History and Mystery

I climbed the steps leading away from the light-rail station onto the street above it; a woman bounded up the steps behind me and at the top, asked for directions to a street. I pointed her in the right direction and she startled me by asking, “Do you want to go with me?” This encounter was astonishing to me for two reasons. A white woman, a stranger to me, was inviting me to go with her to the home of Scott Joplin, a place I had never visited in all my years in St. Louis.I sat in wo