"Where did you get that fine looking horse, Red?" Mr. Jones asked.
Red, who was very ugly, gave a very pleasant smile.
"I have been working," he said. "I had such a good job that I was able to buy the horse. What do you think of him?"
Mr. Jones thought he was pretty and so did all the rest of us. Red poked his chest way out.
He spent the whole day with us, letting us all take turns riding his horse. Oh, we had a ball! Red stayed for supper, the same as I did in later years, and when I blew the bugle for taps he mounted his fine horse and bade us all good-bye.
"Ah'll see you-all soon," he said and he rode away as good as the Lone Ranger. After he had left, Red was the topic of conversation until the lights went out. We all went to sleep saying how great ol' Red Sun had become.
After dinner the next evening while we were looking out the windows we saw Mr. Alexander – he generally went to the Juvenile Court for delinquents – bring a new recruit into Mr. Jones' office. We wondered who it could be: it was Red Sun – bless my lamb – who had been arrested for stealing a horse.
I saw plenty of miserable kids brought into the Home. One day a couple of small kids had been picked up in the streets of New Orleans covered with body lice and head lice. Out in the back yard there was an immense kettle which was used to boil up our dirty clothes. Those two kids were in such a filthy condition that we had to shave their heads and throw their clothes into the fire underneath the kettle.
The Waifs' Home was surely a very clean place, and we did all the work ourselves. That's where I learned how to scrub floors, wash and iron, cook, make up beds, do a little of everything around the house. The first thing we did to a newcomer was to make him take a good shower, and his head and body were carefully examined to see that he did not bring any vermin into the Home. Every day we had to line up for inspection.
Anyone whose clothes were not in proper condition was pulled out of line and made to fix them himself. Once a week we were given a physic, when we lined up in the morning, and very few of the boys were sick. The place was more like a health center or a boarding school than a boys' jail. We played all kinds of sports, and we turned out some mighty fine baseball players, swimmers and musicians. All in all I am proud of the days I spent at the Colored Waifs' Home for Boys.
chapter 4
I was fourteen when I left the Home. My father was still working in the turpentine factory and he had his boss have a talk with Judge Wilson. I was released on the condition that I would live with my father and stepmother. They came to get me on a beautiful evening in June when the air was heavy with the odor of honeysuckle. How I loved that smell! On quiet Sunday nights when I lay on my bunk listening to Freddie Keppard and his jazz band play for some rich white folks about half a mile away, the perfume of those delicious flowers roamed about my nostrils.
On the day my father and stepmother were coming to take me to their home I thought about what lay ahead. The first thing that came into my mind was that I would no longer be able to listen to Freddie Keppard. He was a good cornet man with a beautiful tone and marvelous endurance. He had a style of his own. Of course Bunk Johnson had the best tone of all, but Freddie had his own little traits which always interested and amused me. Whenever he played in a street parade he used to cover his fingers with a pocket handkerchief so that the other cornet players wouldn't catch his stuff. Silly, I thought, but that was Freddie, and everybody ate it up. There was no doubt about it, he had talent.
Those nights when I lay on my bunk listening to Freddie play the cornet and smelling the honeysuckles were really heaven for a kid of my age. I hated to think I was going to have to leave it.
I wondered what my father would say if I asked him to let me stay in the Home. After all, I had never lived with him, and I did not even know his wife. What kind of a woman was she? Would we get on together? What kind of a disposition did she have? Here at the Home I'd become happy. Everybody there loved me, and I was in love with everybody. At my father's house would I still see Mayann and Mama Lucy who came to see me three times a week? My father had never paid me a single visit. What about the boys and even the keepers? They all looked sad, their faces drawn, to see me leave, and I felt the same way about them.
While my things were being packed the little band played as it had never played before. I played several numbers with them for my father's approval. He was elated by the progress his son had made, and he said I should keep it up.
Mrs. Jones kissed me good-bye, and I shook hands with every kid in the place as well as with Mr. Jones, Mr. Davis and Mr. Alexander. I was unhappy when we left the Home and walked to City Park Avenue to take the street car into town.
My father and stepmother lived at Miro and Poydras Streets, right in the heart of The Battlefield. They were happily married and they had two boys, Willie and Henry. I did not have to wonder long about Gertrude, my stepmother, because she turned out to be a very fine woman, and she treated me just as though I were her own child. For that alone I will always love her. Henry was nice too. He was very kind to me at all times and we became good friends. His older brother, however, was about as ornery as they come. He deliberately would do everything he could to upset every body.
After living with them for a while, my parents, who both had jobs, discovered that I could cook and that I could make particularly good beans. They were therefore glad to leave me with the two boys and to let me cook for them. Since I was the oldest they thought the kids would obey me. Henry did. But oh, that Willie! He was such a terrible liar that sometimes I wanted to throw a whole pot of beans at his head. He knew that his parents would swallow half of the lies he told them. What is more, they did not whip him much.
One day he did something so bad that nothing in the world could have kept me from hitting him in the face. It was a hard blow and it hurt him. I was afraid that after he told Pa Willie and Ma Gertrude when they came home they would send me back to the Home. But the little brat did not even open his mouth to them. I guess he realized he was in the wrong and that he deserved his chastising.
They used to laugh like mad when I first began to practice my cornet. Then as the days went on they began to listen and to make little comments, the way kids will. Then we began to understand one another. They were growing rapidly, and the more they grew the more they ate. I soon learned what a capacity they had, and I learned to take precautions. Whenever I cooked a big pot of beans and rice and ham hocks they would manage to eat up most of it before I could get to the table. Willie could make a plate full of food vanish faster than anyone I ever saw.
I soon got wise to those two boys. Whenever I cooked I would see to it that I ate my bellyful before I rang the bell for Willie and Henry to come in from the yard. One day Willie asked me why I was not eating with them. I told him I had to taste my cooking while I cooked it and that after it was done I didn't have any appetite. They fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
While I was staying with Pa Willie and Ma Gertrude my little stepsister Gertrude was born. I left shortly afterwards because father decided that he was just earning enough to support his three children by my stepmother. In those days common laborers were badly paid, and though both Pa and Ma Gertrude were working they could barely make both ends meet.
My real mother came out there one evening, and she and Pa talked things over for a long time. When Mayann got ready to leave, my father said: