The Gift of Family: Honest Conversations We Don’t Have Enough — Part I

This holiday special skips the wrapping paper and goes straight for the heart.

In Part I of a two-part series, Jermine Alberty sits with his father, Jimmie Jones, for a raw, unvarnished father–son conversation about what we inherit, what we choose, and how faith and responsibility can rewrite the story. From 1960s Kansas City streets to a modern kitchen table, they explore temperament and trauma, the sting of denial, inherited anger, and the vow to never let children grow up as strangers.

Nature versus nurture comes alive—how a grandson mirrors a grandfather’s fire, how unexamined pain can shape behavior, and how prayer, presence, and community can interrupt old patterns. Mental health is named, not whispered—anxiety, depressive swings, and bipolar tendencies framed not as destiny, but as context for compassion and growth.

At the core is a simple dream: keep God first, gather the family, and build a legacy of belonging that stitches generations together. If you’ve ever wondered whether your past defines you—or how to break cycles without breaking yourself—this conversation offers candor, wisdom, and hope.

This is The SALT Talk with Jermine Alberty.

Chapters

• 0:00 A Holiday Frame For Family
• 0:52 Introducing The Two-Part Series
• 2:27 Meet Dad: Temperament And DNA
• 5:20 Taking Licks And Building Resilience
• 7:56 Kansas City Roots And 1960s Context
• 9:41 Vows After A Father’s Denial
• 12:15 Nature Versus Nurture At Home
• 14:10 Be True To Yourself
• 16:04 Village Wisdom And Accountability
• 18:05 Confronting Childhood In Adulthood
• 20:36 Lessons From Every Walk Of Life
• 22:40 Faith As The Anchor
• 24:05 Dreams: Reunion And Legacy
• 26:05 Final Charge: Love Family, Choose Truth
• 27:50 Closing Blessing And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Stock Talk with Jermaine Albergini, where service, affirmation, love, and transformation meet real life. As we approach this holiday season when so much attention is placed on gifts, I want to pause and name something that we don't talk about enough. The gift of family. Not that perfect version, not the curated version, but the real one. The complicated, unfinished, honest version. And what better way to honor that gift than by doing what we don't do enough? Having honest conversations with each other. That's why this Top Talk episode is so very special to me because this is a special two-part series rooted in family. In part one, I sit down with my father, Jimmy Jones, for a raw conversation about temperament, trauma, faith, survival, and legacy. And what it means to take a lick and keep on ticking, and how God, resilience, and responsibility shape a man over time. In part two, I sit down with my brother Jimmy Marks for an equally vulnerable conversation about shared rooms, unspoken experiences, love, inconstitution, feelings, and hope. And we explore how two people can grow up in the same family and swimming with very different lives. And how faith with quiet love and resilience can interrupt cycles, selective terms, which we goodness. Together, these conversations, the wrestle with nature versus nurture, the power of childhood experiences, and the truth that while our past informs us, it does not have to imprison us. Mister is not about blame, it's about understanding, feeling, and choosing connection. So this is the holiday season. My hope is simple that these conversations remind us that family, when met with honesty and grace, can still be one of the greatest gifts we give and receive. Stay with us. This is Jermaine Albert, and listen to The Salt Talk. Well, welcome to part one of our series. I want to welcome my dad, Jimmy Jones, to the Salt Talk. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

I am doing good. So I want to begin with your childhood, and I want you to uh tell me about a moment from your childhood that shaped the way you see yourself today.

SPEAKER_01: 2:45

As a child, you know, you don't put two and two together until later in life as you grow up. What? And as you learn things. Okay. Life lessons are taught for you to either learn or you're gonna keep repeating them over and over. My whole thing was I don't like repeating things. So my thing is to learn the lesson, to advance myself and move on. Well, I had that attitude. I had that double standard where defending myself was more or less a bad thing for me. Because I'm supposed to walk away. I'm not I'm not supposed to get angry. I'm not supposed to defend myself, I'm supposed to be man enough to walk away.

SPEAKER_02: 3:58

So let me let me jump in here because this is the whole thing about uh Freud has this theory nature versus nurture, meaning that there's just some things that are innately in us that we have no control of. Right. Our DNA, our behaviors, right, and there's some things that we are learned, we are taught. But when it comes down to me and your relationship growing up, of course, we was always always around as a roundabout way, always around, right? But didn't directly like teach me anything like directly, like Jermaine, this, this, this, indirectly. Right. But um, and of course with Jeremiah, you you know, you been around Jeremiah a little bit, right, but never taught him like directly Jeremiah, this, this, this. You had conversations. But I find funny though is because I think Jeremiah is your child. Uh, because I want to say that because he reminds me a lot of like you. Like, I know you didn't teach him these things, but your DNA like runs in him. Uh, like it runs in me. Right. And uh one of the things is temperament, right? You know, like that, like like he he eat he's more or less like a raging bull in his hint.

