Aboard the TGV to Paris I could exhale a little. After the morning’s frenzy and the schlepping of my five bags onto the train I was thrilled to be able to sit for a while. Several stops came in close succession: Montpellier, Nimes, Avignon. And then there was the long, uninterrupted, very fast sail up to Paris.

Spring Break was on and the train was full. My seat was part of a group of four that faced each other across a table. I shared the table with a little family – a woman and man and their boys of three and four. The older boy, Aaron, wore purple eyeglasses and was quiet. He eyed me suspiciously and whispered often to his dad (about me, no doubt). Aaron’s little brother Julien, though, had energy to spare. Both boys had Matchbox Ferraris and the tabletop was a convenient racecourse; Julien’s car never stopped moving.

Back and forth from the window to the aisle edge of the table it sped, Maman’s hand preventing it from sailing over. Occasionally she would warn Julien not to bother le monsieur, prompting Julien to stare at me for long stretches. His looks contained less fear than wonder about how serious an offense it would be if his red Enzo did crash into monsieur’s lap.

In a spontaneous act of international diplomacy I asked Julien if I might see his car. He hesitated briefly but slowly offered it across the table. I made chitchat about the car being italienne and rouge and vite but his little hand remained extended – palm up – and he only wanted his Ferrari back. Undeterred, I asked Julien if he would help me learn some French words. He didn’t answer but I persisted.

“Quel est le nom de cet animal?”

“Une vache.”

He wasn’t interested in much except his red car. Aaron still whispered conspiratorially to his papa while looking at me with concern.

Maman continued to warn Julien about letting his Ferrari go into my lap. Joining the fray I said to Julien (with the biggest clown-face smile imaginable, so he would HAVE to know that I was kidding around), “Si ta voiture vient ici – pointing to my lap – elle est la mienne.” If it comes over here, it’s mine.

Maman repeated my admonition but it served only to cajole Julien to mischief. He pushed his car back and forth a few more times before letting it loose towards me. Over the table it rolled and I caught it. The little hand came forth but I said – again with my super-jolly smile – “Non. Elle est mienne maintenant.”

I was unaware up to that moment how quickly a child could make the voyage from happy to hysterical. Hardly one second after maintenant passed my lips the 2^nd Class coach was filled with shrieks of terror, and a tiny branch of the French water utility somewhere behind Julien’s face released a flood of tears. As heads appeared over the backs of seats in search of the source of the howls, I slunk deeply down into mine.

Maman comforted the boy while looking guiltily at me. She had, after all, participated in the charade. I immediately produced the Ferrari from beneath the table. Julien snatched it from me and, just as quickly as his hysterics had begun he returned to his tabletop racing, scored by his melodic “Vroom vrooms.”

The rest of the ride to Paris was blessedly calm.

Normally I would be thrilled for even a few hours in Paris. This time, I only wanted to go home. My months in France had been a gift I gave myself and I mined from them a rich bounty of insight and direction.

It did not help my enjoyment of the City of Light to be lugging five heavy pieces of luggage. The 100-meter walk from Gare de Lyon across the street to my hotel took about half an hour; I had to stop every so often, remove the bags from my sore shoulders and back, and catch my breath.

I spent the afternoon and evening wandering, making only one planned stop, for lunch at La Cagouille. It’s a little seafood place in Montparnasse that we discovered some years ago. With high Zagat numbers and no tourists, it’s just my thing. This was my fifth or sixth meal there and for the fifth or sixth time I ordered grilled mackerel with mustard sauce. It was a meal I didn’t have to think about and that was just fine.

The next morning I boarded an Air France shuttle bus to Charles de Gaulle airport, and then I flew to the United States.

It was the spring of 1996 and I was selling men’s shoes at Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago. The suit department was next door and I’d sometimes help customers there if no other salespeople were around.

It was sale time – it was very often sale time – and the aisles were jammed with racks of marked-down suits and pants. An elderly African-American man rolled up in one of those scooter-chair things and said he needed some tan trousers. Because the aisles were blocked in that department I walked over to the rack, pulled out a few pairs in his size, and brought them to him. He liked a couple and wanted to try them on, so I directed him to the fitting rooms. What happened then was a first (and only) in my 15 years in retail.

The man said he could walk very short distances – such as into the dressing room – but he couldn’t bend over, and he asked if I could I help him try on the pants. So I did.

I went into the little room with him, helped him off with his own trousers and helped him on with the new ones. He stood up slowly, looked at himself in the mirror and made his decision quickly (bless him), and then we got him dressed again.

