Tape of Feb. 21, 2001 71 turns Ruth Greene-CEP. Transcr Kay Horne Q: Today is Monday, February 21st and I’m talking with Mr. CP [CE] CEP, CEP Hardhair? And this is our first conversation. But we’ve been talking a lot all along A: Well, I tell you, I, I, I know that my grandmother was bor, sold on the slave block in Richmond, Virginia, so evidently the people who bought her carried her to South Carolina and, ah, there she...was on a Craig plan’ation [spells Craig], Craig plan’ation and he owned jes’ as far as you could see any kind of way you looked so he had 5 or 6, ah, Negro families as sharecroppers. Now they was a couple of white families there, too, but--you know--they used them as supervisors or whatever, but eventually they died out or whatever. And well, my grandmother was married to a, to a fellow named Henry and, you know, they take up the plan’ation owner’s last name Q: right A: once they freed the slaves and he was a Craig so therefore, my grandmother was a Craig and my grandfather was a Craig and they did sharecropping. About as much as I know about my grandmother, she musta been born about 1850 {pause}, ah maybe before that because they said when they freed the slaves she was 13 years old Q: 13 years old A: so that’d put her a little, maybe 1845 or somethin’ like that. But anyway, my, ah, I think my grandmother had about 2 or 3 kids, or 3, my grandmother had about, lessee, 2 boys and 2---3 boys and 2 girls, I think. Now, my, my grandmother had--ah, the, her oldest son was named Sam and he, he eventually became the uh, uh, the over, over, overseer of that plan’ation. Q: Um l A: And ah, he, he drove the old man Craig around in a carriage to different places until he got too old to go, then he sent Uncle Sam there. ...Well, you know how that work. Lot of time my Uncle Sam went to these different sharecroppers’ house and told ‘em things that the boss hadn’t said, so that made him--they looked to him for the word from the old master. Q: uhuh So a lot of things he said is what he wanted, not what the old master ...cause the old master had got senile. So, it remind me of this late movie I saw called--Color Purple Q: oh, yeah A: and, ah, he done some of that same stuff that that, that ya saw in that picture And, and my, ah, mother, she was a sharecropper, too, when she got married ‘n’ all and had her family so she was a sharecropper, too. And back in that day the more children you had the more acres of land that you could farm, so the women just went at it gettin’ babies. The doctor, naturally, was a white doctor and he, um, he, he lived in town maybe...10 or 20 miles away and he only went to attend the white people. And the black people had to, ah, do with what they had, such as roots, ah, from out in the woods that they found that was good for certain things---they... certain cure for certain things, like poke salad. In the spring of the year they used that to clean your blood--poke salad- Q: yeh A: -they used that and they would, they would cook pots of poke salad and they’d feed it to the family during them years so that it would clear the blood, cleanse their blood and whenever they did go to town they would get medicine for certain things and my mother had a mantelpiece full of different kinds of medicine for colds, for---a lot of different ailments. And back at that time there was no cure for a lot of ailments and she tol me I almost died when I was 2 years old with dysentery. Q: Um A: She couldn’t read or write so she just kept trying different bottles of medicines off the mantelpiece and which...ah, she had used earlier and eventually she found the right bottle that cured me of my ailment. So therefore I didn’t die at 2 years of age which she thought I would. So my grandmother she was a midwife. So she birthed all her grandchildren plus anybody else who had babies in the vicinity, she, they sent for her. Q: Um A: . So--as, as I said the doctor did/was only taking care of white families and he’d drive his [??dray, maybe] for 10 or 15 miles taking care of them but very seldom he had anything to do with blacks. And, ah, it was a well-known thing back then that they was no birth certificate issued because the midwives couldn’t write and, and they didn’t care whether the child was born or whether it died or not, that these white folks didn’t even care. Because the plan’ation owner was the law. They had one sheriff in town but he never bothered to know about anything. He, he came to see the plan’ation owner and whatever he said thas it. He gettin’ on his horse and go back to town. Q: Was it your mother who told you these stories? A: Yeh. Q: Um A: . So, it was all pertaining to the white plan’ation owner. He, he, he, he made the laws for his plan’ation or his land, and, and the sheriff come and talk to him and say yeh, said , ah, what ever happened?...ah, now what heppened, I heard....Aw, he would say my, ah, people are all right so you can go on back to town, and that was the end of