dam for, anyhow? To catch water to irrigate new land, and water all of this
desert-looking country here. And when a little drop of water hits the ground
anywhere out across here--a crop, a bush, sometimes even a big tall tree
comes jumping out of the dirt. Thousands and thousands of whole families are
going to have all the good land they need, and I'm a-going to be on one of
them little twenty acres!"
"Water, water," a young man about twenty or so, wearing a pair of
handmade cowboy shoes, talks up. "You think water's gonna be th' best part?
Well, you're just about half right, friend. Did you ever stop to think that
th' most, th' best part of it all is th' electric power this dam's gonna
turn out? I can just lay here on this old, rotten jungle hill with all of
these half-starved people waiting to go to work, and you know, I don't so
much see all of this filth and dirt. But I do see--just try to picture in my
head, like--what's gonna be
here. Th' big factories makin' all kinds of things from fertilizer to
bombin' planes. Power lines, steel towers runnin' out acrost these old
clumpy hills--most of all, people at work all of th' time on little farms,
and whole bunches and bunches of people at work in th' big new factories."
"It's th' gifts of th' Lord, that's what 'tis." A little nervous man,
about half Indian, is pulling up grass stems and talking. "Th' Lord gives
you a mind to vision all of this, an' th' power to build it. He gives when
He wants to. Then when He wants to, He takes it away--if we don't use it
right."
"If we all get together, social like, and build something, say, like a
big ship, any kind of a factory, railroad, big dam--that's social work,
ain't it?" This is a young man with shell-rimmed glasses, a gray felt hat,
blue work shirt with a fountain pen stuck with a notebook in his pocket, and
his voice had the sound of books in it when he talked. "That's what 'social'
means, me and you and you working on something together and owning it
together. What the hell's wrong with this, anybody--speak up! If Jesus
Christ was sitting right here, right now, he'd say this very same dam thing.
You just ask Jesus how the hell come a couple of thousand of us living out
here in this jungle camp like a bunch of wild animals. You just ask Jesus
how many million of other folks are living the same way? Sharecroppers down
South, big city people that work in factories and live like rats in the
slimy slums. You know what Jesus'll say back to you? He'll tell you we all
just mortally got to work together, build things together, fix up old things
together, clean out old filth together, put up new buildings, schools and
churches, banks and factories together, and own everything together. Sure,
they'll call it a bad ism. Jesus don't care if you call it socialism or
communism, or just me and you."
When night come down, everything got a little stiller, and you could
walk around from one bunch of people to the other one and talk about the
weather. Although the weather wasn't such an асе-high subject to talk about,
because around Redding for nine months hand running the weather don't change
(it's hot and dry, hot and dry, and tomorrow it's still going to be hot and
dry), you can hear little bunches of folks getting acquainted with each
other, saying, "Really hot, ain't it?" "Yeah, dry too." "Mighty dry."
I run onto a few young people of twelve to twenty-five, mostly kids
with their families, who picked the banjo or guitar, and sung songs. Two of
these people drew quite a bunch every evening along toward sundown and it
always took place just about the same way. An old bed was under a tree in
their yard, and a baby boy romped around on it when the shade got cool,
because in the early parts of the day the flies and bugs nearly packed him
off. So this was his ripping and romping time, and it was the job of his two
sisters, one around twelve and the other one around fourteen, to watch him
and keep him from falling off onto the ground. Their dad parked his self
back on an old car cushion. He throwed his eyes out over the rims of some
two-bit specks just about every line or two on his reading matter, and run
his Adam's apple up and down; and his wife nearby was singing what all the
Lord had done for her, while the right young baby stood up for his first
time, and jumped up and down, bouncing toward the edge of the mattress. The
old man puckered up his face and sprayed a tree with tobacco juice, and
said, "Girls. You girls. Go in the house and get your music box, and set
there on the bed and play with the baby, so's he won't fall off."
One of the sisters tuned a string or two, then chorded a little. People
walked from all over the camp and gathered, and the kid, mama, and dad, and
all of the visitors, kept as still as day Light while the girls sang:
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I'm worried nowwww
But I won't be worried long.
I heard these two girls from a-ways away where I was leaning back up
against an old watering trough. I could hear their words just as plain as
day, floating all around in the trees and down across the low places. I hung
my guitar up on a stub of a limb, went down and stretched myself out on some
dry grass, and listened to the girls for a long time. The baby kicked and
bucked like a regular army mule whenever they'd quit their singing; but, as
quick as they struck their first note or two on the next song, the kid would
throw his wrist in his mouth, the slobbers would drip down onto his sister's
lap, and the baby would kick both feet, but easy, keeping pretty good time
to the guitar.
I don't know why I didn't tell them I had a guitar up yonder hanging on
that tree. I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of
their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no
fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling
you've got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And,
instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually--no, it
done something a lot better, something that's harder to do, something you
need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that's what it done, caused
you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber
like a cat's.
Two little girls were making two thousand working people feel like I
felt, rest like I rested. And when I say two thousand, take a look down off
across these three little hills. You'll see a hat or two bobbing up above
the brush. Somebody is going, somebody is coming, somebody is kneeling down
drinking from the spring of water trickling out of the west hill. Five men
are shaving before the same crooked hunk of old looking-glass, using tin
cans for their water. A woman right up close to you wrings out a tough work
shirt, saves the water for four more. You skim your eye out around the south
hill, and not less than a hundred women are doing the same thing, washing,
wringing, hanging out shirts, taking them down dry to iron. Not a one of
them is talking above a whisper, and the one that is whispering almost feels
guilty because she knows that ninety-nine out of every hundred are tired,
weary, have felt sad, joked and laughed to keep from crying. But these two
little girls are telling about all of that trouble, and everybody knows it's
helping. These songs say something about our hard traveling, something about
our hard luck, our hard get-by, but the songs say well come through all of
these in pretty good shape, and we'll be all right, we'll work, make ourself
useful, if only the telegram to build the dam would come in from Washington.
I thought I could act a little bashful and shy, and not rush the people
to get to knowing them, but something inside of me just sort of talked out
and said, "Awful good singing. What's your name?"
The two little girls talked slow and quiet but it was not nervous, and
it wasn't jittery, just plain. They told me their names.
I said, "I like the way you play that guitar with your fingers! Sounds
soft, and you can hear it a long ways off. All of these three hills was just
ringing out with your guitar, and all of these people was listening to you
sing."
"I saw them listening," one sister said.
"I saw them too," the other sister said.
"I play with a flat celluloid pick. I've got to be loud, because I play
in saloons and, well, I just make it my job to make more noise than they
make, and they're sorry for me and give me nickels and pennies."
"I don't like old saloons," one little girl said.
"Me neither," the other little girl said.
I looked over at their daddy, and he sort of looked crossways out my
side of his specks, pouched his lips up a little, winked at me, and said,
"I'm against bars myself."
His wife talked up louder, "Yes, you're against bars! Right square up
against them!"
Both of the sisters looked awful sober and serious at their dad.
Everybody in the crowd laughed, and took on a new listening position,
leaning back up against trees, squatting on smoky buckets turned upside
down, stretched out in the grass, patting down places to lay in the short
weeds.
I got up and strolled away and took my guitar down off of the sawed-off
limb, and thought while I was walking back to where the crowd was, Boy
howdy, old guitar, you been a lot of places, seen a lot of faces, but don't
you go to actin' up too wild and reckless, 'cause these Little girls and
their mama don't like saloons.
I got back to where everybody was, and the two little sisters was
singing "Columbus Stockade":
Way down in Columbus stockade
Where my gally went back on me;
Way down in Columbus stockade,
I'd ruther be back in Tennessee.
"Columbus Stockade" was always one of my first picks, so I let them run
along for a little while, twisted my guitar up in tune with theirs, holding
my ear down against the sounding box, and when I heard it was in tune with
them I started picking out the tune, sort of note for note, letting their
guitar play the bass chords and second parts. They both smiled when they
heard me because two guitars being played this way is what's called the real
article, and millions of little kids are raised on this kind of music. If
you think of something new to say, if a cyclone comes, or a flood wrecks the
country, or a bus load of school children freeze to death along the road, if
a big ship goes down, and an airplane falls in your neighborhood, an outlaw
shoots it out with the deputies, or the working people go out to win a war,
yes, you'll find a train load of things you can set down and make up a song
about. You'll hear people singing your words around over the country, and
you'll sing their songs everywhere you travel or everywhere you live; and
these are the only kind of songs my head or my memory or my guitar has got
any room for.
So these two little girls and me sung together till the crowd had got
bigger and it was dark under the trees where the moon couldn't hit us.
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet, Lord God!
And I ain't a-gonna be treated this a-way!
When the night got late and the men in the saloons in town lost their
few pennies playing framed-up poker, they drifted out to sleep the night in
the jungle camp. We saw a bunch of twenty-five or thirty of them come
running over the rim of the hill from town, yelling, cussing, kicking tin
buckets and coffee pots thirty feet, and hollering like panthers.
And when the wild bunch run down the little trail to where we was
singing--it was then that the whole drunk mess of them stood there reeling
and listening in the dark, and then shushed each other to keep quiet and set
down on the ground to listen. Everybody got so still that it almost crackled
in the air. Men took seats and leaned their heads back against tree trunks
and listened to the lightning bugs turn their lights on and off. And the
lightning bugs must of been hushing each other, because the old jungle camp
was getting a lot of good rest there listening to the little girls' song
drift out across the dark wind.
