25

Florida
Enrique and Amanda
Folklore

-23-

"He won that suit at a lottery for one dollar," says Amanda. The man told him if he wanted to buy an extra pair of pants to match, it would cost him six dollars. I told him to go ahead and get the extra pants because that way the suit would be good for twice as long as if he only had one pair of pants. I bought him that crepe shirt he's wearing, for Christmas. IT cost two dollars."
Amanda is rolling her hair on a clothes-pin. "I fix hair pretty hood, huh?" she asks. "You know I don't get to go to the beauty parlor but about once a year. They don't do it so good as I do sometimes; I taught some of the girls in the beauty parlor how to fix hari."
In due time we are ready to leave. "Let's drive over to Tampa tonight," suggests Edith.
In Tampa, we drive slowly so Edith and Amanda can look in the shop windows. EAch window evokes some such comment, in Spanish, as: "Cue lindo!" (How pretty) "Divino!" (Divine) "No megusta!" (I don't like it).
"That's the jail Shoemaker was taken out of," suddenly says Enrique. "Right in the middle of town. They took him out and set him down in a bucket of hot tar, castrated him, beat him, and did all kidns of things to him. I have heard people argue about whether the Klan, or the police, or both, did it. All I know is that they took him right out of jail.
'I have been in that jail. One night when I was walking home along the bridge I saw a lady climb over the rail and get ready to jump in and commit suicide, so I grabbed her arond the waist and held on and she yelled and raised all kinds of hell. The police came. and I guess they thought we was fighting; anyway, they took us both to jail and told us we could toll

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