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I TOOK CALIFORNIA |
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used to bring their food on the job, just like they was used to doing in the lowdown honkey-tonks along Perdido Street.
Here they'd come ever}7 night to this Wayside Park with a bucket of red beans and rice and cook it on the job. (Man, i wish 1 had some of that stuff right now. The best food in the world!)
So anyhow, Dink and me got to kidding the boys about this, because, as a matter of fact, this cooking on the job made us look kind of foolish. And Buddy and Frankie blew up, threatened to kill us. Next day, they left town, without notice, and went back to New Orleans. Which shows you never fool with a New Orleans musician, as he is noted for his hot temper.
Wayside Park did so well and 1 made so much money that I came into possession of a gambling club, next door to Anita's hotel. I put Zack Williams in there to run it for me. Zack was the first fellow to play Tarzan in the movies. He was a big, black fellow, must have weighed three hundred pounds and he was very expensive help. He used to demand a dollar and a quarter steak every morning and my wife used to cook them for him. But money was no object. In fact I used to keep the top tray of my trunk full of bales of bills—ones, twos, fives and tens in bales. Once I told a fellow I had a trunk of money and just opened the trunk to the top tray and he nearly passed out—he thought the whole trunk was full.
Anita and I were getting along swell. She had three or four fox coats and I had plenty clothes, plenty diamonds. It s a day I'd like to bring back. I never realized how happy I was until after I left her. There wasn't nothing under the sun that I wanted during that time that I didn't get, but two things. One was a yacht and the other was a cow. After I looked up the price for yachts, I said I couldn't handle one; the upkeep was too tremendous. But, outside of that, everything was swell.*
* 'The period was one of Jelly's happiest and most prosperous. He could have Ms big car and Ms diamonds, and could keep Ms music just as a sideline for special kicks while he made Ms real money from the Pacific Coast "Line." As one friend put it, "Yon don't think Jelly got ai those diamonds he wore on his garters with the $35 a week he made in music." |
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