Chapter XVI
STORMY NIGHT
I set my hat on the back of my head and walked out west from Redding
through the Redwood forests along the coast, and strolled from town to town,
my guitar slung over my shoulder, and sung along the boweries of forty-two
states; Reno Avenue in Oklahoma City, Lower Pike Street in Seattle, the jury
table in Santa Fe; the Hooversvilles on the flea-bit rims of your city's
garbage dump. I sung in the camps called "Little Mexico," on the dirty edge
of California's green pastures. I sung on the gravel barges of the East
Coast and along New York's Bowery watching the cops chase the bay-rum
drinkers. I curved along the bend of the Gulf of Mexico and sung with the
tars and salts in Port Arthur, the oilers and greasers in Texas City, the
marijuana smokers in the flop town in Houston. I trailed the fairs and
rodeos all over Northern California, Grass Valley, Nevada City; I trailed
the apricots and peaches around Marysville and the winy-grape sand hills of
Auburn, drinking the good homemade vino from the jugs of friendly grape
farmers.
Everywhere I went I throwed my hat down in the floor and sung for my
tips.
Sometimes I was lucky and found me a good job. I sung on the radio
waves in Los Angeles, and I got a job from Uncle Samuel to come to the
valley of the Columbia River and I made up and recorded twenty-six songs
about the Grand Coulee Dam. I made two albums of records called "Dust Bowl
Ballads" for the Victor people. I hit the road again and crossed the
continent twice by way of highway and freights. Folks heard me on the
nationwide radio programs CBS and NBC, and thought I was rich and famous,
and I didn't have a nickel to my name, when I was hitting the hard way
again.
The months flew fast and the people faster, and one day the coast wind
blew me out of San Francisco, through San Jose's wide streets, and over the
hump to Los Angeles. Month of December, down along old Fifth and Main, Skid
Row, one of the skiddiest of all Skid Rows. God, what a wet and windy night!
And the clouds swung low and split up like herds of wild horses in the
canyons of the street.
I run onto a guitar-playing partner standing on a bad corner, and he
called his self the Cisco Kid. He was a
long-legged guy that walked like he was on a rolling ship, a good
singer and yodeler, and had sailed the seas a lot of times, busted labels in
a lot of ports, and had really been around in his twenty-six years. He
banged on the guitar pretty good, and like me, come rain or sun, or cold or
heat, he always walked along with his guitar slung over his shoulder from a
leather strap.
We moved along the Skid looking in at the bars and taverns, listening
to neon signs sputter and crackle, and on the lookout for a gang of live
ones. The old splotchy plate-glass windows looked too dirty for the hard
rain ever to wash clean. Old doors and dumps and cubbyholes had a sickly
pale color about them, and men and women bosses and work-hands humped around
inside and talked back and forth to each other. Some soggy-smelling news
stands tried to keep their fronts open and sell horse-race tips and sheets
to the people ducking head-down in the rain, and pool halls stunk to high
heaven with tobacco smoke, spit and piles of dirty men yelling over their
bets. Hock-shop windows all piled and hanging full of every article known to
man, and hocked there by the men that needed them most; tools, shovels,
carpenter kits, paint sets, compasses, brass faucets, plumbers tools, saws,
axes, big watches that hadn't run since the last war, and canvas tents and
bedrolls taken from the fruit tramps. Coffee joints, slippery stool dives,
hash counters with open fronts was lined with men swallowing and chewing and
hoping the rain would wash something like a job down along the Skid. The
garbage is along the street stones and the curbing, a shale and a slush that
washes down the hill from the nicer parts of town, the papers crumpled and
rotten, the straw, manure, and silt, that comes down from the high places,
like the Cisco Kid and me, and like several thousand other rounders, to land
and to clog, and to get caught along the Skid Row.
This is where the working people come to try to squeeze a little fun
and rest out of a buffalo nickel; these three or four blocks of old wobbling
flop houses and buildings.
I know you people I see here on the Skid. The hats pulled down over the
faces I can't see. You know my name and you call me a guitar busker, a joint
hopper, tip canary, kittybox man.
Movie people, boss wranglers, dead enders, stew bums; stealers,
dealers, sidewalk spielers; con men, sly flies, flat foots, reefer riders;
dopers, smokers, boiler stokers; sailors, whalers, bar flies, brass railers;
spittoon tuners, fruit-tree pruners; cobbers, spiders, three-way riders;
honest people, fakes, vamps and bleeders; saviors, saved, and side-street
singers; whore-house hunters, door-bell ringers; footloosers, rod riders,
caboosers, outsiders; honky tonk and whiskey setters, tight-wads,
spendthrifts, race-horse betters; blackmailers, gin soaks, comers, goers;
good girls, bad girls, teasers, whores; buskers, com huskers, dust bowlers,
dust panners; waddlers, toddlers, dose packers, syph carriers; money men,
honey men, sad men, funny men; ramblers, gamblers, highway anklers; cowards,
brave guys, stools and snitches; nice people, bastards, sonsabitches; fair,
square, and honest folks; low, sneaking greedy people; and somewhere, in
amongst all of these Skid Row skidders--Cisco and me sung for our chips.
This December night was bad for singing from joint to joint. The rain
had washed some of the trash along the streets, but had chased most of the
cash customers on home. Our system was to walk into a saloon and ask the
regular musicians if they would like to rest a few minutes, and they usually
was glad to stretch their legs and grab a coffee or a burger. Then we took
their places on the little platform and sung our songs and asked the
customers what they would like to hear next. Each joint was good for thirty
or forty cents, if things went just right, and we usually hit five or six
bars every night. But this was an off night. Men and women filled the
booths, talking about Hitler and Japan and the Russian Red Army. A few
soldiers and sailors and men in uniform scattered along the bar nodding to
longshoremen, and tanker men, and freighter men, and dock workers, and
factory men, and talking about the war. Cops ducking in and out of the rain
stood around and took a good look to see if there was any trouble cooking.
The Cisco Kid was saying, "It looks like most of these old buildings
had ought to be jacked up and a new one run under them." He was on the go
from door to door, trying to keep his guitar out of the rain.
"Purty old, all right, some of these flop houses. I think th' Spaniards
found 'em here when they first chased th' Indians outta this country." I
dodged along behind him.
"Wanta drop in here at th' Ace High?"
I followed him in the door. "It'll be a cinch ta git ta play here, I
don't know about makin' any money."
The Ace High crowd looked pretty low. We nodded at Charlie the Chinaman
and he nodded back toward the music platform. The whole joint was painted a
light funny blue that sort of made your head spin whether you was drinking
or not. All kinds of ropes and corks and big fishing nets hung around over
the walls and down from the ceiling. Cisco turned a nickel machine around
with its face to the wall, while I flipped the strings of his guitar hanging
on his back and tuned mine up to his. Then I waved at Charlie the Chinaman
and he reached above the bar and turned on the loud speaker. I pulled the
mike up to where it would be level with our mouths and we started in
singing:
Well, I come here, to work, I didn't come to hang around
Yes, I come here to work, I didn't come to hang around
And if I don't find me a woman, I'll just roll on out of town.
"Hey there, slim boy," a fast-talking little bald-headed man wearing a
right new suit of gray clothes told us, handing Cisco a phone book at the
same time, "turn in here and find me a name and a number to call."
"Which number?" Cisco asked him.
"Just any number," he said; "just read one off. I never could read
those phone numbers very good."
I listened to Cisco call out a number. The man handed Cisco a dime and
then Cisco and me heard him talking.
"Miss Sue Perfalus? How are you? I'm Mister Upjohn Smith, with the
Happy Hearth and Home Roofing Company. I was fixing your next-door
neighbor's roof today. While I was on top of her house, I looked over on top
of your house. The rainy season is here, you know. Your roof is in a
terrible condition. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole thing go any
minute. The water will cause the plaster to fall off your laths and ruin
your piano and your furniture. It might fail down and hit you in the face
some night while you're in bed. What? Sure? Sure, I'm sure! I got your phone
number, didn't I? The price? Oh, I'm afraid it's going to run you somewhere
around two hundred dollars. What's that? Oh, I see. You haven't got a roof?
Apartment house? Oh, I see. Well, goodbye, lady."
"Wrong number?" I asked him when he hung up.
"No. Here, you take this phone book and try calling me off one." He
took the book from Cisco and handed it to me.
"Who is this? Oh, Judge V. A. Grant? Your plaster is falling off your
roof. This is the Happy Hearth and Home Roofing Company. Sure? Sure, I'm
sure! The plaster might fall on your wife while she's in bed. Sure, I can
fix it. That's my business. Price? Oh, it's going to run you right at three
hundred dollars. Fine. Come around in the morning? I'll be there with bells
on!" He took his phone book and handed me another dime and walked out.
Cisco laughed and said, "People do any dam thing under th' sun these
days ta make a livin'! Huckle an' buck!"
"Git ta singin'. There's some live ones comin' in th' door. Boy howdy,
this is our first catch tonight. I hope we can git three more dimes out of
this Navy bunch. Sail on, sailor boys, sail on! Step up an' give us yer
request!"
"Let's sing 'em one first," Cisco told me, "so they'll know it ain't
juke-box stuff. What'Il we sing? Sailor boys are really wet. Got caught out
in the rain."
I nodded and started singing:
Well, it's rainin' on th' Skid Row
Stormin' down in Birmin'ham
Rainin' on th' Skid Row
Stormin' down in Birmin' ham
But there ain't no stormy weather
Gonna stop these boys of Uncle Sam!
"You tell 'em, back there, bud!"
"Let 'er reel! Let 'em ramble!"
