“I have been baptized,” said Simple, “also anointed with oil. When I were a child I come through at the mourners’ bench. I was converted. I have listened to Daddy Grace and et with Father Divine, moaned with Elder Lawson and prayed with Adam Powell. Also I have been to the Episcopalians with Joyce. But if a snake were to come up to me and offer me an apple, I would say, ‘Varmint, be on your way! No fruit today! Bud, you got the wrong stud now, so get along somehow, be off down the road because you’re lower than a toad!’ Then that serpent would respect me as a wise man—and this world would not be where it is—all on account of an apple. That apple has turned into an atom now.”

“To hear you talk, if you had been in the Garden of Eden, the world would still be a Paradise,” I said. “Man would not have fallen into sin.”

“Not this man,” said Simple. “I would have stayed in that garden making grape wine, singing like Crosby, and feeling fine! I would not be scuffling out in this rough world, neither would I be in Harlem. If I was Adam I would just stay in Eden in that garden with no rent to pay, no landladies to dodge, no time clock to punch—and my picture on a Sunday school card. I’d be a real gone guy even if I didn’t have but one name—Adam—and no initials.”

“You would be real gone all right. But you were not there. So, my dear fellow, I trust you will not let your rather late arrival on our contemporary stage distort your perspective.”

“No,” said Simple.

Wooing the Muse

Wooing the Muse

“HEY, now!” said Simple one hot Monday evening. “Man, I had a fine week end.”

“What did you do?”

“Me and Joyce went to Orchard Beach.”

“Good bathing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t take a bath. I don’t take to cold water.”

“What did you do then, just lie in the sun?”

“I did not,” said Simple. “I don’t like violent rays tampering with my complexion. I just laid back in the shade while Joyce sported on the beach wetting her toes to show off her pretty white bathing suit.”

“In other words, you relaxed.”

“Relaxed is right,” said Simple. “I had myself a great big nice cool quart of beer so I just laid back in the shade and relaxed. I also wrote myself some poetries.”

“Poetry!” I said.

“Yes,” said Simple. “Want to hear it?”

“Indeed I do.”

“I will read you Number One. Here it is:

Sitting under the trees

With the birds and the bees

Watching the girls go by.

How do you like it?”

“Is that all?”

“That’s enough!” said Simple.

“You ought to have another rhyme,” I said. “By ought to rhyme with sky or something.”