It was our mutual signal I was open for business. I would go up to him and offer him a light. If I saw him approaching the corner sucking an unlit cigar I knew it was time to spring into action. He needed to feel like a real man and I was ready to help him. He was one of my first and steady customer. Was he such a bad guy? Now his wife called him a chauvenist pig and wanted to be liberated, his daughter was shacking up with a black man and his son had longer hair than his sister and actually looked more ,like a girl than she did! Well, damn them all! He could still walk the streets proudly smoking his cigar and too bad for the person who was offended! All he was trying to do is eek out a iving to give his family some nice things the same way his father did. It was 1974 and Russ couldn’t believe how much the world had changed.
