My father was born in Savannah, Georgia. He was the youngest of a very large family and the only boy. He was called “Cracker” all his life because of his home state. As a teen, he longed to be on the stage, and he dropped out of high school to give it a try. He was briefly in vaudeville, where he teamed up with a tall beautiful brunette from Savannah named Lillian Wise. They had an act called “The Wise Crackers.” Whether it lasted more than a few weeks or months or longer, I can’t say because I don’t know. He always loved to do the soft shoe and make jokes, mostly corny ones.

His favorite singer was Beatrice Kay, one of the great stars of vaudeville. Growing up in the 1940s, we heard her records on our old Victrola again and again (none of us children had money to buy our own records).

Here were two of his favorite songs: “Mention My Name in Sheboygan,” which Kay performed here, long past her prime and one of her rare appearances on video. Another was “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.”And of course, “After the Ball Is Over.”  My Daddy also loved Sophie Tucker (we met her once when she stayed at our neighbors’ home while performing in a nightclub act at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston), Al Jolson, and Eddie Cantor. I must have heard every song Al Jolson recorded. And who could ever forget Sophie Tucker’s theme song, “Some of These Days”? 

Many years later, living in Brooklyn, I was rummaging in a used bookstore on Fulton Street and found a fifth edition of Richard Wright’s Black Boy, inscribed by Sophie Tucker and dated “Chicago 1945.” It now rests on a shelf with first editions, a treasure.

There is something I must explain about my taste in entertainment. I don’t like horror films, and I don’t like graphic violence. That considerably narrows the range of what I watch. I want to be entertained or learn, not to be terrified or depressed by what I choose to see.

Having said that, I confess that one of my TV favorites (now an oldie) was “The Wire.” It is a series about the long-running struggles between drug dealers and the police in Baltimore. It aired several years ago, back before there was streaming. This was the series that overcame my aversion to verbal vulgarity because the usual curse words are spoken constantly and eventually I barely noticed them. There is a lot of violence but it is not gratuitous. It is what you would expect to see, given the subject matter.

The stories in “The Wire” are gripping, and the characters are sharply drawn. My favorite character was Omar, a good-bad guy. My favorite scene is set in the local high school. The local police chief has come to address the students in the gym. They are seated around him, on all four sides of the room. He can’t get many words out because the students are unruly, throwing paper balls and other objects across the room and raising a ruckus. He can’t control them. They ignore him. Then the principal walks in. In contrast to the police officer, who is a strong tall white man, she is a small, slightly rotund African American woman. The minute she walks to the center of the room, the students fall silent. The room is hushed, and the students listen to her every word. I have never forgotten that dramatic portrayal of authority.

My current favorite is “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” Phryne Fisher is a lady detective in Australia in the 1920s. In every episode, she solves a murder. She is played by the gorgeous Australian actress Essie Davis. She is the epitome of style, wearing a different and elegant outfit in every scene. She can do anything: she flies a plane, she drives a racing car, she can handle weapons with ease, she is an expert in every imaginable activity, she is totally fearless and always beautiful. The local police inspector reluctantly allows her to solve murders, then realizes she is a great asset and invites her to help him. Miss Fisher is thoroughly modern in her mores and her intelligence.

Another program I enjoy is “Call the Midwife.” It appears on public television. It is a series about midwives who live in a convent in Britain in the 1950s and deliver babies in a working class district. The stories are often inspiring, sometimes sad, but always about the values of kindness, humaneness, caring, and love.

i have also enjoyed “Last Tango in Halifax,” which is streaming. It is a BBC series about an elderly man and woman who had been crazy about one another as teens, lost touch, married other people, and found each other 60 years later and fell in love. Both have incredibly dysfunctional families, and everyone has secrets. One plus: no matter how difficult your family, you will feel like it is completely normal after watching a few episodes of this show.

That’s what I like. What do you like?