The Trials of Life Inside Chicago's Public Housing

We Called It Our Penthouse

I had a cart. And back then you’d get a refund on bottles. A nickel or a dime, you know. As a little kid—six, seven years old—I used to go through the buildings with my cart and collect bottles and take them to the supermarket to redeem them for money. I was a bottle hustler. I supported myself and my mother. I remember going to the stores, paying for things. My mother was on stamps. I can still remember I had to count the stamps out, because my mother really couldn’t count.