Hate to see the evening sun go down

The others are all gone, vanished, willy nilly, like the leaves of autumn flowing. Businesses like the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the Tri-State Defender, The Memphis World, the Urban League, Jackson's Cafe, a tailor shop, Labacoti, Inc., Wiggins Barbershop, and its affable owner, M.C. Wiggins. However, black Beale Streeters were forewarned by W.C. Handy who wrote:

If Beale Street could walk,

If Beale Street could talk,

Married men would have to pick up

Their beds and walk.

Except for a few who never drink booze

And the blind man on the corner who

Sings the Beale Street blues!

Lieutenant George W. Lee reflectively wrote "Beale Street Sundown" and there's scarcely a blackface on Beale Street.

Nor scarcely a black face on Farish Street. Even the famous Peaches Cafe is threatened with closure!

As Oliver Goldsmith, the English poet wrote: III fares the land

To hastening ills a prey

Where wealth accumulates

And men decay!