Handy--20

## Chapter IV

My father always held that it's better to be born lucky than rich. When I left St. Louis, I began to think that maybe there was something to this philosophy after all. My luck changed suddenly. Hitting the road again, I hoboed my way to Evansville, Indiana. There, shambling listlessly through the town under a broiling sun, I came up on a gang of men repaving Fourth street. As a matter of habit, I went to the boss and asked for a job. He nodded favorably and took me on.

For the first half day I worked on an empty stomach. At noon when we knocked off for the lunch hour, the other men all made a big dash for a nearby restaurant. The boss noticed that I lingered behind.

"What's the matter, 'Bo?' he asked. "Ain't you hungry?"

I don't know what I told him, but it must have been eloquent enough. He went into his pocket, brought out a two-bit piece and flipped it to me. The boanery advertised good meals for fifteen cents. Surely the worn was turning, but not turning a minute too soon. Already, as the old T. O. B. A. comedians would have said, my stomach had commenced to think my throat was cut.

Later the same boss detailed me to a cool spot where dirt was being dumped under an apple tree near Water Street. There the work was lighter. Under the influence of agreeable food and good treatment I began to feel like myself again. I looked about and found that eight of the men on the job were from my home town. We promptly gravitated

a The Theatre Owners' Bookings Association that booked talent for Negro shows.

Handy--30

the night concerts. Naturally a bright uniform, goldenopaulettes, and
a gkaming silk bopper were included. It was too good to be true.

Encyclopedists and historians of the American stage have slighted
the old Negro minstrels while making much of the burnt cork artists
who initiated them. But Negroes were the originators of this form of
entertainment, and companies of them continued to perform as long as
the vogue lasted. Mahara's outfit, like the Georgia Minstrels, the
McCabe and Young Minstrels and the Hicks and Sawyer Colored Minstrels,
was the genuine article, a real Negro minstrel show. Our show, like
most of the others of its type, was under white management.

Life began at 11:45 A. M. in a minstrel company. At that time
the manager of the parade blew his whistle in the theatre ordering
'all out'. The order of things might be varied slightly if the train
reached the city late. In such a case we would dress in our private
pullman car and commence the parade from the railroad tracks. Either
way we were sure to find a swarm of long-legged boys on hand, begging
for a chance to carry the banners advertising the show--the same
young rabbile, perhaps, that invariably swept down upon the circus offer-
ing to water the elephants in return for free tickets.

The parade itself was headed by the managers in their four-horse
carriages. Doffing silk hats and smiling their jeweled smiles, they
acknowledged with easy dignity the small flutter of polite applause
their high-stepping horses provoked. After them came the carriage in
which the stars rode. The 'walking gents' followed, that exciting
company which included comedians, singers and acrobats. They in turn
were followed by the drum major--not an ordinary drum major beating time
for a band, mind you, but a performer out of the books, an artist with
the baton. His twirling stick suggested a bicycle wheel revolving in
the sun. Occasionally he would give it a toss and then recover the