Good Times' Thelma + 🆕 Bourdain + Soul Train

+ pears minus the partridge and tree

loupe.

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze. — Zora Neale Hurston. “Gramercy Pear,” iPhone photo by Danyel Smith, 2015

square one.

This was 1973-74. Los Angeles. I was what, eight? And if my sister and I were lucky, while on errands with my grandmother, we’d see a long queue of Black teenagers and young adults, in kind of south Hollywood, hoping to dance on Soul Train. The kids seemed free, and extra far ahead of us — just for gathering publicly in loud clothes. It was thrilling to see.

Not ten years had passed since the Watts uprisings. Jet magazine still had to publish a guide each week, so we could find black people on television. There were a very few young black women on TV just talking and walking, let alone dancing. Soul Train’s Jody Watley was one…