” during an assembly on bullying, but Dwaine was so high at the time that he didn’t give a shit and just snapped on the man, making things worse for himself.
Drew, the only white nigga within their ranks, was sent to live with his grandparents in Lyons, NY soon after he knocked up a Puerto Rican thot named Izzi, His grandfather, Felix, rents an apartment to her mother on Canal Street, above Meg’s Cafe. Despite the distance Drew regularly skips school and takes a bus or hitchhikes to the City to be with his friends.
Originally Bundles wanted to call the clique ‘The Glo Boyz,’ but most of the other members thought the name sounded way too gay. They didn’t want to be thought of as a bunch of cock sucking faggots.
One day, a group of girls was passin’ Bundles and two of his best sons, Lance and Pierre-cee, in the Exit 3 stairwell. They overheard the three boys arguing over what to name them-selves. Pierre-cee liked ‘Smeez Godz’ and Lance thought ‘Hood Ratz’ sounded better.
Someone shouted in jest (it was never exactly clear who made the comment but it’s suspected that either E’Layne Pelles, the baby mamma of Lance’s two year old boy Gale or Zhade Branwen, the butt-ugly dyke bitch whose retarded brother Rave-Rave was cut to pieces by a cartel lieutenant down in Tijuana a few years ago, threw it out there), “Y’all shood jus’ shut the fuck up and callz yer selfs the ‘Round Crew’ cuz most y’all gotz fat asses from hangin’ ‘round the parkin’ lot at that Cam’s Pizzeria on Lyell when yer not in skools!”
What was supposed to be drillin’ turned out to be exactly what they were all looking for.
Everyone laughed at the suggestion because it was right on the mark. They did spend a lot of time at Cam’s and the employee picnic tables next door. Several of their uncles, cousins and sisters worked for both the restaurant and the adjacent Taxi Company so no one ever complained when the boys gathered there.
The result was unanimous after Bundles put the suggested name up for a vote; ‘Rownd Crew’ would be their name.
Family History
Bundles’ acquired his unusual last name from his great-grandfather.
Utah Pennydraggin was a traveling musician during 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s.
The man made a living out of playin’ guitar at various honky-tonks, gin joints and brothels throughout The South with the likes of other performers such as Leadbelly, King Solomon Hill and Blind Gary Davis.
Utah had his family name legally changed during the Depression from Constantine to Pennydraggin.
He claimed the makeover was a marketing ploy that helped him get more work. In actuality it was just a clever scheme he thought up to dodge several outstanding bigamy and paternity lawsuits.
The stage name was reflective of the unique way Utah played his instrument. Instead of his fingers or a pick he used a special penny to plunk his beloved 12 string, Vivian.
The coin was allegedly charmed with good luck by the voodoo princess from New Orleans that he named his guitar after. He often referred to the music he made as, ‘Vivian’s Magic.’
Sister Nimue, Utah’s favorite Natchez Creole, made a medallion out of it after Utah retired.
Their son Flay (short for Flavius) was murdered by his best friend Vordy Foyer two weeks before his 21st birthday. Flay started having second thoughts about a pawn shop heist they was plannin’. Vordy wouldn’t have none of that talk so he shot Flay in cold blood then carried out the robbery alone.
A couple decades later Vordy eventually confessed to both the robbery and murder of Flay while serving two life sentences for bludgeoning his common-law wife and seven year old daughter to death with a hammer. He found Jesus in jail and felt the need to come clean about all the crimes he committed when he was younger.
Luther, Flay’s son and Bundles’ baby daddy, was raised by his paternal Grandparents and mother in rural Missisippi until he was thirteen.
He was sent north to live with his Great Aunt Cecilia in Rochester, New York when he started getting into trouble with the local Sheriff. His half-brother Ambrose and mother followed a few months later. The family hoped that the change of environment would lead Luther down a different path.
It did not. In less than two weeks Luther was right back at his old ways; skipping school, loitering Downtown at Midtown Plaza and breaking into people’s houses. At fifteen he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Syracuse for six months after he was caught pimping two twelve year old nigga bitches from his neighborhood in the parking lot of some athletic fields off Campbell Street.
Luther swiped his grand-pappy’s old penny right before leaving Mississippi. Sometimes he wore it around his neck, but he was not consistent about it, making him vulnerable during the times he left it at home.
Everyone called Bundles’ step-father Ector. The only person that ever referred to him as Reggie was his foster grandma, Millie.
Sir Ector was originally from Philadelphia. He was a renowned East Coast Rapper and DJ during the early 1980’s. The ‘Sir’ was dropped from his name after he quit the music business and got a regular job running a machine that created contact lenses at Bausch and Lomb.
He met Bundles’ mother, Ingrid, at Club 2001, a popular disco in Chili. She liked him because he earned a steady paycheck and treated her good.
The pair got married a year after Luther was sent back to prison for violating his probation sentence.
The nigga got high with a stripper he hooked up with at Louie’s Cordial Lounge on Lyell Ave. He allegedly spiked the dancer’s drink with roofies, brought her passed out ass back to his apartment then fucked the shit out of the skank bitch. She called the police on him the next day after she woke up naked in a dumpster near Luther’s apartment.
It was basically the same tactic Luther used on Ingrid when she became pregnant with Bundles almost ten years before.
Luther’s lawyer had the rape charges dropped in exchange for Luther admitting to possessing a weapon (a switch blade) and drug paraphernalia (a pipe) which were clearly against the conditions of his probation. The woman was a crazy crack-head and had an extensive criminal history of her own so it was relatively easy for the attorney to shoot holes in her overall credibility.
Rather than complicating his situation further Luther just plead guilty to the lesser charge and agreed to attend addiction therapy while he was incarcerated. The fifteen month sentence the judge gave him was a far better deal than the five to ten years he would have certainly received if he had decided to go to court.
Bundles’ was given the Pennydraggin talisman by his uncle Ambrose after his father was killed in a drive-by; not long after being released from prison, for the second time. The boy was eleven.
Luther was not wearing the amulet when he and three others were shot at the corner of Dewey and Glendale Park; his son took note and never leaves home without it.
Arthur was not musically talented. However, he did inherit his great grand-pappy’s natural charisma. Ladies, old and young were often smitten by his charm.
Bundles was a very likeable person. He did not have very many true enemies, despite his criminal activities (which he worked real hard to keep on the down-low for the most part).
For those who did not know him, his reputation was a lot more devious than he actually behaved in person. The boy had never been arrested, shot or stabbed no one.
He usually kept a small knife with a white hilt tucked in his sock, but only used it to carve his initials or peel fruit. The teen believed that negotiation, friendship and compromise worked a lot better for getting what he wanted than violence and intimidation.
Everyone said that the blade he carried had magical powers. When unsheathed, its wielder presumably turned into a shadow, which is why he never got caught. Bundles pandered to those rumors because they added to his overall mystique.
Ingrid started calling Arthur her ‘bundle of joy’ soon after he was born. As he grew older he became more of a handful for his family. His innocent smile evolved into a devilish grin. By the time he was four his family started referring to him as their ‘bundle of trouble.’ Somewhere between five and ten the endearing expression was shortened to just ‘Bundles,’ which is what everyone knows him as today.