“Folks who think money is all that matters are fools,” my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird once told me. As a boy I didn’t always pay attention to the old black man’s wisdom, but should have, especially about money.
One day while lolling with my pals on Uptown Avenue in our Mississippi Delta hometown, I learned the hard way to abide by Jaybird’s words about money. I didn’t have a cent, and needed a quarter to buy an All-Day Sucker at Peach-Eye’s Grocery. As we meandered up and down Uptown, Billy Clyde Rakestraw, known as Mr. B.C., blared his horn, scattering us from a spot near the bank where he wanted to park.