Slices of the Apple

New York in the Twenties: color it white, a dazzling, blinding white for the Great White Way, Gotham's answer to Paris, where die suckers flocked like lemmings, where cider and seltzer passed for champagne, where the rumrunners' pistolas boomed louder than the music that filled the theaters, dance halls, speak-easies and cabarets from the Palace to Princess Oui Oui's; color it black for Harlem, the iris of the city's eye, focusing and reflecting the mirror image of a post-War population mad for fun and glad to be alive; color it red and green for the Harlem cabarets like The Bucket of Blood and The Green Parrot, stamping grounds of the gunions, gangsters and Feds of those antic times; color it green and silver for the big-sized green bills and the piles of silver dollars tossed up on tables, bars and bandstands night and day by a city that needed no excuse for a party; color it blue for the times between when the jazzman, hung over and beat, lay down in his room alone, and when the Georgia peapicker and the Alabama field hand, bored with the flush toilets, elevator jobs and white folks' kitchens, remembered Southern mornings down home. But no matter where you hailed from, you never stayed blue long in the Promised Land, where the wild women and the raw whiskey could make a boy feel like a man overnight.

When I hit Harlem in 1921, a 14-year-old trumpet player with the Musical Spillers, the saying among the group at Charley's Tavern or the uptown Rhythm Club was: "I'd rather be a lamppost in The Apple than the mayor of any other burg." We came from all over, from Haiti, from Martinique, from the Northern ghettos and the rural South, to the city where, until the crash, a musician could make more money than any place in the world. Just being in New York was cause for constant celebration. Nobody saved or banked; nobody worried about tomorrow; we made more in a week's tips than the average guy made in a month, but despite all the money we threw away, there was always more coming in. It looked like the party would never end. The joints were jumping; the neighborhood cantina, pub or saloon carried your hometown paper, and the jobs were so plentiful that if you drank yourself off a gig or the boss gave you a hard time, you quit then and there and went to work in the club next door or in one of the dance halls around the corner.

These dance halls, euphemistically called "dancing schools," were pickup places where two minutes' worth of fox trot, waltz or tango was served up for a nickel. They were always either in a basement or up on the second floor in some compact, low-ceilinged room illuminated by rose-colored spotlights. Some were run like harmless social clubs, but there were plenty of others that were rough places manned by gangsters whose girls took the clients out and robbed them. This social aberration, according to the old-timers, originated on San Francisco's Barbary Coast during the gold rush, when even a few minutes' contact shuffling around the floor with a woman made life worth living. That almost still seems the case with the last of these places left in New York, which does a staggering business with the bump-and-grind set. Back in the Twenties, the dance-hall jobs provided rugged, unique training for the budding musician who, to keep the nickels rolling in had to play a marathon of tunes that left some trumpet players with bleeding lips and drummers so exhausted they slept right on their drums. But if you could endure the grind, you ended up either reading very well or with an excellent ear, or both; plus, if you had the stamina, you always had a job.

The management thoughtfully provided droves of females of all types, sizes, shapes and colors, on the assumption that one was sure to fit even the most perverse taste. The girls called themselves "hostesses" and some were just that, but there were plenty of hookers mixed in among the Hausfraus, haughty English and Latin types, and the inevitable little gals from back home striving to climb up the ladder of some kind of success in the big city. These hostesses were kept clustered as far away from the bandstand as the wary boss could arrange, a sensible but futile attempt to keep the musicians' minds on business instead of on the wild variations of the shimmy, bumps and grinds the girls whipped up, promising everything in exchange for a John's ticket. It was a real education to watch the competition for tickets, the girls enticing the customers onto the dance floor with the seductive gyrations of Indian nautch dancers. Once a girl had the ticket in her hand, she would follow the customer's lead motion for motion, bodily accommodating but completely expressionless, her eyes fixed on some distant point, her facial movements limited to chewing gum.

This seeming sensuality was, of course, a ruse, because as a rule, at the end of an evening's contortions, all the John really had was a limp feeling and a bunch of ticket stubs. The floormen saw to that. It was their job to collect tickets from the couples on the floor and to watch for anyone who was getting too carried away by the magic of the moment. The floorman would tap the guy on the shoulder and snarl, "Move on, buddy." The customer usually took the hint. These morals custodians were a motley crew of minor hoods, punch-drunk fighters and pimps, who used the job as a front to keep the police off their tails. They were well suited to cope with the characters who hung out in the halls. For years, every time I saw the Goodyear blimp lazily cruising the sky, I would recall with much amusement old man Jones sweeping up the men's room saying, "Goddamn, look at all them rubbers. If there was only some way to melt 'em all down, you could build a whole Goodyear blimp!"

