Look! That's my silver Firebird, at my Sherman Hall parking lot, in Champaign. You've got to look really hard to find it, in this "Christmas Card City" -- as the News-Gazette editors so aptly captioned the picture. I've always treasured it.
This is back to the future stuff; a blast from the past -- from the last millennium, even. You can see that there's practically no one in the sidewalks this Friday morning, and little evidence of vehicular traffic. There were no selfies then. No email. No Twitter. No Google search. The millennials were not yet born. I think they were waiting for my return to Kenya.
At this time, in early 1978, Obama hadn't even come to Illinois, let alone Kenya. Little Michelle, where was she, there in Chicago, that Windy City, that particular morning?
It was a really cold morning, brrrrr! But I was in my room, and I remember it with as much warmth as my room provided me.
You see, somewhere there inside Sherman Hall that morning was a Kenyan thinking about school work, and perhaps about home. I had been happily back to Kenya just months earlier, in the summer of 1977.
The future was all ahead of me here. It's been a magical thing to come upon it in steps, along the winding way. But much of it is, for me, still is. You'll see.
CLICK: Images of Firebird
READ MORE: About Pontiac Firebird
LISTEN: Igor Stravinsky's Ballet Score, The Firebird, conducted by Valery Gergiev:
