The Wisdom of a Buffoon

Ever since the night the Ku Klux Klan lynched his father and his mother disappeared during the confusion, 15-year-old Bartholomew Buford had been fending for himself. At first he traveled the Jim Crow South taking any odd job he could find. But after a while he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and join a minstrel show. Like his father before him, the slight-built boy, B. B. as he was called, was a natural when it came to singing, tap dance shuffling and acting like a lazy ignorant buffoon.

After all, he'd watched his father perform in black face since he was a small tike and had begun to imitate him at an early age. He'd also heard all of his father's tales--of tragedy and reward-about his past travels and adventures. The one story he told most often was about when he'd initially begun working the minstrel circuit. Hired by a so-called medicine man, he joined a four-man and two women troupe of blacks. Their antics attracted customers to buy the sleazy man's snake-oil products, which had absolutely no medicinal value. That first touring job, however, ended when an angry mob tarred and feathered the medicine man and ran him out of town.

"The rest of us were lucky to get out of there with our skin intact." His father laughed with each retelling.

As B. B. was soon to experience himself, minstrel shows were always breaking up for one reason or another. Therefore, B. B. often found himself looking for a new traveling show to join or more odd jobs to feed himself. But when the spring of 1920 rolled around, two years after he'd been on his own, he teamed up with Willie Packer near Tupelo, Mississippi. Although the two worked alone, they drew large crowds in all of the small towns where they performed, billing themselves as Jam and Molasses.

Gray-haired and whiskered, old man Willie, who was at least fifty years old, was Jam--a one-man band, playing a banjo, a harmonica, two small drums, cymbals, a tambourine and bells--all at the same time. He was also the straight-man in their comedy routine. B. B., billed as Molasses, in a rehearsed slow-witted fashion, sang their comedic tunes, as he shuffled through tap dancing routines and drew laughs with his cleverly paced buffoonery. As he often complained as part of their act--wiping his forehead of imaginary sweat whenever it was too cool for him to really sweat, "Dis dancin' sho' nuff harder den stealing chickens is."

Furthermore, one of their shuffling dance routine songs, which celebrated stealing chickens, had a chorus that went:

Ah sees a plump chicken in de coop
So ah steals it for de pot
Now some folks likes dere's cold
But ahs gots ta has mines hot.
Yez-siree... ahs gots to has mines hot.

Most of the time they earned enough from the white town folk they performed for to feed themselves adequately. But there were often times when stealing chickens did become a necessity. They accepted the need as a risk no greater than they experienced every day by merely being born with black skin. At the time, the Ku Klux Klan was more active than ever because there were so many Negro soldiers returning from duty in World War I, who had the misguided belief that they should be treated with more respect than they'd been shown before going off to serve their country. The KKK, however, took it upon themselves to dispel that notion.

So getting out of the South was B. B. and Willie's main ambition. They dreamed of making it up North to New York City, certain that stardom on the many theatrical stages there awaited them. Nevertheless, they knew they could not go strutting into Harlem dressed like ragamuffins and expect to be treated as show business royalty.

Consequently, they had to accept their present fate, wandering from one small town to the next, saving every spare penny they could put aside in pursuit of their train passage North. Further complicating matters, Negroes were sometimes ordered at gun-point to get off any train heading out of the South. A growing lack of blacks to fulfill the needed workforce was at issue.

Finding a place to bed down each night was also a challenge. When they were unable to find accommodations in black boarding houses, they camped outside or slept in private dwellings. However, the dirt-poor blacks in most regions were extremely suspicious of traveling minstrels and reluctant to open up their homes to B. B. and Willie, fearing their few possessions of value might vanish under the cover of darkness.

One hot summer night, as they camped by a creek somewhere on the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas, Willie Packer waxed poetic about their future.

"I hear tells there's this organization that puts folks like us to work on a full time basis. They call it the Theater Owners' Booking Association. I heard they put together bookings for theaters, carnivals, circuses and tent shows all over the country. W.C. Handy told me 'bout them a long time ago. If we get lucky 'nough to hook up with them, who knows...Hollywood might even come callin' on us. Imagine Jam and Molasses starrin' in those motion-pictures they make out West. 'Cause lots of them now has race acts showin' in them...stars, like Bert Williams and Noble Johnson. Seems white folks jus' can't get enough of shines like us when it comes to bein'properlyentertained."