But in spite of the wide-open social climate of the dance halls, the musicians were forbidden even to speak to the girls, many of whom were prostitutes so jealously guarded that when a musician happened to intrigue one of the ladies, her pimp, not wanting to damage his source of revenue by whipping the girl, would maul the musician or have him fired. The situation was aggravated by the fact that all the men in the band were colored and everybody else was white. However, it is hard to divorce the human element by fiat, and plenty of adventuresome cats welcomed the challenge. Besides, the gals trusted us, knowing we realized everybody's life and/or job depended on keeping your eyes open and your mouth shut. Also, since we lived in Harlem, we knew the score on everything from after-hours fun and good food at five A.M. to the right abortionist or faith healer. We felt a natural camaraderie with the women because we both worked on the same side of the bosses. The old canard that all Negroes "go ape" over white females was refuted in the dance halls, because even though the opportunity for intrigue was almost unlimited, liaisons were selective and mainly social, almost playful. The way we communicated under the watchful eyes and ears of the bosses and floormen was by tiny notes the girls wadded up and flicked onto the bandstand where the musician for whom the message was intended would answer a yes-or-no question by playing, for instance, No, No Nora, or Yes Sir, That's My Baby. Sometimes, if they were to meet later, the guy would play There's a Small Hotel; then, before the evening ended, there would be a telephone call during which a male voice would say, "I am calling for Ada." The information would be relayed and they would rendezvous. This system worked well until a series of happenings over which we had no control broke up our playhouse and cost us our jobs.

Coming onto the job, I had been caught bringing liquor in a Coke bottle and had been warned to stay dry or leave, so I was sober, a strange and unaccustomed state, and I remember the evening well. The boss' son, a precocious brat, had, to his father's horror, fallen in love with one of the hostesses, a little Jewish girl who had eyes for our drummer. The boss barred his son from the dance hall, but in the fashion of desperate adolescents, he lurked around the entrance waiting to see liis favorite come out. This particular night he followed her up to Harlem, where he caught her flugranle delicto with the drummer. In revenge, he had the whole band fired on the spot, a rather charitable act, because had he described this pre-dawn scene to his father, the drummer would not only have lost his job, he would have ended up in the river like several other musicians who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

After this scene in the dance hall, I stuck to the clubs like Small's Sugar Cane and the Bamville. New York was such a swinging town that it seemed as if the whole world was out having a ball all night every night. As a result, no one was in a better position to pick up on the dramas mimed in the name of pleasure and passion night after crazy night than the musicians as they sat oti bandstands all over the city, privy to intrigue and romance. There was a lot to be seen if you kept an eye open; there was even more to see if you appeared not to be looking. Harlem, in particular. had an "excitement that made the night life on Broadway just an opener for the main attraction uptown.

The toughest joint on the roughest street in a rugged section of Harlem was The Bucket of Blood, an aptly named basement dive on 133rd Street notorious from coast to coast as a clearinghouse for vice. Jimmie "Blue-eyes," the boss, whose name portrayed his fetish for blue-eyed women, had connections for everything from providing a safe hide-out for a San Francisco hatchet man to strikebreaking. His broad-based business included protection for whorehouses, selling Prohibition whiskey and finding buyers for stray furs or jewels. The boosters, dips, hustlers, strong-arm men, alky cookers and gambling kings, patrons of the club, automatically cast the musicians in the role of father-confessor and drinking buddy. They trusted us to keep our mouths shut and that is just what we did, no matter how startling the action. I remember one cold morning during a blizzard when the door to the Bucket burst open and two cobra-eyed ofays whizzed past the bar and bandstand to the back of the club. The regulars froze in a tableau of black, brown and beige alerted by this weird interruption. During the next few ominous seconds of hostile appraisal they waited, fingers surreptitiously on a switchblade or a .38 Special, ditching bindles of cocaine and marijuana, vials of mickey and Spanish fly under the tables, waiting for the cue from Jimmie. Behind the cash register, impassive as Buddha, he passed judgment on the grays, who probably never knew death was only as far away as Jimmie's experienced fingers were from his sawed-off shotgun. As the seconds merged back into reality, the band played on loud and fast while one hood told Big Ben, the bartender, to give everybody a drink. This eased the tension and people started talking loudly as if ashamed of having been buffaloed. We noticed that the odier gunsel was still standing by the back entrance, which (continued on page 80) (continued from page 70) was always kept locked to prevent just such escape strategies. Then the picture sharpened when the door quietly opened and a dapper little guy in a pearl-gray snap-brim came in completely surrounded by five more ofays wearing derbies and chesterfields. At this, "Blue-eyes" started smiling. "Well, I'll be an s.o.b., if it ain't Jack 'Legs' Diamond. Jack, why in the hell didn't you call me if ya knew you were coming up to Harlem? Hey, waiter, fix up these two tables for Mr. Diamond and his party." Just about then, Chuck-a-Luck, our doorman, sidled up to Jimmie, whining, "I 'clare to Gawd, Mr. Jimmie, I couldn't stop 'em." Everybody broke down laughing at Chuck-a-Luck's pathetic attempt to clear himself, everybody but Jack "Legs," who sat there pasty-faced and somber, above it all. The table was crowded with whiskey, not the ordinary shake-'em-up that the house generally served, but a special brand of brew that came not only in a bottle, but a bottle inside a tin can. This was a real eye opener Jimmie came up with labeled Chicken Cock.

