Six Word Memoirs on Life Stories

Backstory

My mother grew up in North Philly back in the early 1950s when all the Jewish families moved out because one Black family, then two, then three moved in -- but my mother's mother refused to move because Freda Albert loved her house.

And so my mother grew up the only White girl on her block and when it came time to graduate from Gratz High, Eleanor Gloria Albert went to the prom escorted by the entire football team. Otherwise, they said, someone would get killed.

So there is a photo of my Mom, "Cookie" looking pretty much like this, surrounded by a gaggle of burly Black Football stars.

My mother was strangely asexual, almost wrapped in a clear cellophane, protected from tawdry. But she loved to sing the Huck a buck. "When the lights are down low! There's one thing you should know! Do the Huck-a-buck! Do the Huck-a-Buck! If you don't know how to, then baby you're out of luck!"

I could swear, until the day she died, she didn't realize what she was singing.