Viewing page 98 of 102

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

28

[[underlined]] Parade Street Tavern [[underlined]]--I think this was the name. It was a beer joint where Bill Hamilton, who was a great beer fancierand looked it, weighing about 250, liked to stop on the way downtown from the plant and put away a few steins of foaming draft beer. It was a plain place but new and clean and unusually quite deserted. I preferred the City Club.

[[underlined]] "The Partition Place" [[underlined]]--I call it this because I can't remember the name but it was on the second floor on State between 11th and 12th on the west side of the street and Maurice Guynes and I had an amusing incident there one night after putting Bill Hamilton on the train. Maurice loved to roam a little on such occasions as I've recounted and he took me upstairs to this dive--and it was a DIVE. It was separated entirely into curtained booths. Maurice and I got seated in a booth and had a beer and Maurice, characteristically on such occasiona, began to design verbally a combination steam-turbine and 11,000 volt AC trolley locomotive for the New Haven, about as nutty a concept as possible, but Maurice warmed to his inspiration under the influence of the beer. He was talking pretty loud and suddenly I had a feeling we were being watched and I looked up at the top of the partition which constituted the back of Maurice's seat. Seeing me do this, Maurice turned his head around and looked up at the spot I was looking at. And there was the face of probably the toughest-looking female that I've ever beheld, looking over the partition and down at us. As Maurice looked up, she looked him square in the eye and said just one word--"Bullshit!" Then she disappeared. I told Bill Hamilton this story and ever after, whenever Maurice would get going with Bill on some wild idea, Bill would say, "Now, Maurice. Just don't forget the voice over the partition."

[[underlined]] Tanner Club [[underlined]]--This was the dive frequented by the Illinois Central boys. It was in a second-story loft in an ancient red-brick manufacturing building at 4th and State. It was huge, barren, plain, cheap and coarse--and usually full of a crowd of working people drinking a lot of beer and spirits. It was noisy and there was always lots of action and that's what a lot of people liked about it but it never appealed to me. The Erie Club was at one end of the spectrum and the Tanner Club not far from the other and at the time, at least, I liked the City Club which was in between but nearer the Erie Club level. When I went to the Tanner Club as well as a few others in that general class, I left feeling depressed, even a bit morbid. 

[[underlined]] Haven Club [[underlined]]--This was a black night club just off State on East 14th. White people went there for the novelty and the feeling of really "slumming." All the help was black. I think there was a small band and dancing and it was a tough place. I think I went there twice total.