As a small child experiencing a neighborhood which was 95 per cent African-American, I was introduced to the sights, sounds and smell of black culture in 50's America. My father owned a small grocery store which served the needs of the majority of impoverished residents of the area. He supplied the residents, many of which were transplants from the South, with down home food items. It was that little mom and pop establishment that allowed me a small glimpse into the culture of African-Americans.

On any one day, you could walk down Wells Street and hear the blast of jazz and rhythm/blues from the corner bar which was adjacent to my father's small grocery store. On the other side of my father's grocery was a record store with its megaphone type speaker blasting the latest Elvis tune, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, Jackie Wilson. I would sometimes go to my dad's store after school to help Dad out and would find a crate on which to sit and listen to the sounds of the music coming out of both the bar and the record store. I didn't know who the recording artists were, but I did know that the sound had an intensity and emotion unlike the music heard at home or on our TV in the 50's. Even as a young child of nine, I knew that there was more uniqueness to black people than their skin color. It was a different world than the one I shared with my parents and siblings in a middle class neighborhood where we lived. Whenever I came to help in the store to stock shelves or wait on the children who came in for penny candy, there was always my child's curiosity about the people and the food they ate.

Poverty and desperation seemed to pervade the lives of my father's customers. While I sat and listened to the music with sheer enjoyment, there was a depressing aspect to the area that saw alcoholics who would come in for pickle juice from the big pickle jar on the counter to appease their hunger for alcohol. Many a time, a person would come in and take my father aside so that my child's ears would not hear the desperation. Then, I would see my father go to the deli display case and take out the last portions of some type of lunch meat and wrap them in white deli paper and give them to that customer waiting patiently at the counter. Too many came into that little store to ask for free food to hold them over until they were able find the means to purchase something next time. My father rarely denied them. When they did pay for the groceries, payments were made in small installments.

And those grocery items my father had in stock truly amazed me. The items were foreign to my palate or even our family fridge at home. Customers sought ham hocks, mustard and turnip greens, salt pork, hog head cheese (which wasn't cheese at all), spam, chittlings (pig's intestines), and that delicacy that sat in a jar on the counter, pickled pigs' feet. That one item, pickled pigs' feet, remains forever, the one food that I continue to associate, in my mind, with black culture in the 50's. I would sometimes stare into the contents of that cloudy jar and see those feet floating around in that brine, wondering why they were called "feet" when they were "hooves". Why weren't they called pickled pigs' hooves? Maybe feet were more delectable than hooves. Again, I was only a child with a child's curiosity.

The popularity of pickled pigs' feet astounded me. That large jar would empty out within a couple of days. The customers just loved those feet. I would sometimes comment to my dad, "How can anyone eat that stuff?" when all I could see was the outer skin of the pig's feet along with almost gelatinous, fatty layer inside. My dad would laugh and remind me that every culture has its unique cuisine and taste.

After six years, my father closed his little business. The inventory was sold for whatever Dad could get. There was no more pickle juice from the pickle jar to sustain the alcoholic's thirst. There were no more lunch meat ends for the desperate poor who came in for a nourishing handout. The shelves were emptied along with the pickled pigs feet jars still filled with brine.