Daybreak came and went; everybody had left but the band when Jack "Legs" decided he wanted us to play Melancholy Baby. When we naturally obliged, he began to amuse himself by throwing silver dollars at the house "kitty," a wooden replica of a yawning black cat. Back then silver was out, all the way out: musicians were highly insulted when anyone tipped them a lousy dollar, but "Legs" and his party had begun by handing around 10s and 20s, so we didn't mind the silver, even after his whiskey made his aim so bad that Tricky Sam, our trombone player, got hit on the head. Tricky's feelings were soothed by a personal $50 bonus as the band wearily played Melancholy Baby for Mr. Jack "Legs" Diamond while the notorious tough, wrapped in some private sorrow, put down his head and wept.

Jimmie "Blue-eyes" was minor league compared with another character who turned out to play an important part in my rather unorthodox schooling. Country, a ginger-colored, skinny version of Peter Lorre, ran a joint on 138rd Street that he called Seventh Heaven; and because of a boyhood friendship with the police commissioner, his Seventh Heaven was just that for the him half-world of hoodlums that hung out there. Country and his elite provided my first exposure to the underworld of con games, stick-up men, shoplifters and dope addicts, many of whom were supporting $50-a-day habits by pimping. I recall that eight or ten fellows stood out as big shots and Country provided them with special facilities—boxlike compartments behind the bar that only the bartender had the keys to. We used to be able to gauge which pimp had the most industrious stable of whores by the number of hourly deposits made in each box. One would suspect that in this den of thieves, the common knowledge of all that money there would be too great a temptation, but Seventh Heaven had only one way in or out. Old Whistling Sefus, the inside doorman, kept watch perched high on a stool, shotgun across his knees. A nonsmoker, he never drank and he saw everything. If a real rumble started, Sefus would merely bar the door and push the buzzer that signaled Sacramento Slim, die outside lookout, that there was trouble. Once that buzzer sounded, nobody could get in, not even the police. What began in Sevendi Heaven ended right there, too.

My starting salary was supposed to be $25 a week, but I never knew what I was paid. Sometimes Country would give me a Mexican dollar bill, then, before the week was up, hand out a 20 or even a 100. Since tips were great and whiskey was free, we never dared ask for wages; Country just might jump salty, so we let well enough alone.

One memorable morning around seven or eight, just as we finished playing, Country, who was tending bar at the time, yelled, "Hey, you little sad-assed horn tooter, come on and have a drink with me." I was flattered; Country never drank with his help. He put a pint of good Canadian rye on the table, poured some high-class sherry for himself and proceeded to reminisce about his past. He told me how he started out being a runner for the old Hudson Dusters gang, then worked up to being part of Monk Eastman's mob specializing in strikebreaking and strong-arm stuff. Finally, he got his own organization up on San Juan Hill, where most of the colored people lived at the time. Country then confidentially told me he no longer had anything to do with sporting women or dope, except for smoking the poppy, which in sporting circles proved that a man could afford the best. With a sigh he said he'd like to make one more good haul at safecracking (his specialty) and retire to a farm away from everything illegal. Looking back, I'll never know if Country was conning me or setting me up for the pitch that came next: "Boy, you look like a good kid. I like you. Now you listen and listen good, 'cause I ain't gonna say this but once. Do as I tell you and you'll never be sorry. Smarten up; be somebody! First of all, you gotta cut way down on the whiskey. Drinking is OK, but getting drunk all the time is out-get—me? Out! Next is women. You gotta know how to live with 'em and handle 'em. If you don't, they'll handle you; and when that happens, you ain't a man: and if you ain't a man, you might as well be dead—get me?" He poured us another drink and continued, "So the way you handle it is never get one that you love. Get somebody that loves you, but don't you fall in love with her. If in case you do, quit the bitch and get the hell out while you're still a man, 'cause the breed can't help but devour a man, especially if she knows he loves her.

"Hold onto these truths as long as you live and you'll find them to be true. Now, dough is important, but it ain't everything. The thing to do if you get a chance is to grab a bundle, run like hell and go straight from then on. I'm gonna give you that chance because you're young and I want to do somebody some good. Besides, I got a hunch I can trust you."

So saying, he opened a big compartment behind the bar and started piling money in front of me. You can believe my eyes popped wider and wider and I started sobering up. I had never seen so much money in my life. All kinds of thoughts tumbled through my head. I was a green kid, as naive as they come and completely at a loss as to what Country had in mind with this display. I guess he got a kick from my expression, because he laughed and said, "Don't get so excited, kid, ain't you never seen queer dough before?" I felt absolutely sober as he continued, "Here's the deal—every day I will give you a hundred or so to take up to Philly, Stamford, anyplace close to town, and spend. Buy shirts, suits or any-thing with this scratch and I'll give you twenty percent of the good money you bring back. If you get caught, telephone this number and I'll have a lawman spring you, just don't let nobody know my name! If you have to take a beating, take it; I'll pay you for taking it. Just stick to your story—you found this on the street and didn't know it was queer."

Every syllable registered like the blow of a hammer, not because of the opportunity but because everything inside me said No, this is definitely not for me! The problem was how to get out of it without making an enemy of Country. I asked for time to sleep on it, went jamming way downtown and the next night I was working in a little joint in Hack-ensack. I just couldn't go Country's route; in fact, I was so scared I stayed away from New York about two months and only mention this 40 years later because I know Country has been dead a long time.

• • •

Jack "Legs" Diamond, as the man in power widi his Little Caesar vulnerability, and Country, the seemingly invulnerable gangster, were interesting studies, but an obscure handy man named Clarence "Pshitty Sam" Samuels presents in retrospect a character far more spectacular. The story of how Clarence Samuels (continued on page 152) (continued from page 80) came by his nickname "Pshitty Sam" is worthy of more than casual mention. Clarence worked for "Piggy" Whitmore, who maintained a poolroom as a front for his gambling setup in back. It was Clarence's job to run errands for the gamblers, rack the balls in the poolroom and make himself generally available, for which service he got all the food he could beg off the sports and the right to sleep on a pool table. Despite his being the lowest human on the totem pole, he was well liked for the cheerful step-'n'-fetch-it quality he brought intact from his home in the Deep South, along with his facility for greeting any situation with acres of snow-white teeth. If you gave him a hotfoot while he dozed, he woke up grinning. He would skin 'em back over any joke played on him, no matter ho cruel. Once some sadistic moron decided it would be funny to bring him a hamburger covered with red pepper, which Clarence gulped down, tears streaming from his eyes, and in between choking and crying, remarked, "Hard times will make a rat eat a red onion." I happened to be in the back room the night Clarence's scene opened. The crap game was red-hot; the dice were just not cooperative. One fellow would make a point and then fall off, seven out, or else he would throw crap on his first roll. Men were cursing the dice while their chicks vainly tried to coax or drag them away from the table. During a momentary lull, with everyone afraid to shoot, Clarence eased up and said, "Mr. Piggy, I wants to shoot a quarter." We turned around and looked at Clarence as Piggy came from behind the stick to reward Clarence's plea with a swift kick in the pants, yelling, "You simple son of a bitch, get the hell back in the poolroom where you belong and rack them balls. A lousy goddamned quarter he wants to shoot in a game where there's a thousand dollars on the table. I got a good mind to fire his ass!" Just then, "Paper Sack," a pugnacious 300-pound fairy, piped up in his falsetto, "Aw, for Christ's sake, Piggy, let the joker shoot. What the hell, I knew you when you didn't have a quarter, so let him go." The cats all laughed and Clarence shot the quarter; he shot the half; he ran the stack up to $64 in eight straight passes, which was more money than any of us had ever seen him have. Then while the gang kidded him, claiming he couldn't stand to win, he took down his stakes. Clarence stood there grinning and saying, "Goddamn! I sure had me a hot hand."

