Tom Fletcher, who was born in 1873 and had a show business career beginning in 1888, wrote in 1954 that when he was a child, his grandparents told him about the chalk-line walk/cakewalk, but they did not know when it started. Fletcher's grandfather told him, "your grandmother and I, we won all the prizes and were taken from plantation to plantation. The dance became a great fad. It took skill and good nerves ... The plantation is where shows like yours first started, son." Fletcher adds that the dance was called the "chalk like walk" and "There was no prancing, just a straight walk on a path made by turns and so forth, along which the dancers made their way with a pail of water on their heads. The couple that was the most erect and spilled the least water or no water at all was the winner." He describes it being "revived with fancy steps by Charlie Johnson, a clever eccentric dancer" and becoming known as the "Cake Walk".