"Hey! Hey!"
Lord, it's stormy on that ocean
Windy on th' deep blue sea
Boys, it's stormy on the ocean
Windy on th' deep blue sea
I'm gonna bake them Nazis a chicken
Loaded full of TNT!
"Hey, Bud! I ain't got no money, 'cept just a little here to get me a
'burger an' a beer. I'd give you a dime if I had it. But just keep on
singing that song, huh?" A big broad sailor was leaning his head over my
guitar, talking.
"He's just now makin' that song up, aren't you, friend?"
I woke up this mornin'
Seen what the papers said
Yes, boys, I woke up this mornin',
Seen what the papers said
Them Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor
And war had been declared.
I didn't boil myself no coffee
I didn't boil no tea
I didn't boil myself no coffee
I didn't boil no tea
I made a run for that recruitin' office
Uncle Sam, make room for me!
We stopped singing and the whole bunch of sailors got around the
platform. They all leaned on the rail and listened.
"You boys ought to sing those two verses first every time,'' one sailor
told us.
"Anybody know the latest news from Pearl Harbor?" I asked them.
They all talked at the same time. "It's worse than we figured." "Japs
done a lot of damage." "First I heard it was twelve hundred," "Yeah, but
they say now it's closer to fifteen." "I'm just askin' one dam thing, boys,
an' that's a Goddam close crack at them Jap bastards'" "Why, th' sneak-in'
skunk buzzards to hell, anyway, I hope to God that Uncle Sam puts me where I
can do those Japs the most damage!"
A lone soldier walked in through the door and yelled, "Well, sailors,
I'll be on a troopship the first thing in the morning! And you'll be out
there keeping me company! C'mon! Beer's on me!"
"Hi, soldier! Come on back here! Charlie will send us some beer. Five
of us! Oh, seven! Two of th' best Goddam singers you ever did cock your ear
at! On your way to camp?"
"Gotta be there in about an hour," the soldier said. "Knock me off a
tune! This is my last greenback! Seven dam beers, there, Charlie!" He waved
the dollar bill.
Five or six couples walked in the door and took seats m some booths.
A lady waved a handkerchief from a booth and said, "Hey boys! Sing some
more!"
"You jingle a nickel there on th' platform, lady," Cisco told her,
"that'll sound like back where I come from!"
A nickel hit the platform. A sailor or two laughed and said, "Sing one
about th' war. Got any?"
I scratched my head and told him, "Well, not to brag about. We've
scribbled one or two."
"Le's hear 'em.''
"Ain't learnt 'em so good yet." I pulled a piece of paper out of my
pocket and handed it to one of the men. "You be my music rack. Hold this up
in th' light where I can see it. I don't even know if I can read my own
writin' or not."
Our planes will down these buzzards
Before this war has past,
For they have fired the first, folks,
But we will fire the last!
Charlie laughed out from behind the bar, "Plenty quick! Song come
fast!"
The people in the booths clapped their hands, and the sailors and
soldier boy reached across the rail and slapped us on the shoulders.
"Whew! That's gittin' songs out fast!" The soldier drained his beer
glass.
"You guys oughtta move up to th' Circle Bar! You'd pick up some real
tips up there!" A wild-looking cowboy turned around from the bar and told
us.
"Keep mouth shut!" Charlie hollered and waved a slick glass. "These boy
know Cholly Chinee. Like Cholly Chinee! Girly! Take two beer back to sing
man."
"I'd set 'em up again, if I could, guys," the soldier said, "but that
was my last lone dollar."
"Cholly!" I yelled. "Did you say two free beers fer us?"
"Yes. I say girly bring. Two free beer," he said.
"Make it seven!" I told him.
"Seven free beer?"
"If ya don't, we're gonna move th' singin' up to th' Circle Bar!" Cisco
put in.
"Seven?" Charlie looked up quick. Then he held up his finger and said,
"Cholly good man. Cholly bring."
"By God, we gotta treat our soldiers an' sailors like earls an' dukes
from here on out," Cisco laughed. We'd both tried that morning to ship
aboard a freighter headed for Murmansk. They'd turned us down for some damn
health reason and now Cisco and me was hot and crazy and laughing and mad
clear through.
"Well, men!" One of the sailors held up his new glass of beer off of
Charlie's tray. "I got th' prettiest gal in Los Angeles. Got a
good uniform on. Got a free glass of beer. Got some real honest music. Got a
great big war to fight I'm satisfied. I'm ready. So here's to beatin' th'
Japs!" He drained his glass at one pull.
"Beat 'em down!" another one said.
"And quick!"
"I'm in!"
"Gimme a ship!"
"I ain't no talker. I'm a fighter! Wow!"
One of the biggest and toughest of the civilian bunch downed a double
drink of hard cold liquor and washed it down with a glass of beer, then he
stood right in the middle of the floor and said, "Well, people! Soldier's!
Sailors! Wimmen an' gals! I'm not physical fit ta be in th' navy er th'
army, but I'll promise ya I'll beat th' livin' hell outta ever' Goddam
livin' Jap in this town!"
"If you ain't got no more sense than that, big shot, you just better
pull your head in your hole and keep it there!" a long, tall sailor yelled
back at him. "None of your wild talk in here!"
"Cholly got plentee good friend. Japonee. You say more, Cholly bust
bottle. Your head!" The boss was shaking a towel over the bar.
"We no fight Japonee people!" Charlie's waitress talked up at the far
end of the bar by the door. "We fight big-shot Japonee crook. Big lie! Big
steal! You not got no good sense! Try start Japonee fight here! Me China
girl. Plentee Japonee friend!"
The soldier boy walked across the floor with his fists doubled up,
shoving his glass empty along the counter, and saying in the tough boy's
face, "Beat it, mister. Start walkin'. We ain't fightin' these Japs just
because they happen to be Japs."
The big man backed out through the door into a crowd of fifteen or
twenty people. He ducked off up the street in the dark.
"Hell!" The soldier walked back through the saloon saying, "That guy
won't last a dam week talking that kind of stuff.
"Far as that goes," Cisco was bending over, talking in my ear, "this
Imperial Saloon right next door here is run by a whole family of Japanese
folks. I know all of them. Sung in there a hundred times. They always help
me to get tips. They're just as good as I am!" He started a song on his
guitar.
"Music! Play, boys, play!" The sailors grabbed each other and danced
around in the floor, doing the jitterbug, sticking their fingers up in the
air, making all sorts of goofy faces. and yelling, "Yippee! Cut th' rug!"
Most of the girls got up out of the booths and walked across the floor
smiling and saying, "No two men allowed to dance together in this place
tonight." "No sailors are allowed to dance unless it's with an awful pretty
girl." And a sailor cracked back when he danced his girl around, "It never
was this a-way back home! Yow!"
Somebody else yelled, "I hope it stays this a-way fer th' doorashun!
Yeah, man!"
Cisco and me played a whipped-up version of the old One Dime Blues,
fast enough to keep up with the jitterbugs. Everybody was wheeling and
whirling, waving their hands and shuffling along like a gang of circus
clowns dancing in the sawdust.
"Mama, don't treat yore daughter mean!" I joked over the loud speaker.
"Meanest thing that a man most ever seen!" Cisco threw in.
The music rolled from the sound holes of the guitars and floated out
through the loud speaker. Everybody at the bar tapped their glasses in time
with the music. One man was tapping a nickel against the rim of his beer
glass and grinning at his face in the big looking-glass. The joint boomed
with music and dancing. Charlie stood behind the bar and smiled like a full
moon. Music turned a pretty bad old night outside into a good, friendly,
warm shindig on the inside. Sailors bowed their necks and humped their backs
and made goo-goo eyes and clown faces. Girls slung their hair through the
air and spun like tops. Whoops and hollers. "Spin 'er!'' "That
sailor ain't no slouch!" "Hold 'er, boy!" "Hey! Hey! I thought I had 'er,
but she got away!"
And then just out on the street there came a clattering of glass
breaking on the sidewalk. I quit the music and listened. People were running
past the door, darting around in big bunches, cussing and hollering.
The girls and the sailors stopped dancing and walked to the door.
"What is it?" I spoke over the microphone.
"Big fight! Looks like!" the fat sailor was saying.
"Let's go see, boys!" another sailor said. He pushed off out the door.
"All time fight. Me not bother." Charlie kept swabbing the bar down
with a wet rag. "Me got work."
I slung my guitar across my shoulder and run out the door with Cisco
right in after me saying, "Must be a young war!"
A bunch of men that had the looks of being pool-hall gamblers and
horse-race bookies stood on the curb across the street hooting and heaving
and cussing and pointing. The sailors and working men from our saloon
stepped out and walked in front of the Imperial Bar next door. Already plate
glass lay at our feet in the dark. Out of all of the milling and loud
talking something whizzed over our heads and smashed a second window. Glass
flew like chipped ice all around us. A slice cracked one of Cisco's guitar
strings, and the music bonged.
"Who throwed that can of corn?" a lady yelled from right at my elbow.
"Was that a can of corn?" I asked her.
"Yes. Two cans," she told me. "Who throwed them two cans of corn, and
broke them windows? I've a good notion to bust my parasol over his head when
I find out!"
Two men in the middle of the street argued and pushed each other all
around.
"You're th' man I want, all right!" the biggest one said.
"You won't want me very long!"
A soldier with a brown overcoat on was pushing the big man back to the
curb. I elbowed near and saw it was the same soldier that had just bought us
the seven beers. I looked a little closer in the night and seen the face of
the big pug-ugly that had said he was going to beat hell out of all of the
Japs in Los Angeles.
About ten of his thug friends chewed on old cigars, smoked snipe
cigarets, and backed him up with tough talk when he said anything. "We come
ta git 'em, an' dam me, we're gonna git 'em! Japs is Japs!" "I'm da guy wot
t'rew dat corn, lady, whataya gonna do wid me?"
"I'll show you, you big bully!" She waved the can in the air to throw
it at him, and her man right behind her said, "No, don't. We don't want to
start no trouble. What's this all about, anyhow?" He took the can of corn
away from her in the air.
"We're at war with them yeller-belly Japs! An' we come down ta git our
share of 'em!" A big man with a lost voice was talking on the curb. "We're
'Meric'ns!"
"You ain't nuthin', but th' worst dam scum of th Skid Row! Two-bit
gambler!" A big half-Indian truck driver was trying to push his way across
the street to get the man.
"Jap rats!" another tough one said.
"Spies! They tipped off th' Goddam Jap army! These yeller snakes knew
to a split second when Pearl Harbor was gonna be blowed up. Git 'em! Jail
'em! Kill 'em!" He started to cross from the other side of the street.
A couple of sailors edged their way toward him saying, "You're not
going to hurt anybody, Mister Blowoff!"
"Where is th' cops?" a girl was asking her boy friend.
"I guess they're on th' way," Cisco told her.
"Cops ain'ta gonna put no stop ta us, neither!" one of the mob yelled
across at us.
"But, brother, we are!" I answered him back.
"You mangy little honky-tonk guitar-playin' sot, I'll come over there
an' bust that music box over yore bastardly head!"
'I'll furnish th' guitar, mister," I talked back, "but you'll hafta
furnish th' head!"
Everybody squeezed around me and laughed back at the rioters. Cursing
flew in the air and fists waved above the crowd in the rain and in the dark.
The people on our side of the street formed two or three lines in front of
the Imperial's door. Several Japanese men and women stood inside picking up
glass from the floor. "That's it, folks," Cisco told everybody, "squeeze
together. Stand right where you are. Don't let that crazy mob get through!"
"Wonder why they threw two cans of corn?" I was looking around asking
people.
Then I listened across the street and a wild man mounted the running
board of a car and hollered out, "Listen people! I know! Why, just this
morning, right here in this neighborhood, a housewife went into a Japanese
grocery store. She asked him how much for a can of corn. He told her it was
fifteen cents. Then she said that was too much. And so he said when his
Goddam country took th' U.S.A. over, that she would be doing the work in the
store, and the corn would cost her thirty-five cents! She hit him over the
head with that can of corn! Ha! A good patriotic American mother! That's why
we smashed that Goddam window with th' cans of corn! Nobody can stop us,
men! Go on, fight! Get 'em!"
"Listen, folks," Cisco climbed up on the wheel of a little vegetable
cart at our curb. "These little Japanese farmers that you see up and down
the country here, and these Japanese people that run the little old cafes
and gin joints, they can't help it because they happen to be Japanese.
Nine-tenths of them hate their Rising Sun robbers just as much as I do, or
you do."
"Lyin' coward! Git down from dere!" a guy with hairs sticking out from
his shirt collar bawled at Cisco.
"Pipe down, brother. l'll take care of you later. But this dam story
about the can of corn is a rotten, black and dirty lie! Made up to be used
by killers that never hit a day's honest work in their whole life. I know
it's a lie, this can-of-corn story, because even two years ago, I heard this
same tale, word for word! Somebody right here in our country is spreading
all kinds of just such lies to keep us battling against each other!" Cisco
said.
"Rave on, you silly galoon!"
"You're righter than hell, boy! Pour it on!"
"You're a sneakin' fifth column sonofabitch! Tryin' ta pertect them
skunk Japs agin' native-borned American citizens!"
The crowd started slow across from the other side. We stood there ready
to keep them back. The whole air was full of a funny, still feeling, like
all of hell's angels was just about to break loose.
Just then an electric train, loaded down with men and railroad tools,
pulled past in front of them. The railroad workers hollered a few cracks at
the two sides. "What goes on here?" "Gangfight?" "Keep back there, ya'll git
run over!" "Listen ta these ratheads bark!"
Cisco dropped down fast off of the hub of the wheel. "Me, I'm going to
stand right here," he hollered, "right here on this curb. I just ain't
moving."
"I'm with yuh, brother!" A lady walked up with a big black purse and a
gallon jug of wine, ready to be broke over somebody's head.
"I ain't a-movin', neither!" A little old skinny man was flipping his
belt buckle. "Let 'em come!"
As the last two or three flat cars of men rolled down the street and
kept the wild mob back for a minute, I grabbed my guitar up and started
singing:
We will fight together
We shall not be moved
We will fight together
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree
That's planted by the water
We
Shall not
Be moved.
"Everybody sing!" Cisco grabbed his guitar and hollered out.
"All together! Sing! Give it all ya got!" I told them.
So as the last car of the train went on down the middle or the street,
everybody was singing like church bells ringing up and down the grand canyon
of the old Skid Row:
Just like
A treeeee
Standing by
The waterrr
We
Shall not
Be
Moooooved!
The whole bunch of thugs made a big run at us sailing cuss words of a
million filthy, low-down, ratty kind. Gritting their teeth and biting their
cigar butts and frothing at the mouth. Everybody on our side kept singing.
They made a dive to bust into our line. Everyone stood there singing as loud
and as clear and as rough-sounding as a war factory hammering.
Sailors threw out their chests and sung it out. Soldiers drifted in.
Truck drivers laid their heads back and cotton pickers slung their arms
along with the cowboys and ranch hands and bartenders from other saloons
around.
The rain come down harder and we all got wetter than wharf rats. Our
singing hit the mob of rioters like a cyclone tearing into a haystack. They
stopped--fell back on their heels like you had poked them in the teeth with
a ball bat. Fumbled for words. Spewed between their teeth and rubbed their
fingers across their eyes. Scratched their heads and smeared rainwater down
across their cheeks. I saw three or four in the front row coming toward us
that grinned like monkeys up a grapevine. The bunch backing them up split
off and stopped there in the rain for a little bit, then mostly slunk off in
twos and threes in different directions. Four or five walked like gorillas
and waved their arms and fists in the faces of the soldiers and sailors
standing along the curb singing. I thought for a minute that the battle was
on, but nobody touched each other.
And then, after some howling and screeching that didn't halfway match
with our singing, there whined through the clouds that old familiar siren
that tinhorn pimps, horse betters, and gamblers get to knowing so good, the
moan of the police patrol wagon a block away. In a second, the toughs bent
over and skidded away in between the cars, and got lost in the crowds along
the walk, and hit the alleys and disappeared.
A big long black hoodlum wagon drove up and fifteen or twenty big cops
fell out with all of the guns and sticks and clubs it would take to win a
war. They made a step or two at us, and then stopped and listened to the
raindrops and the wind in the sky and the singing echoing around over the
old skiddy row. They shook their heads, looked at their address books,
flashed searchlights around.
"The chief said this was where the riot was." A cop pointed his
flashlight onto his address sheet.
"Jest a buncha people singnin'." Another big copper shook his head.
"Hhmmmm."
"Sing with us, officer?" Cisco laughed out in the crowd.
"How does it go?" the big chief asked him back.
"Listen."
"Yeah. Dat's it. Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum. Dat's planted by de water, we
shall not--be--moved!"
All of the cops stood around smiling and swinging their clubs. The
patted their feet and hands. They watched and hummed and they listened.
"Okay! Dat's all!" the head officer told them. "Back on da wagon, men!
Back on!"
And when it drove off down the street-car tracks to fade away into the
night rain, that old patrol wagon was singing:
Just like a treeee
Planted by th' waterrr
We
Shall not
Be
Mooooved!
EXTRY SELECTS
"You look like one of these here pretty boys that tries to get out of
all th' hard work you can!" a nice pretty girl, about eighteen, was saying
to me as we rode along.
It was about a 1929 sedan, the kind of used car salesmen call lemons.
No two wires quite connected like they ought to; there was a gap of daylight
between every two moving parts, and every part was moving.
''I got jest as many callouses on my hands as you!" I hollered at her
above the racket. "Take a look at th' ends of my fingers!"
She set her eyes on the ends of my guitar fingers. Then she told me,
"Well, I reckon I was wrong."
"That's about th' only place ya get stuck pickin' cotton, too!" I told
her. I pulled my hand back. I sung a little song and made my old guitar talk
about it, too:
I worked in your farm
I worked in your town
My hands is blistered
From the elbows down
Ride around little doggies
Ride around them slow
They're fiery, they're snuffy,
And rarin' to go.
A middle-size lady in the front seat, with streaks of gray hair sailing
in the wind, grinned at her husband beside her and said, "Well, I don't know
if that guitar boy back there hits any of th' heavy work or not, but he can
dang shore sing about it!"
"Mighty near make work sound like fun, cain't he?" Her husband kept his
eyes running along the road ahead, and all I seen of him was just an old
slouch hat jammed on the back of his head.
"Long ye been runnin' around playin' an' singin'?" the mama asked me.
"Round about eight years," I said.
"That's a pretty good little spell" she told me. She was watching out
the broke window at the scenery jumping past.
"California's mortally loaded down with stuff to ride along an' look
at, ain't it?"
"Long on climate out here! But still, It costs ya like th' devil ta
soak up any of it!" the boy who was driving said.
"All you folks one family?" I asked them.
