Smokey Robinson, (no, not that one!) was the caretaker in several of Harry “B”’s (no one really knew his last name so people just called him Harry) nightclubs in Montreal. Those were the ‘heydays’ of nightlife in Montreal when it became known as the ‘Paris of North America.” It was not uncommon for clubs to open with great fanfare, only to close a short time later and move to a different location. Some of the clubs catered to a more refined upscale clientele and served only select liquors, champagne and had live entertainment. They preferred to be called nightclubs. Others were simply expanded taverns whose interiors were marked by the smell of the cigarette smoke and spilled beer.
Harry’s clubs were somewhere in the middle. They were always managed by his brother-in-law Sam and for a long while Smokey was the caretaker. They were a team. Trustworthy and unconditionally loyal to each other. Qualities that were rare in those days.
Smokey was a fair-skinned African American, with rounded shoulders. One’s initial impressions of him may have been of someone who was downcast and despondent. That would have been wrong. Very wrong. Yes he walked with a slow deliberate gait with eyes continually downcast, but for good reason. It was exactly the persona expected of a black person in the deep south where he grew up. When white people walked by, in Georgia, you lowered your head. That’s just the way it was.
No one had ever called him anything but Smokey, and it’s doubtful if anyone, except perhaps his parents who never mentioned it, actually knew his real name. Perhaps it was Smokey. He seemed happy with it, so Smokey it was. Naturally he didn’t smoke. At times it was difficult to understand his speech pattern. A southern drawl combined with a bit of a slur forced you to concentrate on what he was saying. Really concentrate. The result was that people would too often not make the effort and dismiss him. That too was a mistake. One that neither Harry nor Sam ever made.
It was impossible to determine Smokey’s age. Somewhere between forty and sixty would have been a close estimate. Smokey certainly didn’t know. He told people that he was born before the great “boll weevil invasion” in Georgia, which destroyed the back forty acres of the cotton plantation he had lived on with his parents. Perhaps ‘existing’ would more appropriately describe their lives. In any case, that’s as close to his actual age anyone was able to determine.
His parents, James and Ginny Robinson, were enslaved to Col. Thomas Adams a cotton plantation owner in Georgia, whose family had owned the Lady Belle since the early 1800’s. Adams had overseen it since the spring of 1865 when he returned from serving in the Confederate Army under Robert E Lee. The South may have surrendered but Adams never would. His mantra was “the South will rise again” and he took out his anger and frustration about the war on his slaves. Smokey’s parents were not spared his wrath.
