Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-07-18
Daily Short Story
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iuOS IOSSSI
whose members were ambition:
but whose technique condemned
them 10 the marathon dance halls
and the amateur dances.
He pounded the worries in the
tavcrnS. the luke joints and places
where the gentlemen got maudlln
and sometimes dropped a five-dol'
lar tip 10 the professor for play
ING a tear ierker like Mother
Machree" or You Made Me What
I Am To-day
You might say that Johnny
Parks had become musical
tramp, and many people did. He
seemed 10 have lost all his ambi-
ton TO get up there with a name
band and become another Gene
Kupra or Eddie Duchin. He
seemed 10 be content 10 play in
the cheap places, the dives, the
looks" But that was because an
other ambition had begun TO eat
at him.
This world in which he lived
Fascinated him. He began TO see
the live judies" and the double
hippcd men as strange creatures
who were known best by Johnny
Parks. People he believed, would
never believe that squirrel heads
like that existed. As he often told
"a customer who was ready to
listen:
"You could write book
about them or a play. IL would
he either n best-seller or a hit. L
know more about the babies and
the babes that hang around
these joints than anybody I'm
the world. I ought TO. I've been
studying them for years"
LOVES HER DANCING
He met Hilda Kersten in a
dance hall in Charlestown, Ia. She
came To the hall with another girl,
and her freshness and innocence
and youth made her seem like. a
rose in a garden of weeds. He
watched her dance and fell in love
with her movements. Afterwards,
he would have told you il was her
hair like honey her blue eyes and
her thick-lipped tender mouth that
had drawn him. ut it wasn't. II
was her dancing.
She was a girl from farm
about 20 miles out of town and
she had come 10 spend two weeks
with her sister. who was a
stenographer there. Her eyes had
gone 10 Johnny Parks as he sat
beating the drums and they wan
dered back there from time TO
time AS she danced, always to find
his eyes on her.
Their meeting was abrupt,
frank and exciting. Johnny walked
up and introduced himself 10 her.
She waited for him and he took
her home after the dance. For the
rest of the week. they followed
that routine. At the end of the
week, Johnny asked her TO marry
him. She agreed. They were mar
ried.
Hilda's parents disowned her.
She and Johnny lived in a room
ing-house. subsisting on Johnny's
intermittent income as tub-f1og-
ging piano player. It wasn't
enough and Hilda's grave eyes be-
came dreamy as she studied the
problem.
BETTER AS WRITER
Johnny, don't think you
will get anywhere as a musi-
cian," she told him. But 1
think, II you wrote down all the
stories you are always telling
me about the people you have
met while you have been play
ing, maybe some editor might
buy them"
"Yeh," Johnny said, staring at
her, ''if / only could write"
"You can write" Hilda told
him from the depths of her in
nocence. "You just sit down and
talk with a pencil on paper"
"Yeh," Johnny agreed. what
can / lOse?"
So he sat down and wrote a
story about love in a juke joint
He sent it TO a newspaper. 1t at
tracted the attention of a young
critic. The critic got in touch with
Johnny. He went over the story
with him. Johnny wrote il over
again and the critic sent IL TO ar
intellectual magazine that founc
genius and paid little or nothing