"All one family. This is me'n my husband, an' these is all th' kids we
desert-looking country here. And when a little drop of water hits the ground
anywhere out across here--a crop, a bush, sometimes even a big tall tree
comes jumping out of the dirt. Thousands and thousands of whole families are
going to have all the good land they need, and I'm a-going to be on one of
them little twenty acres!"
"Water, water," a young man about twenty or so, wearing a pair of
handmade cowboy shoes, talks up. "You think water's gonna be th' best part?
Well, you're just about half right, friend. Did you ever stop to think that
th' most, th' best part of it all is th' electric power this dam's gonna
turn out? I can just lay here on this old, rotten jungle hill with all of
these half-starved people waiting to go to work, and you know, I don't so
much see all of this filth and dirt. But I do see--just try to picture in my
head, like--what's gonna be
here. Th' big factories makin' all kinds of things from fertilizer to
bombin' planes. Power lines, steel towers runnin' out acrost these old
clumpy hills--most of all, people at work all of th' time on little farms,
and whole bunches and bunches of people at work in th' big new factories."
"It's th' gifts of th' Lord, that's what 'tis." A little nervous man,
about half Indian, is pulling up grass stems and talking. "Th' Lord gives
you a mind to vision all of this, an' th' power to build it. He gives when
He wants to. Then when He wants to, He takes it away--if we don't use it
right."
"If we all get together, social like, and build something, say, like a
big ship, any kind of a factory, railroad, big dam--that's social work,
ain't it?" This is a young man with shell-rimmed glasses, a gray felt hat,
blue work shirt with a fountain pen stuck with a notebook in his pocket, and
his voice had the sound of books in it when he talked. "That's what 'social'
means, me and you and you working on something together and owning it
together. What the hell's wrong with this, anybody--speak up! If Jesus
Christ was sitting right here, right now, he'd say this very same dam thing.
You just ask Jesus how the hell come a couple of thousand of us living out
here in this jungle camp like a bunch of wild animals. You just ask Jesus
how many million of other folks are living the same way? Sharecroppers down
South, big city people that work in factories and live like rats in the
slimy slums. You know what Jesus'll say back to you? He'll tell you we all
just mortally got to work together, build things together, fix up old things
together, clean out old filth together, put up new buildings, schools and
churches, banks and factories together, and own everything together. Sure,
they'll call it a bad ism. Jesus don't care if you call it socialism or
communism, or just me and you."
When night come down, everything got a little stiller, and you could
walk around from one bunch of people to the other one and talk about the
weather. Although the weather wasn't such an асе-high subject to talk about,
because around Redding for nine months hand running the weather don't change
(it's hot and dry, hot and dry, and tomorrow it's still going to be hot and
dry), you can hear little bunches of folks getting acquainted with each
other, saying, "Really hot, ain't it?" "Yeah, dry too." "Mighty dry."
I run onto a few young people of twelve to twenty-five, mostly kids
with their families, who picked the banjo or guitar, and sung songs. Two of
these people drew quite a bunch every evening along toward sundown and it
always took place just about the same way. An old bed was under a tree in
their yard, and a baby boy romped around on it when the shade got cool,
because in the early parts of the day the flies and bugs nearly packed him
off. So this was his ripping and romping time, and it was the job of his two
sisters, one around twelve and the other one around fourteen, to watch him
and keep him from falling off onto the ground. Their dad parked his self
back on an old car cushion. He throwed his eyes out over the rims of some
two-bit specks just about every line or two on his reading matter, and run
his Adam's apple up and down; and his wife nearby was singing what all the
Lord had done for her, while the right young baby stood up for his first
time, and jumped up and down, bouncing toward the edge of the mattress. The
old man puckered up his face and sprayed a tree with tobacco juice, and
said, "Girls. You girls. Go in the house and get your music box, and set
there on the bed and play with the baby, so's he won't fall off."
One of the sisters tuned a string or two, then chorded a little. People
walked from all over the camp and gathered, and the kid, mama, and dad, and
all of the visitors, kept as still as day Light while the girls sang:
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
Takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I'm worried nowwww
But I won't be worried long.
I heard these two girls from a-ways away where I was leaning back up
against an old watering trough. I could hear their words just as plain as
day, floating all around in the trees and down across the low places. I hung
my guitar up on a stub of a limb, went down and stretched myself out on some
dry grass, and listened to the girls for a long time. The baby kicked and
bucked like a regular army mule whenever they'd quit their singing; but, as
quick as they struck their first note or two on the next song, the kid would
throw his wrist in his mouth, the slobbers would drip down onto his sister's
lap, and the baby would kick both feet, but easy, keeping pretty good time
to the guitar.
I don't know why I didn't tell them I had a guitar up yonder hanging on
that tree. I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of
their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no
fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling
you've got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And,
instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually--no, it
done something a lot better, something that's harder to do, something you
need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that's what it done, caused
you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber
like a cat's.
Two little girls were making two thousand working people feel like I
felt, rest like I rested. And when I say two thousand, take a look down off
across these three little hills. You'll see a hat or two bobbing up above
the brush. Somebody is going, somebody is coming, somebody is kneeling down
drinking from the spring of water trickling out of the west hill. Five men
are shaving before the same crooked hunk of old looking-glass, using tin
cans for their water. A woman right up close to you wrings out a tough work
shirt, saves the water for four more. You skim your eye out around the south
hill, and not less than a hundred women are doing the same thing, washing,
wringing, hanging out shirts, taking them down dry to iron. Not a one of
them is talking above a whisper, and the one that is whispering almost feels
guilty because she knows that ninety-nine out of every hundred are tired,
weary, have felt sad, joked and laughed to keep from crying. But these two
little girls are telling about all of that trouble, and everybody knows it's
helping. These songs say something about our hard traveling, something about
our hard luck, our hard get-by, but the songs say well come through all of
these in pretty good shape, and we'll be all right, we'll work, make ourself
useful, if only the telegram to build the dam would come in from Washington.
I thought I could act a little bashful and shy, and not rush the people
to get to knowing them, but something inside of me just sort of talked out
and said, "Awful good singing. What's your name?"
The two little girls talked slow and quiet but it was not nervous, and
it wasn't jittery, just plain. They told me their names.
I said, "I like the way you play that guitar with your fingers! Sounds
soft, and you can hear it a long ways off. All of these three hills was just
ringing out with your guitar, and all of these people was listening to you
sing."
"I saw them listening," one sister said.
"I saw them too," the other sister said.
"I play with a flat celluloid pick. I've got to be loud, because I play
in saloons and, well, I just make it my job to make more noise than they
make, and they're sorry for me and give me nickels and pennies."
"I don't like old saloons," one little girl said.
"Me neither," the other little girl said.
I looked over at their daddy, and he sort of looked crossways out my
side of his specks, pouched his lips up a little, winked at me, and said,
"I'm against bars myself."
His wife talked up louder, "Yes, you're against bars! Right square up
against them!"
Both of the sisters looked awful sober and serious at their dad.
Everybody in the crowd laughed, and took on a new listening position,
leaning back up against trees, squatting on smoky buckets turned upside
down, stretched out in the grass, patting down places to lay in the short
weeds.
I got up and strolled away and took my guitar down off of the sawed-off
limb, and thought while I was walking back to where the crowd was, Boy
howdy, old guitar, you been a lot of places, seen a lot of faces, but don't
you go to actin' up too wild and reckless, 'cause these Little girls and
their mama don't like saloons.
I got back to where everybody was, and the two little sisters was
singing "Columbus Stockade":
Way down in Columbus stockade
Where my gally went back on me;
Way down in Columbus stockade,
I'd ruther be back in Tennessee.
"Columbus Stockade" was always one of my first picks, so I let them run
along for a little while, twisted my guitar up in tune with theirs, holding
my ear down against the sounding box, and when I heard it was in tune with
them I started picking out the tune, sort of note for note, letting their
guitar play the bass chords and second parts. They both smiled when they
heard me because two guitars being played this way is what's called the real
article, and millions of little kids are raised on this kind of music. If
you think of something new to say, if a cyclone comes, or a flood wrecks the
country, or a bus load of school children freeze to death along the road, if
a big ship goes down, and an airplane falls in your neighborhood, an outlaw
shoots it out with the deputies, or the working people go out to win a war,
yes, you'll find a train load of things you can set down and make up a song
about. You'll hear people singing your words around over the country, and
you'll sing their songs everywhere you travel or everywhere you live; and
these are the only kind of songs my head or my memory or my guitar has got
any room for.
So these two little girls and me sung together till the crowd had got
bigger and it was dark under the trees where the moon couldn't hit us.
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet
Takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet, Lord God!
And I ain't a-gonna be treated this a-way!
When the night got late and the men in the saloons in town lost their
few pennies playing framed-up poker, they drifted out to sleep the night in
the jungle camp. We saw a bunch of twenty-five or thirty of them come
running over the rim of the hill from town, yelling, cussing, kicking tin
buckets and coffee pots thirty feet, and hollering like panthers.
And when the wild bunch run down the little trail to where we was
singing--it was then that the whole drunk mess of them stood there reeling
and listening in the dark, and then shushed each other to keep quiet and set
down on the ground to listen. Everybody got so still that it almost crackled
in the air. Men took seats and leaned their heads back against tree trunks
and listened to the lightning bugs turn their lights on and off. And the
lightning bugs must of been hushing each other, because the old jungle camp
was getting a lot of good rest there listening to the little girls' song
drift out across the dark wind.