it. Yep. If somebody killed somebody that was a different story Q: uhuh A: --they had to account for it. But if a white man killed a black man nothin’ was done about it, so he ah, such and such a person did such and such a thing and it’s all cleared up. You can go on back to town. And that was all pertaining to when a, when a man killed a black--it was nothing ever done about it. So, and it was the same way with the women. If a white man wanted a black woman he’d take her. If she was married there was nothing that the husband could say about it because if he did.... I know of a couple of occasions where a Negro man went to the, went to the store--you know, they had merchandise stores in different little towns and this man would go with this black woman and this colored man went there to complain about it. And when he get rough with the white man, the white man shot him dead and that was all of = Q: = in South Carolina? A: . In South Carolina, that was all. There was no more, no more, they didn’t even talk about it no more. So. And when a light-skinned girl or boy go to school, what little school they had, the blacks would whip the poor little light-skinned child all the time because he was light and they were dark. They had long hair and they had short hair so that light-skinned child was in for a whipping everyday, because they couldn’t whip the white man so they took it out on the light-skinned child, you know, so the light-skinned child had a hard way to go then. Q: Remember when that was? A: Yeh. 1923, 24, 25, 26. In 1924 the “Klu” Klux Klan burnt down the church where the blacks went to, went to, went to school. See, they go to school there to...in the church they had 2 benches for first grade and they allow space and they was 2 or 3, 2 ah benches for second grade and they leave a space and, and it went on up to about 5th or 6th grade Q: Uhuh A: And, ah, they each worked with different material and they was only one teacher and she came from 20 miles away, Spartanburg, South Carolina, down in the country there, and when she wasn’t able to make it, maybe because of bad weather, my sister taught school. She was in 5th or 6th grade. Q: Um A: She taught everybody in school, so, so therefore they didn’t miss, miss any, any days in school, and they had to go to school when they wasn’t working on the farm. But when they was working on the farm the kids had to work in the field--they couldn’t, they couldn’t go to school. Now I guess that’s why the “Klu” Klux Kan burnt down the church cause Q: that’s where the school was taking place A: Yeh. See, because what they were learning--at that time I heard my mother say they was, um, the gin people was paying 10 cent a pound for cotton and when they weigh the cotton the blacks were learning how to count 10 cent a pound--how much money they would be gettin for the whole bale, I mean for the whole wagonload, you know? And they didn’t want that, they didn’t want the blacks to be able to count. So they burnt the school down. That was around about 1925, 1925 when that was Q: um A: . I remember it good. GAP. Q: Did you ever get a replacement? Q: Did you go somewh... A: . They were buildin’ another church I, I, I heard but that was 1925 and my mother moved from down there to Charlotte, North Carolina, in the city. So I don’t remember whether they built another school or not, I mean another church or not, but I’m pretty sure they did Q: uhuh A: . So, ah, my family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. So you can imagine at first they couldn’t read or write, trying to make a living and all they could do was, was to, was to cook for white people and take in washings and different odd jobs like that because the highest thing that a, a woman could get to do then was to be a school teacher, that was the highest thing that a black woman could get to be. And that’s what it seems that everyone wanted to be--a school teacher. And the men, the highest thing he got to be was to be a school teacher or a funeral home “directory,” ah, ah it wasn’t much, wasn’t much available, you know Q: uhuh A: . I remember we got to Charlotte at that time and you found a few educators around but it was too late for them that had started families, there was nothing for them to do. But, and even the ones that was going to school, ah, they didn’t get to be more than...the, the, the, the boys would get to be, the most of them would get to be 5th or 6th grade, the girls could go on to finish high school if they, you know, if they wanted to but , because they didn’t have to go to work like the boys did. So, when I got to be ah, 15 or 16 years old and startin’ going around to see girls, what I used to, my conversation was, with the girls, was what they had learned in school...we would talk about math, multiplications, and stuff of that nature, what they had learned and that I didn’t get a chance to learn. Q: Uhuh A: So, that was, I don’t know, I don’t know what they talk about