I was twenty five years old and the middle son of three brothers who were going out for a night on the town. They are both great musicians, but usually broke. My father stopped us on the way out and said, “You guys should do what we used to do in the 1940’s. We would give all of our money to one person, he would pay for everything that night and everyone thought he had money. The next time out...

Last week, as I was reluctantly writing a $1,500 check to send my two kids to a Berkeley summer camp, I started to think of what my parents, uncles and aunts did in the 1950’s and 60’s to provide childcare for their families during the summer months when school was out fulltime. The following is a story of how I spent my summers. Every summer, my younger brother and I spent the sultry months in...

It was a hot summer’s day in Philadelphia, 100 degrees in the street with 98 percent humidity. I came home with chocolate syrup and strawberries all over my white uniform after another stressful day of driving a Mr. Softee’s ice cream truck in the hood. My father looked at me and said, “Son, how’d it go today.” I told him, “I spent half the day arguing with people who were trying to cheat me...

In the 1960’s, whenever I went to friends and relatives homes in West Philadelphia it seemed as if they all had the same two pictures on their mantel John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and this was before they were assassinated. These were all predominately black homes and I understood MLK, but it didn’t dawn on me till much later the significance of why so many people would display a...