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don't you recognize me!" He said, "My God, kid, you are in bad shape. Here, take haft of what I've got - forty cents - and get a bite to eat. I'll see a cheaper show."
My little buddy Reynolds, had walked on to meet his friend at the hotel and I walked back to the Old Barrel House and ordered a bowl of chili for twenty cents and a cup of coffee. I really must have looked scrubby with a five-day growth of beard and an overcoat soiled from using it as a sleeping bag. The Barrel House had been a famous old bar, now converted into a buffet and coffee house. I sat down at one of the wooden tables and ate the chili and all the bread. A waiter appeared and asked me what kind of pie I desired. I thanked him but declined. "But you don't understand, he said, that young man over there invites you to have a piece of pie and another cup of coffee." I was delighted with this turn of events and I looked over toward my new friend and nodded appreciation. When my benefactor got up to leave, I stood up, introduced myself to him, and promised to visit him at his place of employment, the Matson Steamship Company, when I got on my feet. (Later I did call on him and learned that we were prep school fraternity brothers and that there was a Phi Lambda Epsilon chapter in San Francisco where I had many a good time.)
Just as I stepped out of the Barrel House, I saw Butch get off the Oak Street trolley car. He loaned me two dollars and, while I got a hair cut and shave, he tried his hand at cleaning up my overcoat. Butch and Alice had a three-room apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Park. After Butch helped me wash my head and bathe, they put me up in the living room. I slept on a Murphy bed and that night I dreamed some Railroad Company Bull had locked me up in a reefer and when I awoke I was standing on a chair feeling the wall and ceiling for a way out. What a nightmare! Next day we went down to the steamship office and got my pay check, then over to the express office to pick up my suitcase. Butch and Alice were very good to me and agreed to give me room and board for thirty-five dollars per month, which was the amount of their rent.
I reported to a doctor in San Francisco recommended to me by Dr. Goffin. About a month later he took the cast off my shoulder and pronounced me fit. The first job we had in Frisco was building
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a fence for Butch's sister who also lived there. Butch was a fine mechanic and a diligent worker, but he did not have the type of personality to sell one's self to an employer, especially on the west coast. In California the "Native Sons of the Golden West" were very active, their primary objective being to see that people from the east were denied jobs! By now Butch and Alice had been in Frisco nearly six months and their stake was getting low. I suggested that we each take a side of the street in the business district and pound a few doors in search of jobs. On the third day I landed a job building forms on a four-story building. I bought a carpenter box, saw, hammer, level, square, and chalk line in a hock shop and went to work the next morning. On the third day the foreman asked me where I said I was from. When I answered "Down South", he added You mean East don't you?" I told him I was from Mississippi. He laughed, "When you said down south, I thought you were from southern California. I ought to let you go, but you are such a damn good worker I've got to keep you." We topped the job out in three weeks.
A week later, the foreman called me for his next job, but by then I was working for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company as a receiving clerk, courtesy of the business agent of the International Seaman's Union. I had three men in my unloading crew - a tall blonde man who was dying of stomach cancer, a Bolivian in the diplomatic service of his country with permission to remain in the States an extra year in order to learn English, and a University of California football player named Johnson, a blonde giant who was pushing a hand-truck to keep in shape. I ate lunch with them each day and one day I happened to mention that my buddy had been unable to find a job. Johnson asked if he could operate a winch. I said, "Hell, he can build one!" He then told me that his brother was business agent for the Teamsters. "Tell your buddy to come to work in the morning," he added. That night at supper, I broke the good news to Butch and Alice. Butch became a little upset because he thought I was kidding, which could be expected after six months without work of any consequence.
Next morning Butch dressed for work, Alice fixed two lunches, and we set off for work. After four or five years on that job. Butch saved enough money to move back to Mississippi City with Alice
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