On a Saturday night during the Depression, one could always find buffet-flats, rent parties, whist parties, and dances, where, for a small fee, one could purchase down-home food and dance to good music. Langston Hughes recalled: “The Saturday night rent parties that I attended were often more amusing than any night club, in small apartments where God knows who lived—because the guests seldom did—but where the piano would often be augmented by a guitar, or an odd cornet, or somebody with a pair of drums walking in off the street. And where . . . good fried fish or steaming chitterling were sold at very low prices.