Pool_1

"The kids didn't even have underpants or shoes. But they had total joy in having a soft place to sleep," he nearly blubbered. "I'm going to get Irv to donate some skivvies." Irv, a local clothing merchant, was another easy touch - but at arms length. Irving gave, whenever asked, and often when not asked. But Irv didn't deliver in person. Only Jazz Man did that. Everybody in the projects heard, at one time or another, the blues sung by the locals to lively double rhythms beat out on cardboard boxes while Jazz Man's van was parked outside. That van was never touched. The people of the projects had drawn their own lines. And like the many codes that tenanted this community, they were invisible to the outsider. When, later, the riots burned most of the city, the churches, the van, the furniture store, Irv's clothing store, and the mission were never touched. Lines were invisible, but not intangible. Frank's restaurant, as it came to be called, was never touched. It had its own lines. But, they, too were to become blurred.