Chapter 1: Born and Raised 1 Born and Raised The house on Woodcrest Avenue stood proud. It was in a row of about forty houses and its concrete facade sat just up a dozen steps or so from the sidewalk. It''s where his imagination would rumble, then tumble out of his head and into the world in a jumble of personal, private, funny, and silly machinations that only he knew. And often he kept it that way, sometimes telling only Magicker, his imaginary friend. The street was lined with mature oak trees whose branches reached out and touched the ones across the way like ancient guardians protecting middle-class serenity. He can remember the smell of the asphalt after a welcome summer rain tried to cool the center of his West Philadelphia world. Forty children would spill out onto Woodcrest most days. Ice cream trucks, snowplows, double Dutch ropes skipping off the sidewalk, chalk drawings faded by the sun, the plume of someone''s sweet cooking wafting on the evening air.
Football games in the street. Yo, out the street here comes a car! Girls with colorful barrettes in braided hair. Mommas calling to come home. The water plug with its glorious geyser. Hallmarks of an imperfect middle-class oasis in the safest place he had ever known. Even if the AC went out. Or you saw some roaches. Woodcrest was home.
A place to be loved. The touch of Gigi''s paper-thin delicate skin. Her smile on his soul for a thousand years. And a thousand more. A place to desperately escape the concrete of Daddio''s fists. The unbending iron of his terrifying, drunken will. A place to never leave. So he could protect his little brother, Harry.
Always. Soothe his sister Pamela''s cries. Forever and more if she wanted. A place to laugh and dance. Listen to records. Tell jokes. And eat cake on birthdays. And get presents, too.
To rewrite what had not yet happened. So he could always make Caroline smile. The safety of his mother''s love was never out of focus. Or in any imminent danger. Will would do impressions. Wear silly clothes. Home was a place to disappear from. Or into.
For whatever reason. And he could. If only for a moment. All he had to do was close his eyes. "He Who Is Truly Articulate Shuns Profanity" Willard Carroll Smith Jr.''s bedroom was at the top of the stairs. He had a preternatural ability not to distort the truth but to enact entire realities to escape, to taunt, and to entertain anyone with an ear, willingly or not. To most he was not to be believed.
His juvenile sense of wonderment was a source of both confusion and delight, and it would pour out through fantastic yarns that would almost work if only he could stay in character. His rousing, throaty laugh could be heard three doors down, they''d say. Caroline, school administrator and mother, and Willard, a retired air force vet, raised him blocks from the city''s center. Caroline was a proud graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and would see to it that her children were as proud of their educations as she was. She quickly secured a position on the Philadelphia School District''s board. Blue-collar Willard Sr., Daddio to friends, started a company called Arcac, which installed commercial refrigeration systems. Will''s grandmother Gigi, Helen Bright, demanded he revere women and, no matter how much he had moved the crowd the night before, show up on Sunday to morning service at Resurrection Baptist Church.
And, because granny said so, abstain from profanity at all times. "He who is truly articulate shuns profanity," she would say. And the boy did listen. What Gigi said was law. A sister, Pamela, was already four when Willard Carroll arrived in this world on September 25, 1968. She waited in the living room at Woodcrest with Gigi until they brought him home in the bassinet from the hospital, which was six miles away. It wasn''t quite a sitcom life--at least not like many aired yet back then--but it was pretty nice. Up those weathered concrete steps from the quiet tree-lined street, the three-story middle-class home in Wynnefield was warm and mostly loving, but discipline was paramount.
They piled into the living room on Sundays to watch Ron Jaworski heave bombs to Harold Carmichael as the Eagles played across town at Veterans Stadium, carrying the hopes of cooks, plumbers, and butchers on their bulky shoulder pads only to fumble them away. When the Sixers won the NBA championship in 1983, Will had found a hero in Julius Erving, Dr. J. Will would head to the courts and try, failingly, to hang in the air just as long as the Doctor. The Smiths were disciplined in action and in finance, spreading their incomes surprisingly far through Caroline''s discount clothing finds for the kids and coupons from the Sunday paper for meat, groceries, and formula. On his third birthday Willard pulled in quite a haul of toys, including a Fisher-Price See ''n Say, which teaches kids to identify farm animals, and a set of Lincoln Logs. Willard Sr. lay on the living room floor with Will, clad in plaid (a Smith family favorite pants) and a velour sweater, in front of a large floor-mounted stereo, and built little log cabins as the O''Jays oozed from the speakers.
