Shining Like the Sun

Blues singer and guitarist Steve Ferguson in front of his house on
33rd Street in Louisville's West End in the early 1960s.

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

Acts 9:18

Yesterday was a whirl-wind of synchronicity for the Hog. It happened shortly after he'd finished recording his "Jazz Insights" 91.9 Radio show in downtown Louisville. On the way home he stopped on Frankfort Ave. to buy a tote bag for all the various and sundry crap he's been carrying around lately. Yes, the Hog has become a new age bag lady saddled with a Kindle, camera, recorder and tons of periodicals and books.

He'd just gotten to the street corner in front of Carmichael's Books when he noticed a small women wearing a toboggan and heavy clothing moving toward him. "Hi Danny." It was Sheri Ferguson, blues guitarist Steve Ferguson's widow. He asked her if she knew a good place to buy tote bags.
"Sure "Just Creations" right down the street has a ton of them."

He took her advice and found a perfect tote bag. A wildly colored pink, green and yellow affair made in Cambodia out of old rice bags. Just the kind of flash the Hog had envisioned. Now he was off to the bookstore.

Soon as he walked in the front door he saw him. Oh my God, looking up at the stacks, red faced and looking better than he did ten or fifteen years ago, the professorial Charles Breslin.

"Oh Danny, nice to see you. I've been thinking about you ever since professor Richardson died."

Breslin was on the Hog's Masters Thesis committee back in 1981 along with UL professors Harold Richardson and Leon Driscoll.

Driscoll and Richardson hated one another and would disagree for the sport of it, so if it hadn't been for Breslin's participation, the Hog would never have achieved the lofty title of Master of Humanities or as the Hog's wife D. likes to say "Masturbator of Arts."

In any case it was nice to see Breslin looking young and fit at 82.

"Danny, he said, pointing the finger of one hand in a threatening gesture, every time I see you I think of that commercial where you said, "Be There!"

He was referring to the television spot the Hog and four or five very tired strippers did for Channel 32 back in the late 70s. They had stayed up all night after performing at Colonel Morris' Lounge on Fifth Street in downtown Louisville to do a quick commercial for the club.

"Come to beautiful downtown Louisville to see the best in burlesque entertainment at Colonel Morris' Lounge. Blonds, Brunettes, Red Heads. Be there or be square!"

The damn thing ran for months on late night TV so, the Hog got a bit of a reputation for ill-repute.

But back to the story. The Hog had ventured into the bookstore to get a look at "Crossings. Historical Journeys Near Louisville's Merton Square," a brand new coffee-table size volume by Clyde F. Crews.

On March 18, 1958 Thomas Merton stood at the corner of fifth and Walnut St. (now Fourth and Muhammad Ali) and had an epiphany. He suddenly recognized his connection with humanity and wondered "if it were truly possible to convince people they were "walking around shining like the sun."

The Hog realized that Colonel Morris' Lounge was just a parking lot away from the historic corner. And the Hog had spent some time using a phone booth that was located
on said spot after telling jokes and bringing on the girls at the strip-club, where he actually spent quite a bit of time sitting back-stage reading Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson amid pasties and odoriferous g-strings.

Yes, the Hog himself had experienced an epiphany of sorts near that famous corner and had taken a hysterical if not historical journey there. It is a small world after-all.