nowadays, but when I was first talkin’ to girls that was my conversation, spelling and reading and writing and things that they had learned in school that I didn’t get a chance to learn, you see, that’s, that was my conversation with girls at that time, and I don’t know what they do now. But in that way girls at that age got a better education back then than boys, so I know as soon as I got to be 16 years old they had a thing they called the CCC camp, the, ah, Civilian Conservation Camp in which the government, in fact the, ah, government, ah, government . After Hoover came Roosevelt, and ah, he come on with these different, ah, charity-type employments like WPA,PWA, and the CCC camp. So for families who had boys old enough to go and they would pay them um, the pay was a dollar a day, 30 dollars a month. They would send 25 home to the mother and give the boy 5 dollars there in the camp. So I stayed there 4 years Q: Where was it? A: Where was the camp? Q: Uhuh A: . Well, I was in a camp there in Shelby, North Carolina, and what they did was cultivate farms, to cultivate farms where the farm wouldn’t flood or, in the mountains they would cut fire lanes in case a fire started in the mountain, fire lanes was to keep the fire from jumping, it would cut off the fire. They said it burnt that section and don’t burn the other section. So that’s what you call this, and they cut fire lanes in the mountains. Well then, down in the flatlands like Shelby and Monroe and Mt. Gilead, flatlands they worked on farms, irrigating it where the water would run off and not flood out the farmer’s land, you know, so he could---it was just something to keep boys busy in order to send a few dollars home for the parents and their mama. But after I got outta that, I was outta there a couple of years, times was gettin a little better then and I got myself a job and worked about 2 years and after that right into the Army. Into the Army. And--at that time a soldier was getting 21 dollars a month, 21, can you imagine that? They work a whole, they be in the Army for a whole month and collect Q: 21 dollars, 21 dollars--both said this at the same time A: . I guess I was in there about 2 months or 3 months and they raised it up to 50 dollars a month---that was big money Q: Yeah, it was A: . Big money, 50 dollars a month. Q: What year? A: 194.... the latter part of 1942. The, the, the price went to about 40.., went to 50 dollars a month. Course I was, I was, I was in, I went, I went in the Army and I went to Ft. Benning for training and, and I was there for 2 or 3 months before they raised the pay to 50 dollars. Ah boy, that was money to waste then [chuckle] cause big money. And, ah, we went on maneuvers in Tennessee, up there around Camp F?can’t understand?, came back and Q: garbled A: barely had a chance to take off our clothes ‘fore they had us going to Camp ?Kilmer?, New Jersey, and then they smuggled us right on to the bottom of a ship going on across the Atlantic. Q: And how long had you been in training? A: 6 months. Q: 6 months A: You don’t get much time for training and, and, and when you go over there uh, the training, even on the ship and even after you get off the ship, wherever you are, you’re training. Nobody got any training except the, the, the guys who had been in the Army all the time. We had a first sergeant who had been in the Army 27 years and whenI went in I was only 22 and he had been in the Army 27 years, imagine that Q: black guy? A: Yeh Q: uhuh A: . Had been in the Army 27 years and, ah, he had been in World War 1, and he had been down in the Philippine Islands...he was, he was, I don’t know how old he was but he’d been in the Army 27 years so you can add 18 on to that and that’s how old he was. So, and he didn’t want to get out the Army then, he went on overseas with us. He didn’t have to go ‘cause we was with what you call a cadre, training other, other soldiers. But he didn’t have to go but he wanted to go and he went. So, we went over there and we landed in Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland, and we was in Scotland long enough to march across town to catch the train to go down in, hang around Liverpool, down around Liverpool, ?can’t understand, sounds like Chipinauton?, down in there and we was camped down there for about a month and then we was on the ship again on the invasion of North Africa November 8, 1942. I guess you mighta read...no, you wadn’t old enough, Q: u... A: but anyway--- the newspapers I know here headlined ah, that American forces invade North Africa and, and it was a big thing. So I was into that---’n’ walking through the water with a rifle over our head like that and water come up along your chin in the Mediterranean Sea and, and landed at a place called ?can’t understand-sounds like Azou?. And... soon as you hit the, soon as you hit the beach head, bullets flying, you had to, naturally you gonna hug the ground and you can imagine, soaking wet all over and in