Attribution: Leffler, Warren K., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper’s getting-acquainted-with-Chicago days with his old Army friend Bob Shepherd, a Black Southsider who was the keeper’s personal MLK and then some.
As an essential experience the keeper and Bob were in the back row of a sprawling old theatre/church and a young Jesse Jackson in blue jeans was spreading his word before a capacity crowd when an old man in a seat near the keeper adjusted his worn overcoat and a wine bottle fell out of a pocket and crashed noisily down onto the concrete floor. The obviously embarrassed old man attempted to pick up some of the broken pieces of glass as did those around him. The incident was too far from the preaching Jesse to get acknowledgement, and it was only a brief diversion in a small area in the back row from where the keeper saw Jesse for the first and only time in his life.
But of course, the keeper heard about Jesse and his message of “Hope” many times in the intervening years and it was never without remembering the crashing wine bottle and a long ago Sunday morning in Chicago with Bob.