As I was ringing up his purchase he explained that he’d had a stroke recently and couldn’t walk much, thus the scooter, and that he had retired from his job as a criminal court judge. His speech was a bit slow but I understood him perfectly. He was from Memphis, he said, and was in Chicago visiting his sister.

“Memphis? I’m going to be there next month.” Calvin’s mom was recently married and planned a driving vacation from her home in Mississippi to Branson, Missouri, via Memphis, and Calvin and I would rendezvous with the newlyweds in Memphis. I had already done some research on dining options.

“I read about a restaurant called the Four Way Grill. Do you know it?”

His head turned a little to the side, like people’s do when they want to hear something better.

“Yeah, I know it. That’s a black restaurant.”

“Well, is there any reason I shouldn’t go there?”

“Noooo.” He didn’t sound bothered, just a little confused.

“Is it good?”

He brightened. “Yeah, it’s good. I’d go with you if you asked me.” And I did.

A month later, after arranging to meet Judge Lockard for breakfast – that was his name, H.T. Lockard – Calvin, his mom and stepdad and I found ourselves driving through some neighborhoods that made us wonder if we were lost. This place was in Gourmet, I thought; could this be right?

But soon enough we saw the Four Way, and there, in a minivan parked in front, was the judge. He slowly turned himself out of the driver’s seat and, with the help of a cane and a convenient elbow, was able to make his way to the restaurant. It was a small diner, really, in a plain brick building of faded pink.

As soon as the door opened we heard a chorus from the kitchen. “G’mornin,’ judge!” “You’re lookin’ good, judge!”

The rest of us looked toward the dining room, wondering whether we should seat ourselves or wait, when the judge said, “Come this way,” and set out in his slow shuffle through the kitchen.

We snaked behind him through the hot, narrow space, squeezing between women in white dresses griddling eggs and ham and pancakes and patting biscuit dough. Large pans of biscuits were spread over the counters and let up a smell that told you you’d soon be eating too many of them.

Through the kitchen, we found ourselves in a dining room separate from the main seating area, without a door or any means of entry except through the kitchen.

The tables were covered with worn vinyl cloths and the walls paneled with thin wood-grain sheets of 1960s vintage. Photographs hung around the room. Over here was Dr. King and over there was Jesse Jackson. That looks like Alex Haley. And there – why, that’s Judge Lockard. And there’s Judge Lockard with Dr. King!

Orders were taken and our breakfasts were delivered. I had country ham with strong red eye gravy – so did the judge – and there was a mountain of biscuits in the middle of the table. Judge Lockard asked gently if I might help him cut his ham into pieces since he had trouble using his right arm. Of course I did, while resisting the impulse to express my hope that his minivan had automatic transmission.

We had the back room to ourselves for that breakfast and enjoyed a good conversation, mostly about food.

Judge H.T. Lockard

A few months later, in the summer of 1996, the Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago. During that week a customer came into Saks wearing a seersucker suit and a bow tie. “Let me guess, “ I ventured. “You’re not from here.”

“Sharp eye. I’m from Memphis.” He was a newspaperman, it turned out, in town covering the convention.

I lit up and told him I’d been there recently and had some good meals. He asked about them.

“Well, there was the Rendezvous – great lamb ribs.” He nodded approvingly. “And the Cozy Corner – those barbecued Cornish hens.”

“Another good one.”

“And we had breakfast at a place called the Four Way Grill. Have you heard of it?”

He stiffened. “You went to the Four Way Grill?”

“Yeah, and it was really good. We ate in the back room with a fellow I know named H.T. Lockard.”

The newspaperman’s eyes grew large. “You were in the back room of the Four Way Grill with H.T. Lockard?”

This scared me a little. “Uh, yes. Why?”

He explained that the back room of the Four Way Grill was where the black elite of Memphis did their politics and made their deals, and that Judge Lockard ranked very high in the pantheon. He had been among the founders of the NAACP in Tennessee. It was a rare honor, the journalist told me, for outsiders – white ones at that – to be invited into the sanctum.

Several months later Calvin and I returned to Memphis and again we met the judge, this time for Sunday brunch at a trendier little spot near the University of Memphis. It was an Eggs Florentine kind of place.

I never saw Judge Lockard after that but I spoke to him a few times on the phone and we traded a couple of letters over the years.

Six or seven years ago I attended an Urban League event in Los Angeles. At one point I was standing in the rear of the ballroom when Jesse Jackson walked by. I said, “Reverend Jackson, I think we have a mutual friend.” His face pinched up a bit, skeptically.

“Oh, really.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. H.T. Lockard.”

