The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  Some old flappy-mouthed women just sitting there, buzzing. Noses going up. “No wonder old Clyde look so good,” they grumbled. “He raised by white folks.”

  Mama only smiled.

  “You be careful, Liz,” somebody sneered, “after a while he won’t have nothin’ to do with colored people.”

  After church my little friends started teasing me.

  “Clyde got a white papa! Clyde got a white papa!”

  “That’s right,” I teased back.

  “You white now too, huh Clyde?”

  “Yeah, I’m white.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I’m a dark-skinned white boy!”

  And we broke up laughing. It was a lot of fun being white.

  I started smiling more often during those months with the Kluttz family, and my bad dreams gradually stopped. I felt like there was sunshine again all around. Someone had taken interest in me.

  When school started eight months later, I got ready to return to Mama in New London. Schooling in North Carolina was usually sixteen weeks, but for black schools it was always less. Depended on how much money the county had to spend that year for local schools.

  It was just before Thanksgiving, and Mr. Kluttz opened my piggy bank and counted out the change. More then enough for my bicycle. I ran all the way home holding my money very tight and gave it to Mama, telling her to order my bike right away so I have it for Christmas.

  When she hadn’t ordered it by the following week, I started pestering her about it.

  “Hush up, boy,” she said. “I have taxes to pay and need that money. You can’t have a bicycle.”

  When I started to cry, she grabbed a hickory switch and like to beat me to death. Knocked me down and put her foot on my neck. Kept striking me. Wham! Wham! I was screaming. Big bumps came out all over my head, my face swelled up, and my eyes were puffy slits. Opened a big gash that ran from the bridge of my nose down under my eye and half way back to my ear. Blood was all over.

  “And I don’t want to hear no more about it,” she said.

  Mama was having a hard time then, even though she got a sixty-dollar death benefit off Papa’s insurance.

  I started getting sick after that beating. Got weak, started coughing. Came down with a high fever. The doctor said it was the “flu” going around, and by Christmas Uncle Will Barnhardt was dead from it. Two of his six children was next, and his wife, Maggie, was gone by February. That’s when they closed the schools and we all stayed inside for a few months.

  By the first of April I was feeling better and back with the Kluttz family again. Couldn’t wait to get back, because Mrs. Kluttz was better then my own mother.

  I run errands for her, go to the store for maybe a bag of coffee, or sugar, carry it home in a big basket. In the morning I was expected to make up my bed and carry out my chamber pot. Then work in the garden if I wanted or help around the house just like I did for Papa. Feed the hogs. Cows. Mrs. Kluttz had no other children at that time so she gave me her full attention.

  I was feeling so good at being loved I gave myself another middle name. I remembered Grandmother Mauney telling of being loaned to the Barron family during slavery and how nice they be to her. I liked the name and adopted it. Clyde Edric Barron Barnhardt. Had a nice ring to it.

  Living in this white people’s house and wearing expensive clothes, I felt big enough to buy myself a chaw of apple tobacco one day and sneak a bit on the way home from the store. It made me so sick and dizzy I had to lay by the side of the road for a hour. Never did that again.

  Mr. Kluttz took me to many circuses and shows. One was the Brown and Dyers Carnival. Didn’t have to be grown-up to know those carnival bands had trained musicians. One of them was all Italian and nobody spoke much English, but they played hell out of the latest popular music.

  Once I saw this little old minstrel show coming through town. They hired two horse-drawn wagons, and all the musicians sat up there blowing and wailing. The trombone player had the flap down in the back of the wagon and was playing songs like Slidus Trombonus, shooting out his horn, slipping, and growling. Laughing. Sure looked like a lot of fun.

  Living with the Kluttz family was like being on a summer vacation. Gradually I began to understand what Papa meant when he said he would work through other people. And watch over me.

  Mr. Kluttz was just like my Papa.

  Mama had moved to a six-room bungalow in Harristown by 1917. They called that area Codytown then, and now is part of Badin. I joined her there about mid-year with a cow Mr. Kluttz gave me and started looking for odd jobs.

