sandwich, put it in wax paper. He gave me a dirty look and he started down the alley. I watched him when he got, oh, two or three doors down, he threw it down the street.
Dawn, Kitty’s Daughter
I REMEMBER that our apartment was marked. They had a mark, an actual chalk mark or something. You could see these marks on the bricks near the back porch. One mark signified: You could get something at this apartment, buddy, but you can’t get anything up there. We’d be out in the alley playing, and we’d hear comments from people: “Here’s one.” They wouldn’t go to the neighbors upstairs, ’cause they didn’t give them anything. But ours was marked. They’d come out from Chicago and they’d hit our apartment, and they knew they’d get something. Whatever the mark meant, some of them were like an X. They’d say, “You can’t get money out of this place, but there’s food here anyway.” My mother was hospitable to people, it didn’t matter who they were.
Louis Banks
From a bed at a Veteran’s Hospital, he talks feverishly; the words pour out… .
“My family had a little old farm, cotton, McGehee, Arkansas. I came to Chicago, I was a little bitty boy, I used to prize-fight. When the big boys got through, they put us on there.”
I GOT TO BE fourteen years old, I went to work on the Great Lakes at $41.50 a month. I thought: Someday I’m gonna be a great chef. Rough times, though. It was the year 1929. I would work from five in the morning till seven at night. Washing dishes, peeling potatoes, carrying heavy garbage. We would get to Detroit.
They was sleepin’ on the docks and be drunk. Next day he’d be dead. I’d see ’em floatin’ on the river where they would commit suicide because they didn’t have anything. White guys and colored.
I’d get paid off, I’d draw $21 every two weeks and then comin’ back I’d have to see where I was goin’. ‘Cause I would get robbed. One fella named Scotty, he worked down there, he was firin’ a boiler. He was tryin’ to send some money home. He’d work so hard and sweat, the hot fire was cookin’ his stomach. I felt sorry for him. They killed ‘im and throwed ’im in the
river, trying to get the $15 or $20 from him. They’d steal and kill each other for fifty cents.
1929 was pretty hard. I hoboed, I bummed, I begged for a nickel to get somethin’ to eat. Go get a job, oh, at the foundry there. They didn’t hire me because I didn’t belong to the right kind of race. ’Nother time I went into Saginaw, it was two white fellas and myself made three. The fella there hired the two men and didn’t hire me. I was back out on the streets. That hurt me pretty bad, the race part.
When I was hoboing, I would lay on the side of the tracks and wait until I could see the train comin’. I would always carry a bottle of water in my pocket and a piece of tape or rag to keep it from bustin’ and put a piece of bread in my pocket, so I wouldn’t starve on the way. I would ride all day and all night long in the hot sun.
I’d ride atop a boxcar and went to Los Angeles, four days and four nights. The Santa Fe, we’d go all the way with Santa Fe. I was goin’ over the hump and I was so hungry and weak ’cause I was goin’ into the d.t.’s, and I could see snakes draggin’ through the smoke. I was sayin’, “Lord, help me, Oh Lord, help me,” until a white hobo named Callahan, he was a great big guy, looked like Jack Dempsey, and he got a scissors on me, took his legs and wrapped ’em around me. Otherwise, I was about to fall off the Flyer into a cornfield there. I was sick as a dog until I got into Long Beach, California.
Black and white, it didn’t make any difference who you were, ’cause everybody was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle. We used to take a big pot and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together. We all set together, we made a tent. Twenty-five or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white and colored. They
Dawn, Kitty’s Daughter
I REMEMBER that our apartment was marked. They had a mark, an actual chalk mark or something. You could see these marks on the bricks near the back porch. One mark signified: You could get something at this apartment, buddy, but you can’t get anything up there. We’d be out in the alley playing, and we’d hear comments from people: “Here’s one.” They wouldn’t go to the neighbors upstairs, ’cause they didn’t give them anything. But ours was marked. They’d come out from Chicago and they’d hit our apartment, and they knew they’d get something. Whatever the mark meant, some of them were like an X. They’d say, “You can’t get money out of this place, but there’s food here anyway.” My mother was hospitable to people, it didn’t matter who they were.
Louis Banks
From a bed at a Veteran’s Hospital, he talks feverishly; the words pour out… .
“My family had a little old farm, cotton, McGehee, Arkansas. I came to Chicago, I was a little bitty boy, I used to prize-fight. When the big boys got through, they put us on there.”
I GOT TO BE fourteen years old, I went to work on the Great Lakes at $41.50 a month. I thought: Someday I’m gonna be a great chef. Rough times, though. It was the year 1929. I would work from five in the morning till seven at night. Washing dishes, peeling potatoes, carrying heavy garbage. We would get to Detroit.
They was sleepin’ on the docks and be drunk. Next day he’d be dead. I’d see ’em floatin’ on the river where they would commit suicide because they didn’t have anything. White guys and colored.
I’d get paid off, I’d draw $21 every two weeks and then comin’ back I’d have to see where I was goin’. ‘Cause I would get robbed. One fella named Scotty, he worked down there, he was firin’ a boiler. He was tryin’ to send some money home. He’d work so hard and sweat, the hot fire was cookin’ his stomach. I felt sorry for him. They killed ‘im and throwed ’im in the
river, trying to get the $15 or $20 from him. They’d steal and kill each other for fifty cents.
1929 was pretty hard. I hoboed, I bummed, I begged for a nickel to get somethin’ to eat. Go get a job, oh, at the foundry there. They didn’t hire me because I didn’t belong to the right kind of race. ’Nother time I went into Saginaw, it was two white fellas and myself made three. The fella there hired the two men and didn’t hire me. I was back out on the streets. That hurt me pretty bad, the race part.
When I was hoboing, I would lay on the side of the tracks and wait until I could see the train comin’. I would always carry a bottle of water in my pocket and a piece of tape or rag to keep it from bustin’ and put a piece of bread in my pocket, so I wouldn’t starve on the way. I would ride all day and all night long in the hot sun.
I’d ride atop a boxcar and went to Los Angeles, four days and four nights. The Santa Fe, we’d go all the way with Santa Fe. I was goin’ over the hump and I was so hungry and weak ’cause I was goin’ into the d.t.’s, and I could see snakes draggin’ through the smoke. I was sayin’, “Lord, help me, Oh Lord, help me,” until a white hobo named Callahan, he was a great big guy, looked like Jack Dempsey, and he got a scissors on me, took his legs and wrapped ’em around me. Otherwise, I was about to fall off the Flyer into a cornfield there. I was sick as a dog until I got into Long Beach, California.
Black and white, it didn’t make any difference who you were, ’cause everybody was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle. We used to take a big pot and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together. We all set together, we made a tent. Twenty-five or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white and colored. They
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