“You know Judge Lockard.” Again, a statement. He really hadn’t stopped moving during the exchange.

“Yes. Had a nice breakfast with him once in the back room of the Four Way Grill.”

Rev. Jackson stopped and turned toward me. “You were in the back room of the Four Way Grill with H.T. Lockard?”

I just smiled and shrugged. I considered mentioning that I was at that breakfast with my boyfriend but decided that might be too much for the civil rights leader.

The judge died about a year ago at age 91 and I read a wonderful story about him in his obituary. In the early 60s he was the attorney representing black students attempting to enroll in Memphis State University, and during the fight a man called to say he was going to kill him. He told an associate about the threat and said, “I’m going to fortify myself with arms and liquor and be on the front porch waiting for him.” Fortunately nothing came of the incident but the story captured the elegance I saw and the determination I had read about.

I thought about H.T. Lockard the other day on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. He was a great man, one of the people I’ve been blessed in my life to know, if only a little.

When I was a little boy in Houston a cat and a dog lived with us. Lickie the cat was jet black and temperamental, possibly the most catlike cat I ever knew. She wasn’t mean but she wasn’t friendly, either. Other kittens, cats and dogs came and went but Lickie, reaching the ripe age of 21, outlived many of them. She refused to eat anything except Purina #1 canned food.

Skippy came to the family a little before me. Of noble Louisiana breeding and birth, he had a proper name – Squire Skipdale of Nodaway – but he answered to Skippy. I don’t know anything about Wire Fox Terriers beyond what I saw in my ten or twelve years with him, or whether his temperament was standard for the breed, but he was perky without being hyperactive and he didn’t bark too much. He was smart. He knew the usual commands. He’d beg for food, and when you held your hands open and said “All gone,” he’d go away.

I think our dog’s 12-year lifespan was about normal, but he endured in spite of us. Skippy survived so long despite the fact that every Easter, when much of the world celebrated a beautiful, inspirational story of rebirth, we tried to kill him.

My brother and I had a mom who indulged us with holiday candy. On Christmas we would awake to find stockings full of Hershey’s kisses and Pez dispensers, and on Easter morning the spread of sweets was even more elaborate. Big baskets of green plastic grass held malted milk ball eggs, chocolate eggs, solid chocolate bunnies, hollow chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chickens, jelly beans. Candy, candy, candy. We would gorge ourselves until being dragged out to the car and to church.

After church we usually had dinner at our grandparents’ house. We had cousins and sometimes the dinners ran to a dozen people. Often there was ham, or sometimes lamb (which I only learned years later could be served in a color other than gray), and our grandmother Pat liked to put out what she called a relish tray. That confused me because it held black olives out of a can and carrot and celery sticks and little sweet pickles but no relish. Pat was also fond of pickled watermelon rind, which I didn’t love then but for which at this minute I suddenly feel a craving.

Easter afternoons were fun. It wasn’t steamy yet in Houston and we kids could play outside after we ate. Pat had baskets of candy for us, too. She had her own sweet tooth and used the grandkids as an excuse to indulge. The afternoons would end around four or five o’clock, when we’d pack ourselves into the car and head home.

What greeted us when we got there was grotesque. We paused in shock at the front door to survey Shiloh in our own living room. Shredded foil rabbit-wrappers were strewn everywhere. There was so much plastic and torn cardboard that one might have believed a ticker-tape parade had come through. The green plastic grass, which only a few hours before had served as a bed for our candy treasures, was now massed in wet brown clumps, having been swallowed and regurgitated. Skippy apparently had rather catholic tastes in candy, for it seemed that he ate everything from our baskets. Further, based on the contents of the numerous piles and puddles of vomit, he didn’t keep anything down.

I don’t recall learning until much later about the dangers of letting dogs eat chocolate, but these annual binges didn’t seem to do Skippy any lasting physical harm.

One amazing aspect of the Easter adventures with Skippy was the fact that they recurred, year after year after year. When we went to sleep Sunday night our collective memory was erased so that a year later, the same series of events repeated themselves.

I can’t see or eat Easter candy without remembering Skippy.

I’m well aware of the concept of east-is-east-and-west-is-west but I want to commingle two parts of my life here just this once. I write some less sassy, more thoughtful bits for www.mariashriver.com. I’m extremely lucky to be welcome on a forum with such a wide audience and I welcome YOU, dear readers, to have a look over there. Aside from my own stuff the site is an endless source of inspiration, encouragement, learning and enrichment.

http://mariashriver.com/guides/clay-russell

Thank you.