Coming Through Slaughter [antikvár]

His geography. Float by in a car today and see the corner shops. The signs of the owners obUterated by brand names. Tassin's Food Store which he lived opposite for a time surrounded byDRiNKcocA cola in bottles", BARG'S, Or laura LEE's tavern, the signs speckled in the sun, tom moore, Yellowstone, jax, coca cola, coca cola, primary yellows and reds muted now against the white horizontal sheet wood walls. This district, the homes and stores, are a mile or so from the streets made marble by jazz. There are no songs about Gravier Street or Phillips or First or The Mount Ararat Missionary Baptist Church his mother lived next door to, just the names of the streets written vertically on the telephone poles or the letters sunk into pavement that you walk over, gravier. A bit too stylish for the wooden houses almost falling down, the signs the porches and the steps broken through where no one sits outside now. It is further away that you find Rampart Street, then higher up Basin Street, then one block higher Franklin. But here there is little recorded history, though tales of 'The Swamp' and 'Smoky Row', both notorious communities where about loo black prostitutes from pre-puberty to their sevendes would line the banquette to hustle, come down to us in fragments. Here the famous whore Bricktop Jackson carried a 15 inch knife and her lover John Miller had no left arm and wore a chain with an iron ball on the end to replace it - killed by Bricktop herself on December 7, 1861, because of his 'bestial habits and ferocious manners'. And here 'One-legged Duffy' (born Mary Rich) was stabbed by her boyfriend and had her