I made a New Year's resolution to finally acknowledge a kindness someone paid me nearly two decades ago, when I felt like I was at my smallest. All these years, I had never let him know how much that single display of decency stuck with me. It was time to fix that.
Into my mid-20s, I was working at my first reporting gig out of college. A sense of adventure and curiosity brought me to the daily newspaper in Lexington, Ky. The culture of the Bluegrass State seemed planets away from my suburban Chicago upbringing, and I became enamored of everything from country roads to sweet tea.
One thing I did not care for was the overt racism, but I'll get to that in a minute.
