New Book

Judge and I got the key to our new place last night. We can't wait to move there and enjoy the nearness of Shelby Park and our great new neighbors.

I also picked up a book that was left out for me, from our departed friend Mike, and it was just sitting there, waiting in the pile that was bound for the Salvation Army, and I saw it - Hugo Black of Alabama. So many times he had told me about that book, about Alabama's most famous political and judicial mind, and how I should read it, nay how I should borrow his copy of the book.

How appropriate when I saw it sitting there in the stack with other large tomes. But that one, it was meant for me and it brought me to tears when I found it under the flickering ceiling fan lights, and upon picking it up, those overhead lights went out and the three of us were left in the dark. I knew he was there.

We left and went home, and once I was there, I kept picking it up, reading the dust jacket copy, looking at the picture of the dead supreme court justice that stared at me from the cover. Hugo Black of Alabama.

You know, I was born in Alabama. Then my family moved to Columbia, Tennessee. So we're fellow Alabamians. I remembered him saying. It is true he was born there. But he was the biggest, baddest Tennessean I had ever met. MF personified the Democratic Tennessean lawyer, politician, sports fan. He was a Saturn-driving, Titans-supporting whirlwind of the common man. You know about Hugo Black, right? The contraversial supreme court justice that once was a part of the KKK but supported civil rights? He was a constitutionalist.

No, Mike, I did not know about Hugo Black. But I'm finally reading about him now.

Miss you.