J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
So I tells him what it looks like--how a little private road winds in
and circles round a little place which is like a family-burying-ground,
and about the hands downstairs at the front door all being from West
Indiana, and about there being two elevators for the residenters and one
more for the help, and about us having took over the Sublette family's
outfit and all.
"No use," he says, when I gets through, "that sounds just like most of
the expensive ones." He starts walking off like he has done lost all
interest in my case. Then he calls back to me over his shoulder:
"I'll tell you what's the matter with you," he says; "you're lost."
"Yas, suh," I says; "thanky, suh--tha's whut I been suspicionin' my own
se'f," I says, "but I'm much oblige' you agrees wid me."
Still, that ain't helping much, to find out this here police thinks the
same way I does about it. Whilst I is lingering there wondering what I
better do next, if anything, I sees a street-car go scooting by up at
the next crossing, and I gets an idea. If street cars in New York is
anything like they is at home, sooner or later they all turns into the
main street and runs either past the City Hall or to the Union Depot. So
I allows to myself that go on up yonder and climb aboard the next car
which comes along and stay on her, no matter how far she goes, till she
swings back off the branch onto the trunk-line, and watch out then, and
when she goes past our corner drop off. Doing it that-a-way I figures
that sooner or later I'm bound to fetch up back home again.
Anyhow, the scheme is worth trying, 'specially as I can't seem to think
of no better one. So I accordingly does so.
But I ain't staying on that car so very long; not more than a mile at
the most. The reason I gets off her so soon is this: All at once I
observes that I is skirting through a district which is practically
exclusively all colored. On every side I sees nothing but colored folks,
both big and little. Seemingly, everything in sight is organized by and
for my race--colored barber-shops, colored undertaking parlors, colored
dentists' offices, colored doctors' offices. On one corner there is
even a colored vaudeville theatre. And out in the middle of the streets
stands a colored police. Excusing that the houses is different and the
streets is wider, it's mighty near the same as being on Plunkett's Hill
of a Saturday evening. I almost expects to see that there Aesop Loving
loafing along all dressed up fit to kill; or maybe Red Hoss Shackleford
setting in a door-way following after his regular business of resting,
or old Pappy Exall, the pastor of Zion Chapel, rambling by, with that
big stomach of his'n sticking out in front of him like two gallons of
chitterlings wrapped up in a black gunny-sack. It certainly does fill me
with the homesickness longings!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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