This was only the beginning for our hero. He got back in and proceeded to have the damnedest run of luck. He shot and hit; he took bets that only a fool would take and won; he bet on everybody's hand and still he won. Piggy went to the safe for more dough and Clarence won that, too. Then, after his pile climbed to about $2500 and change, suddenly Clarence said, "I quit! I got me a Georgia persuader (a razor, which he produced) and I don't mind using it on any living ass that f––––with me and this dough. I quit, and Mr. Piggy, for all them nights you let me sleep on that funky pool table, I wants to thank you, but I don't appreciate it. As for you, Broadway Al, I wants to thank you for that red-pepper sandwich, outside of that you can kiss my ass. And as for the rest of you jokers, don't ask me to lend you nothin', 'cause I started with noth-in', now I got somethin' and I'm going to keep it. I guess I got a pshitty feeling. Clear the door—I'm leaving."

Well, the crowd talked about Clarence like a dog for weeks and started labeling him "Pshitty Sam." It went so far that when anyone was real ungrateful, they would be called "Pshitty Sam." The original had really left the turf after his windfall, but every now and then someone would mention they had seen him at the race track widi his new old lady, Carmen, and he would be excoriated anew. Carmen's name would always bring up the comment, "Carmen, you mean Carmen 'The Chirper'?" I knew what they meant, having worked with the lady, a singer of sorts who more than made up for what she lacked in the vocal department with animal magnetism, beauty and cunning. One look into her big almond-shaped eyes made most men feel like Pilgrims sighting the Promised Land, and the eyes were just the beginning. Pan in on the rest of the goodies which, to the best of my memory, shaped up like about 33-16-33, and all of this fine, peach-brown exterior tapered down to miraculous legs and tiny feet. She was about 4'10", with the innocent face of a madonna, but all the other chicks called her "Satan's Slut"—jealousy, perhaps, or her preference for women, not unusual among the sisters; or maybe it was the two dainty, gold-handled whips she always carried around for special customers. Carmen boasted of whipping the asses off some of the best folks in town. This was the gal that our friend Clarence, better known as "Pshitty Sam," hooked up with. All of the wise guys were making book on how long this alliance would last. "Nose-Candy" Norris won the marbles, picking four months, which beat out "Trombone Charlie" Irvis by a week.

After Carmen busted him and left him high and dry, just as the script read, Clarence was back, all grins, racking balls and running errands. The regulars all ignored him at first except to call out, "Hey, Pshitty, do this or that," but predictably, after a week or two, all was forgiven and Pshitty's grin grew broader. Then, just as though time was standing still, history repeated itself. The same bunch stood over the same crap table watching Pshitty take them to the cleaners again, but with a difference. This time the take was much bigger, and when Piggy said, "Well, fellows, that's it, this s.o.b. has done it again," Clarence slowly began cramming loose change into every pocket as Carmen walked in on cue, saying, "Come on, Daddy, we got a train to catch." So, with over $3000 in his poke, Clarence grinned his broadest and announced, "Well boys, I guess I got that same old pshitty feeling again."

Luck like Clarence's was very rare; however, most of the Harlemites would take a gamble, staking hard-earned cash night after night in tense back-room bouts of cooncan, red dog and Georgia skin. Consequently, the time was ripe for a racketeer to step in and capitalize. The town and the times were in the throes of reflecting total disdain for Prohibition, which in turn led to an open-house attitude toward all kinds of crime. The city fathers didn't seem to care and neither did the police. The people demanded hard liquor; bootleggers were condoned; they organized, roughed out their territories and fought to the death to keep other aspiring boozemen out. Harlem was only a small part of the local alky operations, which were centered in New Jersey, Staten Island and Brooklyn, but Harlem's grand entrance into the sordid underworld was signaled by the appearance of a Cuban gambler named Don Marcellino.

