【正文】 shadow of racism was still a fact of life. I39。 General Store, Buck Davis stood behind the register, talking to a middleaged farmer. Buck was a tall, weathered man in a red hunting shirt and I nodded as I passed him on my way to the hardware section to get a container of nails, a coil of binding wire and fencing. I pulled my purchases up to the counter and placed the nails in the tray of the scale, saying carefully, I need to put this on credit. My brow was moist with nervous sweat and I wiped it away with the back of my arm. The farmer gave me an amused, cynical look, but Buck39。t change. Sure, he said easily, reaching for his booklet where he kept records for credit. I gave a sigh of relief. Your daddy is always good for it. He turned to the farmer. This here is one of James Williams39。 son. Those three words had opened a door to an adult39。s good name spurred me to bee the first in our family to go to university. I worked my way through college as a porter at a fourstar hotel. Eventually, that good name provided the initiative to start my own successful public relations firm in Washington, . America needs to restore a sense of shame in its neighborhoods. Doing drugs, spending all your money at the liquor store, stealing, or getting a young woman pregnant with no intent to marry her should induce a deep sense of embarrassment. But it doesn39。ve bee exceedingly used to it. Teen drug use has also risen. In one North Carolina County, police arrested 73 students from 12 secondary schools for dealing drugs, some of them right in the classroom. Meanwhile, the small signs of civility and respect that hold up civilization are vanishing from schools, stores and streets. Phrases like yes, ma39。 shop or my hometown barbershop for a haircut, I am still greeted as James Williams39。s good name did pave the way for me. Charlie Chaplin He was born in a poor area of South London. He wore his mother39。s childhood. But only Charlie Chaplin could have created the great ic character of the Tramp, the little man in rags who gave his creator permanent fame. Other countries— France, Italy, Spain, even Japan— have provided more applause (and profit) where Chaplin is concerned than the land of his birth. Chaplin quit Britain for good in 1913 when he journeyed to America with a group of performers to do his edy act on the stage, where talent scouts recruited him to work for Mack Sent, the king of Hollywood edy films. Sad to say, many English people in the 1920s and 1930s thought Chaplin39。 the workingclass audiences were more likely to clap for a character who revolted against authority, using his wicked little cane to trip it up, or aiming the heel of his boot for a wellplaced kick at its broad rear. All the same, Chaplin39。t seem all that English or even workingclass. English tramps didn39。s quick eye for a pretty girl had a coarse way about it that was considered, well, not quite nice by English audiences— that39。t it? But for over half of his screen career, Chaplin had no screen voice to confirm his British nationality. Indeed, it was a headache for Chaplin when he could no longer resist the talking movies and had to find the right voice for his Tramp. He postponed that day as long as possible: In Modern Times in 1936, the first film in which he was heard as a singing waiter, he made up a nonsense language which sounded like no known nationality. He later said he imagined the Tramp to be a collegeeducated gentleman who39。d been able to speak with an educated accent in those early short edies, it39。t be me. Is that possible? How extraordinary, is how he greeted the first sight of himself as the Tramp on the screen. But that shock roused his imagination. Chaplin didn39。 he was the kind of ic who used his physical senses to invent his art as he went along. Lifeless objects especially helped Chaplin make contact with himself as an artist. He turned them into other kinds of objects. Thus, a broken alarm clock in the movie The Pawnbroker became a sick patient undergoing surgery。s great edy. He also had a deep need to be loved— and a corresponding fear of being betrayed. The two were hard to bine and sometimes— as in his early marriages— the collision between them resulted in disaster. Yet even this painfullybought selfknowledge found its way into his ic creations. The Tramp never loses his faith in the flower girl who39。 while the other side of Chaplin makes Monsieur Verdoux, the French wife killer, into a symbol of hatred for women. It39。Neill Chaplin, he found a partner whose stability and affection spanned the 37 years age difference between them, which had seemed so threatening, that when the official who was marrying them in 1942 turned to the beautiful girl of 17 who39。s life became as many unfounded rumors surrounded them both— and, later on, she was the center of calm in the quarrels that Chaplin sometimes sparked in his own large family of talented children. Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977. A few months later, a couple of almost ic body thieves stole his body from the family burial chamber and held it for money. The police recovered it with more efficiency than Mack Sent39。t help feeling Chaplin would have regarded this strange incident as a fittin