The First Third 9780872860056, 0872860051

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Neal Cassady

The First Third & Other Writings Revised & Expanded Edition together with a new

Prologue

City Lights

Copyright © 1971, 1981 by City Lights Books All rights reserved for the Estate of Neal Cassady Parts of this book first appeared in Notes from Underground and City Lights Journal. Cover photo of Neal Cassady by Carolyn Cassady, San Jose, CA, 1953. Cover design by Gerilyn Attebery LC# 74-88229 ISBN: 978-0-87286-005-6 e-ISBN: 978-0-87286-818-2 City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133 www.citylights.com

CONTENTS Editor’s Note Prologue THE FIRST THIRD Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Afterword FRAGMENTS I remember One day as I looked the train over To have seen a specter isn’t everything I walked into the poolhall Leaving LA by Train at Night, High Adventures in Auto-eroticism One night in the summer of 1945 Beginning of The History of The Hip Generation LETTERS To Jack Kerouac To Ken Kesey

Editor’s Note As time has passed (now ten years since first publication) this autobiography has assumed more and more the character of early American source material, like letters from pioneers in wagon-trains trekking Westward two hundred years ago. To the youth of the televised 1980s, the West that Cassady grew up in — the skidrows, hobo jungles, barbershops and back streets of Denver — is a time and place as remote as the Gold Rush — a 1930s America that exists today only in forlorn bus stations in small, lost towns. Cassady’s descriptions of that pre-war world has the quality of old silent movies — so quintessentially the somehow lonely Western experience of that vanished time — Chaplin’s Tramp walking into the future. Thus this recording of Cassady’s wandering existence becomes source material for that old myth of the Wild West, as if Cassady were of the last generation of folk heroes, an early prototype of the urban cowboy who a hundred years before might have been an outlaw on the range. (And as such Kerouac saw him in On the Road.) Especially in the recently recovered “Prologue” (tale of the Cassady family before Neal sprang onto the set) we have here an early American saga as true and deep as Faulkner or Thomas Wolfe (and often with sentences just as tortuous), as homegrown as Paul Bunyan. The homespun, primitive prose has a certain naive charm, at once antic and antique, often awkward and doubling back upon itself, like a fast talker (which is what Cassady was, rather than a “writer” — in person, he moved and talked like a speeded-up Paul Newman in “The Hustler”). So hear his hustling voice as you read…. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti September 1981

Prologue I More than a century ago the first Cassady settled in northern Missouri. Of his offspring, two of the boys are known to have crossed over into southern Iowa and spent their lives there. Apparently, his remaining children stayed about home, for when the Civil War ended, there were several farms in the vicinity on which Cassadys lived and worked. William, the youngest son of this first Cassady, grew into manhood while caring for his great-aunt at her cottage home in the village of Queen City, Missouri. When she died in 1873, the youth moved in with his oldest brother, Ned, who owned a substantial farm near Queen City. In the seventh year of his residence on this farm, William was the victor in a fatal fight between the two brothers. Ned had been noted for his quick and violent temper, his repeated quarrels with his recently-wed wife, and sundry other hot-headed traits. Among these quirks of his nature was the practice of needling and overworking his help at harvest. This may have led to the culminating argument. William was mildmannered to the point of being meek. Some folks contended that he had never had a free day to himself and was often forced to work at unnecessary tasks, especially in adverse weather. Besides which, Ned would not even allow him to eat at the family table and, in general, had come to treat William as a lowly fellow indeed. Other gossips had it that he had eyes for Ned’s new wife, Cora. Wasn’t William a sneaky pup anyhow and a coward, too, for taking such abusive treatment? Later, the community was to wonder whether the cause of the fight was that Ned had become suspicious and caught them together, or whether William was just bullied and goaded into a moment of blind rage. Perhaps closer to the truth, in the light of subsequent events, was that both of these prime causes had been intermingled. Whichever the case, the incident took place on the afternoon of September 9, 1880. Ned was fortyfive years of age; William twenty-six. They were gathering alfalfa. At the barn Ned stacked while William heaved the hay up to him. The wagon being emptied, William clambered into the loft to help Ned finish the stacking. It was here they clashed and fought with pitchforks. William managed to force his brother out of the loft by embedding the tines in his right side and arm. Ned fell backward out of the opening, bounced off the hay-rick below and broke his neck. William was uninjured save for a slightly nicked thigh or two. He was soon jailed and held for trial in Kirksville, the county seat. It commenced October 1, 1880 and was completed three days later. William pleaded self-defense as evidenced by the pricked thighs. There were many emphatically sworn statements by his neighbors attesting to Ned’s ferocious character and surly disposition. The courtroom’s general atmosphere seemed one of “well done!” to the performance of a “good deed.” The jury was instructed to return one of three verdicts: second degree murder, manslaughter or acquittal. They voted for acquittal, and the judge, with an admonition to William to give thanks, closed the case. Cora had one child by Ned and was pregnant at the time of his death. Although there is no record of a marriage to William, she bore him four children in the next thirteen years. In 1893, exhausted at 35 — for William had allowed no hired hands, in fact, forced her to live in seclusion — she died of complications in giving birth to the last of her six children, Neal. When Cora died, William, though not yet forty, retreated almost wholly into himself and lived as a recluse. He became even more close-mouthed and took to reading the Bible in solitude. In consequence, the farm of which he was master had even fewer visitors than before. A year after his mother passed away, the eldest boy, Ned, Jr., sullen and morose, an outcast in his knowledge of the situation and in the face of his stepfather’s apparent ill-will toward him, fled the house on his fifteenth birthday. He was never heard from again, and William made no effort to find him. There was to be no other change in the household until 1900. At this time, Benjamin, at 18, the second oldest child of the remaining five, left home to become a blacksmith’s apprentice. In later years he settled in the northwest portion of the state. In 1903, Roy, now 17 and the only child to attain a formal education, went away to attend Kirksville State Teachers’ College. In 1907 he returned to teach in the nearby school and once again came to live with the family. In this year also, Eva, the only girl, married a lad from Unionville, Missouri. She returned with him to his home and settled there permanently. The eldest of these five children never left his father, and at old William’s demise in 1917 his will proclaimed the farm was to belong entirely to this son. This action seemingly confirmed the common assumption that Cora’s second child, supposedly Ned’s, since it was on the way at the time of his death, was in reality William’s. The choice of his name was William, Jr. Also, William favored the boy a good deal to the exclusion of the others, and in old age doted on him excessively. * * * When Neal was quite young, Eva, the child closest to him in age, had taken a pronounced liking to

him. As the years passed, this attachment grew. She mothered the boy as do so many older sisters, and it must be said that the pouring-out of love to her youngest brother was the only noticeable sign of such an emotion as affection to ever have been seen among the Cassadys. As Neal grew older, they would work together about the farm, take long hikes and were indeed inseparable. Eva protected him as best she could from the rough bullying of the other boys, and when she left at the time of her marriage, they pounced on Neal with increased malice. Life became intolerable, for he was continually hounded and maligned as the unprotected butt and now lawful — even easy — prey of the older brothers’ ruffianism. Neal Cassady was sixteen in the year 1909. He stood five feet, eight inches and weighed 160 pounds. He retained these dimensions throughout his life. His torso was somewhat elongated with shortened extremities. His face was usually alight with the kindness of simplicity, although when angry, his light complexion became quickly florid. Light blue eyes and a shock of dense brown hair completed the coloring. He was an excellent runner and remarkably strong for his size. The mind was restless but slow, with very little in it. On schooldays Roy and he would trudge through the fields together. Neal disliked school since Roy had come as teacher. With his newly-found authority, Roy was severe with his pupils and his brother in particular. One fine Spring day Roy’s taunts and ridicule of Neal before the class finally goaded the boy into striking him. Thereupon, Roy proceeded to administer a sound thrashing with the willow switch. The brutal whipping over, Neal dashed from the schoolroom in tears of humiliation followed by the hoots of laughter and the jeers and guffaws of his classmates. His over-wrought nerves heightened his fear of the further consequences of his act if he returned. Perspiring profusely from his exertion, fearful of his fate at home, he plodded slowly across the farmland. As he pondered the ways of his family, he came to believe that he should follow in the path of Ned, Jr. and flee the house of these three hardened and uncommonly bitter men: his father, Bill, Jr. and Roy. Neal spent the hours until nightfall walking the several miles to Queen City. He passed the night in the home of one of his school chums. Waking early, on the morning of May 25, 1909 he left his birthplace forever. The boy made straight for his sister Eva, thinking of her as his only refuge. Unionville was some fifty miles, and it took him two full days to traverse the distance; the intervening night he slept in a convenient haystack. Once in Unionville, he made inquiries and found that George Simpson and wife lived with his parents. Hesitant and with embarrassed reluctance, Neal went to the Simpson’s small farm. Eva, of course, was delighted to see him again, after two years without any word from home. Despite this, the initial attempt made by the two to reawaken their old relationship was not successful, for Eva was too completely taken up with the Simpson family and its struggles. Eva’s husband, his brother Henry, and their parents John and Sadie Simpson, were very poor. Their poverty was so extreme they could hardly find food for Neal to eat the evening he arrived. This evidence of their desperate straits caused an awkward tension in which the boy further choked with embarrassment. By the pressure of enforced frugality everywhere present, he saw, with shame’s acute awareness, his imposition. Nevertheless, Neal stayed on. Resolute in his anxiety to prove himself no burden, he labored almost continuously at the farmwork. With his willingness to work excessively, there occurred an accident which dealt himself and the Simpson financial condition a withering blow. Near exhaustion one evening, he was spreading manure on the field, and in attempting to push the last of the load off the wagon in one powerful shove, he dislocated the small vertebrae in his back. The guilt of the doctor bill he had caused gnawed in his belly so that he allowed himself too little time to convalesce and too soon returned to work. Stupidly persisting at heavy tasks, he irritated the injury, and thereby did damage which permanently weakened his back. As the hot summer wore on, Neal came to see that all his efforts to do his share had little effect in salvaging the depleted Simpson fortunes. The necessity for leaving became obvious and so urgently felt that now he spent the nights in silent speculation of various possibilities. Discarding other projects of youthful fancy — such as going to sea — he decided to go to the “big city” In his limited scheme of things, his practical mind saw but one big city for him — Des Moines, Iowa. One morning over the breakfast table he declared himself about to leave. With a firm voice intended to stop or nullify any polite protests, he pointed out that the slim harvest could be gathered without his aid. Eva made no effort to dissuade him. When Neal thanked the Simpsons for their generosity, they responded by inviting him to return any time he wished. He took leave of them on a Sunday in the late summer of 1909 and turned his face northward. For the journey — somewhat over 100 miles — he took a lunch, extra trousers, shirt, socks and little else. On this, his first real venture on his own, he had no money. For the second time in his life he sought out a suitable haystack when night came. In the afternoon of the next day he fell in with a family moving to Des Moines by wagon. When evening approached again, with cordial insistence they gave him an extra bedroll. Traveling thus, the party reached the city without mishap. Neal left them and went at once to the stockyards to seek employment. He got there at an opportune moment; a large shipment of cattle had just arrived, and he was hired to help feed and water this stock. The labor of the work was emphasized by his weak back. Seeing Neal’s difficulty in finishing each day, the foreman assigned him to an easier job. Later, in the fall of that year, he was transferred to the packing department. He worked at the stockyards about eight months in all.

After getting the job, it was a fairly simple matter to find a nearby boarding house. With no luggage, he was made to endure a searching conversation with the huge proprietress. She finally decided he was worth the risk. The house, as houses go, was as big as its owner, as women go. The female had two hundred and fifty-some pounds; the house had twenty and more rooms. The woman, by name Anne Stubbins, had lived her whole life in the house, by name Ken’s Gables. Anne’s father, Kenneth Stubbins, had built the house, and she had been born in it. In Anne’s mind, the house and herself were inseparable; she always spoke of “Me and Gables.” Neal first witnessed this curious attitude as he was resting in the parlor on one of his first evenings in his new home. He was startled to hear Anne say to another boarder, “Gables is getting older every day. I doctor him up all the time, but it’s no use. I turn my back, and he slights me at every turn. The old scamp; he’s always dropping a board or an awning or something. Why, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped his porch someday … front one, too, don’t you know.” Anne had never married, and the house was her husband. Every night it was, “Gables and me are tired tonight; it’s early to bed for us,” or “That Gables, the darned old rascal, he’ll be the death of me … kept me awake all last night with his creaking and moaning. I swear, some night the roof will fall right in bed on top of me, don’t you know.” Neal stayed there all the while he worked at the stockyards. Even after he had moved, he would occasionally return to visit “Mother Anne,” as he had come to call her. Complaining of “Gables” down through the years, she died of a heart attack when the front porch finally actually did cave in. * * * It was Spring again; Neal had been away from home a full year. He made no friends in this first year, having a smalltown boy’s inability to meet them when in a strange city. With no time for amusements, and being too fatigued when the long day ended to have indulged, he thus saved money. He bought a wardrobe, sent Eva some money and was in the best spirits he’d ever known. Being still innocent, he was happy. Neal lost his job in the early part of 1910 due to insufficient work at the cattle yards. This did not displease him. The weather that Spring was beautiful and for an interval he loafed. Rising late and eating a big breakfast, he would then usually walk to a downtown park to spend the day. This park became his habitat — a bench-sitter at 17. He delighted in watching the people as they idled by, talking to his fellow sitters, feeding the few pigeons and teasing squirrels. Although of serious inclination, he still, however, didn’t much speculate about life. There was little worry in his young mind. Sitting thus one day, Neal was approached by an elderly gentleman. The man’s silvered hair and stern red face contrasted comically with bulging, glass-shielded brown eyes to emphasize his all-black attire, which was impeccable although he wore no hat. He introduced himself, rapidly blinking, with courteous restraint in his weak voice, and they fell to talking. This man, Roolfe Schwartz, was a kindly, old-minded German whose life had become a lonely one. Having no family and becoming more enfeebled each day, he hoped for an apprentice, a partner. In flights of old-man fancy he prayed for a son to become heir to his three-chair barber shop. These considerations were in Roolfe’s mind as he spoke with Neal, and were, indeed, the reasons which had led him to seat himself beside the boy. Their instant compatibility was so adroitly maneuvered by Roolfe that before the day had ended Neal had agreed to be taught the barber trade by this old-world German. Accordingly, he moved his belongings from Ken’s Gables, and with a promise to visit “Mother Anne” of a Sunday, went to live in the rear of Schwartz’s shop. With feverish delight Schwartz pushed the training period, and although a lifetime of strain at the barber’s chair had weakened his eyes to the point of near-blindness, he still retained a deft touch. With masterful intensity he taught Neal, and the boy responded with an equaling serious eagerness. The day arrived when the fine points of the craft were an accomplished credit to Neal, and, with eyes watering more than usual, Schwartz embraced the youth, called him “son” and told him that he was now more skilled than even he, himself. They lived together in this close harmony for more than seven years. From their meeting in the Spring of 1910 to their parting in the Autumn of 1917, the only changes in the way of their common life were those imperceptibilities of advancing age. As these years passed, Neal did most of the barbering; Schwartz only occasionally helped on a busy Saturday. He kept his hand in with two or three steady customers who would playfully insist, “The old man’s still the best damned barber in these parts.” It was a peaceful life, and in its very regularity Neal almost forgot he’d known any other. In 1914 Neal was twenty-one and yet had not known a woman. There seemed no definite reason for this; he had been in Des Moines five years and had several chances to start a relationship with some of the local girls. He was not unduly shy now; his mannerisms were simple and normal, even animated in those already mentioned moments of excitement which changed his light complexion to ruddy floridity, and having an open-faced handsomeness, his lack of girl companions was a thing of curiosity to those few who knew him. He evidently was just not interested. Yet, in this year of World War beginnings, he did meet a girl in whom he did become interested. He had seen her before; she lived in the same block as the boardinghouse, but he had no chance for formal introduction until one Sunday when he came to visit his old landlady. The girl’s name was Gertrude Vollmer; the only child of a neighborly German household. She had brought a knitted something as a birthday present and was made to stay and listen in docility to the latest news about “Mother Anne’s”

