"Black II" is the story of my childhood. For the most part, only the names have been changed. But the history of Blackie's family is true of my mother's side of the family. The narrator's boyhood hanging with Clarence on fox hunts and country bars is mine. The only real differences in this story between the narrator and me are I don't smoke cigars or anything else and i don't hang around in taverns drinking and crying over juke box songs.
I do have some recordings of the song "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train", and I do tend to cry when I play them because the lyrics do remind me of my grandfather in my youth.
The photo at the top of the story is of my grandfather back in the time of the story standing in front of an underground tank at the Iron Works. the photo was before he shattered his leg and his life.
The photo on the right is me in 1946. I am in one of the several doghouses alongside one side of my grandparents home. These were for my grandfathers Fox hunting hounds. you can see one of them in the foreground.
The picture above is of the author in 1943 with his grandparents. This is about 13 years before his accident and about 15 before his death. the dog you see in that photo was Nellie, my mother's pet.
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