Chapter XVI
STORMY NIGHT
I set my hat on the back of my head and walked out west from Redding
through the Redwood forests along the coast, and strolled from town to town,
my guitar slung over my shoulder, and sung along the boweries of forty-two
states; Reno Avenue in Oklahoma City, Lower Pike Street in Seattle, the jury
table in Santa Fe; the Hooversvilles on the flea-bit rims of your city's
garbage dump. I sung in the camps called "Little Mexico," on the dirty edge
of California's green pastures. I sung on the gravel barges of the East
Coast and along New York's Bowery watching the cops chase the bay-rum
drinkers. I curved along the bend of the Gulf of Mexico and sung with the
tars and salts in Port Arthur, the oilers and greasers in Texas City, the
marijuana smokers in the flop town in Houston. I trailed the fairs and
rodeos all over Northern California, Grass Valley, Nevada City; I trailed
the apricots and peaches around Marysville and the winy-grape sand hills of
Auburn, drinking the good homemade vino from the jugs of friendly grape
farmers.
Everywhere I went I throwed my hat down in the floor and sung for my
tips.
Sometimes I was lucky and found me a good job. I sung on the radio
waves in Los Angeles, and I got a job from Uncle Samuel to come to the
valley of the Columbia River and I made up and recorded twenty-six songs
about the Grand Coulee Dam. I made two albums of records called "Dust Bowl
Ballads" for the Victor people. I hit the road again and crossed the
continent twice by way of highway and freights. Folks heard me on the
nationwide radio programs CBS and NBC, and thought I was rich and famous,
and I didn't have a nickel to my name, when I was hitting the hard way
again.
The months flew fast and the people faster, and one day the coast wind
blew me out of San Francisco, through San Jose's wide streets, and over the
hump to Los Angeles. Month of December, down along old Fifth and Main, Skid
Row, one of the skiddiest of all Skid Rows. God, what a wet and windy night!
And the clouds swung low and split up like herds of wild horses in the
canyons of the street.
I run onto a guitar-playing partner standing on a bad corner, and he
called his self the Cisco Kid. He was a
long-legged guy that walked like he was on a rolling ship, a good
singer and yodeler, and had sailed the seas a lot of times, busted labels in
a lot of ports, and had really been around in his twenty-six years. He
banged on the guitar pretty good, and like me, come rain or sun, or cold or
heat, he always walked along with his guitar slung over his shoulder from a
leather strap.
We moved along the Skid looking in at the bars and taverns, listening
to neon signs sputter and crackle, and on the lookout for a gang of live
ones. The old splotchy plate-glass windows looked too dirty for the hard
rain ever to wash clean. Old doors and dumps and cubbyholes had a sickly
pale color about them, and men and women bosses and work-hands humped around
inside and talked back and forth to each other. Some soggy-smelling news
stands tried to keep their fronts open and sell horse-race tips and sheets
to the people ducking head-down in the rain, and pool halls stunk to high
heaven with tobacco smoke, spit and piles of dirty men yelling over their
bets. Hock-shop windows all piled and hanging full of every article known to
man, and hocked there by the men that needed them most; tools, shovels,
carpenter kits, paint sets, compasses, brass faucets, plumbers tools, saws,
axes, big watches that hadn't run since the last war, and canvas tents and
bedrolls taken from the fruit tramps. Coffee joints, slippery stool dives,
hash counters with open fronts was lined with men swallowing and chewing and
hoping the rain would wash something like a job down along the Skid. The
garbage is along the street stones and the curbing, a shale and a slush that
washes down the hill from the nicer parts of town, the papers crumpled and
rotten, the straw, manure, and silt, that comes down from the high places,
like the Cisco Kid and me, and like several thousand other rounders, to land
and to clog, and to get caught along the Skid Row.
This is where the working people come to try to squeeze a little fun
and rest out of a buffalo nickel; these three or four blocks of old wobbling
flop houses and buildings.
I know you people I see here on the Skid. The hats pulled down over the
faces I can't see. You know my name and you call me a guitar busker, a joint
hopper, tip canary, kittybox man.
Movie people, boss wranglers, dead enders, stew bums; stealers,
dealers, sidewalk spielers; con men, sly flies, flat foots, reefer riders;
dopers, smokers, boiler stokers; sailors, whalers, bar flies, brass railers;
spittoon tuners, fruit-tree pruners; cobbers, spiders, three-way riders;
honest people, fakes, vamps and bleeders; saviors, saved, and side-street
singers; whore-house hunters, door-bell ringers; footloosers, rod riders,
caboosers, outsiders; honky tonk and whiskey setters, tight-wads,
spendthrifts, race-horse betters; blackmailers, gin soaks, comers, goers;
good girls, bad girls, teasers, whores; buskers, com huskers, dust bowlers,
dust panners; waddlers, toddlers, dose packers, syph carriers; money men,
honey men, sad men, funny men; ramblers, gamblers, highway anklers; cowards,
brave guys, stools and snitches; nice people, bastards, sonsabitches; fair,
square, and honest folks; low, sneaking greedy people; and somewhere, in
amongst all of these Skid Row skidders--Cisco and me sung for our chips.
This December night was bad for singing from joint to joint. The rain
had washed some of the trash along the streets, but had chased most of the
cash customers on home. Our system was to walk into a saloon and ask the
regular musicians if they would like to rest a few minutes, and they usually
was glad to stretch their legs and grab a coffee or a burger. Then we took
their places on the little platform and sung our songs and asked the
customers what they would like to hear next. Each joint was good for thirty
or forty cents, if things went just right, and we usually hit five or six
bars every night. But this was an off night. Men and women filled the
booths, talking about Hitler and Japan and the Russian Red Army. A few
soldiers and sailors and men in uniform scattered along the bar nodding to
longshoremen, and tanker men, and freighter men, and dock workers, and
factory men, and talking about the war. Cops ducking in and out of the rain
stood around and took a good look to see if there was any trouble cooking.
The Cisco Kid was saying, "It looks like most of these old buildings
had ought to be jacked up and a new one run under them." He was on the go
from door to door, trying to keep his guitar out of the rain.
"Purty old, all right, some of these flop houses. I think th' Spaniards
found 'em here when they first chased th' Indians outta this country." I
dodged along behind him.
"Wanta drop in here at th' Ace High?"
I followed him in the door. "It'll be a cinch ta git ta play here, I
don't know about makin' any money."
The Ace High crowd looked pretty low. We nodded at Charlie the Chinaman
and he nodded back toward the music platform. The whole joint was painted a
light funny blue that sort of made your head spin whether you was drinking
or not. All kinds of ropes and corks and big fishing nets hung around over
the walls and down from the ceiling. Cisco turned a nickel machine around
with its face to the wall, while I flipped the strings of his guitar hanging
on his back and tuned mine up to his. Then I waved at Charlie the Chinaman
and he reached above the bar and turned on the loud speaker. I pulled the
mike up to where it would be level with our mouths and we started in
singing:
Well, I come here, to work, I didn't come to hang around
Yes, I come here to work, I didn't come to hang around
And if I don't find me a woman, I'll just roll on out of town.
"Hey there, slim boy," a fast-talking little bald-headed man wearing a
right new suit of gray clothes told us, handing Cisco a phone book at the
same time, "turn in here and find me a name and a number to call."
"Which number?" Cisco asked him.
"Just any number," he said; "just read one off. I never could read
those phone numbers very good."
I listened to Cisco call out a number. The man handed Cisco a dime and
then Cisco and me heard him talking.
"Miss Sue Perfalus? How are you? I'm Mister Upjohn Smith, with the
Happy Hearth and Home Roofing Company. I was fixing your next-door
neighbor's roof today. While I was on top of her house, I looked over on top
of your house. The rainy season is here, you know. Your roof is in a
terrible condition. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole thing go any
minute. The water will cause the plaster to fall off your laths and ruin
your piano and your furniture. It might fail down and hit you in the face
some night while you're in bed. What? Sure? Sure, I'm sure! I got your phone
number, didn't I? The price? Oh, I'm afraid it's going to run you somewhere
around two hundred dollars. What's that? Oh, I see. You haven't got a roof?
Apartment house? Oh, I see. Well, goodbye, lady."
"Wrong number?" I asked him when he hung up.
"No. Here, you take this phone book and try calling me off one." He
took the book from Cisco and handed it to me.
"Who is this? Oh, Judge V. A. Grant? Your plaster is falling off your
roof. This is the Happy Hearth and Home Roofing Company. Sure? Sure, I'm
sure! The plaster might fall on your wife while she's in bed. Sure, I can
fix it. That's my business. Price? Oh, it's going to run you right at three
hundred dollars. Fine. Come around in the morning? I'll be there with bells
on!" He took his phone book and handed me another dime and walked out.
Cisco laughed and said, "People do any dam thing under th' sun these
days ta make a livin'! Huckle an' buck!"
"Git ta singin'. There's some live ones comin' in th' door. Boy howdy,
this is our first catch tonight. I hope we can git three more dimes out of
this Navy bunch. Sail on, sailor boys, sail on! Step up an' give us yer
request!"
"Let's sing 'em one first," Cisco told me, "so they'll know it ain't
juke-box stuff. What'Il we sing? Sailor boys are really wet. Got caught out
in the rain."
I nodded and started singing:
Well, it's rainin' on th' Skid Row
Stormin' down in Birmin'ham
Rainin' on th' Skid Row
Stormin' down in Birmin' ham
But there ain't no stormy weather
Gonna stop these boys of Uncle Sam!
"You tell 'em, back there, bud!"
"Let 'er reel! Let 'em ramble!"
