around there, but these were a cheaper type, this was the worst of the ghetto, the poorest people,
the ones who in every ghetto keep themselves narcotized to keep from having to face their
miserable existence. I didn't last long down there, either. I lost too much of my product. After I sold
to some of those reefer smokers who had the instincts of animals, they followed me and learned
my pattern. They would dart out of a doorway, I'd drop my stuff, and they would be on it like a
chicken on corn. When you become an animal, a vulture, in the ghetto, as I had become, you
enter a world of animals and vultures. It becomes truly the survival of only the fittest.
Soon I found myself borrowing little stakes, from Sammy, from some of the musicians. Enough to
buy supplies, enough to keep high myself, enough sometimes to just eat.
Then Sammy gave me an idea.
"Red, you still got your old railroad identification?" I did have it. They hadn't taken it back. "Well,
why don't you use it to make a few runs, until the heat cools?"
He was right.
I found that if you walked up and showed a railroad line's employee identification card, the
conductor-even a real cracker, if you approached him right, not begging-would just wave you
aboard. And when he came around he would punch you one of those little coach seat slips to ride
wherever die train went.
The idea came tome mat, this way, I could travel all over the East Coast selling reefers among my
friends who were on tour with their bands.
I had the New Haven identification. I worked a couple of weeks for other railroads, to get their
identification, and men I was set.
In New York, I rolled and packed a great quantity of sticks, and sealed them into jars. The
identification card worked perfectly. If you persuaded the conductor you were a fellow employee
who had to go home on some family business, he just did the favor for you without a second
thought. Most whites don't give a Negro credit for having sense enough to fool them-or nerve
enough.
I'd turn up in towns where my friends were playing. "Red!" I was an old friend from home. In the
sticks, I was somebody from the Braddock Hotel. "My man!Daddy-o!" And I had Big Apple
reefers. Nobody had ever heard of a traveling reefer peddler.
I followed no particular band. Each band's musicians knew the other bands' one-nighter touring
schedules. When I ran out of supplies, I'd return to New York, and load up, then hit the road
again. Auditoriums or gymnasiums all lighted up, the band's chartered bus outside, the dressed-
up, excited, local dancers pouring in. At the door, I'd announce that I was some bandman's
brother; in most cases they thought I was one of the musicians. Throughout the dance, I'd show
the country folks some plain and fancy lindy-hopping. Sometimes, I'd stay overnight in a town.
Sometimes I'd ride the band's bus to their next stop. Sometimes, back in New York, I would stay
awhile. Things had cooled down. Word was around that I had left town, and the narcotics squad
was satisfied with that. In some of the small towns, people thinking I was with the band even
mobbed me for autographs. Once, in Buffalo, my suit was nearly torn off.
My brother Reginald was waiting for me one day when I pulled into New York. The day before, his
merchant ship had put into port over in New Jersey. Thinking I still worked at Small's, Reginald
had gone there, and the bartenders had directed him to Sammy, who put him up.
It felt good to see my brother. It was hard to believe that he was once the little kid who tagged
after me. Reginald now was almost six feet tall, but still a few inches shorter than me. His
complexion was darker man mine, but he had greenish eyes, and a white streak in his hair, which