While I was there I saw some serious fights, such as the Saturday night gun battle between Slippers and a guy from the swamps near the levee. Those workers were paid on Saturday night, got drunk and headed straight for town and the honky-tonk where I was playing. Slippers was a good man with his dukes. He did not bother anybody, but God help any guy who started anything with him or raised a row in Matranga's joint.
The night the fellow from the levee camp came in he lost all his money gambling in the back room. Slippers was watching him when he tried to stick everybody up and get his money back from the game keeper. Slippers tried to reason with him, but the guy kept on bellyaching. Finally Slippers picked him up by the seat of the pants and threw him out on the sidewalk. The fellows around the gambling table had forgotten to tell Slippers that the guy had a gun. While the door was being closed the guy pulled out a big .45 and fired three shots, but these shots went wild. Slippers was a fast man on the draw. He winged the guy in the leg, and he was carried off to the hospital and then to jail.
When this happened the three musicians in our band were scared to death. Our stand was near the door. When the trouble started Boogus, the pianist, turned white as a sheet, and Garbee, the drummer, with his thick lips, started to stammer.
"Wha, wha, wha … what's that?"
"Nothing," I said, though I was just as scared as he was.
As a matter of fact, nothing did happen. The wounded man was carted off to the hospital, and about four o'clock the gals started piling in from their night's work. They bought us drinks, and we started those good old blues. Soon everybody forgot the whole thing.
One thing I always admired about those bad men when I was a youngster in New Orleans is that they all liked good music. Slippers liked my way of playing so much that he himself suggested to Henry Matranga that I replace the cornet player who had just left. He was a pretty good man, and Matranga was a little in doubt about my ability to hold the job down. When I opened up, Slippers was in my corner cheering me on.
"Listen to that kid," he said to Matranga. "Just listen to that little son-of-a-bitch blow that quail!"
That is what Slippers called my cornet. He never changed it as long as I played at Matranga's. Sometimes when we would really start going to town while Slippers was out in the gambling room in the back, he would run out on the dance floor saying:
"Just listen to that little son-of-bitch blow that quail!"
Then he would look at me.
"Boy, if you keep on like that, you're gonna be the best quail blower in the world. Mark my words."
Coming from Slippers those words made me feel grand. He knew music and he didn't throw compliments around to everybody.
Slippers and Black Benny were the two best men in the neighborhood with their dukes. They were always ready for a fair fight. But if anybody tried to sneak up behind them and do some dirty work, brother, they would get what was coming to them. If they had to, they could fight dirty. One thing I admired about Slippers and Black Benny is that they never got into a scrap with each other.
There were two other honky-tonks about a block away from Matranga's, but we youngsters did not go to them very often because some really bad characters hung around them, particularly around Spanol's joint. The ambulance was forever backing up to the door to take some guy to the hospital. If it wasn't the ambulance it was the patrol wagon to haul off to the morgue someone who had been shot or cut to death. We kids nixed the joint. The other tonk was Savocas'. We had to go there for our pay when we had been working on the levee unloading banana boats. Sometimes we worked those big ships all day, sometimes all night. When we finished we would light out for Savocas' honky-tonk and line up on the sidewalk to get our pay. Afterwards many guys went inside to the gambling room and lost every nickel they had earned. I couldn't afford to do that because I was the sole support of Mayann, Mama Lucy and my adopted son, Clarence. I wanted to do my best to keep their jaws jumping.
Clarence loved buttermilk. When the buttermilk man came around hollering "But-ter-milk. But-ter-milk," Clarence would wake up and say: "Papa, there's the buttermilk man!"
Clarence was going on two, and he was a cute kid. He became very much attached to me, and since I was a great admirer of kids we got on wonderfully together. He played an important part in my life.
Mrs. Laura kept the lunch wagon in front of Henry Matranga's honky-tonk. When the night lifers got full of liquor, which was much stronger than the present day juice, they would line up religiously before her counter and stuff themselves like pigs. We musicians used to eat on credit and pay at the end of the week. Mrs. Laura made a good deal of money, but her husband, who was much younger than she, used to waste it on other women. Mrs. Laura was not much on looks, but she was happy and that was all that mattered.
During this period of my life I worked for a time as a helper on a milk wagon for a driver who was a very fine white boy. He was very kind and he made my work as easy as possible. Our route covered the West End and the summer resorts at Spanish Fort, and we delivered our milk in the early hours of the morning. The roads were made of oyster shells which were ground down by the traffic into a firm road bed. One Sunday morning I jumped on the wagon after it had started. My foot missed the step and was caught under one of the wheels, which rolled over it and ground it into the sharp, broken bits of oyster shells. Since the wagon was heavily loaded the top of my big toe was torn wide open and tiny, sharp pieces of shell were driven into the wound. The pain was terrible, and the boss drove me to the Charity Hospital miles away in New Orleans.
I like to have died at the hospital when the pieces of shell were taken out one by one. When the doctors learned that the accident had happened on a milk wa gon of the Cloverland Company they asked me if I was going to sue them for damages.
"No sir," I said. "I think too much of my boss for that. Besides it wasn't his fault."
When I came home with my bandaged foot, Mayann went into a natural faint. She would always pass out cold whenever anything happened to her son Louis. Of course everybody in the neighborhood tried to persuade her to sue the milk company but she refused.
"If my son says no, that's that," she said.
If I had sued I could have probably gotten five hundred dollars, but I was not thinking about money. I was thinking about getting well, and about the fact that it was not my boss* fault, and about how kind he had been to me. The toe got well and the boss gave me a present anyway.
The next week another kid who worked on another wagon had an accident which was not serious at all, not nearly so serious as mine. He was the smart aleck type, and he sued. If he got anything out of the company at all he was lucky. The lawyers take the best part of any settlement they get. That is typical of the South.
The kids who worked as helpers for the milk wagons used to get paid off around ten o'clock on Friday morning. After that we would go around the corner from the dairy and start a big crap game. I had not received a dime as settlement for my accident, but I was certainly lucky in those crap games. I used to come home with my pockets loaded with all kinds of dough, and finally Mayann got scared.
"Boy, where in the name of the Lord did you get all that money?" she asked.
I had to confess to keep her from thinking I had stolen it. Then I got ready for the good whipping I was sure she would give me for gambling.
"Son," she said instead, "be careful about your gambling. You remember the hard time your pa and I had getting the judge to let you out of the Waifs' Home."
I said "yassum," and went down to Canal Street to buy mother, sister and Clarence some real sharp clothes. I even bought a pair of tailor-made short pants for myself. I did not have enough money to buy shoes so I just dressed up barefoot as usual. New pants and a new blouse were all that counted.