"Hey! Hey!"
Lord, it's stormy on that ocean
Windy on th' deep blue sea
Boys, it's stormy on the ocean
Windy on th' deep blue sea
I'm gonna bake them Nazis a chicken
Loaded full of TNT!
"Hey, Bud! I ain't got no money, 'cept just a little here to get me a
'burger an' a beer. I'd give you a dime if I had it. But just keep on
singing that song, huh?" A big broad sailor was leaning his head over my
guitar, talking.
"He's just now makin' that song up, aren't you, friend?"
I woke up this mornin'
Seen what the papers said
Yes, boys, I woke up this mornin',
Seen what the papers said
Them Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor
And war had been declared.
I didn't boil myself no coffee
I didn't boil no tea
I didn't boil myself no coffee
I didn't boil no tea
I made a run for that recruitin' office
Uncle Sam, make room for me!
We stopped singing and the whole bunch of sailors got around the
platform. They all leaned on the rail and listened.
"You boys ought to sing those two verses first every time,'' one sailor
told us.
"Anybody know the latest news from Pearl Harbor?" I asked them.
They all talked at the same time. "It's worse than we figured." "Japs
done a lot of damage." "First I heard it was twelve hundred," "Yeah, but
they say now it's closer to fifteen." "I'm just askin' one dam thing, boys,
an' that's a Goddam close crack at them Jap bastards'" "Why, th' sneak-in'
skunk buzzards to hell, anyway, I hope to God that Uncle Sam puts me where I
can do those Japs the most damage!"
A lone soldier walked in through the door and yelled, "Well, sailors,
I'll be on a troopship the first thing in the morning! And you'll be out
there keeping me company! C'mon! Beer's on me!"
"Hi, soldier! Come on back here! Charlie will send us some beer. Five
of us! Oh, seven! Two of th' best Goddam singers you ever did cock your ear
at! On your way to camp?"
"Gotta be there in about an hour," the soldier said. "Knock me off a
tune! This is my last greenback! Seven dam beers, there, Charlie!" He waved
the dollar bill.
Five or six couples walked in the door and took seats m some booths.
A lady waved a handkerchief from a booth and said, "Hey boys! Sing some
more!"
"You jingle a nickel there on th' platform, lady," Cisco told her,
"that'll sound like back where I come from!"
A nickel hit the platform. A sailor or two laughed and said, "Sing one
about th' war. Got any?"
I scratched my head and told him, "Well, not to brag about. We've
scribbled one or two."
"Le's hear 'em.''
"Ain't learnt 'em so good yet." I pulled a piece of paper out of my
pocket and handed it to one of the men. "You be my music rack. Hold this up
in th' light where I can see it. I don't even know if I can read my own
writin' or not."
Our planes will down these buzzards
Before this war has past,
For they have fired the first, folks,
But we will fire the last!
Charlie laughed out from behind the bar, "Plenty quick! Song come
fast!"
The people in the booths clapped their hands, and the sailors and
soldier boy reached across the rail and slapped us on the shoulders.
"Whew! That's gittin' songs out fast!" The soldier drained his beer
glass.
"You guys oughtta move up to th' Circle Bar! You'd pick up some real
tips up there!" A wild-looking cowboy turned around from the bar and told
us.
"Keep mouth shut!" Charlie hollered and waved a slick glass. "These boy
know Cholly Chinee. Like Cholly Chinee! Girly! Take two beer back to sing
man."
"I'd set 'em up again, if I could, guys," the soldier said, "but that
was my last lone dollar."
"Cholly!" I yelled. "Did you say two free beers fer us?"
"Yes. I say girly bring. Two free beer," he said.
"Make it seven!" I told him.
"Seven free beer?"
"If ya don't, we're gonna move th' singin' up to th' Circle Bar!" Cisco
put in.
"Seven?" Charlie looked up quick. Then he held up his finger and said,
"Cholly good man. Cholly bring."
"By God, we gotta treat our soldiers an' sailors like earls an' dukes
from here on out," Cisco laughed. We'd both tried that morning to ship
aboard a freighter headed for Murmansk. They'd turned us down for some damn
health reason and now Cisco and me was hot and crazy and laughing and mad
clear through.
"Well, men!" One of the sailors held up his new glass of beer off of
Charlie's tray. "I got th' prettiest gal in Los Angeles. Got a
good uniform on. Got a free glass of beer. Got some real honest music. Got a
great big war to fight I'm satisfied. I'm ready. So here's to beatin' th'
Japs!" He drained his glass at one pull.
"Beat 'em down!" another one said.
"And quick!"
"I'm in!"
"Gimme a ship!"
"I ain't no talker. I'm a fighter! Wow!"
One of the biggest and toughest of the civilian bunch downed a double
drink of hard cold liquor and washed it down with a glass of beer, then he
stood right in the middle of the floor and said, "Well, people! Soldier's!
Sailors! Wimmen an' gals! I'm not physical fit ta be in th' navy er th'
army, but I'll promise ya I'll beat th' livin' hell outta ever' Goddam
livin' Jap in this town!"
"If you ain't got no more sense than that, big shot, you just better
pull your head in your hole and keep it there!" a long, tall sailor yelled
back at him. "None of your wild talk in here!"
"Cholly got plentee good friend. Japonee. You say more, Cholly bust
bottle. Your head!" The boss was shaking a towel over the bar.
"We no fight Japonee people!" Charlie's waitress talked up at the far
end of the bar by the door. "We fight big-shot Japonee crook. Big lie! Big
steal! You not got no good sense! Try start Japonee fight here! Me China
girl. Plentee Japonee friend!"
The soldier boy walked across the floor with his fists doubled up,
shoving his glass empty along the counter, and saying in the tough boy's
face, "Beat it, mister. Start walkin'. We ain't fightin' these Japs just
because they happen to be Japs."
The big man backed out through the door into a crowd of fifteen or
twenty people. He ducked off up the street in the dark.
"Hell!" The soldier walked back through the saloon saying, "That guy
won't last a dam week talking that kind of stuff.
"Far as that goes," Cisco was bending over, talking in my ear, "this
Imperial Saloon right next door here is run by a whole family of Japanese
folks. I know all of them. Sung in there a hundred times. They always help
me to get tips. They're just as good as I am!" He started a song on his
guitar.
"Music! Play, boys, play!" The sailors grabbed each other and danced
around in the floor, doing the jitterbug, sticking their fingers up in the
air, making all sorts of goofy faces. and yelling, "Yippee! Cut th' rug!"
Most of the girls got up out of the booths and walked across the floor
smiling and saying, "No two men allowed to dance together in this place
tonight." "No sailors are allowed to dance unless it's with an awful pretty
girl." And a sailor cracked back when he danced his girl around, "It never
was this a-way back home! Yow!"
Somebody else yelled, "I hope it stays this a-way fer th' doorashun!
Yeah, man!"
Cisco and me played a whipped-up version of the old One Dime Blues,
fast enough to keep up with the jitterbugs. Everybody was wheeling and
whirling, waving their hands and shuffling along like a gang of circus
clowns dancing in the sawdust.
"Mama, don't treat yore daughter mean!" I joked over the loud speaker.
"Meanest thing that a man most ever seen!" Cisco threw in.
The music rolled from the sound holes of the guitars and floated out
through the loud speaker. Everybody at the bar tapped their glasses in time
with the music. One man was tapping a nickel against the rim of his beer
glass and grinning at his face in the big looking-glass. The joint boomed
with music and dancing. Charlie stood behind the bar and smiled like a full
moon. Music turned a pretty bad old night outside into a good, friendly,
warm shindig on the inside. Sailors bowed their necks and humped their backs
and made goo-goo eyes and clown faces. Girls slung their hair through the
air and spun like tops. Whoops and hollers. "Spin 'er!'' "That
sailor ain't no slouch!" "Hold 'er, boy!" "Hey! Hey! I thought I had 'er,
but she got away!"
And then just out on the street there came a clattering of glass
breaking on the sidewalk. I quit the music and listened. People were running
past the door, darting around in big bunches, cussing and hollering.
The girls and the sailors stopped dancing and walked to the door.
"What is it?" I spoke over the microphone.
"Big fight! Looks like!" the fat sailor was saying.
"Let's go see, boys!" another sailor said. He pushed off out the door.
"All time fight. Me not bother." Charlie kept swabbing the bar down
with a wet rag. "Me got work."
I slung my guitar across my shoulder and run out the door with Cisco
right in after me saying, "Must be a young war!"
A bunch of men that had the looks of being pool-hall gamblers and
horse-race bookies stood on the curb across the street hooting and heaving
and cussing and pointing. The sailors and working men from our saloon
stepped out and walked in front of the Imperial Bar next door. Already plate
glass lay at our feet in the dark. Out of all of the milling and loud
talking something whizzed over our heads and smashed a second window. Glass
flew like chipped ice all around us. A slice cracked one of Cisco's guitar
strings, and the music bonged.
"Who throwed that can of corn?" a lady yelled from right at my elbow.
"Was that a can of corn?" I asked her.
"Yes. Two cans," she told me. "Who throwed them two cans of corn, and
broke them windows? I've a good notion to bust my parasol over his head when
I find out!"
Two men in the middle of the street argued and pushed each other all
around.
"You're th' man I want, all right!" the biggest one said.
"You won't want me very long!"
A soldier with a brown overcoat on was pushing the big man back to the
curb. I elbowed near and saw it was the same soldier that had just bought us
the seven beers. I looked a little closer in the night and seen the face of
the big pug-ugly that had said he was going to beat hell out of all of the
Japs in Los Angeles.
