In the 1970's, I was living for a time with a friend's family. It was R, his wife, his parents, his daughter and a young boy whose connection I don't recall, a very cool little man. I was the token Caucasian of the house. Many stories happened in this place. Half the time it was like living "Sanford and Son", sometimes it was "Soul Food". One time it was NYPD Blue, but not Murder One. It was never "Leave it to Beaver", though. One of the things it proved to me was that folks are pretty much the same at the kernel of their being. The rest is cultural.

I met a lot of diverse people from the area, none of them royalty, but many of them fit into the other categories I mention in my description of these memoirs. One of them was Snake, let's imagine a guy who looked something like Will Smith because that's how I remember him looking.

I used to put on my Dudley Do-Right voice when we joked about racial "differences", which we could do and did all the time, laughing and smiling. Snake asked me one day if I wanted to make some money. I didn't end up doing it, but his plan had to do with going in a bank and using my "white routine" referring to the voice among other things, to pass off a check or something like that. Probably just as well I passed up that opportunity, but Snake and everyone else I met was always cool to me. One day though, we went to a Black Muslim burger joint, and the people there were seriously saturated with hatred for "white folks". That day was an unforgettable lesson in what unbridled and unreasoning hatred feels like. An individual of whom you know nothing can not possibly deserve such hatred based on a prejudice against a group you somehow were taught. Racial hatred, religious hatred, hatred based on gender or sexuality, it's all basically wrong, period. You can't be an intelligent being and be into hating someone you do not know on the basis of what they believe (excluding the obvious of them wanting to exterminate you), where they come from, what color their skin is, how they talk, etc. The people I lived with were all kind to me, straight with me, cool with me in 1975. Yet in 2010, we see this resurfacing of hatred, not just discrimination, which is bad enough, but hatred.And in the guise of political agendas, it's that much uglier.

Snake had a proposition, but he never tried to hide the true nature or goals involved.

People, be suspicious of politicians whose agendas are always based on hate speak and innuendo. Politicians who want the job bad enough to purvey hatred don't care about your interests at all, only their own, and they will do anything to get the power and money they crave. Don't drink the koolaid.

Be skeptical of the media clowns, many of whom have openly admitted that they are entertainers in the competitive world of news-as-enertainment. They make no bones about the provocation they enact, it's just a part of their act, like Lenny Bruce used to do. Unfortunately, Lenny Bruce was provocative, yes, but he never incited anyone to violence or hatred, only a mild derision meant to make you think about things in a new light.

Whether it's politicians or media clowns you're listening to, try to think - what is it this person is after, exactly? A better world for you and me, or their own career advancement at any price?

I can remember feeling the sun on my back at the start of summer in Minneapolis and the mud scraper on the back porch, the one you used before you could go in. And the smell of burning leaves in the fall. And waiting for the ice to thaw so I could open the garage door and get my bike out to ride it when the streets were no longer slippery. And putting playing cards or baloons in the tires in the spring, to make the motorcycle noises. And walking in snow plowed up on the edge of the sidewalk, over my head in winter.

I can remember making friends in suburban Seattle and liking the climate with its fog and dark rainy winter skies with mild temperatures. When they got an inch of snow, Boeing closed its doors for the day! In Minnesota schools sometimes closed down. We used to listen keenly to the radio in the morning and be cheered by the news of an occasional school closure. Too occasional.

I can remember much later when all the "adults" in the tour bus in Germany wanted to just get there and that I wanted to get out and roll around on the ground like a dog, and no drugs of any kind were involved. And I did get out and roll around!

The rest of my life will need to be spent trying to find a few of those intense good feelings.