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I’ve got my fingers crossed.

The title is a reference to the great Sam Cooke song that I put high on my personal list of all time favourites. (Otis Redding’s version is also excellent). But it’s a wish I have as a Canadian watching this historic day in American and World History. A new sheriff will be signed in today.

I can honestly say I don’t know much about this Obama guy. But at dinner last night, my friend MW got this serious look on his face and started talking about him with a conviction that MW gets when you know he believes strongly in something. He’s a Canadian too but he’s really a humanitarian, as well. So I stopped talking and I listened a lot more. I have trouble with that. But I knew this was important to MW.

So I think I’m not going to pass judgement on another new political figure just yet. From what I can tell, he’s promised some interesting stuff to the American public and they have responded in kind with thier support. So the test begins. Will he cave and take the politically correct route, or as MW put it, will he just lie? Isn’t that what poitically correct really means? Not my question. MW said it but I agree.

I sure hope he doesn’t cave.

Mr. Obama seems to have a lot of soul and that’s not a reference to his skin colour. Why should that matter? I always wanted to take a trip from Toronto to Harlem in my youth and visit the great hall of music known as The Apollo Theater. But I always had this great fear of being perceived as a piece of white pocket lint amongst a sea of black-eyed peas. Shows you how smart I was back then. Not very.

But it was never a problem for me in Toronto. One of my best friends in my little hall of music, The Gogue Inn, was Bobby A. who had a skin tone similar to Mr. Obama’s. We didn’t care. Bobby used to borrow a copy of a fairly rare recording (at the time) by James Brown (Out Of Sight) so he could play it on his floor. His buddies liked to slide like James did it. Colin, the Irish guy, was pretty good at it.

The Gogue Inn had 3 levels and Bobby and I played records on our individual floors. When you left your floor and did your stint on guard duty on the back door, Bobby had the record stuffed down his pants like a second cup for a goaltender (maybe that’s where Dave Dryden got the idea for that one when I worked at Cooper). He was afraid that he might have to come to me and apologize for one of his friends getting a little selfish. The joy he always had was something I will find very to hard to forget.

And it was a special day when I ran into Bobby and his Dad on Yonge Street in Toronto and Bobby introduced me to his Dad as my friend John and the warmth would have lit up the department store where I was working at that time.

So maybe the American public will make new friends and introduce them to their dads and that Obama guy might have a lot to do with.

MW and I both agreed. We hope he is allowed to…

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