Strivers Row (72 page)

He ignored them, standing in the very back of the car, with its glassed-in open roof, and three-quarter walls. Watching the sun go down over the top of the woods, and the marshes and bogs of the South Shore of Massachusetts. Watching the birds roosting by the hundreds in the slowly darkening summer trees, knowing that they would be cawing away raucously to each other until the last light of the day.

There was another indignant rustle of paper behind him, a stomp of feet and the scent of a cheap cigar leaving, and Malcolm settled himself down in the last seat of the car. Breathing deeply and contentedly, as if he could actually inhale the rapidly cooling, late summer evening air through the train glass. His body still feeling limp and exhausted, but at peace for the first time in days now.

After his narrow escape from the cop on the night of the riot, he had gone back to the St. Nicholas Hotel, and slept almost nonstop for the next two days. Then he had gone down to Pennsylvania Station and used his free trainman's pass to get on the first train he could out of town. Taking a taxi all the way down, keeping his head low just in case anyone was still looking for him. Deciding to head back up to Boston for a little while, at least until he could sort everything out. Sure that Jarvis would let him stay with them until he got himself situated again, feeling the first, awakened desires of new hope, new ambitions, the wish to see old friends and even his step-sister, Ella, again.

In the meantime he sat in the last seat of the observation car, heading north, and watched the land slide gently into darkness behind him. The last evening light making him think about Michigan, and how it looked and felt when he was outside with night coming on, delivering his newspapers, or making his way back home. He thought about his brothers and sisters, then, and his father, and even his mother, in the hospital in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo. Seeing all of their faces in the brilliant gold and purple rays of the sun setting behind the tree line to the west. And emblazoned there above them all, he could see the kindly face of the Prophet, Elijah Muhammad, who had first told him that he was certain to fall.

He shielded his eyes from the image, from the last, piercing rays of the setting sun. Still not certain how much he wanted to see of it—still thinking more of what hustles he could pull with Jarvis up in Boston, of girls and cars, and big money, and doing what he liked. Yet knowing now, as he peered into the fading summer sunlight, that he was surely moving toward his own glorious destiny.

A GLOSSARY OF NAMES, WORDS, AND EXPRESSIONS

Many of the expressions defined here came from the Harlem jive of the day, and for them I am indebted to the
Amsterdam News
's tireless Dan Burley. Burley must have worked without ceasing in the 1940s, turning out not only weekly columns on entertainment, society, and sports, but also serious pieces of reporting on racial injustices, and the mistreatment of black workers and soldiers around the country...and ongoing, joyous accounts of the latest developments in Harlem's ever-evolving, hep argot.

It should be remembered that jive was not, of course, the regular, everyday language of Harlem. It was, instead, the selective language of self-styled hipsters—club denizens and jazz musicians, gangsters and glamour girls, and all the wannabes—and even then, was spoken at most times with considerable irony and playfulness. Nonetheless, it is astonishing to see how long jive's legacy has been; how many of its expressions and turns of phrase have lasted, influencing what was thought to be the fresh patter of both the 1960s and hip-hop nation.

Not all of the expressions below are from jive, of course. Others have roots even further back in African-American, Caribbean, and African history, or are the professional verbiage of trainmen, musicians, cops, robbers, and others; or they are simply general, New York slang of the 1940s. I have included as well the names of a few individuals who have passed from the public consciousness—often with good reason. Readers should keep in mind that some expressions had different meanings in different places.

ABC
BOYS
: Inspectors from the state liquor board, or “Alcoholic Beverages Commission (or Control).”

BALLING
: Partying.

BEALE
STREET
: In Harlem, an area of cheap, often after-hours bars and music joints along West 133rd Street. After the famous Memphis street.

BEAT
UP
MY
GUMS
: Talk all about.

BEG
: A pittance; a handout.

BILBO
: Theodore Bilbo, a noxious, aggressively racist, populist senator from Mississippi.

BLUE
: Police.

BOOTED
TO
THE
PLAY
: To be hip, understand what's going on.

BUFFET
FLAT
: A whorehouse.

BULLS
: Police.

BULVAN
: Yiddish, for “oaf.”