the ground in the dirt, the sand, and rolling over, you, you look like a mud man from another world. And when you, when you finally was able to raise up, boy, I tell ya, you look terrible enough to scare somebody to death. So we went inland there and, and they pushed on in for 10 or 15 miles but at the same time we had to bed down ‘cause we were service and supplies and all and wait for our trucks to come so we could haul supplies to them up front. So that’s why we were, and we, and that, and that time we had to fight the French about 3 days before the French surrendered and got on our side. So we marched right on through North Africa without another fight. But when we did have to fight and we went up around Tunisia, Tunis, Libya, that’s where we run into Rommel [he pronounces this Rom mel’], the Desert Fox Q: I remember that A: , the Desert Fox and there’s where the fighting began, ‘cause he, you know, the real fight took place. When ‘Gomery was coming up from Egypt, from Egypt through Libya and Tunisia, and American forces was going from Casablanca, Oran, ah ...?can’t understand, sounds like Masaftaber? and on up and..., in other words, Rommel was wedged between 2 forces, so he had to scoot out across the Mediterranean into Sicily, across to the foot of Italy, the boot Q: right A: , the toe of the boot. So he had to re, retreat out that way, up into the southern part of Italy. Well we, we, we, we, we became the Army occupation there in, in, in, in Oran, around Oran there, for a period of time. They called it MBS, the Mediterranean Base Section. It was just Army occupation. Well, whatever the Army take you gotta occupy it. If you don’t occupy it, then it, it’s loose land, open land, you know, and Q: yeah A: you know anywhere you capture you got to occupy it. So therefore, we was among the ones who had to occupy until it was time to move on. And when time come to move on it was when they got to fightin’ hard in Italy around the Po River Valley in Italy,and Naples, Cassino, the ah place up on the mountain there, where the, where the ah...the ah monaster, up there where the monks and things live, in that monastery. So the Germans got into that and could look down on the Allied forces coming up, and they could just drop a bomb or whatever in, in any parts of where they...and there was a hard, hard battle there. A lot of people lost their lives there. But at the same time we were down around Naples, we wasn’t in that hard fightin’ and, and when, and when they, they really did get into, ah, the northern part of Italy, it was 1945, when they had D-Day, and we were over in Corsica. We were shipped to Corsica to an island out from southern France, where Napoleon was born, in Corsica. And ah, we went into Marseille, southern France, while at the same time the real battle was taking place across the English Channel there on, on, around “Cherbourn”, and those different little towns across from England. The big battle was taking place up there so.... It was a, a little action in Marseille, the southern part of France. There was a little action down there, but it wasn’t as much as there was up north. And that give the Germans a fit to know that they was being, that France was being invaded from so many different places, so wasn’t nothing for them to do except back up towards the Rhine, the river. And ah...by the time we got to Paris and all, I had been overseas I think about ... 21/2 years, then it was 3 years, and they was letting people come home on rotation, a-according to how long they had been over there. So I signed up to come home on, on rotation. theme: war injury and return to US C-init So...by the time Germany surrendered I was back in Washington, D.C., at the Walter Reed Hospital, that’s where I was Q: uhuh. Had you gotten hurt? question-checks inference A: No, I didn’t get hurt. I uh, I was driving a truck in the southern part of France and, ...well the truth of it was, it was run off a cliff and it injured the disc in my back, so that’s why I was at Walter Reed, and I stayed there in Washington in, in, in Walter Reed for a period of time. I was there when Germany surrendered Q: um A: --I was in Walter Reed Army Hospital at that time. Q: Boy, that’s a lot of living in 2, to 2 or 3 years A: . Huh? Q: That’s a lot of living in 2, 2, 2 years? A: Yeh. It coulda been a lot of dying, too, but I tell ya it, it, it was quite a few guys were killed from stepping on ah, mines, you know? See, when you retreat you put down mines so when the truck drives over ‘em they blow up. Q: Um A: . So quite a few guys got killed like that. And, and some ran off the, ah, road and ran down a steep grade into the Mediterranean Sea and drowned. A lot of them died like that. But... My, my job, I was a bugler, bugler. Q: I was going to ask you what your job A: I was a bugler, that’s what I did. When I, and I, I, I and the only thing I did mostly was drive the commanding officer around and, ah, hung around the headquarters. I