Tyrone, Street Sense Vendor, Wisconsin and River

      I approached Tyrone at his usual spot outside the Tenleytown Metro. After buying a paper, I introduced myself to him and the lady selling with him. He introduced both of them, saying "This is Edna. Edna's shy." When I asked if either of them wanted to do an interview, he volunteered immediately. When I asked if Edna wanted to talk too, he said "Nah. Edna don't talk much." Edna nodded. Tyrone talked to me for more than half an hour. The interview I posted here is, believe it or not, just a fraction of the extremely dense and diverse opinons of Tyrone Murray.

Tyrone's Street Sense Badge Photo

         “I’m Tyrone Murray and I sell Street Sense Papers. And not only just the Street Sense, I’m working for God as well. Tryna keep people- keep ‘em inspired, let ‘em know they’ve got a gift today of being alive. Instead of you always want to go out here and work for The Man to get a check, you remember that you gotta work for God as well, and that all He ask you to do is he asks you to work with God’s love and grace and kindness and to help each other and to serve each other. And the thing about it is that we get a check every day, but it’s a check that you don’t see. It’s that you being alive and that everything’s still working. So if you’re getting this good why can’t you give back something? We’re hardheaded people, we just big sinners. But we try to pray for each other. Me and my church we try to pray for people. I am a full member of the Restoration Church from the beginning and I pray to God that I’ll be there until the end.   

I been [in DC] all my life. Everybody knows me. All the busses that run up through here, all the bus drivers know me. They knew me before I started being a Street Sense guy. I’m just the same old way: I love to treat everybody with God’s grace. I tell people, ‘you don’t have money to buy a paper, you know, you can give it to me later or whatever, whatever you decide. But friendship is meanin more to me than the paper does.’

           He turns to a woman passing by “How you doin today ma’am? You have a blessed day.”

            I ask him if he is ever bothered by people who don’t acknowledge him or make eye contact. “Those are the people I pray for the most. It’s sad that a person can walk down the street with a dog who loves to bark at everybody, and the dog will bark to say hello, and I’ll talk back to the dog and say ‘oh yeah, I still hear you sugar, what you fussing about?’ This dog’s speaking to me, and a human being won’t. 

            I considered myself a bad boy [when I was in high school.] I smoked my weed, played hooky from school, went to school, hustled. But I wasn’t the type of hustler everybody else was. I gave away the drugs more than I sold them. People would come out selling clothes belongs to their children or people in their house. I give ‘em some drugs and say ‘take that back in the house.’ The food they come out there to sell, or the toys, I gave ‘em some drugs, I said ‘you better go home. Take that back in there.’ I didn’t really make no money. So that’s me. I’m God’s court jester. I try to keep everybody happy, you know. I was a crazy young man. I loved the women more than anything else.

             I didn’t focus in on God as much as I do now. I found Him a long time ago. I just surrendered. I said ‘you know what? Everything I try to do on my own I mess up. I won’t move until God tells me to move.’ And that’s how I’ve been. I stopped going to church for like twenty-

            A lady walks by and smiles and nods. Tyrone says “Hey baby, you have a blessed one. And thank you for acknowledging me with that lovely smile!”

            A man walks by and looks curiously at us. “I hate that. People walk right by and they look at you like, ‘beautiful young white girl sittin’ there talking to this black guy.’ They just stare and stare and stare instead of just saying ‘how you doing?’ It’s weird! When I was younger, I woulda slapped somebody dead if they was lookin at me like that."  

Tyrone's Spot

           "But other than that, I was a good kid. There were things I just didn’t like doing. I didn’t like a man that treated a woman wrong or talked to a woman any kinda way. And today, the way the women sit around and talk to these boys with their pants down? They should tell these boys to go away.

         Young men who walk around with their pants down and their dreadlocks in their hair, they are not no leaders. They are not no leaders. Because to me they all cowards and they are followers. They following another person’s style. If you’re going to follow someone, follow the rules to make yourself continue to look like a young man with your pants pulled up. With a nice haircut. I mean look at me! Mine’s like this and I put it in a ponytail. But dreadlocks, I think that you are lazy. You are lazy, you don’t want to groom yourself, you don’t want to take the time to comb it, you don’t want to take the time to grease it, you don’t want to sit around and be a full gentleman. What do it really mean to wear dreadlocks? What is the religion? What is their culture? What do those people do?

             This is how I see them, ‘specially for the black generation. Are they really looking at their history? Are they going back of how far we have come? In slavery we walked around with our pants down and we had to find corn stalks and tie that together in order to tie around our pants to pick the cotton and stuff like that. So if we went though all of this already, why you tryna bring this back? At the time that I went to jail, a man come in with his pants down, believe me, he got to be somebody’s- he got to be Big Bubba’s woman.        

            There’s another subject, I dunno if you’re gonna ask me about it. You’re gonna ask me about the President, what he’s saying about the gay marriage and stuff like that? Was you gonna ask me that? Well I’ma give you this. Me and my church, we are not for it, because that’s not what Jesus said. Like I said, it’s not God’s law. The President, I didn’t vote for him in there, and I knew it was gonna be a problem when he ran for President. I knew he wasn’t a real good firm leader. And they said that the American government and our President don’t give into terrorists. I’m sorry to say but the gay people just turned to terrorists and he just gave in. So that’s the way I feel about that.

            I’m part Cherokee. I’m a black, European, Chinese, Italian, Indian American. The main thing that you must do is remember where you come from. Remember that you are God’s children and I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, I still love you, I’ll keep you in my prayers as well. If you fell down and needed a drink of water I would still give it to you. And we are all equal, no matter what you might have. When you cut yourself, you got the same color come out your skin that I do. And we are all neighbors. It’s not because of what block you live in or what side of town you live in. We are on the same planet. In China, when he sneeze, that starts working its way over here. We’ve got the same type of love, the same type of heart. If somebody throw knives at you, you just keep throwing love right back at ‘em. Don’t let nobody dictate your life. You can say ‘he made me do it, he made me say it!’ Nobody make you say anything. Nobody got a gun to your head, a knife around your throat. I don’t see how a person can wake up in the morning and be this nasty if God has given them a great day, has given them a life.

            I had to get out and work for my food when I turned six. I’m a cement finisher, a brick mason, drywall hanger, paralegal, process server, criminal investigator, an investigator, and a lawn mower man. And remember this when you graduate, when you start working: take the job that is at hand, because God is preparing you for something better. He just wanna know where’s your discipline and how much faith and how much love do you have in him.

            Keep your parents proud, keep your grades up, keep that room clean. You gotta remember, when you was sick, who stayed up with you? Who was at the hospital? Who made sure you had food in your belly and a roof over your head and clean clothes? Give them back the love. When you finish your homework, just don’t run out the door, always go up to them and say ‘is there anything you want me to do for you?’ I always tell the kids that.

            I like looking out for people. I do the best I can. I’ve had people up here that called me a nigger, that said ‘get your black ass outa here, we don’t want no black people working in no stores, drivin no busses.’ I tell ‘em, I say ‘Shhhh! Don’t go letting everybody know your IQ, and I’ll pray for you.’"

"The main thing that you must do is remember where you come from. Remember that you are God’s children and I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, I still love you."