all-consuming topic. As they sat on the porch to hear the laborious soliloquy of the older woman, Neal and Gertrude cast the usual sidelong glances. He walked Gertrude home and met her parents. After that, with Roolfe’s approval — especially of her ancestry — he was a steady caller. By 1917 America was in the war. Patriotically bent, with an idealistic intensity, Neal insisted on enlisting, but Schwartz would not have it. For the first time, they argued in full anger. Now, Roolfe Schwartz was a wise and cautious man who knew many old-world secrets of love. The way the lonely barber kept Neal content was to keep him innocent, catering when possible and leading when necessary. At the time of their first meeting in the park he had found a simple boy, seriously naive, as it were. Schwartz, with his insight, kept him that way. He praised the quickness and ability of the youth’s “conquest” of barbering, extolling him by subtle indirection, and thereby carefully balanced their life together — with the selfish wisdom of a domineering, patient mother. He had managed thus not only to keep Neal close to him these seven years, but he also knew that Neal’s mind was not a searching one; he had as yet asked no questions of life which had not been answered by the time he met Schwartz at 17. Such was his naiveté still that now his twenty-four-year-old mind refused to believe it was not because Schwartz was German that he protested. Neal saw with the blindness of youth that Roolfe well knew there was no personal reason why he shouldn’t join the Army. Schwartz had been forced to come down and declare himself, at last, to clear Neal’s eyes. Whereas before he had cunningly shielded his fear of being abandoned, he now poured out truths. Neal was initiated into his loneliness, and in the resultant confusion of emotional shock he puzzled within. Outwardly, the force of normal habit bred acquiescence, and for the moment Schwartz had respite. So Neal stayed on; life went along as before: work at the shop, interludes with Gertrude, visits with “Mother Anne” to watch her madness. Now it was apparent to him that he had little else. When Schwartz had won the argument about the war, Neal had heard about a whole world of personality previously unknown. He discovered he was free to look outside himself to the distractions of the world, and for all his simplicity, he became so aroused by the prospects that this fret begot, his daily disquiet set in more firmly. Schwartz suspected but was loathe to alleviate his restless boredom, since it would change the order of things, and Neal, with his new-minded freedom, would have the upper hand, would do something crazy, might even leave him. Neal found no outlet, and his animosity mounted, yet a culminating crisis was averted when suddenly he was caught in the second draft and rushed into the Army. * * * The Army life further awakened Neal; thrown into contact with more mature men, he came to a fuller realization of how little he had done with his years. His Army companions became the focal point of his admiration, and thus influenced, he affected many of their habits. Before his induction, he had neither smoked nor drunk; now he began doing both. He discovered the existence of whores, and in a sort time contracted a disease to which they are prone. In contrast to his innocent and self-sacrificing attitude at the war’s outset, it soon became of little consequence in his mind that now he made a poor soldier. Jim Trent was the man in Neal’s outfit to whom he had felt the most attached. Jim came from the desert country of Arizona where his parents had been prospectors before they were both killed when a miniature mine, worked alone, caved in atop them. Jim’s pre-pubic mind was hushed into a state of suspension by the shock of this fatal loss, and after an initial decade of growth in the open-air outdoor life, he was compelled suddenly to adjust to the opposite environment, for he had been taken over immediately by an unknown Aunt who lived in Kansas City. The overwhelmed boy was thoroughly schooled by private tutors until his entrance into Missouri University. He majored in Journalism, and soon after graduation got a job as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. When the war came, he quit and joined the Army over the protests of his aunt, who immediately disowned him. Trent was now a reckless and cynical young man, and his resentment at the loss of her patronage served to inject an added maliciousness into his character. His general attitude about life, which bespoke the beginnings of another snob striving to overcome inadequacy with bored haughtiness, made almost everyone dislike him, and in the Army he was soon an outcast. But Neal, the simple country boy, blindly adored Jim Trent, and a casual acquaintance became what Neal thought was a fast friendship. Their very closeness had a somewhat desperate quality, for unknowingly, both were rebelling, and in chafing at the Army they became an insolent pair, increasingly ungoverned by reason. The departure of the ship on which Neal was to steam to Europe had been set for mid-November, 1918, but the Armistice prevented the boat’s sailing. This unexpected, though hoped-for change in orders was greeted with joyous gratification like a last-minute reprieve by all — except Neal, who felt cheated. In his preparation for imagined Battle and Death, he had used the bravado of Trent to help overcome his fears. The anti-climactic end troubled him, for he thought warfare might have verified the correctness of his method in attempting to attain a still-idealized courageousness. That is, by some real Hero Action, he might pull up even, make everything right. Reasoning in this fashion, he had no excuse for the actions he had committed while in government service, and the guilt of self-knowledge was upon him. Neal was mustered out of the Army with an honorable discharge in January, 1919. Trent, too, was discharged with him, and together they traveled to Kansas City by train. They registered in a fine hotel, and in several weeks had spent all their savings. As will small boys when released from confinement,

they manufactured for themselves a continual excitement to find pleasure in doing the things they’d promised themselves when discharged. Even before the money was gone, Neal was satiated with nightlife, yet the limit to Trent’s riotous exuberance had not been reached, and he borrowed large sums from his old friends to drag on the routine of their luxury. Sick of it all, Neal left Trent in his debris and returned to Schwartz in Des Moines. Once again he took over the reins of control at the barber shop, but the trade had dwindled, for in Neal’s absence Schwartz had become senile. Completely unnerved by such a shock after all that had just happened, he soon came to despise Roolfe, his antipathy mounting with every old-man slobber and the incessant gleeful cackle. Schartz would lean over his shoulder as he worked on a customer and giggle in his ear, poke him in the side, or on occasion, gently stroke his back and head. Worse, the things of which he spoke made no sense. Confronting him daily, this vision of a man’s end distracted Neal so much he often closed the shop and took to bed complaining of his stomach. One day Schwartz, too, lay in his bed and remained there, an invalid. Desirous of leaving and yet forced to stay, Neal neared a breakdown. As the weeks wore on, his feelings of entanglement reached frightening heights and displaced any compassion within him. Finally, driven to decision, he left after hearing that the Ottumwa Mutual Life Insurance Company was seeking men as salesmen. With no farewell, as Schwartz slept, Neal abandoned his foster father to die alone. Troubled thus, he apprehensively made the short journey to Ottumwa to begin a second vague new life in another strange field of endeavor. He had remained in Des Moines only a few months. The Ottumwa Mutual Life Insurance Company served mostly rural dwellers. Neal’s territory to work was in the area around the state line separating central southern Iowa and northern Missouri. Pitching on his home ground with his own type of people and with his serious-minded earnestness, he did well at selling insurance despite the spectre haunting his sleep. On the last day of March, 1920, he won promotion to Ace Salesman, to represent the company alone (junior men worked together in crews). He bought his first automobile, a T-Model Ford. In a Spring washout that year he wrecked the car, attempting to leap a four-foot gully with it. So as to get farther away from Schwartz, since he now had no car, Neal took an opening that was offered him in the Kansas City branch office of the company. He had not been in Kansas City more than a few hours before he happend to meet James Trent while drinking in a downtown tavern. Alcoholically enthused at their chance meeting in this inordinary fashion, they greeted one another with strong emotion. Jim’s warmth of feeling was such that he insisted Neal be installed as permanent guest in his aunt’s palatial home. Now, Kansas City society was proud of Genevieve Connelly Whitaker. Her father, Osgood Maynard Connelly, had been the scion of the town’s rich “banking Connellys.” Her deceased husband, Willard Whitaker, had founded the largest meat processing plant west of Chicago and left an immense fortune. Genevieve was the personification of a widow laden with responsibilities of wealth. Philanthropy, fashion leadership and huge social events were her main concerns. Then, of course, there was the problem of her sister’s lone child, James Trent. Annoyed as she had been when he’d joined the Army, through remembrance of having had unanticipated guilt-fears for his safety, she relented after his return, and once again reinstated him in a privileged position. Neal was caught up in the whirl of social affairs which focused on the Whitaker Mansion. He was thrust suddenly into the demands of a way of life even more alien to his nature than had been those of the Army. Another adverse development was that Jim Trent had become the nominal head of a group of fierce little snobs. This group soon rejected bumpkin Neal. Bewildered, he was only defended from their scorn by jovial Jim. But he, too, as initial enthusiasm died and newer diversions appeared, lost interest and gave up concern over the matter. Being ostracized, Neal felt as though he was on exhibit, an oddity to be stared at when they had nothing better to do. No one had ever sneered at him in this way, and the new experience was humiliating. Raging at the pretentions of these city people, although still very much in awe, the gullible country-raised man became more withdrawn in paranoia and self-loathing. His work-life suffered, since the expense-free home removed the pressure of sustained effort to gain a livelihood, and new prospects easily resisted his feeble attacks. He even dreaded dealing with old clients for fear they might make complaints against him for some reason. Realizing he couldn’t sell anything now and seeing his sales charts declining rapidly, he missed work several days in a row, then quit entirely. By sticking to his room for weeks on end, he avoided Jim, across whose mind would flicker only occasional wonderment at Neal’s actions, but it was left at that. Genevieve, of course, had no definite idea of the number of people staying in her home at any one time; there was a continual round of guests arriving or leaving, and often for long periods taking her off with them to one attraction or another. She paid little attention to the ones of lesser ilk anyway, so Neal certainly was not missed when he retreated to brood. In his room’s confinement he devoted most of his time to solitary drinking of the liquor so freely provided. Still outweighing the failure to find a proper niche in Trent’s world was the increasing recognition of guilt for leaving Des Moines as he had. Neal spent repetitious hours of anxiety recreating in his drunken mind the cowardly departure from Schwartz. Each time he recalled the night of leaving he was shot through with steady shame and hot remorse, and the emotions of that short, distasteful period with Schwartz lived again in his memory. Added to these conflicts was the confusion created by the inability to hold his job and the bitterness of being irresponsible in sacrificing it. His inadequacy in high society — when he was so-inclined to mull that over in the midst of his other ponderings — engendered recognition that these hardened people had again made him feel the long-dormant

emotions of inferiority and helpless rage he had first known in his youth at the time Eva had left home and his older brothers were so cruel. In this anguished condition with such thoughts as his sole preoccupation, he was not slow to know his position in this household of grandeur was untenable, not to say ridiculous. But the daily drink he consumed created an inertia which suspended action on this realization. * * * In the evening of the third day of a celebration for the advent of the New Year 1921, Neal at last arose from his stupor and engaged in a climactic tirade against the whole of life. Trapped Trent answered in contemptuous smirks designed to elicit ever louder hee-haws form his company of assembled donkeys, and Neal rushed with finality from the house. In the impersonal coldness of the rich neighborhood street his anger gradually subsided only to be replaced by renewed surges of contrition for what he had done to Schwartz, which caused first tears to well so thickly that he hastened to the highway with blind disregard. With little money, he was forced to make a hectic hitchhike to Des Moines, and the slower each vehicle of transportation rolled — presenting more wagon than car rides — the faster his irritability grew. He prayed with strong emotion that Schwartz still lived. It had been almost a year since Neal had deserted the invalid. There is an experience which comes but few times, because it occurs in those seconds of anticipation just before one is given answer to query that has swollen to such importance it would seem to determine one’s personal fate irrevocably. This moment of strain — eyes wide, mouth open, breath held, throat choked and mind at full intelligence — was first felt by Neal as he half-ran down the familiar path to the shop. The shop was dark, had been long closed with faded blinds tightly drawn behind the unwashed plate glass. Noticing the encrusted handle, he tried the door and found it locked, so he searched about the building for some way to gain entrance but found none. Without heed to the restraint of laws, he broke the glass of an upper side window and crawled through the opening to drop into the shop itself and head for the rear and living quarters. A hasty glance confirmed there had been no business enacted for a considerable time. He stepped some distance beyond the last barber chair, protected like the two others by a carefully placed striped linen sheet, to another door located in the center of a partition separating the two rooms. This door too was locked, but the partition, built to be more a simple obstruction of view than a wall, did not reach the ceiling. He hoisted himself over this barrier, eased to the floor, and was once again inside the domicile wherein he had slept more than twenty-seven-hundred nights. He first noticed the bed, made and unused, coated with dust. On a stand at the other side of the room was still the two-burner gas plate used for cooking, but disconnected. In the direct center of the farthest wall was the crude closet he remembered building years ago, using clumsy six-by-twelve lumber culls. Clothes no longer hung there, and the drape once used to conceal them was gone. Except for a small bathtub and toilet draped from view in the corner, the room was without further fixtures. He sat on the bed in somber thought, dilated nostrils detecting the smell of bareness which permeated the close air. Suddenly he was aroused from this dull reverie by a light focused on his eyes. Somehow, through both the front and partition door the neighborhood policeman had entered with extraordinary stealth, or was it that Neal was too deeply intent on his despair to hear anything. At any rate, the policeman now stood above Neal with flashlight and drawn gun. “Stand up, face that wall there, put your hands on it — up higher, over your head,” he barked. While frisking Neal, he demanded his name, business there and the like. Finding no hidden weapon on Neal’s person, the cop marched him outside to question him at greater length. Neal’s apathetic reaction and apparent unconcern for this gumshoeing intrusion eased the patrolman’s suspicion somewhat. It happened that the station house was nearby, so considering the possibility of bluff, he escorted Neal there on foot to check more fully into his story. Finally, Neal managed to recall an old customer’s name, and he, when telephoned, came to the police station to confirm Neal’s right to break into and enter Schwartz’s barber shop. The captain of detectives was soon satisfied Neal’s explanation was correct, and he was released without charge. As they walked from the stationhouse together, this customer (whom Neal remembered as a fanatic for facial massage) told him that an ignoble bum named John Harper had cared for Schwartz until his death some weeks ago. The knowledge of Schwartz’s death being foreseen and given confirmation in this unusual manner neither produced an immediate reaction of grief, nor did the news further stun him. On the contrary, Neal felt so inexplicably heartened by the unexpected prospect of speaking to the very person who had been with Schwartz as nurse that, after eager questioning to learn his address, he had brightened enough to thank the former customer for his help and to handshake the surprised man excessively before taking hasty leave of him. Neal walked hurriedly to the home site of the vagrant, John Harper, which was in the city dump at the town’s edge, and once there apprehensively stopped at the first of four or five shacks in a hollow, located amid many mounds of rubbish. At his knock there appeared a wizened face which froze in withdrawal with the help of blank, purposely uncomprehending eyes that struck Neal as those of a madman miser, reminding him of the character in one of the few books he’d read, Silas Marner. A deep throatbox tone passed a flash of toothless gums to issue through contorted lips, “Over there.”