picked up on French real good... pretty good. Enough to know what people was talking about. So everytime somebody come around the campground talking French they sent for me. Out of the whole camp they sent for me. And, ah, I would, you know, tell the captain what, what was, what they were saying and all. I know when we was in a place called ?don’t know, sounds likeAnnioTurk? in ah, North Africa, and I was on the campground ‘cause I was always, stayed around to be in the area where the captain was because I had to drive him anywhere he had to go. So I was, I was down in the campground they only had to holler for me. This woman was out there trying to talk to the lieutenant and the lieutenant didn’t know what she was talking about, so I went up there and... ah, he tole me, “See what this woman want.” I went over and talk to her, and she said they was a French girl up there who was gonna have a baby and wanted me to drive her, wanted her, wanted her, wanted an American, you know they had the only vehicles around there. To drive her to Oran which was about 15 kilometres {pronounced kilometz} away, to the French hospital. Q: Um A: So he told me to get the command car and take her. So I went, I went, I went and got the car, and the command car, and got her in the car and took her up there. They wrapped that girl up in a blanket and put her in the back seat of, of the command car and I drove her to the French hospital But there’re a lot of little trick things took place there. See, she walked by the black camp and wouldn’t talk to no black soldiers, she’d always go to the French soldiers and talk to them. So everytime I come across a, a shell hole in the road, I’d run over it. She went “Ar-r-r-g-g-h-h.” She would holler---well---she didn’t talk to no black boys so I ain’t supposed to be sorry for her. That was mean ‘cause... but after all, I was only 23 years old and I didn’t know no better. Chuckle. But--- Q: How did you, ah, get your job as a bugler? A: Well, I tell ya this. When I came to Charlotte, you can imagine my mother with 5 kids, 5 children, and she wanted to go to church. Well, my oldest sister had been living here for a while, so she was going to, ah, Little Rock over there at 7th and McDowell, over at 7th and Myers St.. so my mama went to that church, and you can imagine her walking into church with 5 little snotty-nosed kids, ha, that’s what we were. Laugh. And the people there in the church acted a little funny and didn’t hardly want to sit beside us {garbled} We didn’t have all those fancy clothes to wear. So, so mama didn’t feel good going there, so she finally ended up going over to Daddy Grace’s church over there on Long Street in 2nd Ward and, and they didn’t worry about what you looked like. They, they, they accepted you right in there, so that’s where Mama joined. Q: Um A: And by me joining the, by me joining up there when I was 8 or 9 years old, ah, people was playin’ horns and beatin’ drums and stuff and that was my thing, you know? So I got me a horn and started playin’ it. But when I got to the CCC camp, I, I, I, I could play a horn real good. So my job there was the bugler, blowing Reveille, Taps, and everything else. They, the commanding officer, got me a little music sheet there and I learned how to blow, to blow them different calls, and by the time I left the CC camp I could play---the Army has 43 calls. In the old days, they all meant certain things, but nowadays you... you blow a bugle out there and so you would know what it meant, garbled because they didn’t have enough buglers. You had Reveille when you wake up in the morning, you got chow call when you eat, you got drill call when you get ready to practice marching, and you got fire call, you got payday call, a call for everything, fire call, lights out, and when ya die, you play Taps, This day is done. But I could play ‘em all and ah, and that’s what I did. Q: So when you got in the Army you, you already had that skill A: . Oh, yeah, I, I, I could do that. Q: Well, it has been good talking to you today. Pause. How old were you in this picture? A: Um---24, 24, 25. Q: Is this a sergeant stripe? A: No. Q: Corporal stripe? A: Lance Corporal. Q: Lance Corporal A: Uh huh. Q: I’ve heard that. It’s what my brother was A: . Really? Q: Uhuh. When he came about your age A: . Yeh. Lance Corporal. {sound of tapping} Q: Well, we gotta finish for today. I think I kept you a long time A: . You think that’s a long time? Q: About 40 minutes A: . Sho ‘nuff? Q: Uhuh A: You mean it came out I talk that much? Chuckle. That’s my teacher. Q: Tell me about this again. When you and I talked you said you had seen your teacher A: . Yeh. Q: You want to tell that on the tape? A: Now? Q: Yeah, we got a little time A: . That’s one of the most amazing things I ever had happen to me. I went to the hospital to see, I mean, a nursing home, to see an old friend of mine, and he was 81 years old. So I went in there to see him and, ah, while I was