holding court and about 75 people were gath- ered around hanging on his every word. He tell us about how he started working for Bruce Lumber Company when he was 16, how he walked up to a group of men standing out- side of the office in West Memphis and asked the oldest one if he needed any hands. The old man asked him, "What can you do?" He told the old man, "You see that stack of lumber over there, just tell me where you want it and I will fig- ure out how to get it there.”
The old man
had started laughing and said, "Walk over to that man standing by that door and tell him George Rodgers said put you to work.” As Howlin' Wolf gained fame and got to where he had to decide between work- ing a hard full time job or slow down on the gigging, he told Mister George Rodgers he had signed with Sun Records and Sam Phillips wanted him to concentrate on his music.
George Rodgers took a silver dollar out
of his pocket and carved his telephone num- ber in it with his case knife, and said, "Chester if you ever need work, walk up to any Bruce Lumber Company or Bruce Hard- wood Flooring, and tell them I said to put you to work, and if that manager gives you any trouble, call the number on that silver dollar, and I will have a new manager on the way there while that one is cleaning out his desk." Rayburn Zinn, the plant manager, was peek- ing through the Venetian blinds on the back door of the office, someone pointed and
Howlin Wolf held up the silver dollar he was holding. We heard the front door of the office close, and Rayburn Zinn steped out onto the small back porch of the office building, (it was built on stilts because the Tombigbee River less than a half a mile away flooded every spring) and Mr. Zinn told the lynch mob, just kidding, he tells Mister Chester, " we don't have enough in petty cash to pay you, we could write you a check, but the banks are all closed and you would have to wait until tomorrow to cash it, so I've sent my secretary, her husband owns a pharmacy, to see if he can cash a company check, she will call me as soon as she finds out." While Mister
Chester was waiting he told about his various ad- ventures, and had every- one hanging on his every word. His band was wait- ing over in Mister Chester's car, and they
were not used to being around so many white working people at one time. Mister Chester said jokingly. Actually the crowd was about a 50/50 mix. Mister Chester never worried about anything but getting from here to yon- der, so he never went out of his way to buy a fancy automobile. He told us, when he was a young man, he was looking at the cars around the West Memphis plant and noticed Mister George Rodgers, a millionaire several times over, drove a rusty pickup truck, and he men- tioned how nice the assistant plant managers car was, Mister George Rodgers told him, "Yeah that automobile owns him for the next few years and as rough as he is on cars, it will be worn out before he ever gets it paid for. Never let your possessions possess you."
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