Of all the architectural absurdities erected on this bit of refuse-laden earth, his was perhaps the best example of near-nothing utilized as a dwelling. Crates of various types of sheet steel, plaster boards and numerous other scraps of material salvaged from the dumpage were the ingredients of the melange. Before this shack a ratty little terrior yipped his loudest and scuffed the snow-covered ground in the area his tether allowed. His din abated, then ceased, as Harper stirred within and yelled for quiet. The dog silenced, he spoke again, “Come in.” Neal took off his hat and stooped to more easily negotiate the low doorway. Harper swung his feet to the burlapcovered floor and sat up on his canvas cot. Seeing Neal standing on the threshold, hat in hand, he half-mistook it for a gesture of respect. “We’re alone,” he said, then paused, his eyes fixed in rigid focus on flustered Neal. “You can put your hat on the table.” He indicated a large upturned box with lighted candle in direct center. Instead of complying with this — indeed, hardly following the words’ gist, Neal began an excited questioning of Harper. All the things he had imagined, everything he felt he must know were asked in blurted sentences, with scarcely a pause for breath. When Harper interrupted to answer, Neal quickly started anew, so Harper then sat motionless and watched with puzzled eyes until he should be through. Neal ended his impassioned spiel on notes of condemnation at his own failure to Schwartz, and in chestthumping agony, sank to the cot beside Harper, begging him to speak. For a moment there was silence in the overheated room: an oilstove gave out black clouds of heavy smoke. Although overwhelmed, Harper was not frightened by Neal’s show of maniacal emotion and wisely decided to ignore it, concentrating instead on the simpler aspects. For he sensed that was what this distraught man most wanted, i.e. something concrete to weave further fancies around. So for emphasis he spoke plain facts with all the show of dignity he could muster. “I had gone into town to get meat scraps for Buggyboy out there, when I passed your barber shop and heard him calling out, so I went in, and there he was on the bed in the back. He grabbed my arm when I entered and asked where you were. I started to tell him I was just going by and didn’t know you, but he wouldn’t pay any attention, just kept yelling out for you. So I decided to stay and try to quiet him. Well, I did; I gave him some soup that was there, and he got better pretty quick. He began talking to me a little more sensibly, and I stayed quite a long time before I told him I’d be back in the morning and left to get my dog meat. “I saw him regular for a week or so, but then he started wanting me to stay there at night too, so after that, I did. A couple of months passed, and since he couldn’t work, and the shop was closed, I even lived on his money. But we used to talk together quite a lot, and I thought that helped him. After awhile, though, he got so bad he didn’t hardly wake up from one day to another, and he stopped talking altogether. I suppose he knew you had left him for good. Anyhow, he died a few days later — about a month ago, I guess it was.” Neal left the bum’s shack that midnight more nauseous than was usual for his always queasy stomach. He attributed this to the kerosene fumes in his nostrils rather than diagnosing his entrail symptoms as twisting of soul or Freudian torture. He never saw Harper again. Neal reopened the shop for several weeks, then sold it without qualm when he received an offer out of the blue. Shortly after, since the barber shop and fixtures were all Schwartz left, when spring came again, Neal lapsed into further inactivity and took to the park bench in earnest. Finding a brooding sort of peace in recalling the past, he spent full days ruminating over his 28 years, and the pleasures of bench-thought increased so much that summer came and went and even autumn passed without change in his routine. He led this irregular life without friends or foes, and stayed in a small hotel, always eating at odd hours in a cheap all-night cafe next door. In the park he sat alone now with only squirrels for company and, bundled to the ears against the cold, continued this extreme self-involvement. Of course, living in this masochistic fashion, he achieved a certain patience and developed a pride of indifference which allowed nothing to disturb his equilibrium. He wished to believe the explosions were over, and he vowed to keep free from all disturbance of emotion, repressing extravagance. He smoked Bull Durham tobacco, sought no comforts, and spent very little money. But although the sum from the sale of the shop was undeniably dwindling, he did not stir himself to get more. He did in fact wait until he was exactly broke. After having used his last pennies for breakfast, he simply walked into the best barber shop in town to apply for work and was hired on the spot. Neither surprise nor thankfulness crossed his features. * * * Working four years at this job, he never missed a day except for one occasion sometime during the summer of 1924. Renewed was his old habit of drinking, although it was confined to Saturday night exclusively. One of these Saturday nights he got exceptionally drunk after a busy day of haircutting and shaving many men, which entailed long hours of standing in the oppressive heat and produced aching feet and a weakened back. Late in the night, staggering along through the streets of Des Moines, his hazy mind recalled some object within the shop he thought he needed at once, so acting on drunken impulse, slowly he sneaked and swayed along the alleyway behind the building, fumbling for his keys as he reached the back door of the shop. At this juncture, as he bent over to focus the lock, he was accosted and swung about by a night-shift policeman. This worthy did not hesitate long enough for Neal to mumble any thick-tongued explanation before he smashed him one mighty blow between and just

beneath his bleary, drink-blinded eyes, and the powerful swing of this brutal bull’s fist was made further effective by shiny new heavy brass “knucks” inserted over the fingers — probably being tested for the first time. It so happened that the desk sergeant of police was the same gentleman with whom Neal had been brought to face on the important night of three years before. He had been Captain of Dicks then, so was either transferred or demoted. This remarkable officer remembered Neal’s tendency for forcing entry into the town’s barber shops, so he now doublechecked on the fact that Schwartz had left his shop to Neal, as well as forcing careful inquiry into the present incident. Not, however, so careful an inquiry as to inconvenience the patrolman or in any way curtail the further use of his new toy. Perchance in private, compliments were extended him for his latest verification of his diligent vigilance. At any rate, victim Neal was released late the following Monday. He put off having his deviated bridge reset, and this procrastination continued indefinitely; so it was that his nose remained far out of line the rest of his days. Strange, and contrary to apparent logic, this bashing of the nose served to jolt him out of his shell to an extreme degree. He became more amiable with his fellow workers and the clientele of the shop, and he began to pay attention to his dress. He even grew so gregarious it became a passion to talk to everybody. All his spare time was absorbed in attending gatherings — whether baseball or poker games, band concerts or Saturday night dances — Neal went to them all. This trend became habitual and was lent manifest form and dignity when Neal persuaded one of his regular customers, the local golf instructor, to get him initiated into the Des Moines Country Club set. The Trent failure in Kansas City seemed forgotten or meant little to him now; it may have been he was actually proving something to himself. Anyway, he enlarged his social life immeasurably, and if one can point to a period in Neal’s lifetime that was most balanced and contentedly full, it must be in the year or eighteen months following the mutilation of his nose. He was literally at his peak and the happiest he ever was to be. Through cultivation of great or near-great elite and by acceptance into the lower strata of this level of society, he made numerous acquaintances and even a few friends. Soon he cut the hair and shaved the faces of more important men than almost any barber in the city. This was recognized, and upon the death of the head-chair man, he filled the vacancy. His meteoric rise climaxed in his appointment as manager of the ten-chair shop early in 1925. The satisfaction he felt might have completely nullified what had heretofore never seemed important to him — the pleasures of love. Yet, evidently the reverse became true, and the participation in a more normal way of life had naturally turned him toward a yearning for feminine companionship, because after 32 years of his life had passed, near the end of the first half of the year that completed the quarter-mark of the 20th century, Neal married his only wife, Maude Jean Scheuer.

II In the late Autumn of the year 1869 there docked in New York harbor a schooner, the “Giesenstadt,” owned by and operating under the flag of the German government. As the vessel was made fast, the youngest of her crew shared the others’ eager anticipation of the limited shore leave allowed them while the ship was being unloaded, but this excitement was predominantly caused by fear. Otto Scheuer, an orphaned youngster in a large German town had been pressed into maritime service unwillingly, as was customary in these times. Deprived of family when both parents had succumbed to a prevalent infectious disease, Otto had taken to the streets and had soon been caught up. At sixteen he had already developed a hulking frame, magnificently muscled and destined to grow even taller and with the pale blond coloring prevalent in his native country. His mind was always to be tainted with ponderous sincerity; the tincture of his soul was dull grey. Non-meta-physical in the extreme, he retained a plodder’s gait throughout his long and simple life. Crossing the North Atlantic, Otto had been treated with the usual abuse accorded a youth on his first voyage. Few sailors endured these torments without formulating some escape. Yet most of them, out of habit now, having failed to flee at once, passed into involuntary acceptance of hard first voyages, and in finding with each additional voyage successive improvement — up to a certain point of course — continued to sail as a vocation even after freedom from maritime conscription was acquired. Otto, however, became increasingly resolved to successfully maneuver his freedom from that pattern. Before mid-ocean he was plotting in meticulous detail repetitious plans of young logic to attain his goal. He knew the ship’s policy (in the event of an escaped seaman) was to delay departure for a maximum of twelve days to allow time for the remaining seamen to search out the missing culprit. The solution to the problem of safely surviving this fortnight undiscovered had so far eluded his efforts, especially since one seemingly unsurmountable block belittled any other consideration — he could not speak English. Naturally, a preliminary action in the structure of his planning called for immediate distance from the scene. So with hasty caution, Otto extracted himself from the group as they strolled the waterfront seeking its pleasures. Hardly had he begun to ease away when he saw a fight ahead, several men viciously beating another. The man being attacked looked to be about five feet tall and weighing at least two hundred pounds. Being so short and broad, he gave Otto the impression of immovability. Yet against these odds he was losing so pitifully that our sensitive young hero, though sensing his mates’ eyes boring his back, felt forced to come to his aid. Angered by watching the man’s punishment, he swiftly discarded his jacket and hat before crashing into their midst to fight until his whole being became weary, all the while keeping his back to his ally who seemed even closer to collapse, so red was his face

from sheer shortness of breath. Fighting hard, they edged toward an alleyway, and when for a moment they had all their opponents grounded, they took the shouted advice of one or two of Otto’s crew (who had hurried to enjoy the spectacle). Their arrival assuring victory, the two defendants dashed along the alley to safety, where fortunately, their headlong flight precipitated no pursuit. Short blocks away they ducked into a tavern to recover themselves. Just as they sat down, Otto remembered the coat and hat he’d thrown to the gutter prior to combat. He rose from the table to retrieve them before continuing his interrupted flight, and when he moved toward the door, the man sitting opposite — the squat giant for whom he’d fought — saw he’d better breathe well enough to speak or Otto would be gone. Raising his heavy face from the table with effort, he said, “Name’s Rasmus Svensen, and I thank you, friend.” Otto shifted his standing position, and in a voice thick with tongue and embarrassment, indicated he couldn’t understand. Svenson lifted his head higher as curiosity arched his brow. He then answered in Otto’s own languae, “German? I know that, too.” Otto reseated himself with obvious relief although too startled to convey it. They began a long evening of talk and drink, both supplied by the squat New Yorker. Initially he dwelt on this tale: In 1844, he, Rasmus Svensen, was born on the Island of Loaland in the Baltic Sea. A very pretty homeland was made further enjoyable by the income from the large dairy farm his parents owned. He was an only child, and when he was four his father died. At once, his mother — some twenty years younger — married again a man who proceeded to produce an offspring per season, even twins. This stream of children was quite heartily resented by Rasmus with such unnatural intensity that his mother, to whom he was uncommonly attached, decided to send him to an expensive school in Germany. In 1860 he returned to his beautiful island, only to find even more children running about, and since any 16-year-old worth a grain wouldn’t stand for that, he showed them his salt and stowed away on a ship to America. He was caught while attempting to make a slippery exit at the New York dockside. At this point in the reminiscent monologue in which Svensen was indulging, Otto could not resist cutting in to lay bare his own plight. Rasmus heard him out, then said, “My place is across the river; they’ll never find you there.” Rasmus then told him about the farm he had, and in quick detail, explained how he had acquired it. His mother had sent money to pay his passage fare demanded by the ship’s officials and enough more to buy land and make a home for himself, writing “Since, as our sad hearts know so well, dear son, there can be no home for you here beside your mother.” With these quotes from his “old mother that I haven’t seen for almost ten years now,” he dabbed at his puffed eyelids in mock grief. In his cups and doubly warmed by this broad humor, he grew subtle with rare good form as he told Otto in eloquent tones of the “spot in the red-earth country west of the Hudson” where he’d chosen to build, and now, nine years later, was firmly entrenched with his own “little wifie.” Later, in the boat rowing across the river on the way to the New Jersey dock, Rasmus grew sullen with secrecy and evasion when Otto quizzed him about the longshoremen’s attack. Perhaps from lethargy after heavy drinking, but more likely from a changeable nature, these questions he finally muttered away with a cryptic “I’m always having fights.” When they landed, Rasmus lifted the boat to his shoulders and trudged straight inland. This startled Otto into admiration and begrudged envy, for big though he himself was, towering 18 inches over Rasmus’s blunt head, he doubted he could carry such weight. Rasmus managed to do so for several hundred yards to a spot where he stored the boat in a secluded shack. They then rapidly walked over the uneven ground several miles to Svenson’s home. Early the next afternoon, Otto, having slept heavily from exhaustion, woke to the hard whisper and urgent hand of Rasmus and jumped up with anxiety on hearing his words: “There’re some men coming who might be your mates. Hide in the attic where my wife shows you, but if it’s me they’re after, I’ll yell for help.” Otto jammed into his trousers, jerked his shirt from the chair and, thrusting big feet into bigger shoes, scanned the room in a frenzy not to overlook some personal effects that could betray him. While seeking the upward stairway, he glimpsed grim Rasmus on the front porch with a conspicuous rifle over his forearm. Once in the attic, where a silent Mrs. Svensen had just removed some boards, he had hardly stepped into the niche revealed before she began to replace the partition. Otto guessed he had been wedged in his place of concealment about twenty minutes when he heard voices and feet of three or four men mounting the stairs. There were some German words, then close by he recognized the first mate of the “Giesenstadt” sternly issuing orders to sound the walls! At this moment of imminent discovery, the boy’s fear of the crew could not entirely obliterate wonderment at the compressed fashion of these happenings, and his mind whirled around the fact that his shipmates had found him so quickly. He thought, with an instant rush of trapped emotion, that he had hardly had a chance. Irrelevantly, as these ideas flashed, weaving between them and racing more rapidly than any, there came to him, over and over, a one-sentence refrain from an old German song he had not sung for years, a kindergarten song, he thought, although its name eluded him. The tapping began — stopped. Scuffling noises, more words, then the pounding of feet descending the stairs! Not long after, the woman removed the wall portion that made his door, and a grateful Otto squeezed through, his joy-lit face contorted by gulping in air and sneezing dust. Rasmus was relaxing with wine. The huge chair that received his bulk again emphasized his short stature. This was Otto’s first sight of the living room, and he looked about it, trying to cover his embarrassment as Rasmus explained what had happened.

