Prejudice

I grew up in a county that was 65 percent Spanish-speaking.

The biggest distinction between races was not color, it was Catholics and Baptists. My first experience with prejudice was the summer I spent on a job in Kansas City…1978… the year after the city burned itself down.

Years ago in Kansas City, I set out one night to find one of them ‘down home’ guitar blues pickers that I had read about in the Sunday paper.

I was drivin’ around Saturday night lookin’ for Walter’s Crescendo Lounge.

I had some ribs at Money’s on Prospect and asked directions. The feller told me not to go over there after dark. Then, after thinkin’ about it, he scribbled his name and phone number on a piece of paper and said, “When you git in trouble, have’m call me.” Nice of him, I thought.

Somehow I never found Walter’s but at the corner of 39th and Jackson I spied Willie’s Total Experience Lounge. I recognized the name from the paper so I went in.

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