When he was a little older, Will would tuck a ten-dollar bill in his pocket and ride his bike to Overbrook Pizza on North Sixty-Third for the best cheesesteaks in town. The grease that turned the bag translucent meant you were in the right place. It wasn''t long before they knew the floppy-eared kid by name. He would bicker with his brother and occasionally talk back to Caroline--a problem quickly solved by the threat of Willard Sr.''s belt--but seemed to stay free of trouble outside of the expected schoolyard skirmish, a constant of a young boy''s life in West Philly. The outdoor courts at Tustin Rec Center were another refuge for young Will. He would often play pickup ball there, launching feathery rainbow jumpers. It was a spot he would later describe as hallowed grounds where he "got in one little fight and my mom got scared.
" But he wasn''t good. And not tough like his brother, Harry, either. Athletic ability had not so much betrayed him as it had never arrived in the first place. His father''s grit for manual labor hadn''t been passed down, either. Will would sometimes work at the family''s refrigeration business but didn''t exactly display the aptitude that working-class Philadelphians had developed as a point of pride for generations. On one Saturday while working with his father, the elder Smith tore down a brick wall and told twelve-year-old Will and his nine-year-old brother, Harry, to rebuild it. The boys were aghast at the impossibility of the task, but reluctantly summoned the resolve to clear the rubble and begin brick by agonizingly heavy brick. Another and another until their forearms burned.
They would mix cement and carry buckets. Then they began to rebuild. After school. After church. Before dinner. During the rain. It took them a year and a half. "Now don''t ever tell me there''s something you can''t do," said Willard Sr.
upon the wall''s completion. Will had a gift for making just about anyone laugh and a seemingly innate longing for the spotlight. It would take very little for him to unholster his charm--the threat of detention or to earn a smile from a cute girl--earning him the nickname "Prince" from his teachers at Overbrook High. His high, round cheekbones seemed to give him a look of perpetual bemusement, flanked by his wide, directional ears, which looked like a car with its doors open, only adding to his comedic persona. He perfected a bougie girl''s accent and the dramatic, over-the-top Oh no you dih-int mannerisms of an around-the-way girl. His exaggerated running man employed every muscle in his body to spasm simultaneously, punctuated by a silly, knowing smirk. He called it dumb dancing. Then he would stumble around drunk as if he''d been sucker-punched outside of a liquor store.
My brother you wanna take this outside?! A real crowd pleaser was affixing the back of his hand to his forehead and fainting with an exasperated scream, which saw him dramatically flop to the floor in shock after a perceived slight. It killed every time. His ability to deftly imitate Muhammad Ali, classmates, Jesse Jackson, teachers, friends, and Billy Dee Williams were go-tos. Sometimes all he had to do was flail his floppy limbs. The daily one-man show that was the origin of his Fresh Prince identity won him waves of adulation from peers. Sometimes you couldn''t tell alter from ego. Where Will ended and Prince began. Or if they did at all.
Adding "Fresh" was his idea. Young Willard did not know it but he was on a collision course with a twenty-year-old rising DJ who would change his life. "We Had No Idea How Big It Would Be, Not Even a Little Bit" Jeff Townes made a name for himself lugging his Pioneer 1200 turntables and crates of records to block parties all over his Philadelphia neighborhood, flexing skills honed in the basement of his parents'' modest home on Fifty-Seventh and Rodman near Cobbs Creek Park. Soon he was the neighborhood. His distinct style was almost as familiar as the Liberty Bell. Word began to spread of how he could scratch the record behind his back or with his elbow and keep a party going for hours. He would mix Motown with homemade beats. Sugar Hill with Chuck D''s booming baritone.
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