BUNKER
HILL
APPLE
: Boston, in jazz vernacular, just as New York was the Big Apple, Chicago the Windy Apple, etc.

BUST
DOWN
: Get high.

BUST
SUDS
: Wash dishes.

BUTTERFLIES
: Homosexuals, transvestites.

CALKEENER
BROADS
: Live-in domestics.

CANNON
: Broadway.

CAPONS
: Homosexuals.

CHACHEM
: Yiddish, for “wise guy.”

CHAISERIM
: Yiddish, for “swine.”

CHALK
CHICKS
: White women.

CHEESE
AN
'
CRACKERS
,
JACK
!: An exclamation, as in “Good grief !”

CHIPPIES
: Women, usually loose.

CHOLLY
HOSS
: For “Charlie Horse,” a way of saying “buddy,” or “homeboy.”

COLLAR
SOME
WINKS
: Go to sleep.

COLUMBUS
HILL
: The area near the current site of Lincoln Center, from 57th to 64th Streets on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Soon after large numbers of African Americans settled there in the late nineteenth century, it was popularly called “San Juan Hill,” for the constant assaults on the area's blacks by local Irish Americans and other whites.

COMING
ON
THAT
TAB
: Falling for something, or going along with something.

CONK
YOU
UP
: In this context, not the agonizing hair-straightening process, but a threat to knock one silly.

COP
A
SQUAT
: Take a seat.

COP
A
TROT
: Take a walk.

DEAD
-
BEAT
FOR
SHUT
-
EYE
: Wanting to sleep.

DICTY
NIGGERS
: Blacks who try to imitate white people, or act as if they're above other blacks.

DOPE
: In this context, and capitalized, trainman lingo for the B&O Railroad.

DOUBLE
BUMPERS
: Bottom. Or breasts.

DRACULA
: A fine-looking woman.

DRAPE
: A suit.

DRIVING
ME
A
NAIL
: Telling me a story.

FAUST
: A beautiful woman.

FIGGER
: Percentage; the payoff a cop would get in protection money.

FINE
AS
AN
OCEAN
GULL
: A fine-looking white woman.

FINE
AS
THINE
: Doing well.

FINE
CARSTAIRS
: Fine stuff, often used for a good-looking woman.

FINIFF
: A five-dollar bill.

FOUR
HORSEMEN
: Four notoriously tough, no-nonsense black cops in Harlem, as per
The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

FRAILS
: Women.

GAGE
: Marijuana.

GAT
: Gun.

GATE
: In this context, a friend. Can also be a gun.

GLAMOUR
GIRLS
: Good-time, party girls, particularly during World War II.

GONIFFS
: Yiddish, for “thieves.”

GOYIM
: Yiddish, for “gentiles.”

GRAYS
: Whites.

GUNNING
HER
RAY
: Looking over.

GUNNING
THE
HENS
: Checking out the women.

HARD
-
HITTING
GRAY
: Good-looking white woman. “
HE
SURE
CAN
READ
OUT
OF
HIS
HAND
”: An expression used to express admiration for an inspiring sermon in a black church. It has its origins in slave days, when the first black ministers—not officially allowed to read, or own a book—would hold up their hand to symbolize a Bible, and give a sermon based on what they had heard and memorized from white services, and/or their own thoughts.

HEAVY
ON
ALL
FRONTS
: A lot of trouble.

HEN
: Woman.

HICKORY
STICK
: A twenty-dollar bill, for Andrew Jackson, or “Old Hickory.”

HIPPED
TO
THE
PLAY
: Aware of what's going on.

HOME
FROM
ROME
: A variation on “homeboy.” See also “Home from Nome.”

HOOF
RIFFS
: Dancing.

HOT
ICE
: Stolen jewelry. “
HOW
'
BOOT
THAT
?”: “How about that?”

HURRICANE
BLIZZARD
: Something extraordinary, usually a beautiful woman.

HURTIG
&
SEAMON
'
S
: Old name of the Apollo Theatre in the days before there was a large black community in Harlem—and when blacks were still not allowed inside.

INDOOR
AVIATOR
: Elevator operator.

