"West Side Story" Update

The West Side Story was a great romance, probably the inspiration of many interracial, inter-religious and international marriages.

Many of us who grew up in the 1960's America were inspired to look further afield for love and romance. Not that I did.

It wasn't so simple for those who actually grew up in the sort of neighborhoods depicted on stage and screen. This New York Times article about real gang members from those days puts a different slant on things. Some continued in crime and others made new lives for themselves.

Recently I got hold of a video of West Side Story and I wonder if a sequel was ever done. I couldn't find anything on google. There is at least one sequel of sorts based on Gone With The Wind. In the movie, West Side Story, tony and Maria spend a night together. Let's say that a child, or two (if twins, then a boy and a girl,) result from that, very discreet (things were different then,) night.

Would a fictional story compare with what happened to William M. Jenkins and the brothers convicted of shooting him, George Lemus, now 64, and the late Robert, dead a decade?

During my recent visits to New York, I've been amazed by the lack of fear, even on the subways. My mother no longer insists that I leave my gold jewelry at home. The crime rate is way down from what it once was.

If Maria had given birth in the 1960's, the child would have benefited from "Head Start" and gotten a good education, maybe... Fiction isn't my specialty, but...