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I TOOK CALIFORNIA |
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underwear all that summer and it was a wonderful vacation. I got so high on one occasion that I nearly fell into the ocean, which would have been very bad for me and those diamonds, as I had never learned to swim. I and Anita were getting along very, very fine, it seemed to me, but I must not have underÂstood so well.
One night in Tacoma she drank some Worcestershire Sauce with a little whiskey as a chaser and all of a sudden picked up a great big steak platter and busted it over my head. It took several strong men to keep her away from me. I got the feelÂing she was mad enough to kill me. Next day she was all right, and said she couldn't remember a thing about what she'd done.
We decided to split up for awhile. Anita wanted to go back to Los Angeles and I had an offer in Casper, Wyoming. I played a big barn of a place there. Business was bad. The thermometer went down to 45° below and I left for Denver. I played gigs for a time, made some new friends, among them Andy Kirk from Newport, Kentucky, and then ran into my old pal, Gouldstucker from Pensacola. He introduced me to Ben Cooper, the big gambler in that territory, and by May I had lost my $20,000 and al my diamonds. That morning a wire came from Anita in L.A. , . .
Nan and dad both at point of death. Must undergo operation immediately. come home. anita
I became frantic. I had just thirty cents in my pocket and was ashamed to wire for money. So I decided to hobo. Luck was with me in the shape of a man who wanted me for a dance. 1 demanded a five dolar deposit, jived the expressman to haul my trunks to the station by telling him my money was uptown, checked them through to Los Angeles and, when the train pulled out the Denver station, I was riding the blinds. The railroad police put me off at Colorado Springs. I played up some meals on the piano, caught another freight to Pueblo and then another on into L.A. By the time I got home, everybody |
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