Chicago's old Maxwell Street
Sometimes I wake up on Sunday mornings wishing my Dad was going to take me to old Maxwell Street in his white Camaro to buy socks, blues records and bone-in-por...k chop sandwiches with mustard. We'd walk the battle worn streets of the near-south side, looking like London after the Blitz, hand in hand with nearly every five minutes being stopped by a vendor or street hustler selling his wares who would call out, "Freddy! Freddy!" and ask him for a line on a horse or perhaps a loan of a fin. I was with a celebrity. And that celebrity was my Dad. He'd buy Little Walter or Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker albums or eight-tracks. He would tell me over and over again in the car, while listening to racy, metaphorical lyrics I failed to identify, "remember this, my Bull, the whites stole everything from the blacks, and made it shit," and then laugh heartily. In his quest for the secrets of the universe and his abhorrence of mediocrity in any form, he made sure I knew the difference between good and great - mundane and "electrifying." We were tied together by father and daughter, love and affection, and also the mustard stained clothes we always returned home wearing. My father wanted to share as much of his knowledge gleaned from his secret studies of the world while he was alive -, and he did. He was the greatest teacher and I was a devoted student. His favorite line was, "I don't go to them, they come to me." #myfatherwasarockstar