I once had business in Baltimore and had a little time to wait.

I spent it in an Inner Harbor mall of sorts that had a 50s-60s styled eatery in it. I think I got a piece of pie there. I did look at the juke boxes.

When I left I ran into a beat cop and asked him for directions. The officer in question was a black man. I asked him how many favors he had pulled in to get such a good beat. He confessed he had a hard time getting it as it was a good beat. For one thing it was inside and air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter.

He also commented that a beat like the one he had was a damned sight better than duty in a patrol car which was light years better than a street beat.

I mentioned I was an out of towner and commented that Baltimore probably had a large black community. He looked at me curiously and said it was a large black community and asked me how I had figured that one out.

I told him that I figured that one out by looking at the jukeboxes.

"The jukeboxes?!" he asked. "How do you figure that?" He was a tad confused and curious.

I explained to him that in 1959 Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash and rock 'n roll pretty much died until the Beatles showed up in '64. I pointed out that rock as we knew it was continued on by a lot of black artists. The jukeboxes in the 50s-60s place had an inordinate number of black artist recordings in them. I pointed out that if the area was snow white there would have likely been more countryish music in the jukes.

He looked at me thoughtfully and then said I'd probably have made a pretty good cop. I grinned.

"I don't deal with stupid well," I said. "Police officers deal with an awful lot of stupidity."

He laughed. "You got that one right."





To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY