Confused by mean-spirited behavior, he was forever explaining how little it cost to be polite, to be nice to people. "You ain't gotta love people," I remember him proclaiming to the Elite Coffee Club guys at Ikey's back in the early days.
He believed in "Do unto Others." It was a good, indeed golden, rule to by and it never occurred to him that perhaps it wasn't enough. If he wasn't the cause of what ailed his fellow man, neither was he the solution. But here's the thing about my father that I've come to understand only reluctantly and very recently. His behavior was merely an extension of who he was.
His kindness and interest weren't feigned, nor did they derive, I'm convinced, from any perceived send of duty. “What did I think? Right then I was thinking about my father, specifically his habit of treating everyone with courtesy and consideration, of how he used to stop on lower Division Street and converse genially with old black men from the Hill whom he knew from his early days as a route man.
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