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83-year-old man collecting aluminum cans. He has done all kinds of work in his life, starting with shining shoes when he was seven-years-old, even as the cops chased and harassed him. "White people back them, they didn't want us to do anything. They wouldn't let us do anything." He said kids nowadays had it easy. "Back when I was small, I wouldn't think twice about walking a mile to buy a dollar of coal for my family. If my mom told me to do it, I'd just do it. I'd push that cart down the road to get us some coal." The neighborhood was safer back then too, he said.

I suggested we went to a bar to continue the conversation, my treat, of course, but he said he didn't drink. He had drank but two beers his entire life, and didn't care for the taste, although the first time, his beer was laced with whiskey without his knowledge, "I was seventeen, and me and a buddy of mine, we were taking these girls out. It was my first date, you know, and my buddy, he put some whiskey in my beer as a joke, and I thought it tasted awful, but I didn't know, because I never had beer before. Back then, the beer was more bitter, anyhow, so people had to put salt in it. I had my second beer a few years later, and didn't like it much better, so I never tried it again."

He has a son and a daughter, she in Tampa, but they aren't close to him, so he rarely sees them.


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