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The
Shotgun
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Back at the pool hall, one evening, one of the guys decided that he wanted to go to a local house of ill repute, so Bud said "OK," we'll take you," and four of us piled in the car to take him to this whorehouse, which was located in one of the seamier parts of town. But the neighborhood credo was that customers of said whorehouse were supposedly afforded safe passage in and out. So while our friend was inside, the rest of us were waiting for him in the yard calmly talking, when a group of five or six "local boys" ambled by and stopped to chat. They were jiving around and sort of kibbitzing a little, but not real mean, yet.
Then
one of them pulled out this little revolver and started waving it
around. At this point Bud leaned over to me and said, "Let's
show 'em what we've got," and slipped me the keys.
I took the
keys and kind of slid behind him and casually strolled out to the
car. In the trunk was a genuine sawed off shotgun. Bud had sawed off
the barrel and chopped the stock until it looked like a pirate
pistol; a large bore pirate pistol. He did a good job of it. I
retrieved the gun, and holding it down to my side, returned to the
group.
Bud said to these local hoodlums, "Yeah, we've got a little piece ourselves here."
I then brought up the pirate pistol. Their eyes got big and they hemmed and hawed and got a bit friendlier before beating a retreat. Our friend came out shortly and we, too, fled the scene before our new found acquaintances returned with reinforcements, or more armor, or both.
It's probably a good thing they didn't return because, if they had, someone might have been hurt. You see, I was not in a good place at that time. I had been in a bad frame of mind and frustrated with - everything, I think, for a long time. I had even smashed a few windows with my fists and cut up my wrist pretty good one time, requiring a trip to the ER. I just wasn't concerned with the consequences of my actions. Let's just say, I'm mighty glad they didn't come back while I was holding the pirate pistol.
That excursion notwithstanding, I spent a lot of time in black clubs with no problems, mostly because I enjoyed the music played within. The white establishment just didn't understand Rhythm and Blues or Rock and Roll music and tried to force feed Pat Boone and a few other white performers on the young people. We knew better. Pat Boone was fine in his own genre, but He was a poor cover for the R&B singers. We listened to WLOU, the black station in Louisville in the day and WLAC in Nashville at night to hear the real stuff. We weren't fools. We knew where to find Fats Domino, Little Richard, B.B. King, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, LaVern Baker, etc., despite efforts to keep us away from the black performers. We knew what was good.
Parents would get so overwrought over R&B and R&R, and plenty of white guys, too. Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and others were all evil, but to us youngsters, it was just music, for God's sake. Chill, people.
There was a nice club frequented by both races on Fifteenth Street just north of Chestnut. I don't remember its name, but it was a pretty hip joint. We would all get "vined out" and go down there and have a real nice time.
We discovered a couple of other joints where not that many whites frequented. There was the Diamond Horseshoe at Twelfth and Zane. It was more of a dive, but they too, had good Jazz and R&B and food. We almost goofed there one night when one of the three guys I was with stumbled into the wrong room while searching for the restroom and came upon a serious poker game in progress. He quickly left and came back to the table a little concerned. We had heard stories about the place, but we decided to stay. We got some pretty stern looks, but no one said anything and after a while they realized we meant no harm or disrespect and things went on as usual.
My favorite place happened to be in my own end of town. A musician at one of the clubs told me of a little place at the end of Cecil Ave. in the West End that had some great music on sundays. The night clubs were all closed on Sundays and a lot of the musicians went down there for all day jams. My friend Eddie and I started going down there and always had a super time. I don't remember what it was called.
Our
first time there, I saw a man I knew from work who came over to our
table with a friend of his and sat with us for several hours. That, I
am sure, helped break the ice. We never had a bit of trouble and we
went over there every Sunday for months, much to my grandmother's
disapproval, and we never needed a shotgun.