well I'll tell you in details exactly how we got together it was 1933 if you remember there was a frightful depression on in our country Millions were unemployed in New York City you would go through the tunnel into gimbals from say the square where gimbus begins it goes all the way through to the uh by the Holland Tunnel they were sleeping with the permission of the mayor three and four deep as far as the eye could go there's no place to go in the park in the summer months they were allowed to sleep in the
park sleep all over the place and the long lines for coffee and bread that were there to get them there are millions unemployed we then had a population of not more than say 130 million as against today's 192 million I was a dancer and if you couldn't eat you couldn't pay to watch it answer so there were no shows playing on Broadway I think we had five Broadway shows and they were running on paper yes we've been passing out paper to go and see them really instead of the usual 50 and 60 shows that you
used to get well what I'm getting it I didn't have a job I had no money and I was living in a basement on 75th Street and he lived on 72nd Street in a very lovely home that was owned by morgenthal who's son was then the treasury of the uh of our country a Cabinet member but his father owned this house but he didn't live there and he rented the first floor to my friend Abdullah I said to Abdullah in the month of October late October have you know I've been gone from Barbados for almost
12 years came here in 22. and it's almost 12 years I've never had a desire to go back but now I have a hungry desire a haunting desire to go to Barbados not a thing stops me but the lack of money I have no money he said to me you are in Barbados I said I'm in Barbados he said yes you are now in Barbados and so you see Barbados and you see America from Barbados and you can smell the tropical land of Barbados see only the Little Homes of Barbados and that's all you do
you just simply sleep this night in Barbados well I thought him insane really I mean at the moment it seems so stupid because 72nd Street we still had 15 or 60 story buildings a little Barbados with a little three-story building almost the tallest that you'd find and narrow little streets in those sidewalks and I'm walking on a sidewalk wider than the wide Street of Barbados on 72nd Street well nevertheless that night I slept in Barbados I assume that I'm in Barbados in my mother's home and then I saw America relative to Barbados and it wasn't
under me that night it was north of me about two thousand miles well the next day I didn't tell him anything about a week later when nothing happened I thought I would approach him this time we've moved into November I said you know EV there is no uh not a thing has happened he wouldn't discuss it with me he turned his back on me and went into his little library and slammed the door about three times I tried to open up the discussion with my friend AB between that moment when I first talked to him
and the end he would never discuss it on the basis how can he discuss with me how I am going to Barbados when I am already in Barbados that's stupid to discuss how I'm gonna go when I am in Barbados and if I am faithful to my assumption I can't discuss the how I am already there well this went on on the morning of the fourth day of December there's no job no place to go and the last boat that will get me there my Christmas is going to sail on the 6th under my door
is a little letter from my brother Victor and he said as a family we were never around the table at Christmas together is my oldest brother he left home before the last was born because we have a large family it was an interval of eight years between my sister Daphne who was the eight child and then my brother Jill well in that interval my brother Cecil went off to Demerara so never as a family were we ever together at Christmas so in the letter he justifies why he's asked me to come he said I know
you don't have a job and there's no excuse for not coming and so I'm in closing a draft for fifty dollars you may need a shirt pair of shoes socks or something and I've notified that furnace ready line that you will come for a ticket so the ticket is waiting for you at the furnace line well I was so excited I brushed on down to the furnace line and I told give them my letter they said yes we have a message here from your family in Barbados give you a ticket well we haven't any first
class tickets left you can go set you can go third class and use the facilities of the first but you have the Sleep third class until you hit the island of Saint Thomas when you hit send Thomas someone just involves then you may take a first class bunk I said I'll take it I rushed right up to Abdullah and I said AB I got my ticket for Barbados but I have to go third class I am all elated and happy about it he said who told you that you're going to Barbados and who told you
that you went to Barbados third class you went to Barbados and you went first class would say no more he isn't even happy that I'm going to Barbados now so I went down on the morning of the sixth day of December with my third fast ticket went up to the desk as they're checking in the passages and I put my ticket forward he said I've got good news for you Mr Goddard someone is canceled and you're going first class and I went first class all the way down to Barbados 10 days down 10 days back
