Feeling in tune with a fellow child of '70s

[The Roux Comes First]

Danny Westneat hits a chord with me:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2008642345_danny18.html

Everybody's talking about what Obama's inauguration means to them. For me, it all goes back to when I was a kid, hanging out in my neighbor's basement.

It was the '70s. Nobody had video games or computers. What 12-year-old white boys did back then, besides play Nerf hoop or ogle Charlie's Angels, was to troop down into dark, carpeted basements, put on headphones and listen to music.

You may have seen this re-enacted on "That '70s Show."

Except in my version, the other kids were black.

Three of the four families nearest us were black. And it was a different world in their basements. I didn't realize it then, but it ended up blowing my little 12-year-old mind.

It was back in the basement that I first heard a soul radio station, called "WDAO." It played Bootsy's Rubber Band to John Coltrane. The call letters stood for Dayton, Ohio. But in the basement, the black kids said what the letters secretly meant: "White Days Are Over."

One day, my friend's older brother came in the basement and said to me: "Bet you haven't heard this."

He put on Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City." It's from 1973, before Stevie's music got schmaltzy. "A boy is born, in hard time Mississippi," it begins, then chronicles how he grows up and moves to New York and is all but destroyed because he's black.

He's living just enough for the city, Stevie sings angrily. But it ends hopefully, with Stevie calling on people to "change the world."

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This is what Obama's inauguration means to me. I listened again to his race speech from last March, and the sweep of this story is all there. The initial promise. Then the disillusionment. White resentment. Black anger. Finally a call — Obama's audacious hope — for a more perfect union.

It's a great speech. Only it takes Obama 37 minutes to say what Stevie says in three!

Maybe Obama won't be a great president, or even a good one. I am a fellow child of the '70s, but that doesn't mean I want him to start governing like they did in that horrendous decade.

But the dirty business of being president comes later. Inauguration Day — and this column — are like episodes of "This I Believe." And I believe — have always believed, since back in the basement of my boyhood — that when it comes to the American struggle over race, it was Stevie Wonder who had it right.

And I believe we now have a president who believes it, too.