Mom chuckled, I winced. She was displaying the spoils of a visit to Pennsylvania with Dad, a trip precipitated yearly by Dad's Army Air Corps reunion being held in cities like Branson. Once in the Altoona, Pennsylvania area Dad tended to not move around much. Gettysburg, to Mom's chagrin and I commiserate, was never attained and I suppose Mom needed things to do with her own people over in Tyrone gradually disappearing. And speaking of emancipation and disappearing, she was showing me a calendar from the area and had proudly crossed off the Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday---as she had with calendars in Dad's Mom's household that did not belong to her.

In the Frazz comic for the holiday taking place at the time of this writing, our beloved custodian's youthful black sidekick Caulfield points out for a long time the two of them would not have been allowed to share the water fountain seen in the frame, but now they aren't sharing it because they are carrying water in separate bottles for no real reason. They toast each other, with Caulfield saying, "To progress! Even when it's ridiculous."

This June I plan to attend the Playboy Jazz Festival for thirtieth and then some time. People of all races will be around this loner, but I notice many black people, often at point blank range, carrying on at the top of their lungs about the minutiae of their daily lives. It's heartening there are conversations actually carried out away from the little phones seemingly implanted in everyone's ears, but I'll make an exception in that arena. And I blush when using the term "piglet voice" to describe a lot of female caterwauling.

But it's greater, so to speak, big bad old L. A. which translates as "time to party", as one remembers the horrors of racism and how long it has taken for certain people to enjoy the luxury of using music which includes jazz and blues from a persecuted heritage as a third rate overgrown boom box. Progress and music can range from ridiculous to profound. The inconsiderate conversations only accent memories of Mom's prejudice, while the music makes it subside.