“I gave that first mate some money, but he sure would’ve had you if the happy thought of bribery hadn’t hit me. It took a little talking, though; he was worried about the two crewmen, but I got lots of money, and I gave him enough for those two cut-throats, too, so he won’t bother us any more. Better have a drink and forget it.” * * * So, Otto was made to feel at home and stayed with the Svensen’s for half a year or more, concentrating mostly on learning English. One of Rasmus’s numerous half-brothers, Christian Nils, had left lovely Loaland, and with his own family, was now settled in Duluth, Minnesota. It was decided, after a long exchange of correspondence, that Otto should go there to try his fortune as a seaman on the Great Lakes, as Christian himself was. This agreed upon, Otto reluctantly set out by stage with funds supplied by Rasmus. Though loathe to part, these two strangely met and totally different men made their last goodbye one of quiet understanding. Otto’s trip from New Jersey to Minnesota was an uneventful as such a trip was likely to be in 1870. Once Otto was in Duluth, Christian had little trouble establishing him in the employment of a Great Lakes steamship company, which was incidentally one of the first to operate with steam exclusively. Otto’s assigned post was a lowly station in the engine room as oiler or wiper. In these new circumstances, without the pressure of the German methods, he found a seaman’s work agreeable and enjoyed the winter months ashore board at the Nils’ comfortable home. In those early years the few essentials he required of life were entirely satisfied, and no further ambitious occurred to him. He became one of the oldest enginemen in those northern waters, eventually serving more than forty years with the same company. Otto finally left the Nils in 1875 when he was 22 and married a German girl of eighteen, whom he had recently met. They bought a house on Duluth’s outskirts and, since he was at sea almost continuously from early spring through late autumn, they raised a family slowly. In 1877 their first offspring, a girl named Carrie, was born. A second child, the only boy, Charles, was born in 1879. The next girl, Lucille, did not arrive until seven years later, in 1886. Their last child, Maude Jean, was born in 1890. Otto’s family remained intact until 1898 when his wife suddenly died of pneumonia soon after he had departed for the year’s voyaging. Carrie and Charles capably handled the emergency in their father’s absence, and soon after the burial of her mother, Carrie (previously a close “pen pal” with a daughter of one of Sioux City, Iowa’s wealthiest families) now journeyed to that town to work for them as housemaid. Brother Charles, 19, immediately got a job with the Railway Express Company in Duluth, and he was to work as a clerk for this company almost as many years as old Otto did with the steamships. Lucy, now 12, watched over 8-year-old Maude, while Charles was at work or otherwise absent from the house. When Otto finally returned home that autumn, he quickly arranged for Lucy to live with Carrie in Sioux City, where she was to serve as maid also and eventually replace sister Carrie. Maude was sent to the family of a seaman buddy who shipped with Otto. This sailor’s kindly wife and two or three children lived on a small farm near Duluth where Maude shared their next four years. Charles would continue to live at home alone, except when his father was in port for four or five months each year. In absolute fact, since Charles never married, and Otto cared little for women, these two men lived in that lonesome old house more than twenty years without another female foot again crossing the threshold. Of course, Otto had always been a distant father to the children, through both circumstance of job and inclination of temperament which displayed little affection. He seemed not to have been unduly troubled by the disintegration of his family, for he made no attempt to hold it together — indeed, actually dispersed it himself. The girls, in particular, meant little to him, and after their mother’s death they knew him only through occasional fondly cordial letters. In 1902 Carrie got married and went to Los Angeles with her husband. Lucy assumed her duties, and it was soon arranged for Maude to leave the farm and fill the vacancy created in the extensive household staff by the marriage. Maude and Lucy lived — contrary to the usual residence of maids — in an outlying cottage on the estate, almost a mile from the main house. For the family, through the daughter’s intervention perhaps, had decided to house Carrie and Lucy in this building years before. And these two hardworking girls had made over the ex-gardener’s cottage into a real home for themselves. After Carrie’s departure, the balance created by Maude’s arrival necessitated no change. Now, unlike most rich families, this one had been wonderful employers, and their friendliness toward Carrie became transformed into sheer infatuation with her replacement. When Maude, fresh from the farm, came to Sioux City she was not yet 13, but one could already discern the extraordinary beauty she was to possess as a woman. Despite the potential for jealousy, a shy and humble nature made her the favorite of all; indeed, before long, they went wild over her, and soon she was looked upon almost as another daughter by these emotional people. Yet in the face of all this affectionate attention, she continued to display an unconcern that was as rare as her personal beauty. To be so unpretentious and unaffected was quite unusual for her age, and she was surely all one could desire. Gracious and mild-mannered, she was a gem. The attributes of her character were constantly extolled, each virtue worked over, carefully catalogued and commented upon in sewing circles until there was no limit they could set for her that she could not be expected to attain.

Fortunately for their self-esteem, the accuracy of their predictions was upheld. In time, each young man of the town’s upper set who was interested in such things came to know of Maude. As the years passed, she ripened into eligibility, and several of these young men called on her with courtship in mind. Among them was one whom she married in the last part of the year 1906. His name was James Kenneth Daly. The match was so good socially that everyone preened and said to each other, “I told you so” or “See? What did I tell you?” * * * Daly was a lawyer well-up in the local political sphere, despite his youth, and his family had money, so he brought his wife into a home of financial security. Personally, he was a big man, full Irish in parentage, tastes and temperament — intelligent, gruff, quick to anger but kind-hearted and sentimental. Although an intense worker who spent long hours building his career, he found time to hunt the abundant small game about, especially ducks. His excesses included McSorrell’s Ale and heavy meals. In 1919, as an underdog, he became Mayor of Sioux City, thanks to his Lincoln Steffens-like platform of exposing graft in the incumbent administration. He was for strong reform in all departments. Suddenly he died in office on September 7, 1922, just before a second election. Although not yet 40, apoplexy was the medical verdict. The children his wife bore over a period of 15 years were four boys and four girls. One boy died when born in 1917. The names and dates of birth of the other seven were: William, 1907; Ralph, 1910; John, 1912 (12/12/12 in fact); Evelyn, 1915; Mae, 1919; Betty, 1920; and James Kenneth, Jr., 1922 (named for his father posthumously). When Daly was buried with the honors due his office, Maude, sensitive about her pregnancy, hid her grief as best she could, and her quiet dignity, reinforced by her pride in the children, eased the public funeral ordeal for all. Daly’s widowed mother, rich and proud, had always resented Maude and now offered no help. To her surprise, Maude found that Jim’s will left her only the house she and the children lived in, plus an insurance annuity that would soon expire. To help escape her memory of Jim (which was stirred by their home — from basement hobby-shop to attic clutter of a hunter’s paraphernalia) as well as a malicious mother-in-law, Maude decided to sell the house and move to nearby Des Moines. But here the problem of money soon came to the fore, and for the first time the Daly boys showed the strong pride within them by their solicitous care of their distraught, beloved mother. William quit school and worked a full daytime job. Ralph got afternoon and Saturday employment with a housepainter. John sold papers, and they made ends meet without too much pinching. Now Maude settled into the typical routine of a middle-aged widow with a large family to raise. A few lady friends came occasionally; they played avid bridge. Of course, she had no hired help, but with Evelyn to watch the younger children for a few hours, she took to a soon-unbreakable habit of never missing the Sunday concerts which had become the custom of most of Maude’s new acquaintances. And since she was a widow of a deceased mayor, although temporarily depleted financially, she had been accepted into their circle, as a respectable member. Near the end of the concert year 1924, all season ticket holders were invited to the annual dance given by this group — at the Des Moines country club. It was at this gala affair that Maude met the man who became her second husband, Neal Cassady.

III The country club of that small midwestern American city, Des Moines, contained a secluded corner table over which, on Saturday nights in the winter of 1924-25, was enacted a courtship of restaint. Short, well-built, bachelor Neal, who with his smashed nose now looked rather like a middleweight pug, was in cautious pursuit of the slim attractive middle-aged widow, Maude, she with the auburn hair and above-average height. The atmosphere of the room, with its fireplace and high-fashionable styling combined with the fine cuisine and liquors, enhanced the romance. Among other things, this cloak of surroundings which was to be her last link with days of leisure and which was the guise under which Neal was received by Maude, helped to produce the emotion of delight so strongly that she was to commit herself and her children rather willy-nilly into the care of this drink-susceptible man. Besides these Saturday nights, always spent at the place they had met, Neal was with Maude and her family only one other time each week — those Sunday afternoons. What had begun when he escorted her home after their first concert continued after the band’s last concerts, as times of romantic habit during the winter. On these occasions he tried to ingratiate himself with the older boys, played with the smaller children, and in every respect behaved like a gentleman. After these amities he would take Maude riding about the town and nearby countryside in his new Star automobile. As the winter passed and the progression of Spring lent further beauty to nature and more mud to the road, they would park in an appropriate spot to appreciate the view and avoid getting the car stuck. During one of these idyllic times Neal proposed and was accepted. They were married May 1, 1925. Soon after their marriage they started the first of almost countless subsequent moves, created by one circumstance or another, that was to make their household a forever-fluid one. Whatever may have been the reason — perhaps it began simply as just the idea of a “honeymoon” — the newlyweds took to the hills, that is; a disbanding of Maude’s family began blindly, as it were. Neal bought a Ford truck and built by himself (an unaccountable constructiveness, neither anticipated nor repeated) a top-heavy

house with a sloping roof on the truck’s two-ton bed. It took months to finish. Maude showed an earnest appreciation for these first consistent days of work. The youngest son and daughter, Betty, aged five, and Jimmy, aged three, were to accompany the lovers. Maude, now pregnant with her ninth child and Neal’s first (the embryo, me), were all to embark on a leisurely western trip “to see the world.” Thus, in the dead of winter, some ten months after their marriage, they headed for Hollywood in Neal’s unique vehicle. The five other children, despite their youth, were to stay in Des Moines and shift for themselves until the tourists returned. The three older boys, in particular, seemed eminently capable of this. William, now 18, Ralph, 15 and John, 13, had a common trait of aggressive confidence — perhaps developed by caring for Maude in the three-year period since the death of their heavy-handed father. He, being a lawyer with an honest and decisive mind, had settled everything from the most minute of domestic decisions to the largest financial matters. His passing on transferred this responsibility to them while removing the pressure of his strict ways from their formative minds, which thus unleashed, had sprung strongly outward with the youthful quality of cocksureness. When Maude delivered en route, our travelers added to their healthy brood. Nearby the Mormon Tabernacle and the rotund and stately Temple with its 78 points of upward thrust balanced evenly atop the twin towers, is the L.D.S. Hospital, where was born on February 8, 1926, at 2:05 A.M., Maude’s last son. It was to be Neal’s only boy and was named after him, except that Neal had no middle name; so as compensative remedy they gave the child the additional name of “Leon,” which ironically spoiled what Neal Sr. was most proud of — a “junior” Neal. They stayed on in Salt Lake City for several weeks while Maude recuperated; then, still driving the weird truck, completed the journey to Los Angeles. On the exact corner of Hollywood and Vine streets was a barber shop which Neal bought with the last of their savings. They didn’t prosper, for right from the start, and often, Neal began closing the shop to spend several days drunk. He somehow, firmly and suddenly, fixed upon an idea that no one could run the shop when he was not there, and so laid off his helper-barbers whenever the increasingly frequent urge to drink came over him. Within a year this practice, despite the shop’s fabulous location, had cut the trade so drastically that one day while soberly stupid and in a black mood, Neal acted in disgust and sold the shop and figures for a pittance of the purchase price he had paid. What to do? Then came a letter from Maude’s brother, Charles, who still worked for the Railway Express Company but had been recently transferred to the Denver, Colorado, office. He suggested Maude and Neal come to beautiful Denver and settle permanently, largely because he loved the great number of green lawns so much that he thought this, in itself, was enough reason to advise relations to live there forever and manicure one of their own. Or, at least stay until they had planned with more surety a definite next step. Reluctantly, because they had no real goal, but somewhat excited and relieved since their natural naiveté was still not fully overcome by middle age, they about-faced again and drove to Denver in 1928. There, on 23rd Street between Welton and Glenarm next to the alleyway, was a brown brick building of miniature dimensions. It housed an incredibly cluttered shoe-repair shop, the accumulation of a halfcentury’s leather-litter. The old repairman who squatted daily before the ceiling-high barrier of sweepings that choked this shop, was Neal’s new landlord. His two-chair barber shop that shared the building with the shoe stall was acquired on a one-year’s lease. Neal, Maude, Jimmy. Betty and little Neal moved into the crowded quarters in the rear of the sop. Then the other children in Des Moines were sent for, and soon by train Bill, Ralph, Jack and Mae arrived in Denver. Thirteen-year-old Evelyn, as hotblooded as the boys, took an offer from an old maid Sioux City friend of Maude’s and stayed there until her 21st year when she married her first cousin and went with him to California permanently. Still, with seven children, conditions in the shop’s two small rooms were intolerable. There were not beds enough; clothes lay everywhere; they could not squeeze together into the kitchen and so ate in two groups. The independent older boys had no patience with these inadequate household provisions of their stepfather and almost immediately struck out on their own. This move left Maude with but three of Daly’s offspring and, of course, little Neal. * * * Bill, the oldest, was now twenty-one and nobody’s fool. Within a month or so after arriving in this strange town, he met and married a pretty young widow whose considerable income came from her recently dead husband’s “Dine and Dance” place just outside the West city limits of Denver. Bill managed this tavern with her and, while about these duties, became adept at the requisites of bartending. Picking up these fundamentals put him in good stead to become an ace barkeep, and he never again worked another trade. In later years it was his pride that he had worked the biggest, busiest and best of all the clubs from New York to Los Angeles — a slight exaggeration, of course, but true in essence. Ralph, next in line, was the handsomest and most rugged of the lot. He was soon bootlegging liquor for one “Sam” at 11th and Larimer in downtown Denver, although at this time he was only eighteen. Among his varied tasks was making deliveries to the city from several stills some twenty to thirty miles away. In the mountains near Denver, perhaps the largest and certainly the most pretentiously and carefully-housed of these illegal whiskey-makers, was one “Blackie Barlow.” Ralph saw him regularly and before long wrangled a job for younger-brother Jack, 16, as a guard on this beautiful “ranch.”

