“So I could think with one, and let the other one rest, man, that’s why. I am tired of trying to figure out how to get ahead in this world. If I had two brains, I could think with one brain while the other brain was asleep. I could plan with one while the other brain was drunk. I could think about the Dodgers with one, and my future with the other. As it is now, there is too much in this world for one brain to take care of alone. I have thought so much with my one brain that it is about wore out. In fact, I need a rest right now. So let’s drink up and talk about something pleasant. Two beers are on me tonight. Draw up to the bar.”

“I was just at the bar,” I said, “and Tony has nothing but bottles tonight, no draft.”

“Then, daddy-o, they’re on you,” said Simple. “I only got two dimes—and one of them is a Roosevelt dime I do not wish to spend. Had I been thinking, I would have remembered that Roosevelt dime. When I get my other brain, it will keep track of all such details.”

Simple on Military Integration

Simple on Military Integration

“NOW, the way I understand it,” said Simple one Monday evening when the bar was nearly empty and the juke box silent, “it’s been written down a long time ago that all men are borned equal and everybody is entitled to life and liberty while pursuing happiness. It’s in the Constitution, also Declaration of Independence, so I do not see why it has to be resolved all over again.”

“Who is resolving it all over?” I asked.

“Some white church convention—I read in the papers where they have resolved all that over and the Golden Rule, too, also that Negroes should be treated right. It looks like to me white folks better stop resolving and get to doing. They have resolved enough. Resolving ain’t solving.”

“What do you propose that they do?”

“The white race has got a double duty to us,” said Simple. “They ought to start treating us right. They also ought to make up for how bad they have treated us in the past.”

“You can’t blame anybody for history,” I said.

“No,” said Simple, “but you can blame folks if they don’t do something about history! History was yesterday, times gone. Yes. But now that colored folks are willing to let bygones be bygones, this ain’t no time to be Jim Crowing nobody. This is a new day.”

“Maybe that is why they are resolving to do better,” I said.

“I keep telling you, it has come time to stop resolving!” said Simple. “They have been resolving for two hundred years. I do not see how come they need to resolve any more. I say, they need to solve.”

“How?”