  I wasn’t but all of twelve years old yet but got work washing dishes in a Greek restaurant. Then I stacked pies and cakes in Pete Endres’ Bakery. Took a job as water boy at a construction site for a dollar a day. Shined shoes and brushed coats in a white barber shop.

  And ran a lot of errands for people. That’s how I met the great black singer Madame Gertrude Rainey, that everybody called Ma. It was June 1917 when her own all-colored minstrel show, “The Georgia Smart Set,” came to Badin for a few weeks. They set up their big canvas tent right behind the cemetery, on Falls Road.

  I was always hanging around her tent in case she got thirsty, then run to the store for some Coca-Cola. She loved Coca-Cola. Cost five cents a bottle, but I knew where to get three bottles for a dime. And she tip me a dime. During the day the whole company be outside cooking or exercising. Or just talking about show business. And I was running around, keeping busy, getting a nickel here and a dime there. Sometimes I made almost a dollar a day that way. But I was so thrilled being around those show folks I would of done it for nothing.

  The people were all so nice, especially Ma Rainey. She was then rated to be the greatest blues singer in the world. Ma was very dark, had a wide nose, big lips, and a mouth full of gold capped teeth. She wasn’t pretty—her natural complexion was black, but on the show she looked much lighter, almost high-yella.

  “Honey,” she say, “it’s hard work to be light like me. Takes a hour to put that makeup on and another to get the damn stuff off.”

  She spoke with a little lisp-tongue, but you couldn’t hear it when she sang. I liked Ma Rainey. She was a happy-go-lucky person, a religious-hearted person. You could see it in her. Always helping the underdog.

  Everybody talked about her famous gold necklace. I never seen such a necklace before—one-hundred-dollar gold coins all strung together with some fifty-dollar, twenty-dollar, and ten-dollar ones stuck in between. The smallest was five-dollar pieces. It was like a trademark for her. One day I found her scrubbing her necklace with Old Dutch Cleanser in her washbasin.

  At night I was right down front in the colored section to watch the show. The tent was big and square, almost two hundred feet long. Men selling popcorn and roasted peanuts in the shell.

  I remember she had a string band in front of the stage. A bass fiddle, violin, viola, piano, and drums, and it was the first time I seen the big bass played while straddled. Couldn’t stop from laughing.

  After the band overture, the curtain opened and out danced eight long-legged gals in short costumes. They weren’t the prettiest I seen, in fact they were downright ugly. With light makeup they were passable, but they could sure dance up a streak. Then the chorus boys came out and danced in the same line. The audience just loved the old gals and boys.

  As they danced off, the backdrop came down showing a large illustration of a cotton field. Two blackface rubes came out dressed in stovepipe pants that ended just below the knee to show white socks going down in their big, extra-long shoes. When they started telling those old, funny stories, everybody broke up.

  Bertha Forbes was one of the ballad singers on the show, and John Miles was another that sang Sweet Adeline dressed in a long tailcoat with walking trousers and a top hat. They also had a terrific dancer doing buck and wing steps and some tap. Another comedy act was hip-bumping Roxy Caldwell and her lady partner. These were two funny women.

  The great blu
es singer, Madame Gertrude Rainey, who I ran errands for in 1917. (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)

  It was a straight two-hour show, no intermission. One time this funny juggler, his name was Joe Fraser, put two oil lamps on his head and both were lit. He turned his body up, down, around, back flipped, and never dropped a lamp. Didn’t even blow out. Later, a man riding a bicycle came on dressed as a Japanese and holding a umbrella. Rode that thing every which way, sitting, standing, on his head, on his back, and finally one wheel fell off and he rode it as a unicycle. He was good.

  Ma Rainey closed the show. When she was ready to go on, the great lady start singing in the wings and as the curtains opened, strutted out flashing those gold-plated teeth and her expensive gold necklace. She wore a long, gold silk gown that swept along the floor, gold slippers, and carried a sparkling rhinestone walking cane. Her hat was high and wide with large feathers stuck in it, had gold earrings dangling and diamond rings on all her fingers. When she got to center stage under those amber spotlights, the audience just went wild. She was all of what show business was suppose to be. She was show business.

