I am rejuvenating from Summer-break. Ready to get the school year started. Knowing that my year will have its struggles. That's my job. To help structure and teach the lives have headstrong, ill-mannered, and ill-natured kids. I am not realizing at that moment, that my struggles were going to be with the adults. My coworkers. The people I am supposed to count on. My team. I realize that adults can be worse than kids. I never imagined getting bullied at work. Especially from grown adults. I thought we were a team. We are supposed to support one another, not tear each other down. We work at a school for troubled kids, but yet the trouble coming from the adult minds. We are supposed to be examples, role models for these young children. Who are mentally still growing? However, we are teaching them to lie, hurt one another, and do whatever it takes to bring your peers down. So you can get ahead. Our kids are not dumb. They know what's going on, they see it. They are smarter than you think. Bullying does not just happen in your young life. It can happen to anyone at any time. So many people get bullied at their place of work. Sometimes the victim has nowhere else to turn but to turn to social media. When you so caught up in the torment that you can't think right. Your brain is on fire. From all the suffering, confusion, questions, and sadness. That when you're in the crossfire, you can't think clearly. To stand up for yourself. When you finally do stand up for yourself. You are in tears, shaky, anxious, terrified, and have so many thoughts flashing through your fired brain. Your higher up does not agree with you. He agrees with the bullies who are clear-minded. Who are the master manipulators? Who have their thoughts together? I had to walk through the crossfires this year — the fire of feeling mentally alone, not wanting to go to the job I once loved so much, feeling a heavy weight on my shoulder, not being able to escape reality. The reality of my life. The truth of getting bullied, not knowing where my life will be in a month from now. The ups and downs I have to face, of my everyday life. Questions I have to ask. The questions are, will I escape the torment? Will I be a survivor? Or will I end up giving up on myself? Will the bullies once again get away with murder? Will the truth prevail?

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Goat Alley" (A Tragedy of Negro Life) by Ernest Howard Culbertson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Maybe it's the post-New Year's boredom. Maybe it's the cold, frisky air. Whatever the cause, the citizens of Mossy Creek seem determined to get into trouble on a clear winter day in mid-January. Police Chief Amos Royden and his loyal officers, Mutt and Sandy, can barely keep up with the calls. Hank and Casey Blackshear's great aunt Irene, 93, leads a protest march of angry old folks--on their electric scooters. Louise and Charlie Sawyer battle renovation pitfalls (literally) in their cranky house. Pearl Quinlan fights her sister, Spiva, over a plate of brownies. Patty Campbell performs a makeover on Orville Gene Simpson's front yard, against Orville's will. All that and more! Last, but not least, Amos and Ida finally stop fighting their secret attraction, but then the trouble really begins!