First, I like to thank you for taking the time to visit my first web site.

As I wrote this memoir, I realized it was a challenge to bring alive a world that no longer exists except in my memory. But after I began, many visions and details from the past surfaced, and as I recalled those events, it served as a sort of catharsis.

My gradual retirement began in 2016 after 43 years of medical practice, and before that, I never took time to reflect on my past. The demanding daily life of an anesthesiologist, plus a busy personal life that included, among many other endeavors, five marriages, four divorces, four children, a stepdaughter, six grandchildren (and counting) kept me focused on today and tomorrow, not the past. 

I wrote about my childhood experiences in Birmingham and my journey after I crossed the Alabama state line for the first time at 16 to attend college. During that journey, I was the proverbial fish out of water. Each new place I went after that was a venture into uncharted territory — D.C., Brooklyn, Nashville, Harlem, Chicago, Puerto Vallarta, and Los Angeles.

Birmingham during the 30s and 40s was one vast belt of steel mills that covered miles and sent the local economy up and up. Men, Colored and White, including my father, flocked to work in the mills, or to dig the coal or mine the iron ore in one of the few places on earth rich in both. 

I realize that 1950s Birmingham was the worst of times for Coloreds because of the Jim Crow conditions but, as I recalled the first 16 years of my life in the place I called home, I realized in one respect; it was the best of times for Colored people.

I used Colored, because in those days, the majority preferred it. Call somebody Black and you had a fight on your hands. The uninhibited use of negra and nigger by local politicians and other Whites moved the word Negro to disfavor, and nigger to our casual and jovial use. Over the years, we became Black.

Colored people purchased hamburgers at Mack’s Cafe, not McDonald’s. We patronized Mr. William’s Groceries on the corner, not A&P, because there were no A&P supermarkets or any supermarkets in the Colored neighborhoods. And because of segregation, there were many Colored entrepreneurs serving the Colored community whose businesses flourished. These included, but were not limited to, two Colored newspapers, Colored cleaners, Colored photography studios, Colored doctors, Colored bank, Colored construction companies, Colored funeral homes, Colored movie theaters—there existed a whole separate Colored world that kept the dollars circulating.

The economic status of Coloreds, as a result, ranged from poverty to millionaires. And the imposed segregation kept the Colored community and Colored people, regardless of economic status, close together, unlike today.

Remembering that all-Colored community I experienced, brought to mind my favorite TV show of the 50s, Amos and Andy.” I was six when I saw my first episode.

"Amos and Andy" was a mythical Colored world, but closer to my Birmingham world than anything else on TV. I related to the 99% Colored world it showcased. But that world was still mythical, because in my world there was no possibility for a Colored man or woman to become a police officer, a judge, a bus driver, a taxi driver and other jobs as portrayed in the series. 

This memoir is a series of personal stories guided by internal, external, familial, environmental, and psychological forces that shaped my unique experiences not a Civil Rights history.

And today I can see from the political national and world dynamics that not so much has changed as I once thought. And the obstacles I negotiated may not seem so much in the past. As the dictum warns, "history repeats itself."

I have never before shared the stories in this memoir because I had buried them deep in my 77-year-old subconscious. 

Some have surfaced here in black and white.