Could not fall asleep....

For an unknown reason to me, I could not fall asleep last night. I moved through radio stations and decided to listen to old Chicago Blues. Not R&B, but real blues. It was very good listneing. I then started to remember my old neighborhood where I grew up in some 50 years ago. Our block was made up of White families, Mexican and Puerto Rican families and some Italians. Two blocks to the north it was primarily Italian. As a boy in the very early '60's I recall walking those blocks and knowing just by the smell of certain foods where I was. On my block you could smell the PR food. Towards the middle of the block you could smell the chorizo and eggs the Mexicans were enjoying. As you got near Taylor St. where the Italians lived, you could smell the cooking of green peppers. It was neat.

This brings me to my memories triggered by the Blues sound. Behind my house, just across the alley, the colored families lived. I say that respectfully since that is how I knew black people at the time. Roosevelt Rd. was, and still is the name of the street where they lived. There aren't to many houses left there. Well, I recall going to the corner of Cambell and Roosevelt and listen to a black man playing an electric guitar right on the sidewalk. He would sing the blues and I would sit there with an audience made up of kids and enjoy the music. I recall that instead of cement car stops in the parking lots, there would be wooden poles just like what is now used for power lines. These would just lay there to prevent cars from going any further. We as children would use these as our seat as we listened to the blues. I don't know the name of the man who entertained us, I have often wondered if he became or was famous. There was no prejudice in our little group, or if there was I did not know it. It is interesting though, most of the time everyone stayed in their own place. It is as if there was an unwritten rule about how far we could go into the others territory. It really did not matter to us as children. I can't speak for the adults, I was too busy enjoying my childhood.

These are great memries I want to hold on to. They helped to mold the person I am today. I am glad I was not raised in a neighborhood where only one race of people lived. I got to see and appreciate from an early age how others lived. It is interesting though, I guess because of the fact that the adults, whether black or white, were all blue-collar workers, everyone respected each other. No one really was better off than another person in the area.

I would not change many things, if any, about that part of my life. It must have been good, since I recall then with much fondness.