Trains and Transformations Page: 52
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Yesterday's Fantasies
Jazz Fiction
Introduction
I woke up this morning where three and two made four. It was in Louisiana, where the muddy
river runs, where the nights are sweaty, where I heard the story of a man who took the train north while
the land was dark. Nobody saw them go but one man who stays nights out at the station selling tickets
when anyone comes along wanting one. The town sat so far back in the woods that the sun never made
it to the ground, and the way he describes it, I feel like I'm there, where three and two do make four, at
least when I play my piano.
One arm of buildings stretched out from the town proper, shops and even houses trailing back
along Satin Street where they grew up after the two speak easies suddenly and quite arbitrarily became
legal taverns. The first bar to appear was King's, owned and operated by the man who gave it his name.
In 1924, this shack had lain concealed by Sycamores so that you couldn't see it from more than a few
yards away, unless you heard the noise. Not long after, however, this sleepy Louisiana backwater
spawned a second entrepreneur who followed the muddy track to the same place, deciding to build his
own establishment scarcely six yards from King's called Ferdinand's after the musician who, despite signs
to the contrary, never set foot therein. •Each succeeding rainy season deepened the track a little more,
with everybody in town swearing the club wasn't there by day, then putting their money down at night.
A fierce competition continued for three years, until one night a certain party walked from Ferdinand's
across to King's for a high-stakes card game, thinking he would make some more cash using what he just
collected. It does not take long to make the trip between these places' front doors, yet scarcely had the
man set his first silver dollar on the table when a policeman, whose pants pockets felt considerably
depleted to the wearer, burst in and arrested the entire assembly for gambling. Of course, he had to
confiscate the evidence, especially every single penny that ambitious card shark had. Naturally, Archy
King's business flagged and soon the sagging log structure was abandoned to frogs and cicadas. Rumors
had Archy King in business up river, where his fortunes would change as he left the river behind.
Ferdinand's flourished until the end of Prohibition, at which point the town hurried to embrace its secret
heart openly. Buildings rose in a thin line on either side of the track, which quickly saw itself laid with
gravel and given a name, Satin Street. Birds and children, both held by the narrower branches, might have
seen the strip as a claw reaching all the way from the church to the forrest, where its last grasp dug into
the dark mud with wooden poles and a sign post announcing the best jazz outside New Orleans.
The first musicians to play the speak easies were the sons and grandsons of slaves, as were most
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Hadder, R. Neill. Trains and Transformations, thesis or dissertation, November 1993; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc146427/m1/53/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Honors College.