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54 |
STORYVILLE |
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Captain, captain,
Let me make this trip,
I need some money
To fill my grip.
Yes 1 need the money
And I need it had, Wants a lot of things That I never had.
These honkey-tonlcs ran wide open twenty-four hours a day and it was nothing for a man to be drag out of one of them dead. Their attendance was some of the lowest caliber women in the world and their intake was the revenue from the little, pitiful gambling games they operated, waiting for a sucker to come in. When a sicker came, don't worry, he would really be taken. The odds were so much against him, he never had a chance, especially if he played Cotch, the three-card Spanish poker where you deal from the bottom of the deck. The way the dealer would shove the cards in the bottom of the deck he would have that sucker leegayed in no time.
If they didn't clean this sucker by legitimate cheating, one of the tough guys would take his money anyhow—men like Chicken Dick, who had shoulders and arms on him much more stronger-looking than Joe Louis-and Toodlum and Toodoo Parker, guys you couldn't afford to bother with-and Sheep Eye (I was raised with him), he was real loud-mouthed and, if he could bluff you, he might murder you. Sheep Eye was a raider around these little Cotch games and when he would walk in, eveiybody would quit—
"Cash in my checks here, I've got to go."
And Sheep Eye would holler, "You gonna play! Sheep Eye's here and I'm the baddest sonofabitch that ever moved. Set down there and play. If you don't, I'm taking this pot."
Of course, it made no difference whether Sheep Eye won or lost. He'd take all the money anyway. Curse you, kick you, and slap you cross the head with a pistol. He was the toughest |
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