"As my father used to say," B. B. picked up the theme, "'The white man will always love seein' blacks actin' the fool. It helps them support the notion that they really are superior," B. B. mused. "But as long as they keep shelling out the dough, I'll act a fool for them any ol' time."

"You said a mouthful there, young fella." Willie responded with a hearty chuckle. "But I sure wouldn't want to be the one to dare tell the world that."

While Willie went on glowingly speaking about New York and Hollywood, B. B. cupped his head in his hands and gazed up at the bright flickering stars and the dancing fireflies that fluttered on the night air. The natural beauty of the sight made it easier for him to allow himself to believe what his partner was saying to be true. It was also talk he'd heard from his father.

And much as his heart sometimes ached when he thought about his past life--as far back as being a small child--and he wondered what had become of his mother, he was determined to make his show business career a big success. For the life of domestic or outdoor servitude was exactly the day-to-day routine his parents had dared to avoid. Working the odd jobs he'd done, when he'd first found himself without their support had educated B. B. as to why they'd felt as strongly as they did. Doing back-breaking labor from sunup to sundown held no appeal for them or B. B. Far better, he thought, to play the role of the shiftless and stoop shouldered blackened-face buffoon than accept that kind of dead-end fate. At least he could dream about being a real star, wallowing in riches, and only stealing chickens in song.

Willie was still talking when B. B. feel asleep.

The next morning shortly after dawn, he felt a foot being nudged and woke to find himself staring into the double-barrels of a shotgun. The big red-faced man, shouldering the weapon, spoke gruffly.

"Wake up coon!"

B. B. shook his head, hoping he was in the middle of a nightmare. But seeing Willie, cowering bugged-eyed on his knees with both hands clasped behind his head, snapped B. B. fully awake. He'd seen Willie's frightened act more than once and knew it was no dream that he was experiencing.

"What ya'll boys doin' campin' on my prop'ty like y'all right at home?"

"We's didn't mean no harm, massa," B. B. said, mouthing each word slowly as he sat up and inched himself away from the working end of the shotgun.

"I reckon ya'll ain't from 'roun' these parts nowheres or y'all'd known better," the man said, accentuating his statement by spitting a mouthful of tobacco on the dew covered ground near B. B.'s bare feet.

"Mind you... we's just passin' through, sir."

"But not fas' 'nuff for me!" Pointing his shotgun toward two bulging potato sacks with their belongings, that they also used as pillows, the man inquired "What ya'll got in there?"

"Jus' a bunch a stuff ain't worth nuttin' to nobod' but us."

"Oh, yeah!" The man turned his attention toward Willie, whose body was still in the throes of shaking like he was freezing to death. "Is dat de God's honest truth, boy? You don't have no books in there, do you?"

"Ah swears dat's de truth," B. B. stammered an answer for Willie. "We don't has no books. Neither one of us reads, none. But you free to look for yo'self."

"Why don' ya' let dat boy over there speak for hisself?" The man motioned his weapon in Willie's direction.

"Ah does all de talkin' fo' both us, 'cause Willie ain't too bright, you see," B. B. responded in an even longer drawl, circling the side of his head with a forefinger.

The white man raised a quizzical eyebrow and smiled faintly, as though the thought of the older man being even more dim-witted than B. B. amused him.

B. B. took advantage of the moment by adding, "We jus' minstrels an' ma par'ner he scares easy, too. So...let de truth be tol', he ain't much good fo' nuttin' 'cept playin' his banjo an' eatin' and sleepin'. An ah has ta do all da talkin' an' thinkin fo' us or we'd be in a real heap ob trouble."

The white man lowered his shotgun and let out a roaring howl of laughter, his body rocking so hard he almost lost his footing on the uneven turf. When he gained his composure, he asked B. B. to show him what kind of shows they put on.

"Song an dance mens... is what we is, sir!"

"Let me see a little bit of what ya'll do," the man said in a friendly manner.

Standing up very slowly, slack-shouldered and narrow back bent, B. B. remarked, "We works bes' in black face. If'n ya'll gots da time ta wait, sir, we can put on sum burnt cork."

"Don' worry 'bout that, none, fella." The red-faced man guffawed as he sat down on a nearby rock with his shotgun lying beside him harmlessly. "Ya'll two is plenty black enough for me."