About ten of his thug friends chewed on old cigars, smoked snipe
cigarets, and backed him up with tough talk when he said anything. "We come
ta git 'em, an' dam me, we're gonna git 'em! Japs is Japs!" "I'm da guy wot
t'rew dat corn, lady, whataya gonna do wid me?"
"I'll show you, you big bully!" She waved the can in the air to throw
it at him, and her man right behind her said, "No, don't. We don't want to
start no trouble. What's this all about, anyhow?" He took the can of corn
away from her in the air.
"We're at war with them yeller-belly Japs! An' we come down ta git our
share of 'em!" A big man with a lost voice was talking on the curb. "We're
'Meric'ns!"
"You ain't nuthin', but th' worst dam scum of th Skid Row! Two-bit
gambler!" A big half-Indian truck driver was trying to push his way across
the street to get the man.
"Jap rats!" another tough one said.
"Spies! They tipped off th' Goddam Jap army! These yeller snakes knew
to a split second when Pearl Harbor was gonna be blowed up. Git 'em! Jail
'em! Kill 'em!" He started to cross from the other side of the street.
A couple of sailors edged their way toward him saying, "You're not
going to hurt anybody, Mister Blowoff!"
"Where is th' cops?" a girl was asking her boy friend.
"I guess they're on th' way," Cisco told her.
"Cops ain'ta gonna put no stop ta us, neither!" one of the mob yelled
across at us.
"But, brother, we are!" I answered him back.
"You mangy little honky-tonk guitar-playin' sot, I'll come over there
an' bust that music box over yore bastardly head!"
'I'll furnish th' guitar, mister," I talked back, "but you'll hafta
furnish th' head!"
Everybody squeezed around me and laughed back at the rioters. Cursing
flew in the air and fists waved above the crowd in the rain and in the dark.
The people on our side of the street formed two or three lines in front of
the Imperial's door. Several Japanese men and women stood inside picking up
glass from the floor. "That's it, folks," Cisco told everybody, "squeeze
together. Stand right where you are. Don't let that crazy mob get through!"
"Wonder why they threw two cans of corn?" I was looking around asking
people.
Then I listened across the street and a wild man mounted the running
board of a car and hollered out, "Listen people! I know! Why, just this
morning, right here in this neighborhood, a housewife went into a Japanese
grocery store. She asked him how much for a can of corn. He told her it was
fifteen cents. Then she said that was too much. And so he said when his
Goddam country took th' U.S.A. over, that she would be doing the work in the
store, and the corn would cost her thirty-five cents! She hit him over the
head with that can of corn! Ha! A good patriotic American mother! That's why
we smashed that Goddam window with th' cans of corn! Nobody can stop us,
men! Go on, fight! Get 'em!"
"Listen, folks," Cisco climbed up on the wheel of a little vegetable
cart at our curb. "These little Japanese farmers that you see up and down
the country here, and these Japanese people that run the little old cafes
and gin joints, they can't help it because they happen to be Japanese.
Nine-tenths of them hate their Rising Sun robbers just as much as I do, or
you do."
"Lyin' coward! Git down from dere!" a guy with hairs sticking out from
his shirt collar bawled at Cisco.
"Pipe down, brother. l'll take care of you later. But this dam story
about the can of corn is a rotten, black and dirty lie! Made up to be used
by killers that never hit a day's honest work in their whole life. I know
it's a lie, this can-of-corn story, because even two years ago, I heard this
same tale, word for word! Somebody right here in our country is spreading
all kinds of just such lies to keep us battling against each other!" Cisco
said.
"Rave on, you silly galoon!"
"You're righter than hell, boy! Pour it on!"
"You're a sneakin' fifth column sonofabitch! Tryin' ta pertect them
skunk Japs agin' native-borned American citizens!"
The crowd started slow across from the other side. We stood there ready
to keep them back. The whole air was full of a funny, still feeling, like
all of hell's angels was just about to break loose.
Just then an electric train, loaded down with men and railroad tools,
pulled past in front of them. The railroad workers hollered a few cracks at
the two sides. "What goes on here?" "Gangfight?" "Keep back there, ya'll git
run over!" "Listen ta these ratheads bark!"
Cisco dropped down fast off of the hub of the wheel. "Me, I'm going to
stand right here," he hollered, "right here on this curb. I just ain't
moving."
"I'm with yuh, brother!" A lady walked up with a big black purse and a
gallon jug of wine, ready to be broke over somebody's head.
"I ain't a-movin', neither!" A little old skinny man was flipping his
belt buckle. "Let 'em come!"
As the last two or three flat cars of men rolled down the street and
kept the wild mob back for a minute, I grabbed my guitar up and started
singing:
We will fight together
We shall not be moved
We will fight together
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree
That's planted by the water
We
Shall not
Be moved.
"Everybody sing!" Cisco grabbed his guitar and hollered out.
"All together! Sing! Give it all ya got!" I told them.
So as the last car of the train went on down the middle or the street,
everybody was singing like church bells ringing up and down the grand canyon
of the old Skid Row:
Just like
A treeeee
Standing by
The waterrr
We
Shall not
Be
Moooooved!
The whole bunch of thugs made a big run at us sailing cuss words of a
million filthy, low-down, ratty kind. Gritting their teeth and biting their
cigar butts and frothing at the mouth. Everybody on our side kept singing.
They made a dive to bust into our line. Everyone stood there singing as loud
and as clear and as rough-sounding as a war factory hammering.
Sailors threw out their chests and sung it out. Soldiers drifted in.
Truck drivers laid their heads back and cotton pickers slung their arms
along with the cowboys and ranch hands and bartenders from other saloons
around.
The rain come down harder and we all got wetter than wharf rats. Our
singing hit the mob of rioters like a cyclone tearing into a haystack. They
stopped--fell back on their heels like you had poked them in the teeth with
a ball bat. Fumbled for words. Spewed between their teeth and rubbed their
fingers across their eyes. Scratched their heads and smeared rainwater down
across their cheeks. I saw three or four in the front row coming toward us
that grinned like monkeys up a grapevine. The bunch backing them up split
off and stopped there in the rain for a little bit, then mostly slunk off in
twos and threes in different directions. Four or five walked like gorillas
and waved their arms and fists in the faces of the soldiers and sailors
standing along the curb singing. I thought for a minute that the battle was
on, but nobody touched each other.
And then, after some howling and screeching that didn't halfway match
with our singing, there whined through the clouds that old familiar siren
that tinhorn pimps, horse betters, and gamblers get to knowing so good, the
moan of the police patrol wagon a block away. In a second, the toughs bent
over and skidded away in between the cars, and got lost in the crowds along
the walk, and hit the alleys and disappeared.
A big long black hoodlum wagon drove up and fifteen or twenty big cops
fell out with all of the guns and sticks and clubs it would take to win a
war. They made a step or two at us, and then stopped and listened to the
raindrops and the wind in the sky and the singing echoing around over the
old skiddy row. They shook their heads, looked at their address books,
flashed searchlights around.
"The chief said this was where the riot was." A cop pointed his
flashlight onto his address sheet.
"Jest a buncha people singnin'." Another big copper shook his head.
"Hhmmmm."
"Sing with us, officer?" Cisco laughed out in the crowd.
"How does it go?" the big chief asked him back.
"Listen."
"Yeah. Dat's it. Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum. Dat's planted by de water, we
shall not--be--moved!"
All of the cops stood around smiling and swinging their clubs. The
patted their feet and hands. They watched and hummed and they listened.
"Okay! Dat's all!" the head officer told them. "Back on da wagon, men!
Back on!"
And when it drove off down the street-car tracks to fade away into the
night rain, that old patrol wagon was singing:
Just like a treeee
Planted by th' waterrr
We
Shall not
Be
Mooooved!
EXTRY SELECTS
"You look like one of these here pretty boys that tries to get out of
all th' hard work you can!" a nice pretty girl, about eighteen, was saying
to me as we rode along.
It was about a 1929 sedan, the kind of used car salesmen call lemons.
No two wires quite connected like they ought to; there was a gap of daylight
between every two moving parts, and every part was moving.
''I got jest as many callouses on my hands as you!" I hollered at her
above the racket. "Take a look at th' ends of my fingers!"
She set her eyes on the ends of my guitar fingers. Then she told me,
"Well, I reckon I was wrong."
"That's about th' only place ya get stuck pickin' cotton, too!" I told
her. I pulled my hand back. I sung a little song and made my old guitar talk
about it, too:
I worked in your farm
I worked in your town
My hands is blistered
From the elbows down
Ride around little doggies
Ride around them slow
They're fiery, they're snuffy,
And rarin' to go.
A middle-size lady in the front seat, with streaks of gray hair sailing
in the wind, grinned at her husband beside her and said, "Well, I don't know
if that guitar boy back there hits any of th' heavy work or not, but he can
dang shore sing about it!"
"Mighty near make work sound like fun, cain't he?" Her husband kept his
eyes running along the road ahead, and all I seen of him was just an old
slouch hat jammed on the back of his head.
"Long ye been runnin' around playin' an' singin'?" the mama asked me.
"Round about eight years," I said.
"That's a pretty good little spell" she told me. She was watching out
the broke window at the scenery jumping past.
"California's mortally loaded down with stuff to ride along an' look
at, ain't it?"
"Long on climate out here! But still, It costs ya like th' devil ta
soak up any of it!" the boy who was driving said.
"All you folks one family?" I asked them.
"All one family. This is me'n my husband, an' these is all th' kids we