A Fairy Godmother in an Uber

I met a fairy godmother yesterday. His name is Nelson Rocadella.

Mr. Rocadella is a broadcast producer for Black stations in Chicago (where I'm visiting this week). Because of him, I'll be on WVON Radio from 5:30 to 6:00 Central time today. The show is Afternoons with Buchanan and Hill. You can tune in via iHeart radio or, if you're in the Chicago area, go to AM 1690.

Mr. Rocadella also drives for Uber and Lyft in his spare time. That's where I met him.

In the back seat of his car.

I was headed to the Whitney Young branch library on Chicago's South Side. I had an appointment with the manager, Mitchell Smith, to make an author appearance ... and hopefully get To Do Justice, the just-published Book 3 of my Chicago Trilogy, on shelves throughout the Chicago Public Library system

It's a long ride to the far South Side in rush hour. Mr. Rocadella and I started talking.

The subject soon became my time covering the mid '60s riots for The Associated Press, experiences that undergird To Do Justice.

We started with the 1968 Democratic National Convention street disorders. I was on the street all but the final night. I looked on as the infamous "police riot" erupted outside the Hilton along S. Michigan Ave.

Mr. Rocadella was captivated. He was born in 1968.

We turned to the inner-city riots of preceding summers, including the second (1966) North Lawndale riot that was Chicago's worst in terms of lives lost and property destroyed. In the novel, my heroine Pinkie loses her 'baby sister' Bettina in the melee and confusion.

Then the subject turned to WVON.

The call letters WVON stand for "Voice Of the Negro". The station burst onto the airwaves while I was in high school, with a sound like none other. It was Black and proud in a day -- the mid '50s -- when there was nothing else to compare. It played music us kids had never heard in my then-lily-white suburb of Park Forest.

We went nuts. We stopped listening to Dick Biondi on WLS and tuned in to WVON.

I told Mr. Roccadella all this, and how I'd incorporated such experiences into the novel. I rattled off disk-jockey names from Back in the Day -- Sid "The Real" McCoy, Yvonne Daniels, Butterball Crane, Herb Kent the Cool Gent -- and he recognized many of them.

Then I read him the WVON passage from the novel..

"You should be on radio!" Mr. Rocadella exclaimed..

"I should!" I responded.

And he picked up the phone.

Ten minutes later it was arranged. A half-hour slot was free from 5:30 to 6:00. Show up 15 minutes early.

I plan to be there at 5:00.

Frank S Joseph Author

www.frankjoseph.com

P.S. To Do Justice is now up on Amazon. It's $2.95 for the e-book (or free if you're an Kindle Unlimited subscriber). Or you can order an autographed paperback copy for $19.95 + $5 postage (+ $1.20 sales tax if you're in Maryland). For your own paperback, just email me at frank@frankjoseph.com.