Free Hard Times by Studs Terkel Page A

gettin’ snake bit and everything in that hot sun. And all he had was a little house and a tub to keep the water.
’Cause I went down there to see him in 1930. I got tired of hoboing and went down to see him and my daddy was all gray and didn’t have no bank account and no Blue Cross. He didn’t have nothin’, and he worked himself to death. (Weeps.) And the white man, he would drive a tractor in there… . It seems like yesterday to me, but it was 1930.
    ‘33 in Chicago they had the World’s Fair. A big hotel was hirin’ colored fellas as bellboys. The bellboys could make more money as a white boy for the next ten or fifteen years. I worked as a bellhop on the North Side at a hotel, lots of gangsters there. They don’t have no colored bellboys at no exclusive hotels now. I guess maybe in the small ones they may have some.
    Jobs were doing a little better after ‘35, after the World’s Fair. You could get dishwashin’ jobs, little porter jobs.
    Work on the WPA, earn $27.50. We just dig a ditch and cover it back up. You thought you was rich. You could buy a suit of clothes. Before that, you wanted money, you didn’t have any. No clothes for the kids. My little niece and my little kids had to have hand-down clothes. Couldn’t steal. If you did, you went to the penitentiary. You had to shoot pool, walk all night and all day, the best you could make was $15. I raised up all my kids during the Depression. Scuffled … a hard way to go.
     
    Did you find any kindness during the Depression?
     
    No kindness. Except for Callahan, the hobo—only reason I’m alive is’cause Callahan helped me on that train. And the hobo jungle. Everybody else was evil to each other. There was no friendships. Everybody was worried and sad looking. It was pitiful.
    When the war came, I was so glad when I got in the army. I knew I was safe. I put a uniform on, and I said, “Now I’m safe.” I had money comin’, I had food comin’, and I had a lot of gang around me. I knew on the streets or hoboing, I might be killed any time.
    I’d rather be in the army than outside where I was so raggedy and didn’t have no jobs. I was glad to put on a United States Army uniform and get some food. I didn’t care about the rifle what scared me. In the army, I wasn’t gettin’ killed on a train, I wasn’t gonna starve. I felt proud to salute and look around and see all the good soldiers of the United States. I was a good soldier and got five battle stars. I’d rather be in the army now than see another Depression.
     
    POSTSCRIPT: On recovery, he will return to his job as a washroom attendant in one of Chicago’s leading hotels.
    “When I was hoboin’ through the Dakotas and Montana, down there by General Custer’s Last Stand, Little Big Horn, I wrote my name down, yes, sir. For the memories, just for the note, so it will always be there. Yes, sir.”

Emma Tiller
    At the time, she lived and worked in western Texas as a cook.
     
    WHEN TRAMPS and hoboes would come to their door for food, the southern white people would drive them away. But if a Negro come, they will feed him. They’ll even give them money. They’ll ask them: Do you smoke, do you dip snuff? Yes, ma‘am, yes, ma’. They was always nice in a nasty way to Negroes. But their own color, they wouldn’t do that for ’em.
    They would hire Negroes for these type jobs where they wouldn’t hire whites. They wouldn’t hire a white woman to do housework, because they were afraid she’d take her husband.
    When the Negro woman would say, “Miz So-and-So, we got some cold food in the kitchen left from lunch. Why don’t you give it to ‘im?” she’ll say, “Oh, no, don’t give ’im nothin‘. He’ll be back tomorrow with a gang of ’em. He ought to get a job and work.”
    The Negro woman who worked for the white woman would take food and wrap it in newspapers. Sometimes we would hurry down the alley and holler at ‘im: “Hey, mister, come here!” And we’d say, “Come