“You should never of sold Everett Day that land for them whorehouses,” Annadel would say. “I dont like my younguns growin up around that.”

“What you want me to do, keep all the land to myself, tell everybody when they can go take a crap on it, like them coal operators do?”

Truth was, Ermel was into politics even back then. The coal operators controlled the Republican Party and held all the local offices at that time. But through business connections, Ermel knew every bootlegger in the area and had already got himself on the county Democrat committee. He seen the Alhambra and the whorehouses as a way of saving the county from the Republicans.

I wasn’t happy with what he was doing. I wished he would have kept on farming his land. Of course if he had, I wouldn’t have no drugstore, nor money saved up. I wouldn’t have no icebox nor electric nor water inside my house. It keeps me awake at night wondering if I done sold my soul for them things.

I tried to forbid Rondal going to the Alhambra with Isom. But Ermel took it like I hurt his feelings, so I shut up about it. Ermel has been good to me. So I just told Rondal no drinking. He said sometimes Sam Gore, the bartender, slipped them whiskey watered down. I whipped him for it and went to talk to Sam. Sam promised he’d stop it, and keep an eye on Rondal, too. I felt better then, because Sam is a man to trust, not like a lot of white men I know.

They’s a lots of Negroes in Annadel, and I like about most of them. The Jim Crow don’t go here. Ermel ain’t happy about it, but he admits that colored people’s money spends just as good as white people’s. And he’ll say, “It’s a hell of a lot easier to deal with a nigger than a damn dago. At least a nigger speaks English.”

I was scairt of the Negroes at first. It was something different. Then Doc Booker come on the city council with me. One night we got drunk together after a meeting and Doc started cussing the coal companies. After that we got on just fine.

Doc told me a lot about history that I didn’t know. The Negroes, they been kicked around. They know what it is. The white man, he’s a little slow to learn. You got to kick him about ten times solid, till his teeth is all knocked out and his balls is black and blue, before he catches on that he’s been whupped.