PROFILE

"I guess being a bootlegger was the fartherest away we ever got from our churchly childhood," explains Snowball, jovial colored free lance of Mt. Auburn Street who uses the royal prerogative, walks on the sides of his shoes, and does not believe in dicting.

From preacher's son to postman and postman to Pullman porter took up the first twenty-five years of Snowball's life. Religion was the one thing he did not get from his boyhood. At the age of nineteen, while taking mail from the trains, he was "bitten by the bug to see the country at the expense of the Pullman Company." And for the next five years, as porter on the 20th Century Limited, that went from Boston to Chicago, he matured from wide-eyed innocence to philosophical manhood. As for seeing the country, he "looked up its worst to begin with, and then came gently to its best." But whatever else came out of these years, Snowball drew one definite conclusion. He was "thoroughly convinced that beauty was struck in Chicago" (ed. note: his wife hails from Virginia).

Then, in 1914, when Bill Bingham was a Junior and the Gold Coast was really fourteen carat, Snowball came to Cambridge and tried his hand at laundry, pressing, and punch-concocting. In those days, the great Club controllers like Chase Mellon, young Barney Baruch, et al, inhabited 6 Holyoke Place (now a parking lot), Claverly, Randolph, and Westmorley. "Then, they went more for the straight stuff with a little ginger alc or soda," reflects the alcoholic expert. "They had pride in holding their own whiskeys. Now that the punch has come in, they start right off with the idea of getting drunk."

But Snowball didn't major in drink by a long shot. From the day he pulled into Cambridge, throughout the next twenty six years, he has promoted one thing after another. "All my promotions have been on financial shoestrings," he admits, "but I always managed to catch hold somewheres." Most important of these promotions was, and is, a colored semi-pro baseball team called the "Boston Tigers." Travelling on a guarantee from opponents, Snowball has taken this team all over New England, and even to Canada. They reigned supreme in their league from 1922 to 1927, and once, "when they defeated the hitherto unbeaten team from Sherbrooke, Canada, the Canadian ball players had bet and lost so much money in the upset that they had to burn their ball park and start all over again.

Snowball wanted, more than anything else, to bring the best Negro athletes in contact with big leaguers. And this, he claims, was "trying to mix oil with water." In 1918 he acquired a wife who objected to his wanderings from laundry to pressing, to shoe-cleaning, and shoes to baseball, with punches peppered over all. But by now, he says, "she's gotten used to it, though we still have to buy her silence by getting her tickets to the Harvard football games."

During prohibition, the master got his degree as "bootlegger, counselor, and legal adviser to students." But his bootlegging was "entirely legitimate," since he imported his booze direct from Canada through pullman porter connections. Moreover, he always sampled the goods to make sure it wasn't poison before directing its flow toward 60 or 68 Mt. Auburn Street. "We were smart in those days," he reflects. "Now, we don't even know how to think."

Snowball claims that he is "of the old school." Colonel Apted and Max Keezer were his contemporaries. The only ones left are Jimmy O'Brien (Janitor of Claverly) and Nappy, the taxi driver. But he still overflows with biblical quotations, preaches powerful sermons against race discrimination while picking up clothes to press, mixes his famous "Green Dragon" punch, manages the "Boston Tigers," and is private caretaker, weather-discusser, and day-starter for Professor Copeland. His main ambition is to be a Cabinet Minister; his main contention that "you can always wake a Harvard man with music and put him to sleep with drink"; his life "is an open book"; and his real name is Arthur Johnson.