I was working in the band at Small's Sugar Cane Club on Fifdi Avenue one night when a light-brown, heavy man came in accompanied by two six-foot giants, one very dark, the other even more piercingly black, with all his upper teeth encased in gold. Herb Gregory, a fellow bandsman, took a look and said, "My God, here's the Gold Dust twins." Our clarinet man at the time was a Cuban named Jejo, who recognized the party and told us with great excitement that it was Don Marcellino, a big gambler known all over Cuba. It wasn't too long before the waiters in Small's started coming around with their little pads, asking the band and the customers, "Do you want to play some bolila with me tonight?" I forget the initial odds, but they were tremendous. Later it spread all over the nation known as policy, and the odds were much shorter. An obscure Cuban gambler had given the gangsters another big business.

Another first I happened to be in on was the demonstration by a couple of waiters of a dance that quickly became an international fad. Human nature being what it is insofar as people pirating any good idea that is not adequately protected, it is no wonder that the dances of the Twenties like the shimmy and the black bottom are claimed to have so many originators. Somebody is always saying, "Here's a little dance I found the people doing as they beat their feet on the Mississippi mud," but the truth about one dance that hit New York is as follows: I was playing at Small's Sugar Cane in the middle Twenties when a few of the young waiters started having fun on a dull evening by doing a dance as they served the few customers. It was a novel sight to see them balance four-foot trays of drinks on their heads while dancing the basic cotillion step of the Charleston. This caught on like wildfire among the all-Negro patrons, who used to come up to Small's just to see Whitey (later Whitey's Lindy Hoppers) and the other waiters trying to out-improvise one another on what they called the "Geechee glide." Later, when the Caucasians started pouring in, they really put Harlem on the map by popularizing a less embellished version of the dance the waiters cooked up so everyone could join in the fun. The next thing Harlem knew, New York was doing the Geechee glide, except it was now called the Charleston and credited to someone else. Oh well, the Geechees from the islands off Charleston, South Carolina, still enjoyed doing their dance.

Another unforgettable dance, but one never destined for widespread imitation, was performed at an eerie little soiree over in Jersey. The action started at Goldgraben's with a phone call to Johnny Montague, the piano player. A female voice asked, "Are you the piano player?" and when Johnny replied, "That's me," the lady continued, "If you can play for a singer, I have a job for you tonight after you finish. The money will be good and you won't have to play long." Johnny told me later he started to hang up, figuring that somebody was trying to play a joke on him, but he listened on, hoping to catch the voice. The rest of the conversation intrigued me. His instructions were to take the Hack-ensack ferry to New Jersey at exactly five A.M., and when the boat docked, he would see a Packard with the side curtains up waiting at the end of the pier. He was to get into the car to be driven to an undesignated place and there was to be no conversation with the driver. I didn't like the sound of the closed car and the mysterious driver, which smacked of the bootleggers back in D. C. (who would assemble fleets of twin-6 Packards marshaled by guys with revolvers in the lead car and guys with sawedolf shotguns in the rear car covering their alky runs to Baltimore or Delaware), but Johnny wanted me along for moral support. At 17 the scene struck us as just crazy enough to pursue, so we set off for Hackensack, where we were met by a Japanese chauffeur who grunted when we got into the car and never spoke again. After about ten minutes of fast driving, we pulled up at a big iron gate that barred the passageway to a winding private road. I looked at Johnny and he looked at me: This was the real big stuff or murder or something, and I for one wished I had never left Harlem. Eventually we stopped in front of a mansion, where another Oriental received us and led us to the elevator. Elevator! Not only had we never seen an Oriental servant, we had certainly never seen an elevator in a home before; then, to cap this, the damn thing descended instead of going up. Johnny mumbled in my ear, "Ain't this a bitch! I wonder how the hell we get out of here?" I didn't have any answer, but I sure was wondering, too. This was only the beginning: The elevator opened on a real weird sight-a room diat looked like a night club anywhere in the world, complete with a stage and about 20 couples sitting around at scattered tables, except that nobody was talking or laughing; no one was smoking or drinking; it was as quiet as a morgue. When it dawned on us that the patrons were not alive, that they were store dummies, we were stunned. I know I was scared shitless and Johnny was no braver, but at that moment a delightful Nipponese doll appeared in a side-slit Oriental gown that revealed a beautiful thigh with every step she took. This sight back in the Twenties was enough to revive us. She minced toward us, smiling, bowing and bearing a silver tray with three notes for Johnny:

1. Gentlemen, welcome. Mr. Montague, please be seated at the piano and play any of the Broadway show tunes that you know. When you hear someone singing, do continue with that song until the lights flicker, then go on to another.

