The Best of Simple

American poet Langston Hughes was a guest at Yaddo in the early sixties. The Yaddo Authors’ library has four or five volumes of his short stories. I didn’t even know he wrote short stories. I’ve been reading The Best of Simple. Simple is a wisecracking Harlem rooming house living workingman night owl barstool philosopher. Funny, fast-talking and street-smart, these stories have got me started calling people daddy-o. In honour of the one glass of whiskey I drank at the open studio last night, one being enough to fuzz my head, here’s an excerpt from “Vacation” in which, Simple has just returned to Harlem having cut short a vacation in Saratoga Springs:


“What’s on the rail for the lizard this morning?” my friend Simple demanded about 1 A.M. at 125th and Lenox.

“Where have you been all week?” I countered, looking at the dark circles under his eyes.

“On my vacation at last,” said Simple.

“You look it! You appear utterly fatigued.”

“A vacation will tire a man out worse than work,” said Simple.

“Where did you go?”

“Saratoga – after the season was over and the rates is down.”

“What did you do up there?”

“Got bug-eyed.”

“You mean you drank liquor?” I enquired.

“I did not drink water,” said Simple.

“I though people went to Saratoga Springs to drink water.”

“Some do, some don’t,” said Simple, “depending on if you are thirsty or not. There is no water on Congress Street, nothing but bars…”

Langston Hughes, “Vacation” in The Best Of Simple, NY: Hill & Wang, 1961, p 34.

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