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LOUISIANA TOWN |
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lieved truly to stick right close to the Scripture. That means rejoice at the death and cry at the birth . . .
Those boys I used to sing with were really tough babies, They frequented the corners at Jackson and Locust and nobody fooled with them. The policemen was known never to cross Claiborne Avenue and these tough guys lived five blocks past Claiborne at Galvez, way back of town!
It was a miracle how those boys lived. They were sweet-back men, I suppose you'd call them—always a bunch of women running after them. I remember the Pickett boys—there was Bus, there was Nert, there was Nonny, there was Bob. Nert had a burned hand, which he used to wear a stocking over, and he was seemingly simple to me. All these boys wanted to have some kind of importance. They dressed very well and they were tremendous sports. It was nothing like" spending money that even worried their mind. If they didn't have it, somebody else would have it and spend it for them—they didn't care. But they all strived to have at least one Sunday suit, because, without that Sunday suit, you didn't have anything.
It wasn't the kind of Sunday suit you'd wear today. You was considered way out of line if your coat and pants matched. Many a time they would kid me, "Boy you must be from the country. Here you got trousers on the same as your suit."
These guys wouldn't wear anything but a blue coat and some kind of stripe in their trousers and those trousers had to be very, very tight. They'd fit um like a sausage. I'm telling you it was very seldom you could button the top button of a person's trousers those days in New Orleans. They'd leave the top button open and they wore very loud suspenders—of course they really didn't need suspenders, because the trousers was so tight and one suspender was always hanging down. If you wanted to talk to one of those guys, he would find the nearest post, stiffen his arm out and hold himself as far away as possible from that post he's leaning on. That was to keep those |
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