  Her first song was St. Louis Blues in a slow-drag tempo. Then maybe Yellow Dog Blues with a spoken introduction about her “easy rider” and other problems. She close with her own See, See Rider Blues and for the big finale go into Walkin’ the Dog, which was also called Get Over Sal, Don’t You Linger. Then the whole chorus line come stepping out behind her and she dance along, kicking up her heels. The song had dance instructions in the lyrics, and as she call a step, everybody would do it. Soon the whole cast was out on stage, jugglers, riders, singers, comedians, all dancing wild with Ma Rainey shouting and stomping. She call “WALK!” and everybody walked together before breaking out fast. She call “STOP!” and everybody froze. After many calls she finally holler “SQUAT!” and the whole group squatted down with a roar. Including Ma Rainey.

  It was a exciting show and the audience kept cheering and whistling. The whites in the audience usually applauded the longest.

  I was there every night to see the show. It was better then Silas Green or the Florida Blossoms Minstrels, except those shows had brass instruments and could play louder music. And have street parades, too. But Ma Rainey put on a hell of a act. I liked her music better in person then on her later records. Much better.

  I saw the show again the following year and it was just as good. At that time the famous singing comedienne Carrie Adams was with her. She sang Tree and a Possum with all that hound dog mocking that the people liked. She was good, too.

  School let out in March of 1918 and I got a job working for the big Tallahassee Power Company, which later was the Alcoa Aluminum Company plant. Paid twenty-five cents a hour for a ten-hour day just for soaking rusty bolts in kerosene.

  When I told Mama how I saw these big cranes in there, a couple hundred feet up lifting big buckets of hot, liquid metal, how men was cutting things all over with big rains of sparks falling down, how hot and sweaty it was all the time, maybe 125 degrees, she didn’t like it at all.

  “A twelve-year-old boy don’t belong in a heavy plant like that. It’s dangerous.”

  But after me working two weeks at the plant, Mama got work there too, at thirty cents a hour. With her and me working full time and my sisters cooking in domestic work, we got along.

  The Community Theater in Badin was on the black circuit and held about seven hundred people. It showed moving pictures as well as stage shows.

  After work I run over and see if I could do errands for the entertainers like I did for Ma Rainey. That’s where, in April, I first saw the one and only Princess White. That was her real name—she was part Indian. A slender, streamlined older woman with pretty dark hair that rested low on her brown shoulders.

  I liked to watch her handle the audience while she performed. She sing the Hesitating Blues or Drafting Blues in her low contralto voice, and people throw money up on the stage, they scream and shout, wouldn’t let her off.

  Some people liked her better then Ma Rainey because she sing other songs besides blues. And was so much prettier. People drive in forty miles from Charlotte to see her. She was a real headliner. A top name.

  One time I took a train to Winston-Salem to visit relatives. While I was there I stopped in at the Lafayette and Lincoln theaters. I remember once this slender, dark gal was headlining—her name was Bessie Smith. She was singing Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues, and other W. C. Handy numbers. Clarence Adams played clarinet and sax in the pit band. Willie Wilkins was on piano, and there was a drummer and a woman trombone player.

  Bessie was moaning those blues and dancing up a storm, but I’ll tell you something—I thought Ma Rainey and Princess White was much better. Yes sir. Bessie didn’t have the magnetism then as the others had. She was just another black woman singing the blues.

  I remember November 11, 1918, when all the factory whistles began blowing. Automobiles honking. People jumping up and down. Some crying. Everybody embracing each other. Blacks and whites. Young and old.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” they were saying. “The war is over.”

  But as soon as the men started coming home, Mama got let go from the plant. So I got a extra job working for a independent contractor. His name was Andy Fabian. When I went to get my $5.25 pay after the first week, the rascal done slipped out of town.

  Mama got hot at me for being cheated and just whipped the daylights out of me again. That’s when a lot of colored neighbors started talking about her.