sittin’ there, the, the person occupied the bed across from him, ah, was a guy, I guess he musta been about 75 years old. His wife and his daughter was over there talkin’ to him and this lady came in to see him. Oh, she had a walker in front of her and, ah, she, she sit down beside me and, ah, and ah, this nurse who worked there said, “Well, she was my school teacher and my mother’s school teacher, too.” I said, “That’s amazing,” and I asked her, I said, “What school did you go to?” She said me and my mother both went to Morgan School over, in Cherry. I said I went to that school myself in 4th grade, when I was in 4th grade, and I had a teacher named Miss Douglas. And she looked at me very funny. She said that’s Miss Douglas there right beside you. But you know she got married so her last name is Gunn now. And I said, “Well my goodness, isn’t this amazing?” I’m sittin’ up there ‘side the teacher I had in 4th grade and didn’t even know her. And I told her ‘bout how she spank me in my hand with a, a ruler. You know, you know you hold out your hand and she spank me in my hand. Chuckle. She said let me outta here cause you ain’t gonna try to get even, are you? Q: Both chuckle joint chuckle A: . Q: This is amazing. She looks well A: . Yeh. She said she had, she said she had been in France and “Belgian.” Said she had been in England and had seen the ah, Buckingham Palace and said she had been down in Egypt to see the “Phinx” and the, the, the, the, the pyramids of Egypt and I told her I had been down there, too. You know, it’s amazing. Q: I tell ya. When you’ve had that level of travel, it gives you a different perspective A: . Oh, yeah. You got a new outlook on, on life and, ah, on top of that, it’s amazing how people, things happen. You over there, fightin’ a war, right? And anything you do to help out, whether you supplyin’ ammunition or you bringin’ the food or whatever you’re doing to help out, you, youre fightin’ the war. Even the ones back here making the ammunition and trainin’ the soldiers or making the material to supply the soldiers, you just, you aidin’ and abettin’ the war, you helpin’ the war. Anything you do. So only thing was, we was over there and these other people’s over here, you know? So when I was over there, Talmadge, the governor of Georgia, down there talking about nigga this and nigga that, and we over there tryin’ to do what we could do for democracy and, ah....Then the soldiers, some of ‘em came from Tennessee and Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, and wherever, and they see you talking’ to a while gal, they--oh--they want to, they thought, they musta been thinkin’ they were down in Mississippi, you know? And ah. Well, I tell ya, I had, I had many a fight over there because o’ that. See, I picked up on French pretty good Q: yeah A: and I’m there talkin’ with the French girls and laughin’ and goin’ on, and they come up and, “What she say? What she say?” Oh, man, I don’t have time to talk to you. I said, “I, I, I’m tryin’ to talk to this girl here.” You, you’re black and I’m white and you shouldn’t be doin’ this and, and that’s where a fight started. That’s where the fight started. Q: When you dis..., when you picked up on your French, you were, did you make a decision that you were gonna learn the language? A: I like, I like learning languages and, ah, as soon as I got in North Africa---there was a white Frenchman. He was in the French Foreign Legion, and by me not doing nothing but hangin’ around the campground---his, his office was about a block away and I’d go and sit down and talk to him. So...what I was, what he was teaching me was the vowels and, and stuff of the French language like, “I had,” “you had,” “you will,” “you won’t,” “something,” ah---these different things, and the names for different things. I didn’t put it in the proper perspective, but I, I, I, they knew what I was talkin’ about. Q: Yeh A: And, the words for different things like your arm, your leg, your nose Q: yeh A: ah, your head, eh, eh, eh le tete. Chuckle. Q: Yeh A: . Different things I could let you know what I’m talkin’ about, see. Q: uhuh A: And to walk and to run or whatever it was. I knew words for different things like potato, pomme de terre, and ah, different things. I, I, I knew ah, ah vegetables, legume, you know, legume is a vegetable Q: uhuh A: . Cat, dog, you know. I knew, I know those words in French so, so, I, I, I, they knew what I was talkin’ about, I could find my way around, that, that’s the main thing. So, I’m talkin’ with...and they was wantin’ to know, telling me I’m smart and you understand this and that. Why don’t they understand like you do? You know, and stuff like that. And ah, he standing there beggin’ me to help him out and I ain’t helpin’ them out. I’m gonna look out for me. Chuckle. Q: That’s amazing A: I look out for me. Q: Well, I’m gonna stop it now and we’re gonna come back...I’ll be back next week A: . Ain’t nothin’ else to talk about, is it?