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I was born in 1950. This was a time that now seems ancient. This was a time when built-in obsolescence was unheard of; when dependability and long-term utility were common. This was a time when I used to sit at the foot of my maternal grandfather, along with a couple more of his grandsons and listen to him tell of times before us. My grandfather didn’t have an ounce of formal education, but he was wise beyond any notion he harbored. He told us stories of times when he was a child. These stories were sometimes reassuring, sometimes funny and sometimes scary. The scary ones usually were laced with the realities he dealt with surrounding racism. Although he never got close to being lynched, he knew someone, who knew someone, who did. The sheer scariness of my grandfather’s stories was also enhanced by the reality that my cousins and I…