SPEAKER_01: 5:14

He's calm, but once he's pushed, there's no limit to it. There's no limit. There's no limit. There's no way that you can speak, yeah, talk, yeah, or even uh uh act or react to the way he's feeling at that time. And that's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02: 5:43

Where's that rage come from, though?

SPEAKER_01: 5:45

But that's the whole thing, see, that's the thing in my life that I had to take in sequence. Yeah. Because when my mother told me I was like my uncle that's supposed to kill some man with his hand. Yeah, this man I've never seen. This man I don't know nothing about. My mother only spoke with me in a manner of that because of my attitude and the way my anger showed.

SPEAKER_03: 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

Because she whooped me with skillets, iron cords, whips, and everything else. When I was eight years old, she came and whooped me, and I stood there and looked at her. And she looked at me, she said, You're not gonna cry. I said, For what? You just don't hit me more. And I stood there while she about five minutes who walked on me, and I just stood there. I didn't jump, I didn't move, I didn't bottle, I just stood there. Well, every time the lick hit, the sting went away. So we should keep hitting the sting just goes away.

SPEAKER_02: 6:59

At that point in time. Wait a minute, mate. You can't you listen, okay. So there's a metaphor in there for sure. Right. There's a metaphor in that, in that as we live our life, sometimes we get to that place where we take a lick and keep on ticking. You know what I'm saying? Like life, life can hurt, life can be hard, but sometimes you can be so hardened to the licks the life come. You're like, hey, it's just another lick.

SPEAKER_01: 7:25

It's more or less you learn that as they teach you, life isn't fair.

SPEAKER_02: 7:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:33

That's the scenario that we grew up in. You learn, or you go to the hard rock. School learning.

SPEAKER_02: 7:44

So we're talking about so you know, you grew up in the 60s. Because you were born in 57. So yeah, this you're talking about, if you're eight years old, you're talking about 1965, somewhere in that area. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:56

So, you know, we that was when Black Panthers, SOS, uh, the um SOS, Black Panthers. We had uh all kind of street gangs back then. Um we had the Masons. They was in the they was in the Pros in the neighborhood between Prospect, Walbash, Brooklyn, everything that was east of Paseo.

SPEAKER_02: 8:32

By the way, uh my listeners, my dad was born and raised in Kansas, Missouri. So this address these streets that are in Kansas, Missouri. I I want to fast forward from the eight-year-old kid to the 18-year-old dude, a turn 18. Okay. So 17-year-old first child.

SPEAKER_01: 8:56

Yeah, but see the thing about the thing that failed me was that when I found out my father denied me in court as his child, I prayed to God that way. However many children I had, I would never deny any of my children. And if they wasn't all born up under one woman, they would learn of one another because I wouldn't want them interswinking with one another without knowing who the father is and who the mother is. That was just something that I looked at that made me hardened against men that don't want to take care of their kids.

SPEAKER_02: 9:49

So, so, okay. That's why we're laughing sometimes because I have a thing about men who shirk their responsibility. Right. I I was married for 27 years and I was determined, and maybe this is something that was in me by by um by nurture or nature, but I refused to abandon my children. Right. It didn't matter what was going on with their mama and me. I was I said, I'm gonna be in my children's life until they all get grown. Right. And no matter what it means, for me, I'm gonna stay in their lives. And I and I honor that. I honor that commitment.

SPEAKER_01: 10:24

The thing was, when you was firstborn, my prayer to God was that all my sins stay with me. Not to go to my first son. Because at that point in time I had hatred, I had anger, I had rage, I was at the point of knowing that I that entrepreneur was rooted in me. It didn't make I wouldn't let nothing stop me. Uh-huh. I didn't care what it was.

SPEAKER_02: 11:06

So your prayer was none of your sins would hit me. That's right. God answered your prayer, didn't he? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:14

I thought it. After we not love God to this day, and I'm 68 years old. I love God to the utmost. That's the reason I prayed on a daily basis, and I love it because he answered the prayer that was more meaningful to me than anything. That I had a son that I wanted. Nothing of my sins that touch his soul. That let all whatever I do, however I was, because of my age, my rang, anger, my rage, my temperament, everything. At that point in time, I knew the poison was there, but controlling them or getting them under hand was the problem. So, when I had you, I more or less stood on the ground that I would never be a father like my father.

