BIG BEN

We lived in this one shelter in Atlanta, a warehouse and it had concrete floors, and we'd just have cots with a little thin mat. They're made out of plastic, so if people pee on them, they can clean them. Oh, it was so horrible. We had tarps, blue tarps, separating the women from the men, and God, it was so disgusting.

My dad would always play some practical joke in the middle of the night, like buy a little remote rat and roll it around. 'Cause there was a lot of real rats there, and one that they called "Big Ben". It was so funny. He ate a cat. He killed a cat. That's how they found him. I sear he killed a cat. There was a cat there that had one of its ears chopped off; its tail was all fried off. I don't know, it was weird. It limped. They called it Rocky. But Big Ben killed Rocky.