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Black Life in the Sacramento Valley (1919-1934) (36 pages)
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Page: of 36
Black Life in the Sacramento Valley Page 31 of 37
Mama said that she and Kate would leave first, as I worked at a bootblack stand and earned between $18
and $20 a week. I was doing my share at home for an 18-year-old.
The bootblack stand was in front of Tom King's smoke shop on Main Street. In the back room, King
conducted a big poker game, plus other games of chance. It was all illegal, but the cops never bothered
the operation.
Mama and Kate left for Oakland in June. I made a promise that I'd follow them in about a month, and I
did. At the time, it was a wise move for all of us to get out of there.
But Chico was a very nice little town. I think it was one of the best things that happened to me, after
coming from New York. Many times I look back on those happy free years, and think of how it was
then. I never had any regrets about growing up there.
Thomas Fleming in Berkeley, California in 1929 at age 21, when he worked as a cook for the Southern Pacific
Railroad. Three years later, he would return to Chico to attend college. This is the only known photo of Fleming taken
during the 1920s.
14. BACK AGAIN
From 1926 to 1932, I held a series of jobs on the ships and railroads on the West Coast. First I worked
as a bellhop for an intercoastal passenger shipping company that stopped at ports from Victoria, British
Columbia, to Ensenada, Mexico. Then I was a waiter on a train ferry in the upper part of San Francisco
Bay.
In 1927 I was hired as a cook by the Southern Pacific Railroad. I worked for the Southern Pacific until
the Depression came along. Then I encountered the seniority system, in which those who have been the
longest on jobs are the last to be released in periods of decreased economic activity. If your seniority
was less than 10 years, your chances of working every day were not good. Plus, the railways had started
canceling some routes, which meant fewer crews in all categories.
http://www.cmonline.com/boson/freebies/blackhistory/fleming2.html 12/28/04