 My grandparents, of course, required me to give recitations at the dinner table. My grandfather would say a prayer, he would turn to me and he would ask me if I would recite something, a poem by Robert Frost or something by Langston Hughes. And so every meal was preluded with a prayer and some recitation. It could have been the Declaration of Independence, but I mention that because always at little Joe's house, when I got out of the chair, someone would say,