2. When I have finished singing, the girl will serve refreshments and give you your money.

3. You will be escorted back to the ferry and thank you for coming.

The charade began with this unseen woman singing in a damn nice, soothing, caressing voice, which so relaxed me that I fell half asleep until I felt Johnny shaking me and saying, "C'mon, she wants you to play." I remember saying, "Play what?" and a treble reminiscent of Mae West answered, "Play me the blues, boy. Play them low-down and dirty." Calling me boy did not even offend me as it usually did, because the way she said it made everything seem OK, so I pulled out my horn and started wailing. That's when the fun began. Like the boys back home used to say,I don't have no ear for music,And I don't have no voice for song,But when the sun goes downIn the cool of the eveningLook out for Baby Brother'Cause he's been here and gone.

It turned out that the lady not only sang but she also danced, an impressionistic Arabian cooch peppered through with stimulating bumps and grinds. As the lights grew dimmer and the room temperature soared, we followed every move of her voluptuous body, imagining the face (which was veiled) to match. Mesmerized, we played blues Handy would have enjoyed until, finally, our hostess danced away into the shadows and the party for one ended with the little lady from Nippon's presentation of a bright smile, a bottle of Scotch and a $100 bill.

Back out in our world, the evening seemed unreal. For years we puzzled over where the woman had gotten Johnny's name and exactly what kind of fantasy we had been party to. We never even mentioned the incident, because we figured no one would believe us. Anyway, we drank the Scotch and spent the money. As a matter of fact, we drank and played ourselves out of this world and back in on that one evening.

Despite all the stories I've told, not all our time was spent inside clubs. Each year there was a different fad among the fellows. Bicycle riding was so popular at one time that after cabaret jobs you might see 250 guys riding through the streets of Harlem. The year after the bicycle fad, we took to flying kites and betting a bottle on whose kite would soar highest, but we had to discontinue bottle betting because the stakes holder always drank up the bet. In summer, when we would get the urge to swim, 20 or 30 of us would ride the subway to Long Island or Pelham Bay in the Bronx. It must have been quite a sight, all of us in our rumpled tuxedos and wine-stained shirts with bathing suits hanging out of our pockets, so loud and carefree and drunk. On looking back to those days now, I can see how desperately we were clinging to our youth and at the same time trying to prove to ourselves and the world that we were men. Mass roller skating followed the kite flying, but the cops made it tough for us to skate, so some of the fellows started buying automobiles, which in turn led to girlfriends and marriage; until, before the end of the decade, almost before anyone realized it, there was no more gang. We were growing up.

Damon Runyon's sympathetic reality notwithstanding, New York in the Twenties was not ever recommended by Emily Post as the ideal prep school for a youngster, but it was a great time to be young in. Underneath the surface glamor, the scenes were often sordid and unhealthy, but from the time I charged onto the merry-go-round at 14, I had a large portion of fool's luck, because as stupid and as unprepared for exposure to the underworld as I was, the trauma insulated rather than twisted me. A sinister strong man like "Legs" Diamond could hardly remain heroic after I saw him weeping over a sentimental tune. The metamorphosis of "Pshitty Sam" clearly demonstrated that a humble exterior does not necessarily house a soul of the same order, and of course, that for any man, money is power. By the same token, the wealth and privilege of the mystery dancer was no hedge against the primitive needs expressed so furtively in her mansion and so publicly in Harlem. Not that she would have been better off grinding away in a dance hall, but that she was not that different from the girls she mimicked. Then, to be offered a chance to make big money in the rackets and turn it down, partly out of fear, partly from moral aversion, is a privilege not everyone is given at such a tender age. Looking back, I think I have to say it all happened for the best, because I did survive, but mostly because it became a region in my mind, one it is possible to revisit.

All hail to the days of the silver dollar, when the clarion call of "Hello, sucker!" echoed from a thousand side streets on the island; hail to the myriad musicians taking the evening stroll on Seventh Avenue—to the brassy tone of Big Green's trombone, Poor Bubber's sensuous growl, Happy Caldwell's honking tenor—to everyone who wailed at Gold-graben's, Mexico's, Leroy's or the Garden of Joy; all hail to the fairies at the 101 Ranch; to the breakfast dances and rent parties (social and bow-wow); to the ponies, chorines and showgirls young, full of life and sometimes beautiful; hail to assignations that hinged on matching up torn $50 bills; to the audiences we couldn't live without; and, finally, all hail to a decade begun with expectations that were more than met.