SPEAKER_03: 12:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 12:25

And I prayed no matter how many kids I have, no matter how many women that I go to, all my kids gonna know one another. And no matter whether I'm with them or not, I'm gonna stay in contact with my kids regardless. For whatever they might need. If they whenever they need me, I'm coming. I made that from the beginning when you came out, any of my kids. If I wasn't able to be with the mother, or I know how I was at that time, I knew I would be ain't no kelp. And the thing was just protect my kids, and when needed, I will protect them, no matter what.

SPEAKER_02: 13:14

So I think it's important for folks to know that I'm the oldest of seven kids. My mother, my mother had seven kids. My dad has five kids, including me, Jimmy, Jamar, Geronimo, and a sister named Tiffany. So those are the five kids that my dad has. Um and one of the things that Jimmy and I was talking about was this whole thing of self-sabotage. Kind of like, you know, when you're doing good and you trip up and you fancy back there. We were talking about kind of like where that all comes from. Like some of it is, of course, personal responsibility, you know, for your own actions. Right. But then some of it's just like it's stuff in you that you just trip over and you don't know where it comes come from.

SPEAKER_01: 14:00

A lot of it, you a lot of it is when growing up and learning yourself. You actually not tell you, tell you, like I told all of y'all. If it's one thing in life, be true to yourself. Uh-huh. Because if you're not true to yourself, you can't be true with nobody else. Uh-huh. And that's the reason. Old folks, when they taught me, and that's one thing that I learned from older folks, because I never could hang around. People my age, or three years older than me, could not teach me a damn thing. I learned from people 40, 50 years older than me. And I listened to them. Like these kids today, they don't listen. Back in our days, it took a village to raise a kid. That means you listen to the woman down the street, next door, on the next block, three blocks down. She could be a mile away, but if she knew your mother, you better be listening to her. Yeah. Because by the time you get home from what you did and she knows your mother, you got another butt whip and come when you got home because she didn't call your mother and let you know what was up. Yeah. Nowadays, I mean, it's a whole different lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02: 15:19

But I've often said, though, uh Hillary Quentin wrote a book called Takes a Village to Raise a Child. And I've often said, nowadays the question is who raised the village? Okay. I got a few more questions I'm gonna ask, and then I'm gonna wrap up this interview. All right. So Forr said human beings are shaped by unresolved conflicts from early stages of life. Uh, do you think there were things from your childhood or young adulthood that you had to confront as an adult? Some things from your childhood, a young adulthood that that you gotta confront as an adult. So childhood, okay, childhood, a young adult that you got everything.

SPEAKER_03: 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:03

As I grew up and learn that you had to be grown in order to be able to calculate and articulate the things that went on as as as your childhood. You had to reach an age of maturity or age of acceptance. Uh your childhood is only a part of your growth as an adult. Your childhood can either cripple you, it can maim you, it can drive you crazy. Depending on where your mindset is. And the thing with me is I learned about my anger, I learned about my rage, I learned about magic depressants, I learned about anxiety, I learned about being bipolar as the outcome of your demeanor as an adult. Now you can say, okay, because of this and because of that, it's the reason I'm like this. I say I took the bad and turned it to the good in my adulthood. What happened to me in my childhood through my through the adults that I grew and that grew me up. We was taught respect the elders, oldest, family, this, that, and the other. But me, if a duck came around, I was the most calm, collector, politic bug. I mean I was polished up, I was shine like a dime around a duck.

SPEAKER_02: 18:19

Tell me what's been one of your toughest challenges, and how did you work your way through it?

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

And just what the toughest challenges was the reality that I had to be me. Because my younger days they speak what I looked at and looked up to. I mean they ain't the best role models in the world, but they respected me and taught me the merry good of being a man. And standing as a man. Period. Now you say what you want to say about paint robbers, these robbers, pimps, uh working men, whatever. I classify them all as a village growing me up. Because there's those in robbery, bank robbery, killing, dope, kneeling, working, pimping. They all had they well, they all had an emphasis in my life because I was around them all. And I learned from them. And all of them looked at me as, hey, for a young man, you're very intelligent. Because you listen. Uh-huh. You're not like these other knuckleheads out here getting beat up. And getting befrauded, getting the man's hood taken and everything else. Well, I mean, I looked at it that grown folks is what made me a grown folks. They helped me to become a grown folks. So with all that I learned, even though it was from all the different fields, and a lot of it I didn't understand. But as I got older, as I grew up around it, as I experience was one of the things old folks always taught me. Experience is the best teacher. So with all the experience that I gathered and pulled in, it helped me to separate and dislodge a lot of my problems in as childhood, my problems growing into adulthood, my teenage years, and the years before becoming a full adult.

