MEMPHIS: Ain’t nothing to do. Unless I do like West and go into the undertaking business. I can’t go out there in Squirrel Hill and open up a restaurant. Ain’t nothing gonna be left around here. Supermarket gone. Two drugstores. The five and ten. Doctor done moved out. Dentist done moved out. Shoe store gone. Ain’t nothing gonna be left but these niggers killing one another. That don’t never go out of style. West gonna get richer and everybody else gonna get poorer. At one time you couldn’t get a seat in here. Had the jukebox working and everything. Time somebody get up somebody sit down before they could get out the door. People coming from everywhere. Everybody got to eat and everybody got to sleep. Some people don’t have stoves. Some people don’t have nobody to cook for them. Men whose wives done died and left them. Cook for them thirty years and lay down and die. Who’s gonna cook for them now? Somebody got to do it. I order four cases of chicken on Friday and Sunday it’s gone. Fry it up. Make a stew. Boil it. Add some dumplings. You couldn’t charge more than a dollar. But then you didn’t have to. It didn’t cost you but a quarter. People used to come from all over. The man used to come twice a week to collect the jukebox. He making more money than I am. He pay seventy-five cents for the record and he make two hundred dollars off it. If it’s a big hit he’s liable to make four hundred. The record will take all the quarters you can give it. It don’t never wear out. The chicken be gone by Sunday. It ain’t nothing like that now. I’m lucky if I go through a case a chicken a week. That’s alright. I’ll take that. I ain’t greedy. But if they wanna tear it down they gonna have to meet my price.

WOLF: They ought to give you a good price. That’s what I hear . . .  when the city buy something they give you a good price.

MEMPHIS: They give white folks a good price. Most time that be who they buying it from. Well, they gonna give me just like they give them. I bought it eight years ago for fifty-five hundred dollars and I ain’t taking a penny less than twenty-five thousand.

WOLF: You ought to be able to get that.