Well!

Many years ago in Georgia, by law, blacks and whites were separated. Normally they were not allowed to sit by each other. Silly!

Then when segregation was ruled illegal and blacks could sit with whites it was not uncommon if a black person satt by a white person the white person move away.

That was the way it was. It was no hard feelings. The whites mistakenly thought they were the king of the roost by heritage.

Now, times like that are happily gone forever.

A few years ago on the way back from Memphis we stopped at a Tennessee State Park and spent the some time there. They had a couple of beautiful water falls. While there, in their gift shop I bought a walking stick. It was naturally curved, heavily varnished, and had a little hole up top that a loop of rawhide there. It was cheap, considering – I think I paid about $9 for it. Since then, I have become a connoisseur of natural looking walking sticks. At craft shows I always look at them and admire them, but they all seem too expensive compared to my one I bought. The first (and only) walking stick buy spoiled me.

Now when I see somebody with a natural walking stick I sometimes mention to them how nice looking their walking stick is.

I just remembered this when I saw my noticed my walking stick in the corner this morning: When I took my sister to the doctor and I sat in the waiting room for a couple of hours people were coming and going. They would have a certain phase of their stress test and come back to the waiting room and wait for the next phase.

Once, a little short black lady came and sat by me. She had a natural walking stick. This one had part of the limb bark still on it, and rings were carved up and down the stick. It looked very unique. I turned around to the lady and told her, “I like that walking stick.”

She got up and moved across the room.