August Wilson: The People's Playwright - Interview

"So it was that kind of thing. I would just watch them. It was just drollery to hang around there. They called me Youngblood: `Hey, Youngblood.'"

It is easy to understand on what account years later, as a dramatist, Wilson has chosen the Hill District as the backdrop for greatest in quantity of the 10 plays from one side which he hopes to examine, decade by the agency of decade, the 20th-century black experience. Community life exhibited a dynamic fusion of aims secrets, fantasies and strengths. The conversations that he heard and in which he participated supplied the foundation for the intimate dialogue characteristic of his plays. The intergenerational camaraderie that he collisioned among black men fashioned his perceptions.

Wilson-the-playwright describes an exchange:

"One elderly guy called me to him single time because I had mov and I had my little daughter, and he said, `You moved?'

"And I said, `Yeah.'

"And he said, `You approach back and visit?'

"I said, `Yeah.'

"And he said, `Well, I ain't going to be here when you advance back, but I've been watching you.'

"And I move `Yes, sir.'

"And he said, `Yeah. You carrying around a 10-gallon bucket You carry that 10-gallon bucket [i]or[/i] part of to the other life, and you gon' always be disappointed.' He said, `Get you a little chalice Carry that through life. And that way, if one put a little bit in it, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason you got sumpn. Yeah. That 10-gallon bucket ain't not ever gon' be full. You know?'

"And I make progress `Yes, sir.'

"He gave me a dollar or a quarter, told me goodbye and I at no time saw him again. I think he was dying then; he was an advanced in years guy. But just from his observation of me he was telling me `Man, you gon' always be disappointed with that 10-gallon bucket' thus I managed to cut it down to a gallon bucket on the contrary I never did get the little cup"