Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

892 maybe we must have had kind of a feeling that things was going to happen like they did happen or we wouldn’t have been talk- ing the way we did that night about going back and being a hick again or not going back and being a hick again. It was fate, that’s what I think. Just fate! We went on the road for a couple of weeks, and then we come into New York, and it was just like we had thought it was going to be. Honest, the only time I ever get a chance to stay on Broadway for more than two weeks is when I’m out of work and looking for a job. If the managers only knew what tough luck I got they would pay me big money just never to get a job with one of their shows. Honest, I bet if Belasco would give me a contract something would happen to him and he would have to go out and do the one-night stands or run a stock company in the sticks or something like that if he ever got me in a show of his. If I ever got in a show that would stay in town more than two weeks I bet somebody would make a law against Broadway and shut it up. So we played in town for a couple of weeks, and then we went out on the road and played everything but schoolhouses. You know sometimes you get talking with a girl who is a waitress or a manicure or something like that, and she finds out how you’re in the profession and she says she would like to go on the stage because it must be such fun! If any of those people that think it’s such fun had been with us on that trip of one-night stands in the tanks, and split weeks in the places that are too big to be little towns and ain’t big enough to be cities yet, I bet every time they’d see a finger nail or a dish of ham and eggs they’d feel like jumping in the river because they’d give up good jobs to be bum troupers. It was one of these shows where the manager’s wife was in the cast, and if you know anything about shows and managers and wives, you know that after you been in one of them you wonder why people make such a fuss about a little thing like a world war or something like that. Every- body was mad at everybody else and al- ways trying to get somebody fired. The ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. manager wouldn’t talk to any of the men, except to call them down, because he was jealous of them, and his wife wouldn’t talk to any of the girls for the same reason only the other way arcund. His wife didn’t dare to talk to none of the men, because if she did, then the big stiff would beat her up, and the manager himself, he was scared to talk to any of the girls except to cail them down, because if his wife caught him at it he would be out of luck. Why, hon- est, it was so bad between them two that she would get mad if he talked to the ward- robe woman, and you won’t believe this, but it’s a fact, he would even get jealous if she talked to the chorus men. Me and Marie got along pretty well be- cause we roomed together all the time and we didn’t fight with each other much, and when either of us had a fight with anybody else we'd always fight them together. So we didn’t fight much, because the rest of the people in the show didn’t like to pick on us alone, and none of them was ever good friends enough so two of them could get together and pick on us. So we got along pretty well. And all the time Marie was making a roar about wanting to go back and live in one of them little hick towns like one of them she come from. T says to her: “ Listen, we don’t have to go back,” I says. ‘“‘ We’re in ’em now,” I says. ‘ Ain’t it bad enough playing these tanks without having to live in ’em?” She says living in ’em was different. She says when you play in ’em you don’t get to know the nice people and don’t know noth- ing about the homes or nothing like that. She says only the hotels and the theaters is bad. She says when you get to know them hicks in little tanks like that they’re fine people. She says they’re good hearted, and have lots of fun, and don’t ever talk mean about each other or fight or anything. She says it’s all jake. So, by and by we come to one little town in one of them flat States that you come to just before you get up to where you can see the mountains going West. I forget the name of it. I don’t mean I forget the name of the town, it was the name of the State, Anyhow, it was one of them States CoOmiclooolxs (CO)