IORIANS
: Trinidadians. Like most Harlem blacks who hailed from the West Indies, they were considered to be overly proud and obnoxious by other African Americans. Islanders, on the other hand, traditionally considered themselves to be harder working and more ambitious than American blacks, and were proud of having been out of slavery for a longer period of time.

ISSUE
: A uniform, or “government issue.”

JERSEY
SIDE
: Rhyming slang for “inside.”

JUMPING
SALTY
: Fly off the handle.

KILLER
DILLER
: A very sharp suit, usually a zoot suit.

KING
KONG
: Corn liquor.

KISCA
: Marijuana.

KITCHEN
: The back of a black woman's hair.

KITCHEN
MECHANIC
: Euphemism for a cook, or dishwasher.

KNOCKING
BONES
: Playing dice.

KNOCKING
HIS
GUMS
: Spouting off.

KNOCK
A
STROLL
: Take a walk.

KNOCK
ME
A
SHORTIE
: Pour me a drink.

KNOCKING
YOUR
TRILLY
: Walking yourself.

LID
: Hat, or head.

LIGHT
AND
BRIGHT
AND
DAMN
NEAR
WHITE
: In good with someone.

MAIN
STEM
: 125th Street, or any main drag.

MAKING
A
FLASH
: Making a splash.

MAMMY
DODGERS
: Men.

MANGLES
: The metal storefront guards, pulled down at night (or in moments of danger) over shop windows and doors in New York, and many other cities.

MELLOW
AS
A
CELLO
,
RIPPIN
'
AN
'
ROMPIN
',
TRIPPIN
'
AN
'
STOMPIN
': Doing all right.

MEZZROLL
: A particularly long, thick joint, after the jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow.

“
MR
.
HIGH
POCKETS
”: “Mr. Big Stuff,” or a hotshot.

MR
.
SAMUEL
D
.
HOME
: A variation on “homeboy.”

NARROWBACK
: An Irishman, and usually a workingman.

OFAY
: A derogatory term for white people. Commonly thought to come from Pig Latin for “foe,” its origin probably goes back to Africa, possibly to the Ibibio word “afia,” for “white or light-colored,” or the Yoruba “ofe,” a word that was said to protect one from danger.

OIL
UP
YOUR
HEAD
FOR
YOU
: Hit you upside the head.

OLD
SETTLER
: An old woman; usually a derisive expression.

OLE
AVENUE
TRIPE
: Nonsense.

ORK
: Short for “orchestra.”

PENNSY
: The Pennsylvania Railroad.

PLAYING
YOU
14
TH
STREET
: Playing you cheap, 14th Street being known for its cheap and second-rate stores.

PONIES
: In this context, the railroad.

PUNIM
: Yiddish, for “face.”

PUT
THE
TWISTERS
TO
THE
HAMMERS
: Turn the knobs and open the doors.

RANKIN
: John Rankin, a notoriously racist congressman from Mississippi.

REECHEOUS
: Variation on “righteous.”

REET
: Variation on “right,” or “righteous.”

RENT
PARTY
: A longtime Harlem device to raise the rent money, by throwing a party to which all comers would be charged a small admission. By the 1940s, such house parties sometimes turned into venues where perhaps the greatest jazz in the world was played, with top musicians coming up after their gigs to join in ruthless competitions against each other.

RIGHTEOUS
PEG
: Good-looking suit.

RUGGIN
': Flipping out.

SALTY
: Mean, grouchy.

SAN
JUAN
HILL
: The area on Manhattan's Upper West Side between 57th and 64th Streets, near where Lincoln Center stands now.

It was the next stop on the long black march uptown after the Tenderloin, and the one just before Harlem. See “Columbus Hill.”

SCHOOL
: Teach.

SHORT
: In this context, a car, which “shortens” the time between any two points.

SHORTIE
: A small drink.

SLAVE
: A job.

SLICING
YOUR
CHOPS
: Running your mouth.

SLICING
YOUR
GUMS
: Ditto.

SNITCHPADS
: Newspapers.

SOFTY
: Pillow, or bed.

SOLID
: Great, fine.

SPLIT
THE
HAMMER
: Open the door.

SQUARE
SHUFFLER
: An honest person, but more likely someone with a dreary, workaday job and a humdrum existence.