with three Heavenly months in Barbados so all that I did I tried to the best of my ability with his I would call almost influence he was rude but he taught me by his rudeness that I cannot discuss how if I am doing what I'm supposed to do he tells me right away you are in Barbados like someone comes to you now and you would apply this principle towards their request and they say oh I would love to be happily married and you said her or him you are now happily married they look at you
as though you're insane but that's exactly what you're supposed to do you are now happily married but if I am now happily married and I'm a lady I would instantly begin to feel that ring layer in my imagination and I let others see that I have my ring but that would imply I'm happily married if it's a wedding ring and so if I don't wear it from then on I am not doing what I'm supposed to do so in my imagination I have to go to bed wearing my ring and actually do all that I
would do in that state oh he said you were in Barbados and I'm in New York City physically but he put me in Barbados in my imagination so this I stepped in Barbados to the best of my ability but you know days go into weeks and the week's been into a month and I'm trying my best to open up the discussion with him to get a little hope no no hope he wouldn't give me any encouragement if I did what he told me to do but we all are human enough to want another little discussion
another little push and so he taught me the lesson that there is no such thing as a little pregnancy no such thing if you did it then you're pregnant let the child grow and interference with it is going to be a miscarriage you assume that you are in Barbados now you're pregnant the ideas you're going to give birth to a journey and which will land you right in Barbados so you can you assumed it that is conception now don't try to argue you are conceived and all you have to do is to be a faithful
mother and bear that child and don't discuss it with me anymore he never discussed it after he told me I was in Barbados and I learned so many things from the old fella I came back because I wasn't drinking I brought him two lovely old bottles of branding the best that we had in the island two lovely bottles and that's some realm so I gave you my father's realm gave him the branding a week later he said to me say how long do you expect those things to last learn my lessons I thought he would
sip those things for a year oh no they were gone and it wasn't how long I suppose these things to last for him and of course he really disillusably terribly on so many things because I would go and dine with him and Abdullah I was in a strict vegetarian I was trying to overcome it after I came back gradually and of course he would sit down and he would have two or three big shots of Rye I mean Big Shots awry and then he would wash down his meal with a lot of water or it
wasn't there it was ale and then he would at the aim like Churchill a huge big bowl of ice cream I said AB how can you do that oh he said you couldn't do it it'll poison you because you have pribles but you know that God made everything everything is God you're going to see you made something an update rest no God made everything and he'll send me back to the Bible go back to the Bible and read the book of Acts and Peter couldn't eat the unclean thing and then the Lord said for that
which I have claims I have cleansed that a sheep came down filled with all manner of animals and food and the voice said to feed a slay and eat or that which I have cleansed I have cleanse so he said you have cribbles Neville with any of your quibbles and poison you but he would sit down and polish off this enormous deal and wash it down with ale precede it with three shots of rye and and here was a man truly of the spirit [Music] but if I judge from appearances I would say well he
can't be a holy man for which so they are most grateful that he wasn't because he taught me real Christianity and he was born in North Africa of Jewish parents and raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish Home but he knew more Christianity than anyone I've ever met because he spoke the Hebrew tongue perfectly he spoke other tongues and rabbis would come to study with him and he and I would discuss day in and day out over five years teaching me all that he could teach me that I could have saw concerning the Kabbalah the great
mystery of how this thing is put together in these simple little letters of Hebrew I know that in the before the Civil Rights bill in New York City no negro could go to the box office and buy a seat in the orchestra you get a seat in the balcony you think Abdullah would ever let me gone by the seats no uh they will go right straight down to the box office and he was a new grass at you and you go right down and say I want two in the center I don't want too far
back not beyond the sixth row right in the center yes sir by the two seats for any shell the first opera I saw Abdullah took me to it it was possible five hours that I never seen one before the scene would never come to an end of all the offers to be introduced to Opera through possible Good Friday it was too you go on Good Friday in New York when you go to possible and you sit back into my law is it ever going to come to an end and he is drinking it in every
little note he understands every little point and he's so in love with it and I'm silly because I'm next to air just waiting hoping but nothing happens it goes on and on and on and then five hours later and then that's it
