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ISBN 0684834715
Non Fiction
At every stop people got on board, and Willie saw
countless replays of his own leaving of home, young men - it was almost
always young men - saying good-bye to their families. By the time they
crossed the state line the car was full, and Willie thought himself a
veteran. Already he had begun to see a difference between those going North
for the first time - the hicks, the country boys, dowdy in their simple
Sunday suits compared with older men who had, Willie guessed, lived in
Chicago and wore a peacock finery. It made him nervous.
He slept for a while, but kept waking, his mind filled
with the things Taylor and others had told him, of life in the big city, and
the traps that awaited a young man there, and the wonders. He made a mental
list of the places he would visit- the shops on Forty-seventh Street, the
Regal Theater, with its movies and live shows, and the Savoy Ballroom. What
amazed him, and comforted him most, was that all these places were black. He
tried to be sophisticated, but the country kept breaking through. |
