Shoeshine

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Shoeshine, 47th Street, Chicago's main Negro business street, Chicago, Illinois: photo by Edwin Rosskam, April 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoeshine, 47th Street, Chicago's main Negro business street, Chicago, Illinois: photo by Edwin Rosskam, April 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoeshine boy, Columbus, Georgia: photo by John Vachon, December 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoeshine boy, Brownsville, Texas: photo by Arthur Rothstein, February 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Bridgeton, New Jersey. FSA agricultural workers' camp. Sunday morning in the shoeshine parlor: photo by John Collier, June 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoeshine stand, Southeastern U.S.: photo by Walker Evans, 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoeshine stand (detail), Southeastern U.S.: photo by Walker Evans, 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



New York, New York. Shoeshine parlor on East Forty-Second Street. Customers in the foreground are waiting while their shoes are repaired: photo by Marjorie Collier, September 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



New York, New York. Shoeshine parlor on East Forty-Second Street. Customers in the foreground are waiting while their shoes are repaired: photo by Marjorie Collier, September 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Peddlers -- shoe shine, New York City: photographer unknown, 11 September 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Sixteen to one ["African American boy with shoeshine kit, holding two chickens, Asheville, North Carolina. Humorous allusion to cock-fight gambling" -- library caption]: photo by John H. Tarbell, c. 1897 (Library of Congress)



Shine in a littered Chinatown street, New York City: photo by George Daniels [?], c. 18 February 1903 (Library of Congress)

Dead End Kids

[Shoeshine boy referring to a neighborhood merchant woman's negative comments about him and his fellow street shoeshiners:] "...Ow, don't mind her. She tawks but she's alright. Sometimes she goes haywire. We pay taxes, don't we? We can't stay here and we can't stay here. She said we oughter go to school but I don't like it. You don't learn nuttin' there. I can't read or write and I'm thirteen years old. I ain't dumb, but they put me in a slow class three years ago when I was in 3-B and I gotta stay there till I'm seventeen. Then they throw me out. It's an industrial class like.

"What's the use of going to school. If you learn nuttin' there? better go to work."

"Hey, Nitt, why do you have to go to school?"

"'Cause the school won't come to me."

"You wanna know how we live? Why don't you ask the 'Dead End Kids'? They're fakes! Two to one they go back to Hollywood but not alive if they visited here just for a while. Just-a-while! Sissys! You wanna hear a story? O.K. Mike! Hey Mike! He's the best story teller on the block -- surprising for his age. Tell him the story of the 'Green Hands'... It's good. Shut up, you guys!"

"Once a man played an organ and as he played suddently somebody crept up behind him and stuck a six inch blade into him -- all from behind. The organ grinder cried out and grabbed his throat. [Illustrates.] Then they buried him in a coffin and buried the coffin. That nite the dead man's hands turned green in the coffin and at midnight they walked out of the grave. Two policemen were walking on the street when suddently one of them felt something scratching his leg. He looked down and screamed when he saw the green hands. He run, but the green hands run after him an grab him by the throat and chocked him just like that [illustrated with a twitch of the face and turn of the neck]. Then the green hands walked into a lady's room just as she was undressing. They grabbed her by the throat and squeezed her till she fell like a sack. Then they swam out to a ship... [etc.]."

The story continues on and on for over thirty minutes with the green hands murdering all people that come within reach. The climax comes when the green hands are trapped in a hotel where a fire breaks out and the green hands turn to ashes. Throughout the length of the narrative, the group of about thirty boys kept silent and listened avidly to every syllable and closely followed the mimicry of the story teller. Their faces registered the horror of each crime -- as if they themselves were eye witness to the crimes of the "green hands". The story teller felt the spell that he was casting over them and drew the story out a little bit by putting "new" victims within reach of the "green hands".

"You wanna hear some songs? The dirty kind?"

Hei ho! Hei ho!
To Hollywood we go,
To see Mae West and all the rest.
Hei ho! Hei ho!
Me and my friend Toni
We come from Italy.
We drink the booze
And shine the shoes
Me and my friend Toni.

We are the boys of 11th street
That you hear so much about
People hide their pocketbooks
Whenever they go out.
We're noted for our dirty work
Most everything we do.
All the coppers hate us
And we hope you hate us too.
Hei ho! Hei Ho!
It's off to the burlesque we go
We sit and stare at the girls bare
Hei ho! Hei ho!
One day I saw something in the grass
It was Mussolini with Hitler in his ass.
In 1492
Columbus was a Jew
He sat on the grass
And tickled his ass --
In 1493.
Tammany, Tammany
Hookus pocus
Kiss my tocus
Tam-m-a-n-y!

A richman takes a taxi cab
A poorman takes a train
A hobo walks the railroad track
But gets there just the same.

Hoover blew the whistle
Mellon rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
And the country went to Hell!

Text from Dead End Kids (Life on the East Side): interviews by case worker Fred Romanofsky, from WPA Life Stories (Library of Congress)

Romanofsky's notes: "Boys between the ages of 9 to 15 years old. Ancestry Polish, Ukranian, Russian, Czechoslovakian, Italian and Jewish. Families working class: wage earners: 'One-third of a nation' type. Many of these boys were inadequately clothed and many appeared undernourished. Most of them have at one time or another worked at various trades as "helpers" or shoeshine boys and newsboys. Interviews conducted 15 December 1938 between the hours of 5 to 7 P.M., at street corners of 9th and Avenue C, 11th and Avenue C, New York City."

This post for Vassilis