A short while later, as Jack was at his post, Barlowe’s place was raided. The Federal agents making the arrests caught Jack first, then another unaware lookout. They handcuffed the two together and left them with one Oscar Dirks, while the main group advanced to nab those in the now-unguarded house. The apprehended men locked eyes for a brief moment, and each read the same thought. Still handcuffed, they suddenly raced furiously down the forested mountain slope. Agent Dirks unholstered his gun without hesitation and fired a few unproductive shots, even as the dense growth hid his prey from view. Jack and his running mate had a good headstart toward at least temporary freedom when they made the mistake of not choosing to pass a tree on the same side. This intervening tree did them in; its unyielding trunk came between, and they were flung around to crash heads in so vicious a manner that Jack fell to the ground unconscious. His dazed buddy had unwound himself and was staggering over to Jack’s side by the time Dirks scrambled down on them. The government man pulled Jack to knee-height by his shirt collar; then, disregarding the boy’s closed eyes and pale face, he whipped his gun arm around in a vicious blow to Jack’s mouth. The heavy gun barrel did instant damage but only broke off four upper teeth. Afterwards, shiny gold was exposed every time he spoke. Jack did some jail time, but he took up bootlegging again when released. Ralph had no police trouble and was accumulating a good deal of cash, as did Bill, coasting along on the advantage of his wife’s income property while on the side selling liquor to preferred customers. Along about the time they bought twin new Model-A’s, Jack and Ralph entered into business for themselves, supplying alcoholic beverages to Bill, among others. Meantime, Neal and Maude struggled on as marriage partners. Although Neal’s drink-caused poverty made Maude turn more and more to her sons for financial help, she still loved him enough to endure. Respect for their mother was all that kept the boys (Jack and Ralph, in particular — Bill was somewhat disinterested) from kicking Neal out on his ear. There were countless arguments over him, but they always gave in to Maude’s wishes — if she promised not to give Neal any of the money she received from them. In the summer of 1929 Jack and Ralph together made the down payment on a new house at West Colfax and Stuart Streets. Things were looking up for sure, since Neal, about this time also, got down to the business of being a better father — a last flurry, as it were. He made good money acorss town at the plush barber shop near the stockyards pavilion and even took the burden of making the house payments off the boys for a couple of months. All the family lived in this new house in reasonable harmony for the rest of that year. Bill and his wife perhaps stayed there only because it was so close to their restaurant; Ralph and Jack, both continuing to bootleg; Mae, 10, Betty, just 9, commuted across town to Sacred Heart School; Jimmy, 7, and little Neal, 3, played every afternoon in the schoolyard directly across the street; which school Jimmy started attending in September. Collapse came sooner than it might otherwise have. If the crash of October 1929 had not occurred, it can be supposed that the family could have continued to be moderately secure for a few years, at least. But no, everyone in Denver seemed to go broke at once, not so much as in other parts of the country, and perhaps hardly at all in reality. Still, the fact remains they all tightened up on their money doubly firm. The boys’ liquor business fell to pieces, Neal got fired, and even ever-lucky Bill had all he could do to break even every month. It was to be ten years, and longer for some, before any of the family actually had enough to eat or in any way hardly escaped living from hand to mouth each day. In 1930 many things happened, for early in the year the home was lost. Bill and his wife moved into an auto-court in West Denver and drifted from the rest almost entirely. Ralph surprised everyone by getting married. Her name was Mitch, a student nurse two years from graduation. Jack stayed any place he could hang his hat. Since he made a practice of seeing his mother daily, despite obnoxious Neal’s presence, he usually came home for at least a few hours of sleep every night. This new “home” Neal provided was really a depression dilly. It was a cheaply rented two-room apartment above a noisy creamery at 20th and Court Place. Because there was no money to care for them, Maude arranged with Catholic charities for Mae and Betty to be put in Queen of Heaven Orphanage until Neal provided a suitable house again, or until the girls reached 16. A new difficulty arose which helped Maude to face parting with Mae and Betty temporarily; i.e., she was pregnant again. On May 22, 1930 at the age of forty, Maude gave birth to her tenth and last child, a girl named Shirley Jean. For a long time they were really up against it. Neal could often only find work for Saturdays, and they had to live all week on this one day’s barbering wage. Of course, Jack always helped as much as he could, and Ralph too gave a few dollars now and then, but it was not enough. Finally, in the last month of this hectic year, Neal got a two-chair shop near the corner of 26th and Champa Streets. In this sad little shop so filled with contention, Neal and Maude shared the last year of their pitiful marriage. Although food was short, at least there was always dessert, for in the middle of the next block was the Puritan Pie Company, and on many an illegal Sunday the shop shades were drawn as Neal cut an employee’s hair in exchange for a pie or two. Other Sundays when he had carfare, Neal would go to North Denver and barber brother-in-law Charles, the lawn-lover, who was now a near-helpless paralytic living on a small pension and cared for by a kindly landlady. Charles later died in the same hospital and on the same day as his sister, Maude; yet neither of them knew of this coincidence. Neal’s non-sobriety persisted as did the dwindling of customers, so that they just couldn’t make ends meet, and Neal lost the shop, the last of several, early in 1932. He also lost his wife, who moved into an apartment at 22nd and Stout Streets that Jack paid for, taking with her Jimmy and baby Shirley. Little Neal went with his wino father into the lowest slums of Denver.

The First Third Chapter 1 For a time I held a unique position: among the hundreds of isolated creatures who haunted the streets of lower downtown Denver there was not one so young as myself. Of these dreary men who had committed themselves, each for his own good reason, to the task of finishing their days as pennyless drunkards, I alone, as the sharer of their way of life, presented a replica of childhood to which their vision could daily turn, and in being thus grafted onto them, I became the unnatural son of a few score beaten men. It was my experience to be constantly meeting new cronies of my father’s, who invariably introduced me with a proud, “This is my boy.” Whereupon the pat on my head was usually followed by the quizzical look the eye reserved for uncertainty, which here conveyed the question, “Shall I give him a little drink?” Sensing the offer, backed by a half-extended bottle, my father would always say, “You’ll have to ask him,” and I would coyly answer, “No thank you, sir.” Of course, this occurred only on those memorable occasions when an acceptable drink like wine was available. The unhappy times when there was none, with only denatured alcohol (“canned heat”) or bay rum at hand, I did not have to go through my little routine. Many times, after normal adult catering with questions to show interest in the child, (such gestures of talkative comradeship was their token parenthood, for these secondary fathers had nothing else to give) I would be ignored while the talk of my father and his new friend turned to recalling the past. These tête-à-têtes were full of little asides which carried with them facts establishing that much of the life they had known was in common: types of mutual friends, cities visited, things done there, and so on. Their conversation had many general statements about Truth and Life, which contained the collective intelligence of all America’s bums. They were drunkards whose minds, weakened by liquor and an obsequious manner of existence, seemed continually preoccupied with bringing up short observations of obvious trash, said in such a way as to be instantly recognizable by the listener, who had heard it all before, and whose own prime concern was to nod at everything said, then continue the conversation with a remark of his own, equally transparent and loaded with generalities. The simplicity of this pattern was marvelous, and there was no limit to what they could agree on in this fashion, to say nothing of the abstract ends that could be reached. Through sheer repetitious hearing of such small talk speculation, I came to know their minds so intimately that I could understand as they understood, and there was soon no mystery to the conversation of any of them. I assumed all men thought the same, and so knew these things, because like any child, I correlated all adult action without actual regard for type. All his fellow alcoholics called my father “the barber” since he was about the only one of them who had practiced that trade, and I was “the barber’s boy.” They all said I looked just like him, but I didn’t think this was true in the least. And they watched me grow with comments like “Why, look there — his head is higher than your belt already!” It wasn’t such a feat, I thought, to stand that tall, because my father had awfully short legs. * * * When, in 1932, the family situation was resolved by my parents’ parting, I was not sorry to accompany my father in his retreat to Larimer Street. Most especially, I was not sorry to bid what proved to be a year’s farewell to my terrifying bully-brother, Jimmy, and even to my little-thought-about mother and younger sister. The prospect of adventure filled my six-year-old head; besides, I would now be spared the sight of violence every Sunday. With my father gone for good, my older half-brothers, Jack and Ralph (when he was there) would not be able to pound his face bloody when he returned home from his Saturday-night binges. Mother used to cry and beg them to stop, but, as I observed many times in the years to follow, when these boys began using their fists, only exhaustion would stop their brainblinding rages. But now all this and other terrors, as when Jimmy made me fight little Mexican boys, were behind me, and for the present I took an increased interest in my new surroundings; singularly uncommon ones, too, for Denver anyway. Yes, without doubt, I had a matchless edification in observing the scum right from the start. Of course, being with brow-beaten men, surly as they sometimes were, I gained certain unorthodox freedoms not ordinarily to be had by American boys of six. Also, my usually-drunk father (or on his way to that condition) was of necessity a bit lax in his discipline. Still, I didn’t often take advantage of him, since I really loved the old boy. * * * It was the month of my sixth birthday, and the usual fierce winter was upon the city when my Dad and I moved into the Metropolitan. This is a five-story building on the corner of 16th and Market Streets, in peril of collapse. It housed about a hundred of Denver’s non-transient bums and still does,

although long ago condemned. On each of the upper floors there were some thirty-odd cubicles whose walls, failing by several feet to reach it, made the ceiling seem incongruously high. These sleeping cells mostly rented for ten or fifteen cents a night, except for certain superior ones that cost two-bits, and we had one of these, but we only paid a weekly rate of one dollar, because of the top-floor location and because we shared the room with a third person. This roommate of ours slept on a sort of platform made by a plank covering a pipe elbow in the building’s plumbing. Not just anyone could sleep there in comfort, for the ledge was only about three feet long. He fit in the space snugly enough; both of his legs had been amputated at the thigh many years previously. Appropriately, he was called “Shorty,” and this fitting of name to fact was very funny to me. Every morning he got up early and, with his oversized arms, swung a skinny torso down those five flights of stairs. I never saw him pause to use the community washroom on the second floor and presumed the sinks were too high for him, so that he made toilet arrangements elsewhere. Once on the sidewalk, he would get into a dolly-like cart and by using blocks of wood in each hand, push himself to his begging post. He usually went around the corner on Larimer Street and stationed himself before the Manhattan Restaurant. Larimer Street was Denver’s main drag in the nineteenth century, and the Manhattan was its best restaurant. Now everything else has fallen to cheapness, but the fine Manhattan is still frequented by tourists and the well-to-do. Shorty’s schedule was a few hours ahead of the bums with a normal length to their limbs, and he would often panhandle a dollar or more before noon, because he had utilized the advantage of his handicap displayed in this good location. When he had received the price of a bottle or two, he would return to the room and drink himself into a stupor. As a rule, he had passed out, or was about to, by the time I got home from school, but some days were slack, and on these days he would stay out very late. It was as though he had an early afternoon deadline, and if he wasn’t in the room by then he wouldn’t come at all. I would dread these times, because he would then drink on the street, and it was up to me to help search the alleys and doorways until we found him. Dad carried him home while I followed, alternately pulling up hill and coasting down on his cart with the roller-skate wheels. Now and again, quietly, but with child-energy, I would burst into the room to catch Shorty playing with himself. Even though he was past forty, any preoccupation with this form of diversion was justified, I’m sure, since, judging from his appearance, he must not have had a woman since his youth, if then. Encrusted with dirt, he stank of body smell and was very ugly, with a no-forehead face full of a grinning rubber mouth that showed black stubbed teeth. Yet his taste certainly did not run to boys my age, because the time or two I saw him exposed, he roared at me to get out, and these were his only incidents of anger I can recall. My father and I lived with Shorty until June, and after these four or five months, although I looked for him out of curiosity, we never saw him again nor did I ever learn what became of old pal Shorty. * * * The first convenient Monday after we settled in the Metropolitan, Dad put me back in school. On this day, my morning washup was dispatched with anxious hurry, though there was the usual care to get behind my ears. A stained mirror hung suspended on the wall’s cracked plaster, whose white dust crumbled into the stench of the metal sink below. Looking into it, past a distorted reflection of washing men, my father gave his blurred face a final check before hustling me to a twenty-cent bolted breakfast of brains and eggs. Onto the big yellow streetcar for a quick ride up Sixteenth to Welton, then left to an alightment on 23rd Street. On the block-long walk to our Glenarm Street destination, we paused a moment to stare as Dad once again pointed out all the cluttered maze behind the window of the shoecobbler’s next to his first Denver barber shop. Then we entered the modern building of gleaming white firebrick that is Ebert Grammar School and apprehensively approached the information desk. My old man meekly informed the girl receptionist that I was ready to go to school again; the term had started some weeks before, and he was afraid I might have to begin kindergarten all over. It was an unfounded fear, for my tardy enrollment made no difference, and I was placed without question in my proper grade, the first. Filling out my card, the pretty clerk asked where I lived, and Dad was wise enough to give Mother’s 22nd and Stout address, only four blocks away. This sort of lie became habitual, for all the years I was with my father (pinched off and on between those with Ma) I had to give the school a fictitious home address. I developed a continual worry they would find I lived outside Ebert’s district; then I would be forced to attend a school near where we lived, and the thought of switching terrified me. So, in defiance of Denver’s geography, I went to Ebert six straight years. And this was no mean foot-feat: I always lived at least a mile from the school and often more, even as many as four. In fact, it was the many mornings of racing these miles (since I seldom had carfare or would use it if I had) so as not to be late, that must have led to my becoming so interested in long-distance running. * * * In the nighttime of Metroplitan squalor, we slept side by side, my Dad and I, in a bed without sheets. There happened to be no clock, so I relied on the one on the Daniels and Fisher mammoth tower to wake me for school, which it did. Or at least I think this is what woke me, because as it boomed 7:00 A.M. down to me I always opened my eyes and from under the unwashed blanket stuck an alert head