SPEAKER_02: 21:09

So when you look at your adulthood so far, you're 68, we're 69 in January. Right. And then we're with hands uh folded in prayer. You're gonna hit 70, and then 70 beyond. Right. So, but when you look at your adulthood so far, what would be net what would be one of your biggest successes, you think?

SPEAKER_01: 21:33

My my my biggest thing right now, keeping God person in my life and remembering my downfalls, my accomplishments, and what I can do to continue to keep praising him prayers. Because I'm only here through him. I I I tell everybody, and I tell anybody, if you think you are that in life, put yourself to sleep and wake yourself up. Now, if you can do that, you can show me you got some power. But until then, ain't nothing you can tell. So your biggest success in life is your connection with God. Okay. That's my biggest thing. Okay. Uh I care what I do, how I do. Lord knows before I did. And as long as he keeps breath in my body, I'm gonna keep praising, and I'm gonna keep doing the best I can do for him now. Not for me. I'm I I didn't party and play it out. I'm through. I'm through. All I want to do is just keep praising him. Let him keep blessing me with these days, keep giving me these years, and hey, I'm a happy camper.

SPEAKER_02: 22:56

So we're gonna wrap up with two questions. The last question is I have two questions. Uh, what is your dream for the next chapter of your life? I know you want to hit 70. That's that's that's one. So what's your dream for your next chapter of life?

SPEAKER_01: 23:10

The next two in the next two years, my whole accomplishment is I'm gonna get a vehicle, have my own home, and I want to get with my children and build a family reunion with all my kids. Because my mother, that's one thing during childhood. We always had family reunion. We we got kin folks in uh Warren Spurs, Heegan Bill, we had kin folks in uh St. Joe, uh Illinois. Uh we had a couple of them up from Washington, but that was our thing. We would we would all gather together at my mother's house, and we would pick a date, and family would come all together. I mean, cousins, nephews, nieces, aunts, I mean, friends that then grew up with us in the neighborhoods. We all come together that one that one time to enjoy family. So my whole thing now is get me a vehicle, go get me a home, get with all my kids, because most of the friends that I had is gone, so the new ones that I'm making, and we all come together, pick a date, and make it our family reunion. And from that time on, hey, try to keep committed year after year after year, with grandkids, great-great grandkids, bring it all together.

SPEAKER_02: 25:00

That's interesting enough. You have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. So on this end, at least so let me ask these. I say a couple more questions, and I would end with these two. One is what do you want people, your children, your family, the communities to say about you years from now? Jimmy was, Jimmy is. What would you want them to say about you?

SPEAKER_01: 25:28

Oh that people that truly know me know that I am a good person, I am kind-hearted, just don't want to cross you. That's it.

SPEAKER_02: 25:45

So what do you hope people take away from your story today?

SPEAKER_01: 25:50

From this energy. Be true to yourself. True to yourself. That's the bad. I don't care what mama said, what daddy said, what auntie, uncle, whoever. Be cru to yourself. Find out who you are. It don't make no deal what auntie says, what daddy says, what mama say. No, find out who you are in the Lord, and you'll be all right from that point on.

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

Now I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up with this last story here, because this is a very funny man. You wonder where I get my humor from. This man told me that when he dies to put an empty casket up front, and then have people say he was late to his own funeral. No, we're not doing that, we're not doing that. He was late to his own funeral. We're not doing that, but anyhow, we're not doing that. I would say this, you know, because you have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will listen to this video, this is this interview. Uh, just tell me one thing you would want them to be true to yourself. Anything else you would want them to know about their grandpa or great-grandpa. I'm gonna tell you this.

SPEAKER_01: 27:18

Love family. Don't never turn your back on your family. I don't care what you say, I don't care what makes you mad, I don't care who makes you mad. Never turn your back on family. Be always true with yourself to be true with them. It don't make no difference whether you're a drug addict, an alcoholic, whatever. Bring it to the family, and I guarantee real families don't love you. They ain't gonna disgrace you, they're not gonna put you down, they're only gonna try to help you. And my thing is, if I can't help you, I sure ain't gonna hurt you.

SPEAKER_02: 28:07

Well, folks, you heard it from the source. Mr. Jimmy Jones, and listen, this is Jermaine Alberty, and you've been listening to The Salt Talk. Listen where we serve, affirm, love, and transform each other uh and the world around us. This is Jermaine Alberti, and you're listening to The Salt Talk.