  “Why you treat that boy so mean?” they ask. “He’s a good boy.” When Mama tell them to mind their business, they warn: “When they take the boy away from you we’ll see whose business needs mindin’.”

  Mama always been strict. Deep down I loved her but I wasn’t sure she loved me. At least she never showed it. Everybody always told me how proud she was that I got jobs and tried hard. But she never told me. Just wasn’t in her to show her true feelings.

  I worked at that power plant for almost fourteen months and went to school at night so I could keep my day job. By 1919 I was plant messenger boy, taking papers around and running letters to the post office in a special mail pouch.

  “It’s time I got you children up north,” Mama said one day. “That’s where you can get a good education and not have to pay if you want to go higher. Besides, we’ll get better jobs there.”

  But my boss, Mr. C. W. Kaufman, told me it wasn’t that good up north for jobs. Said all the colored jobs went to white boys.

  “He’s lying,” Mama said. “Just trying to keep you down here.”

  By July we all on the way to Roanoke, Virginia. Mama gave away most of the big furniture, sold the Sears, Roebuck house in Richfield, packed the trunks, and off we went. She really wanted to go to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but said it be better if we went there in two steps—afraid some of her cousins might think she was loaded with money going direct. That’s the way women were back then.

  I wasn’t of a mind to leave Badin. Liked my job at Alcoa and thought I was doing good. After about a month in Roanoke, we moved on to Harrisburg. Mama had some second-hand furniture and sold it back to the store when she moved on.

  Harrisburg was a big jump, hundreds of miles from Badin, and I didn’t know where we were heading. We were not alone. Everybody was moving at that time, especially to industrial cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit. Lots of good jobs to be had in the North, they all said.

  I found living in our new working-class neighborhood strange. All the houses stuck together in a row. People coming in and going out all day, and night too. Whites. Blacks. Polish. Italians. Romanians.

  Mama got a job in a beer factory, but when the smell got bad, took another as a domestic for a rich white lady. I tried hard, but jobs were scarce for little black boys.

  School started in September and I wasn’t going but a week, before this Hungarian bully-boy started getting on me.

  “I don’t like Southern niggers,” he said, giv
ing me a push. Nobody ever called me a nigger before. I was always a sensitive, shy boy, sort of bashful around new people. And Mama’s whippings never did help my confidence. So I was scared and ran away.

  The only one I could tell what happened was my white teacher. He said to always stand up for what I believed to be right. Otherwise I lose before I start.

  The next time I saw the boy he was coming down the street, pointing his finger at me, and singing a song.

  Nigger, nigger, never die,

  Black face, shiny eye.

  Nigger, nigger, never die,

  Black face, shiny eye.

  Kept repeating it over and over. Laughing. I was carrying my books tied around with a long belt, and before I knew it, I swung those books around my head and knocked him down. Then I jumped on him like white on rice, punched his face, and knocked a tooth out. Grabbed his hair and pounded his head on the street. Again and again.

  Never had no trouble from that boy after that. And I thought a little bit more of myself. Yes sir.

  By late October we moved three miles down to Steelton, Pennsylvania. This was a worse job-town for me then Harrisburg. Bethlehem had one of their biggest steel mills there, but I was too young to be hired. Mama was pushing me to find a job. I tried hard, I really did. Got up before daybreak and was at the food stores by 5:30, hoping to find something.

  “What you doin’ out here?” the man say.

  “Looking for a job, sir. Need a good boy to help around?”

  “Yeah, I do, but don’t want no coloreds. Be on your way.”

  Mama said I wasn’t trying hard enough. “You gettin’ lazy like the rest of these Northern boys,” she mumbled.

  I been secretly writing to Mr. Kaufman in Badin, and he kept answering, saying my Alcoa job was still open.

  So, on November 1, 1919, at the age of fourteen, I packed my suitcase, left home, and went back to Badin. I was on my own. Papa would watch over me, I was sure. Everybody said I was independent like him. And kind of hard-headed and stubborn like Mama. They were right.