into our room’s nippy air. There my father snored and, usually being still too drunk to stir, was oblivious to everything. Turning from the breath’s smell out of his drink-swollen face, I eased my naked self off the creaking cot with shivering quietness. I hurried into some hated remnants of brother Jimmy’s clothes: too-short shoes and knickers which crept above my knees — the long wool socks I wore failed to effectively close this embarrassing gap. Most of the time Dad just slept on and on, and since Shorty’s shelf was bare (he sometimes departed while it was still dark outside) I awoke to no commanding voices. Slipping through our door and along a splintered floor, I passed rooms where other weakened bodies of shattered souls joined my father in giving noise to labored sleep. Down worn stairs on silent feet and a quick step into a sunlit lavatory of activity. Ringing the enormous room were many nondescript men at their toilet. Most of them were shaving, some had the “shakes” so that it was quite a job, and so as not to cut themselves or face the agony too often, they only shaved when they were on their way uptown to hustle a dime. Unclean trousers bagged over run-down shoes, and their heavy coats and frayed shirts hung on hooks beside them, for when washing, they really splashed with janitorial unconcern. I remember side-stepping these puddles of water as I skipped to one of the room’s large windows and tiptoe-peered through dirty panes to read the time by guessing at the slant of nearly illegible black hands against the dingy white glass of the Roman-numeraled clockface atop the mighty tower of Daniels and Fisher department store, Denver’s highest building — it was 7:15. After washing, I tripped back upstairs to fetch my tennis ball and coat and to check Dad for any signs of sobriety or interest in food, but on most schooldays he didn’t often stir, so alone I went to breakfast. Again descending the stairs I went through the lobby, empty of loitering men at this hour, and on down several big steps of deeply-scooped stone onto the busy 16th and Market Streets intersection. Big trucks with chain-drive and hard rubber tires bounced over Market’s slick cobblestone. Opening for the day’s business were the wholesale meat dealers, poultry houses, fish markets, coffee and spice warehouses and cheese companies, the employment agency, restaurants and bars, and a couple of business concerns I’ve surely forgotten, that crowded into the blocks of Market between 14th and 18th Streets. On 16th, arterial traffic rumbled from an overpass into North Denver — of Denver’s half-dozen ones, only this viaduct had streetcar tracks. A bottleneck of oversized trams jammed with working people inching along toward The Loop, Larimer, Downtown and all East Denver clanged past me as I came out of the hotel. I walked a block up 16th and turned left at the newly-opened Dave Cook Sporting Goods store on Larimer’s corner and went into the building next to it. This was The Citizen’s Mission, run by a Protestant church organization and strongly backed by a good city assemblyman (whose name I’ve forgotten, although Dad in his daydreams was always talking of going to see “so-and-so up at the Mission” to get a steady job — now I remember, Val Higgins!). The Mission gave breakfast and supper to about two hundred men a day and in return had a well-attended bi-weekly church service, a thing of which its several competitors up and down The Street could also boast but I couldn’t see why, since they handed out no food, A couple of years later, Father Divine’s up Larimer on 24th began giving meals. They served only lunch, a real tasty one too, and there was a big whoopdeedo among the boys when his place opened, for the gap between breakfast and supper at the Mission had been felt by all. But right now we had only the Mission, and I was its youngest member by a good dozen years. The façade of the Citizens Mission was inappropriately gay yellow stucco. The double center doors opened into an auditorium with massive wooden pews that could seat a hundred people. Down the aisle was a raised platform with a front-center pulpit. Also on this stage was an unmusical piano and a table with a semi-circle of chairs behind it. From the street were single doors on each end of the building, the one on the right leading upstairs to the administration offices, but I never used it and always took the door to the left instead. In an orderly line of hungry men, I moved slowly forward down metal steps into a warm kitchen of smells and clatter. Each of us picked up a tray, spoon, bowl and cup of tinny material and, served cafeteria style, we inched along the wall in a patient wait for our turn before the steam tables. The first white-aproned woman — all the food handlers were women, smiling on us and busy with a “cause” — placed two pieces of bread on the tray, the second woman ladled a scoopful of oatmeal into our bowl, while a third poured hot coffee. There was no cream but plenty of sugar, and one was allowed a second cup. We filed to stainless-steel benches and sat before long ringing tables of similar material which vibrated so much from the impact of our utensils that my sensitive ears always filled completely. All around, eating men clustered, and we squeezed elbow to elbow for lack of space in the crowded basement room. Sometimes my breakfast companions happened to talk to me and sometimes they didn’t: either way, as I remember, it was all the same to me. Of course, I learned eventually that almost all of them were alcoholics, and many of them suffered a great deal from the disease, but there were also several old-age pensioners and other indifferently bunched younger men who were down on their luck because of the Depression. On the Mission’s left was the Manhattan Restaurant, and seated in his cart before the building would be Shorty at work. He sat in the bright morning sun of winter as its cold light came to touch the sidewalk’s outer edge, and turning dull eyes on Larimer’s crowd he leaned back against the base of a heavily ornate iron drinking fountain, the twin faucets of which have long been out of service and whose infant cupids danced in golden contrast over his head. As I passed him on my way toward 17th Street, he gave a languid nod which contrasted with the grinning mouth he exhibited in our room’s privacy, and I realized he must put on a different face for the public. * * * My route to Ebert was always a careful zig-zag. The game was to find hurrying shortcuts, and to not

waste a step, especially by the crime of missing a bounce of the dirty tennis ball’s constant dribble. I also avoided cracks in the concrete, as a substitute for the impractical game of “Sidewalk’s Poison” which, on later trips to school from residential districts, I developed into a Fine Art. I went past some of Larimer’s row of bars and pawn shops, then up 17th Street to the newly-created Federal Reserve Bank with its massive marble square-yard building blocks and with elegant iron bars protecting its windows. Unlike other banks on 17th Street, its enormous bronze doors of scrolled bas-relief (featuring charioteered archers, mostly) were never open, and I wondered the mystery of its vaults. Another left turn and along a block of Arapahoe Street whorehouses I later patroned. Then a right onto busy 18th Street with its noisy sheet metal shops and motorcycle showrooms and garages. Across Curtis Street’s corner of candy company, parking lot, cheap hotel and cheaper restaurant, and up to Champa Street with the mighty colonnaded structure of the Post Office. Along this block I remember always hearing, from the depths of musty second-hand clothing stores, screech sounds of serious adolescent violin lessons. On the Post Office corner I would pause for a quick drink at the public fountain which, unlike most of Denver’s, was not shut off in winter, so that conical ice attacked the spout’s silvery knob, and on certain cold days it victoriously choked the bowl and froze the overflow basin outlet. The idea was to avoid torrents of backlogged water, leap on the fountain to snatch a gulp, then rush a retreat before my shoes were filled. If it had no fresh snow on which to slip, I’d next canter over a huge stone bench whose giant size made even adults use only its edge for sitting. I made paradox of the puzzling proverb carved in its granite, for it cautioned against too much rest while offering it freely: “Desire rest but desire not too much.” A springing leap up the 18th Street side of broad stairway that circumvented the Post Office, to walk through the warmth of its block-long lobby … though on balmier days I disdained this minute of heat, and instead, scampered in a weaving run about the fluted sides of every enormous column that fronted Stout Street, a hundred feet of sidewalk-filled waste space between curb and building. Down the 19th Street steps three in a bound and catty-corner to a narrow wall’s sharp peak which challenged the equilibrium. My tightrope was the angled top of a half-foot-high sidewalk border enclosing the grounds of the new Federal Building. I would pause on my tilted perch to stare upward at the white majesty of the almost completed structure that now made a block-square twin to the Post Office’s substantial bulk. Across California Street to go into the alley behind the basement Church of the Holy Ghost (where I once served a year as altar boy without missing a day), then under a vacant lot’s billboard to reach the five-pointed intersection of Welton, Broadway and 20th Avenue. For the block I would walk it, 20th Avenue had one-way automobile traffic because it was so narrow. On one side of its much-traveled ribbon of pavement, which terminated here, the triangular Crest Hotel rose in ten luxurious floors. On the other side was a miscellany of drugstore, flower shop, beauty salon, restaurant and two large groceries. Above these businesses there towered, all chunked together, hotel buildings whose solid façades were broken only by the gap of a twenty-foot alley entrance. From out of this canyonlike block, so rare in Denver, I raced uphill over another rarity. It was an uncommon pavement bulge with such a stretch from curb to curb that I made a game of traversing its middle. The distinct idea of this journey was to hold my breath with no sneak inhales while on the blacktop itself, and if I didn’t run at top speed or failed to begin with an extreme expansion of chest, I didn’t succeed. From the beginnings of its swell near Welton Street to its upper end on Sherman, the hill of this 20th Avenue street surface was fully two blocks long and on my path from Lincoln to Glenarm was easily a hundred yards in width. It was as though an entire acre or more had been thoughtlessly razed just so autos could branch out in any one of three directions with unnecessary room to spare. In fact, it had a center triangle formed by raised oval traffic buttons that contained nothing and were for no purpose but to keep cars out, since some reckless driver might be tempted into over-wild and fancy curliques on this spacious asphalt. In later years I myself made a few tentative speedway dashes around this triangle. My ambition then was to do my little stunt the long way, but a measuring look at that vast space always discouraged any effort. Reaching the sidewalk of Glenarm Street with my lungs in double tempo, I would pass a business school (later part of the University of Denver) and beyond that corner the first of the homes that fringed the downtown area. They nestled between a splendid Catholic church, with matching slender spires of rough stone, and the Denver Bible Institute whose odd belfry was a squat clapboard affair of afterthought that hid itself beneath the trees of the Institute’s yard. Now the residential section began in earnest and, from 21st Street to 22nd, only a tiny candy store disturbed the rows of solidly bunched houses. I cut the corner and entered the far side of Ebert’s huge graveled playground and ran its length at full tilt, even though this final spurt was not always enough to beat the school bell, for the bell was usually ringing. I faintly remember my few weeks of kindergarten blocks and beads; equally indistinct is the first grade, except the labored efforts to write my name. Our classroom was in the middle of the building and faced the playground; underneath its windows there was a driveway that was used by coal trucks and other delivery vehicles, and beside the driveway entrance was a small slide and row of swings intended for the younger children. Around these an iron pipe guardrail was later built which created a new excitement in the swings, for the older boys found that if they leapt from a swing at just the right point in its highest arc they could clear this barrier. I watched the feat in awe for a long time before I dared attempt it myself; then, even with the best of jumps, I could just graze the rail’s top and often, seized by buck fever, I was so unfortunate as to drop astraddle the railing. Near the center of the playground were two old trees about a hundred feet apart. Beneath their naked branches rose the twin goals marking a basketball court’s gaunt occupancy between the trunks of withered bark, scarred and made barren by years of carved initials. Toward 22nd Street, on the Tremont side of the yard’s farthest

corner, was a circle of overhead rings, another slide and a bigger set of swings. Alongside these was also a rough baseball diamond. Below this, near Glenarm, was the five or six room house of the school custodian, totally isolated from the playground by a high wooden fence that we children were forbidden to cimb. Around the entire block-square schoolyard ran a seven-foot woven wire fence that enclosed all and was made by a U.S. Steel subsidiary, as a metal tag attached every few yards testified. Ebert itself is an “I”-shaped building of two storeys with the classrooms of both floors filling the elongated center bar of the “I”, except that near one end of the main corridor was a large room for the Principal and her office staff. The twin ends of the “I” contained a magnificent gym and auditorium. The school cafeteria in the basement was not used by the student body since most of the children went to their nearby homes for lunch, so the Cub Scouts, student council and other groups with similar organizational activities used this benched room for their meetings. But there was a couple-dozen of us who did eat there; the city had appropriated a small fund to supply the needy children, whose parents applied for it (Father put off doing this for weeks); a noonday snack of milk and graham crackers. Returning from school, the hurried pace of morning was absent, and I made leisurely detours of play. My primary concern was not to lose the ever-active tennis ball with which I played solitary catch, and there was many a close squeak when, after a muff, only a frantic dash and a desperate lunge could retrieve the guttered ball inching toward the open sewer’s mouth. If I missed my last-second grab or if external conditions, such as heavy traffic, prevented prompt recovery, there was a great struggle with the manhole cover before grimly breath-holding I gingerly moved down the repulsive iron ladder into a frightening hole to snatch the bobbing ball from the water’s stench. Often the chase led upwards, at those times when I would incorrectly judge the bounce off a rooftop’s slant, and unless it was a particularly isolated roof that repelled all maneuverings, no mere hard climb ever deterred me from making the unfriendly housedrain yield its prey. To obtain a stockpile, which soon offset any chance loss, I took to raiding all the raincatchers about and felt gloriously repaid to find veritable nests of lost balls in some of the least accessible ones. * * * The Citizen’s Mission began supper at five o’clock. The idea was to be in the first group so as to avoid being delayed by the ever-increasing accumulation of men to be served. The line moved slowly at any time, and one who missed being in the beginning batch might take much of the early evening to reach his meal. If alone, I could whiz through the entire operation in less than half an hour, for then some kindly line-crawlers would surely push me past them. Often, in thus creeping forward to my food, I would edge around a couple-dozen of these indulgent men who, while committing the cheat for me, gave to their companions a sly wink and an expansive chortle of self-satisfaction. These delayless dinners happened only when I was so late from school that there was no time to stop at the Metropolitan for Dad, or if he was laid up drunk. Usually, of course, we did meet and I then stayed in the line with him to wait our fair turn in the rotation of shuffling. Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was the Metropolitan night. Around the spacious main floor lobby were indescriminately-arranged numerous roundbacked chairs that supported with old wood squeakings of protest their pounds of weary flesh. Into this drafty, high-vaulted parlor of affliction crowded those dregs who had nothing to do and spent dreary hours of heavy time just doing it. But none sat in a position very near the pot-bellied stove in the rough floor’s metal-covered center, for, in contrast with the non-heated upper floors and the extreme cold outside, unwelcome waves of too much heat radiated from cherry-colored cheeks of the overstoked stove, with its fiercely roaring, always-open draft. There was an inner lobby of smaller dimensions that was altogether more comfortable. Unlike the outer lobby with its huge dirt-caked windows, on which was advertised the price of beds, this room, except for a narrow door, had no break whatsoever in the filthy walls. In its confines there existed a pleasant intimacy quite missing in the main foyer, because clustered about its tables were moneyless men killing time at cards. A year or two later, when the Metropolitan became even more overstuffed with society’s sediments, the landlords — executors of a deceased plumber and pipefitter’s large estate that had tinyly been begun in shrewd realty deals — removed what furniture filled this secondary lobby and put in cots to make a dormitory for the “one-nighters.” But now, there was only a continual round of Rummy, Cribbage, Coon-Can, Casino, Pieute, Pinochle, Poker and other varieties of cardplaying. Here I spent much of the night learning to play most of the games fairly well besides several slick card tricks in which I particularly delighted. I also passed many evening hours tossing my laboriously made dart … a sewing needle inserted in a wooden match, the top of which was split to receive its feathers of newspaper held in place by thread tightly wound around after to heal the rupture. Despite my poor child-construction this contraption would work fine for the short time it went unstepped on. Of course, the unsturdy needle needed constant realigning and especially often must I recrease the paper rotary blades so necessary for a balanced flight. Nevertheless, I loved my fragile weapon as I made it sail to the mark with throws of erratic southpaw speed, and without letup, save for the hasty moments of adjustment, ran back and forth in play’s oblivion before disgruntled old onlookers, loosing the dart at everything stickable. All about the roomful of sitting men were these targets: a particular spot of scum in the wall plaster above their heads, a crack in the wooden floor, an empty chair, a windowsill, and plentiful though they were, thanks to my dashing play, it was actually a lack of targets and the exhaustive chasing of them that made me finally cease.

