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Back The Best of Simple
Chapters (76)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Foreword: Who Is Simple?
  5. Feet Live Their Own Life
  6. Landladies
  7. Simple Prays A Prayer
  8. Conversation on the Corner
  9. Simple on Indian Blood
  10. A Toast to Harlem
  11. Simple and His Sins
  12. Temptation
  13. Wooing the Muse
  14. Vacation
  15. Letting off Steam
  16. Jealousy
  17. Banquet in Honor
  18. A Veteran Falls
  19. High Bed
  20. Final Fear
  21. There Ought to be a Law
  22. Income Tax
  23. No Alternative
  24. Springtime
  25. Last Whipping
  26. Seeing Double
  27. Simple on Military Integration
  28. Blue Evening
  29. A Letter from Baltimore
  30. Seven Rings
  31. What Can a Man Say?
  32. Empty Room
  33. Picture for Her Dresser
  34. Cocktail Sip
  35. Apple Strudel
  36. Bop
  37. Formals and Funerals
  38. Fancy Free
  39. Midsummer Madness
  40. Morals Is Her Middle Name
  41. They Come and They Go
  42. A Million—and One
  43. Two Loving Arms
  44. All in the Family
  45. Kick for Punt
  46. Subway to Jamaica
  47. No Tea for the Fever
  48. Boys, Birds, and Bees
  49. On the Warpath
  50. A Hearty Amen
  51. Must Have a Seal
  52. Shadow of the Blues
  53. Once in a Wife-time
  54. Present for Joyce
  55. Christmas Song
  56. Tied in a Bow
  57. Sometimes I Wonder
  58. Four Rings
  59. Simply Love
  60. Bang-up Big End
  61. Duty Is Not Snooty
  62. Bones, Bombs, Chicken Necks
  63. A Dog Named Trilby
  64. Enter Cousin Minnie
  65. Radioactive Red Caps
  66. Two Sides Not Enough
  67. Puerto Ricans
  68. Minnie Again
  69. Vicious Circle
  70. Again Cousin Minnie
  71. Name in Print
  72. Minnie One More Time
  73. An Auto-Obituary
  74. Jazz, Jive, and Jam
  75. About the Author
  76. Newsletter Sign-up

“What does I do?”

“I say your semantics make things too simple.”

“My which?”

“Your verbiage.”

“My what?”

“Your words, man, your words.”

“Oh,” said Simple. “Well, anyhow, to get back to eggs—which is a simple word. For breakfast I wish some other birds besides chickens laid eggs for eating, with a different kind of flavor than just a hen flavor. Whatever you are talking about with your see-antics, Jack, at my age a man gets tired of the same kind of eggs each and every day—just like you get tired of the race problem. I would like to have an egg some morning that tastes like a pork chop.”

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“In that case, why don’t you have pork chops for breakfast instead of eggs?”

“Because there is never no pork chops in my icebox in the morning.”

“There would be if you would put them there the night before.”

“No,” said Simple, “I would eat them up the night before—which is always the trouble with the morning after—you have practically nothing left from the night before—except the race problem.”

Puerto Ricans

Puerto Ricans

I WAS rushing past the newsstand at 125th and Lenox on the way to work this morning when I bought a comic book to read in the subway. When I got on the train and opened it, that book were in some kind of foreign language. I said to the guy beside me, “What’s this?”

He said, “Español!”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Spanish—for Puerto Ricans.”

I said, “Puerto Ricans? Are you one?”

He said, “Sí, are you one, too?”

I said, “I am not! I am just plain old American.”

He said, “You—Negro American.”

I said, “You look just like me, don’t you? Who’s the darkest, me or you?”

He said, “You, darkest.”

I said, “I admit I have an edge on almost anybody. But you are colored, too, daddy-o, don’t forget, Puerto Rican or not.”

He said, “In my country, no.”

“In my country, yes,” I said. “Here in the U.S.A. you, me—all colored folks—are colored.”

He said, “No entiendo. Don’t understand.”

I said, “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t understand color either if I could talk Spanish. Here, take this comic book in your language which, me—no entiendo.”