...and as I go among the patrons checking to see if they need anything, an old black man speaks up: “I’m just glad to have a place to come where I am welcome for who I am and no one’s judging me for my past.”
His fellow ex-convicts nod in agreement and I feel a wave of satisfaction knowing that my wife and I have made something of this place.
I sit down at the end of the bar and a rough, frightening man sits next to me. He pulls out a cloth sack and offers it to me.
Inside, hard candies... raspberry candies and garnets.
He pulls out a clump, fused together like a jeweled honeycomb, and breaks off a piece.