To the rear of the lobby, just to one side of the dark stairway-opening, marked by the dim golden color still to be seen on its grillwork, was a cashier’s cage. It was furnished with typical high-legged stool and a well-sized black safe reflecting from its dull finish the light of a tiny bulb aimed upon the dial combination. In this small office domain was a nice man who sat there every night just to collect the pennies of incoming lodgers’ rent. As they paid, each tenant scrawled his name and hometown on an oversized, truly ancient register. Freely allowed, when I had exhausted myself with darts and cards, it was my quiet pleasure to take this ledger book on my lap to scan its hundreds of ink-blotched pages. It became my custom to curiously examine in regular private ritual all signatures legible or not and, pored over, pronounce them to myself, to guess by their sound which were aliases, which those of nowdead men, suddenly rich men, big men or little, wise or fool. Thus, beginning with dates before my birth, the book names of long-departed guests filled my mind with fascination, and also comparing them geographically on the huge dirty wall map, I became engrossed reading the long columns listing towns and states; most particularly, too, did I wonder at the different surnames and their origin. Yet, all unknown to me was each man’s destiny, and in daydreams imagining the variety of their possible fates, I first consciously amazed at life. * * * Today, on the lower side of Larimer between 17th and 18th, there is only one “Zaza.” In my time there were two, but the theater which once shared the name has since become the “Kiva.” The barbershop Zaza, next to the theater, has over these years, besides retaining its original name, kept the same owner and second-chair man as well. Charley, from the lead chair, ran the shop with a quiet dignity uncommon to any Skid Row. Over the two decades I had occasion to see him, this darkfaced thin Italian barber was never ruffled or out-of-humor; perhaps more surprising, when last seen, not one black hair of his easygoing head had yet turned, so he still presented the un-aged appearance of the man I first met. Strangely enough too, the quick-talking Mexican who worked beside Charley for so long also appeared unchanged to me, save for an increased bloat to his always-fat body. I happened to know these gentlemen only because Dad, when first we came to Larimer Street, had secured a “Saturday job” from Charley. Each Saturday’s routine was similar; we left the Metropolitan, ate breakfast and went to Charley’s three-chair shop together, and while Dad worked on his infrequent morning customers or sat in the battered barber chair to rest his feet, I absorbed what I could of Liberty Magazine and the Rocky Mountain News. Also, I recall my child watchfulness was eternally confused by the lettering on the foot rest of all the barber chairs. It read, “The O A KNOX CO CHICAGO” without punctuation, and I forever wondered whether it meant “The O. A. Knox Co.,” or “Theo. A. Knox Co.” Although inclined to reason for the former, the latter also seemed most likely because the “O” was spaced closer to “THE” than to “A”. Funny to remember now, I never asked or indeed ever found out. Oh, well, let’s get on. Restlessness thus partly subdued with words and thought, sitting on the bench inhaling the shop’s heavy odor of hair pomades and talcum powders as they floated to me from reclining men being anointed and massaged, I waited for the Zaza next door to open, so the edge was taken off my enjoyment of the barbershop hour by the anxiety of the anticipated pleasure. Now, this showhouse was absolutely Denver’s worst and catered to a correspondingly poor clientele. Paying ten cents admission, anyone (except children who were admitted for a nickel) could sit in the filth of its interior to watch Hollywood magic for more than half the day before seeing the same scene twice. Of all the sensorial changes in passing directly from the shop to the show, my memory retains most sharply that of the contrast in smell. From the sweet scent of alcoholic lotions it took only an instant to be completely immersed in an indescribable stench, for there hung suspended everywhere under the Zaza’s ceiling an overpowering stink of things. Naturally, I can call up only a fraction of this Great Smell’s many component parts and cannot fully imagine whence its source, but I do fully recall that this unknown combination prevailed over all with a strange musk that rose as though from cesspools hidden under the floor’s ingrained dirt. From wall to untouchable wall it rebounded and came in unhindered waves over the abbreviated balcony’s railing. Each patron’s shared odor added to the building’s own array to form a complicated multiplicity of rot while permeating the nostrils with such a potency that, while struggling to accustom, I breathed as little air as possible through my open mouth. Of course, the programs consisted mostly of Westerns, and of all the screen cowboys, my hero was Tim McCoy, but, liking music, I recall better other Dime Grinds seen at the Zaza during the next few years, for they were elaborate musicals: “Flying Down to Rio” with Astair and Rogers, one with Bobby Breen’s adolescent soprano glorifying the Mississippi as he strolled its banks, “The Ziegfeld Follies,” etc. There were a few unforgettables of a different type, such as “King Kong” and “Son of Kong,” with all the terrifying dinosaurs … why, for months after this picture I quoted in repetitious sing-song the overheard limerick “King Kong plays ping pong with his ding dong.” Always, after the show, the seeing of which would fully compensate for the odorous discomfort, I immediately returned to the shop to give Father a child-lurid description of every vivid scene. Charley and the Mexican in the middle chair seemed to appreciate my re-creation of the screen happenings even more than Dad, and stimulated by their attention, I didn’t spare them a detail of the plot as I had seen it. My recitations of these morning movies were made in the interval before Father judged the time was

convenient to eat. Not to chance missing a haircut or shave, being paid only for each person barbered, his policy was to postpone getting food until he had the leeway of at least one vacancy in a senior barber’s chair. Often, while I had been gone, business would have picked up so that this period of waiting for our midday meal extended well into the afternoon. When at last Dad did unapron himself, taking my hand with a big grin of love, we together hurried out the door, I keeping abreast with a semirun, to head for Mac’s lunch around the corner on 18th near Market. Once seated in this busy bum beanery, we indulged our palates with gusto before again rushing back to the shop. Despite this pace, or maybe helped by it, going to Mac’s on Saturday was a bit of an occasion, because it was one of the few times each week that we ate in a restaurant. Leaving Father, I balanced the rest of my day between the Metropolitan lobby and nearby alleyways. Until darkness deterred me, I roamed trash receptacles in an enthusiastic search for bottles and anything else of value. From these modest Larimer beginnings I was to become so bewitched by “going junking” that in following years I developed my scavengering into regular weekend tours conducted through all Denver’s alleys. But now, with no ashpits or apartment house incinerators to plunder, and with little treasure to be had from the huge downtown garbage cans, the flower of this keen enchantment was to remain an arrested bud until I lived in the residential areas which could burst it into full bloom. Finally, laboring under what small bulge of rescued discards my gunnysack contained, I would, in disgust, turn my snow-chilled feet homeward and then, while pausing to rest, the edge was slowly chipped off my disappointment by the enjoyment of watching the spectacle to the west where white peaks rose to slowly curtain the perfect orb of a descending winter sun. At the Metropolitan I would ask some friendly man to venture a rough assessment of my hoard so that forewarned by this estimate I could guess the amount of dealer’s gyp. Soon these helpful Metropolitans and the junk dealers themselves had advised me which were the unsellables of the many things I had at first deemed worthy of offering. Although this knowledge afterwards saved me from much needless hauling, it didn’t much help to diminish my anguish during those countless times when I dug into a can container’s pile or sifted through the enveloping dust of an ash heap, only to find at the bottom my familiar nemesis marked “Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of This Bottle.” When finished evaluating my assorted junk, which I allowed to gradually accumulate before taking it the considerable distance up Larimer for sale to a junkie, I would hide it under the stairway, then play in the lobby until time for return to the barber shop. State law bade Charley close at nine P.M., and when I came in near that hour I could see Father’s lunchtime grins had grown into great smiles of greeting, for True Love shone from his eyes; but it, and the toothy displays which always became bigger as the day lengthened, were not motivated primarily by my presence or happy relief that the day’s work was ending or even at the thought of collecting the dollars he had earned. Rather, the main reason for the frequent gleaming glances and the increasing size of the excited leers now radiating from his flushed face was simply that ever closer was coming the anticipated time for the gratification of his insatiable craving. And there was a surety to his satisfaction, for Saturday held a double guarantee, although of opposing conditions. Father’s morning sobriety for work was guaranteed, for it must be said that in the depression years he seldom missed a day’s work when there was one to be had; equally assured, whether achieved often throughout the week or not, was his Saturday Night Drunk. I early learned not to expect success when asking Dad not to drink, because for many months he answered these impossible pleas with assurances that he would stop, abstractly spoken even while in the act of buying the destroying beverage. Then, as I grew older and he was forced to cope with me more adequately on this subject, he designed sincere-sounding attempts to wean my suspicions with the implied reformation in the dodge of “just this once.” Often, also, when drink’s distraction loosened his restraint, a nostalgic drive to cry overcame him, and then I was smothered for hours in a blubbery bath from which I always averted my embarrassed face. But neither self-pitying sobs nor many verbal protests helped to make a reality of his good intentions, and eventually I came to see he could never stop; so less and less I asked him to quit and accordingly the announcements of his attempts slackened until came the day he openly rejected all efforts to do so. With this final resignation to alcohol, in which he honestly accepted his inability to even try to contain it, I gave up entirely and settled instead for a question of degree. Of course, he won in every stage of these exchanges, and all my bickering proved useless in reality, for by the time several years later we had reached an agreement of only one bottle in any one day, his condition of saturation was such that to absorb only an ounce of liquor would at once render him nearly unconscious. But all this was yet to come, and in the freshness of our first season he simply hid his drinking from me as chance best dictated. When the last customer had gone, Father was paid, and again together in a spirit of celebration he and I promptly departed Charley’s Zaza to make for the beloved lights of Curtis Street. Quickly we ate another restaurant meal, paused at a candy counter and made a momentary drugstore delay for me to weigh on the penny machine while behind me he bought the prized object which was immediately, though unsuccessfully, sneaked into his coat’s inner pocket. Sadly ludicrous was the serious manner in which he performed this clumsily bungled smuggling attempt which my sharp eyes never failed to detect with uneasy heart. But I was exuberant as I chose the show (it made little or no difference to Dad what he saw) and impatiently tugged him through the crowded lobby to the stairs (so he could smoke) where, balcony-nestled amid lowerclass couples and their whimpering offspring, self-engrossed lovers, noisy young toughs whistling to fluster timid girls bunched in giggling ascent of the stairway, and all the varieties of midnight showgoers, Father would contentedly nip his wine chased by salted peanuts. To

me, beside him, these hours contained only continuously unfolding thrills. Almost unnoticed, my mouth melted tasty chocolate, and quite unconsciously was felt the tension of sweating grip in which my sticky fingers held tight the cushion, for I sat enthralled while viewing the marvelous screen. * * * It was with Father thus a year or so later that I saw the motion picture that impressed me more than any I have ever witnessed: “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I distinctly remember pulsating with every scene in an intoxication of joy and, at my stunned exit from the theater, being so overwhelmed that I ached with the passionate burn of my desire for the school-week’s beginning so that from Ebert’s library I could get the book on which the movie was based. When that Monday I plunged into reading through all the Count’s adventures, and in my avid thoroughness with the long book, taking longer to finish than the library’s fourteen-day limit allowed, I checked out the novel a second time. From this came disaster, for to snatch a paragraph at every opportunity, I carried my bulky hero about with me constantly; I even learned to read while walking. The calamity occurred one afternoon as I stopped to inspect, in particular, the turtles kept in a rich boyfriend’s backyard pool of finny oddities. To wonder the better at these ugly creatures, I laid my Dumas in the crotch of a small tree to kneel for an unencumbered closer look. After pulling the folds of repulsive skin on the neck and legs, gingerly thumping the shell to watch the beaded head wrinkle back and prodding it to move, my tortoise curiosity was satisfied, and I made for home. I had not gone far before missing the book, and in anxious run retraced my steps. It was not in the tree, nor was it to be seen anywhere in the yard. The boy, Freddy, quickly denied that I had forgotten any book, saying that my arm had cradled nothing upon entering the yard, so if there was a book, it must have been mislaid elsewhere. His quiet insistence half convinced me, nevertheless I continued a tearful searching of shrubs and ground until, as though at last exasperated with my stupidity, he commanded me to leave. Taken aback by his demeanor changing abruptly from the confident poise of flatly spoken assurances that I was mistaken to a sudden intimidating anger or apparent disgust, I felt sick at heart and increasingly confused as to a course of action, while ashamed of the abject position Freddy’s attitude forced. I finally choked off my protests to stumble from his property in a blush of awkward embarrassment tinged with self-disgust for forgetting the book and, ignoring reason, fervently hoped he was right that it was left behind. I made a frantic hunt over my route to his house and of my school locker, which naturally failed to reveal anything except confirmation that I had indeed brought the book on my ill-fated visit. At last, nervous fear subsiding into a bleak despair, I accepted defeat and made for the Metropolitan with an everhardening suspicion that the boy had indeed stolen my book, that when I had explored accidentally close to where he had temporarily hidden it, he had ordered me out to prevent unearthment of the theft and subsequent detection of his artful lying. Now, Father’s personality was such that it was quite impossible for him to aid my plight by confronting the boy’s wealthy parents, for his mild nature found life too difficult just eking out a downtrodden existence to expect it to undertake the added complexity of solving my book-problem. So on my own the next day, and many times thereafter, I sneaked into this boy’s yard for a forlorn search, despite that I was not so foolish as to doubt the book had been spirited into his home long ago. Yet this was not the case, as proven years later (I recall being nearly ten) when the mystery of the book’s disappearance was solved by the merest whim of chance. It came about that one day I happened to be walking through the alley behind Freddy’s house. Alongside sauntered the brother closest to my age, Jimmy. Included in his sadisms was a generous amount of hatred for animals. This had first been formed by close imitation of his idol, the second to the oldest brother, Ralph. Now, at fourteen years, Jim’s aggressive actions were developed far beyond his and Ralph’s earlier idle pastime of flushing kittens down the toilet, and had grown into a genuine flair for real violence. I remember the summer before I had seen them together practice sharpshooting with a .22 in an east Denver vacant lot to which they had retired after spending the morning gathering up stray cats. One brother would toss a screeching creature skyward, after swinging it by the tail to gain full velocity, while the other shot it full of holes before it fell to earth. Particularly did Jimmy abhor black cats, and on this day when a rather brash one casually passed before us, Jimmy dashed after it in murderous pursuit. Catching it quickly, he swung it overhead by the convenient tail-handle to fling it against Freddy’s ashpit with all possible strength; then pouncing on the dazed cat before it could recover, he smashed it into the concrete again and again. But the hapless creature refused to die easily, and the exposed brains were spattered through the bloodied mess of his crushed face, the solemn eyes winked more and more slowly — in accusation, too, I thought — under the impact of each new blow. Near the end, in the exhaustion of his savage excitement, Jim’s aim became so poor that his last weakened throw of the feline missed the target and, instead, tightly wedged it into a narrow crack separating the ashpit’s bulk and a garage wall, where finally the fated animal died in silent spasms of its limp and swollen body. All the time Jim was pounding the cat to death, I was screaming and pulling at his arm to try and stop him, all to no avail, of course. I was still yanking while he tried, by several determined tugs, to extract the beast to continue the slaughter, but seeing it had expired, he suddenly decided to quit and stepped back in thwarted anger to muster ebbed strength and regain thoroughly addled wits before striding away in pretended unconcern. Being much too afraid of Jim to follow, I fled up a tree some yards away. After his blasé departure with only a single contemptuous backward glance, I came down to gaze upward in tearful dismay and revulsion at the twitching carcass, morbidly watching the gore stream through its battered flesh. It poured off the black fur in free-falling drops,

making rivulets that coursed down the rust-colored bricks, and as the thick blood sought its level, there began to form a pool of dark liquid on — my book!!! My tears ceased their flow and my heart refused a beat in that instant of finding my long-lost Count. There it was, exactly as Freddy must have tossed it for a careless prank, and after three years of exposure to Denver’s severe clime, it lay mangled, the dead animal now further desecrating my treasured tome. Disregarding the cat with difficulty, I forced my arm far enough into the space for my fingers to grasp the binding and bring forth my old hero. I scraped off the fresh blood and bits of entrail with all the thoroughness my sickened nerves could find for this task of love and smoothed the weatherstained pages with great care before pressing the book to my grateful bosom. And thus my soiled prize was regained, and resurrected anew were the pleasures laid so ruinously low since it had been lost. Reading Dumas afresh made me realize that I would not have traded, even if possible, a single moment of the joy provided me by these wondrous mental adventures for all the peace that $1.68 would have given, for I had taken five years of the Ebert Librarian’s almost-daily harassment before finally achieving payment of that amount, which the book had cost the school. Such a set of values was all that I had to rationalize away the periodic agony endured over the years of facing Mrs. Utterback in her roomful of volumed enchantment when making the shamed admission that I had no money. In fact, it was necessary that the school refuse me graduation before I could, finally, get someone to pay for the book then. To my rescue came my brother Jack’s wife, Rita, who, one noontime, gave me the sum from the tips of her morning’s waitress work. Naturally, the reading of the Count had been my first mighty excursion into extended thought, and together with the motion picture, “The Invisible Man,” it had for a long time given my imagination all it needed. Walking home from school, I often became momentarily lost, so absent-minded was I while under the influence of great daydreams that followed threads of plot to an end and then continued with its own imagery until all thoughts were suffocated under their very number. There was no ebbing in the love of literature that had sprung forth, and while henceforth I was to pursue its gleanings in a satisfied solitude, I still looked to Father for tutoring of my quizzical mind in the meaning of things the movies portrayed. Yet his was an indecisive teaching, for he himself was seldom sure of anything; that is, if he did know a particular answer but it could be one of two or more things, he would evade positive pronouncement because the habit of non-commital speech was too strong in him to allow for any direct statement when there was a chance of error. Since beginning to drink he had maintained the safety of unformed opinions in consequence of his need to agree with any idea expressed. This, paradoxically, was especially apparent when he was soberly talking; indecisive to the core in the long repression of his timid ego, his numbed mind refused to crystallize anything and made adroit sidesteps of even the most trivial of beliefs on which it might be called upon to take a stand. An instance of this retrogression, which clearly showed the decline such mental grovelling had made in his potency of reflection, occurred when I asked him what the word “kill” meant in the movie title “Four Hours to Kill.” After an explanation that it meant to murder someone, there came to him the idea that it might mean to pass time, and his mind, though quickly confused, must have known this to be right; yet, perversely, his nature felt obliged to filter through the haze of thoughts for a difficult third possibility which, although unfound in minutes of intense thinking, was believed better to be sought after than to risk a rash decision on one of the two more likely meanings of the word. Coupled with the Drunkard’s intellectual hesitancy, and in more than ordinary measure, was its twin trait of meekness. In his weakness, Father accepted complete subjugation to the power of his vice and, thus gripped by its onslaught, his unrebelling slavery to drink produced the sustaining force for a saintlike gentleness always displayed when he was sober. Deeply penetrated by the destroying excess of an uncontrolled flaw, his soul assumed the guilt which made unquestionable the right of his suffering, and without evident bitterness he would innocently accept the torment administered, as though unaware that he could protest. In him this Christian virtue of “turning the cheek” was no pretension, for the low esteem in which he held his drunkard self made for a near-genuine humility over his Sin; and thus, being feebly involved in his own fault, he could not be demanding, so was blinded to the faults of others. The humble attitude created by his exaggerated self-debasement is shown in the fact that while my brothers, Jack in particular, beat and vilified him for years with cruel and brutal arrogance, I never heard him speak in other than terms of highest praise for them. Expressing these abject stupidities was not the hypocritical utterance of fear; rather they were motivated by his honest feeling of their superiority, as well as inner acceptance that the base things they said of him were all quite true. Of course, being such a doormat made almost everyone like Dad, and it was seldom that his servility went unnoticed by those who saw him regularly. Even among the non-violent personalities of the bleak bums with whom we associated there were comments like, “Neal wouldn’t hurt a fly” and “Give the barber another drink — he’s so damn timid he might forget to speak up.” From Mother and a few other women he later knew came, “Neal’s such a nice man, so loving and considerate, if only he could stop drinking.” And from my brothers, “Neal’s okay when he’s sober, but that’s not often.” My concern in the matter was at first only expressed by an ever-increasing exasperation at the need to prod and pry at the edges of his intellect before he would say “yes” or “no” about anything in question. It was not until later that I resented his being pushed around and then I became doubly putout with him, for he remained an inert mass while I, dumb with child-ignorance of life, alternately goaded and pleaded to make him stop taking such abuse. But right now, about the only thing that got me down was the absurd torpidity of his movements, especially when drunk. For I remember after our Saturday nights on Curtis Street — which invariably ended with my punching him awake from an

inebriated snooze as, in the harsh glare of the houselights, curious people looked on with embarrassed stares while they filed out — I would stagger him home in an anguished frustration that his slowmotioned gait was unnecessarily prolonging a trip made mortifying enough by the well-lit streets, though I knew in truth I had no reason to feel shame. Since pedestrians were sparse and their watching us really meant little to me anyway, I was actually manufacturing artificial emotions in reaction to his slowness. He somewhat hindered my dashing about on our Sundays too, but being not then needed to help him remain upright, I directed his steps from afield instead of beneath his crushing weight, so his irritating slowness became more the normal adult lagging behind the scampering boy. Since I was in a fever of excitement, attuned only to flushed joy of exploration, it made little difference to my otherwise inattentive mind what might be the cause of Father’s present languidity. I now appreciate that with an aching head or queasy stomach, enduring the severe nervousness of “the shakes,” his weak smile that frequently requested rest can be retrospectively seen as the sick grin of a man with a certain bravery. For I gave no letup, because Sunday was “my day,” to be spent making him tramp from morn to night over the miles of countless wonders that I set out to find below the Larimer line of Denver’s bowery in a vast area where more and more often I came to roam away much of my childhood. Now, Father knew this region better than most Denver people, yet soon not so intimately as my impressionable mind which, once initiated, expelled much of its early yearning in searches through the ever-new complexities abounding there in myriad profusion. Because of the vile weather Dad hadn’t introduced me to this fairyland until almost ninety days of our initial Metropolitan stay disappeared in the pastime which later filled all our winter evenings — cardplaying. For all the Sundays of February, March, and most of April I spent learning cards, especially Rummy, while listening with little comprehension or concern, to fellow bums spin their tales of past hardships and hungers. But with the first of Spring’s fair days, Father had led me to the new horizons of a diversified wonderland which, I remember, was the first-allowed rambling, i.e., a first instance of enjoying recreation for its own sake — a walk made purposely to seek play, rather than, as before, play the by-product of trips toward a definite destination. Always, on those Sundays so generously given me by this last of his fast-fading consistency to perform any action, however temporary, wholly devoted to another, he managed to struggle awake in time for our late breakfast at the Mission. Leisurely we doubled back toward 16th and went down its Sabbathdeserted street in an erratic walk, the pleasure of which naturally increased the more we neared the playground. Again passing the Metropolitan, we would usually pause in our trek to chat with the old boys who, ungracefully decorating the front steps with their unsavory selves, crowded weakly around the spit-spattered doorway so as to soak up what strength they could by a moment in the sun, for sunbasking was a continual preoccupation with them, its energy the tonic they understood their alcoholic bodies needed to sweat out the morning misery and regain a semblance of normality. Our course, after leaving the group therapeutics with their health problem, was on a direct line to the Union Station and thence to the Platte River and its rocky terrain. From Market to Wynkoop Streets was four short blocks consisting of filling station, seed company, American Furniture Company warehouse, Crane’s pipe and plumbing outfit, Singer Sewing Machine Company, Cummings Automotive Diesel Showroom. All along, too, were the usual couple of bars, restaurants and flop hotels. Keeping to our right at the viaduct’s beginning, we passed through a block of always-dank shadows that nudged scant feet from the rumbling overhead, forever blocked from sunlight by the Great Western Sugar Building and across from it the Solitaire Coffee Company. Then, further right, the Union Station at the foot of 17th Street came into view, and unless Dad’s firmly-believed-in restroom call made detour necessary, we avoided the building because of the deadend trainshed tracks on its other side. Instead, angling left, circling busy men loading mail and baggage in the cars just behind hissing engines, we took to 15th Street’s chuckholed pavement to cross the tracks. Now, parallel and to our left there rose a more than mile-long earthfill embankment, the 14th Street viaduct, and sprawled along under its twodozen feet of height were small coal yards sandwiched between the tight piles of mute disaster that make up the auto-wreckers’ stock, all this protected only by loose fence wires whose sag constantly tempted my exploration. Yet, hid from our view by this busy arterial roadway were the greater wonders from 1st to 14th Street: the Santa Fe Railroad shops with their neat stacks of myriad supplies, the roundhouse with a fascinating engine graveyard rail alongside, board-windowed furniture warehouses, small paint, grain and oil companies and, interspersed discreetly, the tiny trashpiles of the Hobos’ Jungle. We went straight ahead, passing on our right the C.B. and Q freight offices where, on one of my first jobs, I was to reign alone, amazed to be trusted, from midnight to 8:00A.M. Beyond this, flanked by bumper-ended spurs of stored refrigerator cars, was an auto-unloading dock and huge crane, then gradually thinning rails fanning into nothingness. Where the South Platte River passes beneath the 15th Street bridge of angle-iron and wood that squeaked aloud in protest as autos passed over its rapidly deteriorating surface, we would climb down a dozen or so feet to the gravel bed where most of our Sunday PM’s were spent, strolling to and fro over the several hundred yards of semi-beach between 15th and 17th Streets. Here my strongest concern was skipping rocks over the water, to carefully count the number of times I managed to make them bounce. This pastime preoccupied me for many years, as did all types of throwing during my Denver Period, until it was eventually curtailed by a football-incurred injury to the left shoulder. Since the allimportant selection of the rock for flatness and weight, also especially the angle with which it first struck the water, offset to an appreciable degree the strength of the throw, I soon, though not yet seven,

developed a score in the ’teens and, before reaching my teens, could consistently skip a stone a score or more times. So with me dashing about tossing rocks while Father sat to applaud and wait me out, we closed in close harmony our Sunday daylights, before a slow walk to the six o’clock Mission supper and our return to the Metropolitan lobby of card-playing and men’s talk that preceded bed. In the next few years of pre-adolescence, all the city was to become my playground — what with the ever-increasing passion for “junking” with plenty of freedom to indulge — so that even the many trickledry miles of Cherry Creek, hardly trudged upon since prospector days (from its union with the Platte at 14th through all of busy downtown and residential district alongside Speer Blvd., to University Ave. and onward, without roadway, to its upper reaches well past Denver’s southeastern limits of dairy farms, chicken ranches, riding academies and country-style night clubs) were to give up to my fancy the most absorbing treasures of its nadir’s gold, i.e., junk caches — mostly empty wine and beer bottles (of interest to sling shots) under the dozens of hobo-enticing bridges along with old tires, etc., plus overhanging tree limbs on which to climb above the creek’s 15-foot cement sides. In this first season I explored, mostly alone but sometimes with another boy or two, all over the ground that separates downtown from North Denver. Mainly it was the banks of the Platte that provided the flexuous corridor for my travels, beginning near a fresh brickyard’s immense red smokestack on the 8th Avenue site of the here-fluent, pre-dammed stream to its weary ending at an immense brick stack which was the largest in the nation when built in 1890 and still the highest west of the Mississippi when dynamited to the ground in several spectacular blasts a few years ago, finally condemned for a long 20-year-old crack down its side. Of Denver’s half-million population over three-fifths came to spectate the daylong operation. Near the 38th Avenue U.P. yardoffice, this stack, tempting for the splendid bicycle hills alongside, was also my destination on my first run-away-from-home at eight. It was there later I often made my way, but in the earlier years on these always-exciting excursions of exploration, I lingered most and learned to swim a little (but not to dive, being confined to the water by my rather embarrassing nudity) under 14th’s viaduct where the junction of Cherry Creek and the here-sewered Platte had been dammed-up over my head’s height, so that Intercity electrical plant could have power. I recall watching through heavy wire gates that opened for a switch-engine to shove gondolas of wetly bright coal right into the building, amazed by the building’s hugeness and that the interior — floors, boilers, pipes, gauges and all — although kept as spotless as every electrical plant, seemed entirely filmed over with light machine oil. I recall also that the loud whine of vibrating dynamos could hypnotize me for hours. And further on, just off 16th, there was a real stone castle, all shuttered up now and used as the trainmen’s change room, whereas before it had been the depot terminal of the Moffett Line’s branch from Craig. I stood feeling proud to think that the rail, ending before it passed through America’s longest RR tunnel — just-completed Moffett, eight long miles — and crossing the Divide, went higher than any other U.S. traction railroad. And, increasing as I trotted along (in a year or two this running habit became so strong that I made a rule never to walk while out-of-doors unless forced to do so by an accompanying adult) would be the tiny heaps of mostly hoarded sooted cans and wine-bottle water jugs all clustered about an inevitable circle of rocks that were laid evenly enough to uphold the improvised grate, sometimes made of a bent wire clothes-hanger or the inner grill of a stove’s oven broiler tray. Soon I was to live in jungles such as these all over the West, even learning to pick one out for the night, the main thing being nearness of water and wood. Of course, I seldom pioneered a camp, rather hunting an abandoned one so that Dad and I and his usual one buddy or two — with whom he’d be off panhandling while I searched — could be alone. We rarely approached the main throng of bums whenever we came upon them in the larger railyards; perhaps Father, thinking I was a prize of one sort or another, feared our safety. At every chance, bums asked my father for my presence on hunting trips, and although I thought the value of my accompaniment while they bummed people was overemphasized, yet I saw that we always managed to eat and the others often did not, or not as well, anyhow, for in each impromptu encampment, everyone generally agreed to get what they could and return to share it as community potluck. Sometimes Dad and I were fortunate enough to stagger back with pockets bulging and stomachs already boated. Since in their hunger the bums immediately ate all but what needed cooking, the pickin’s consisted mostly of beans and potatoes in the slim Mulligan. In Denver, the since-grown-nostalgic hobo base of operations under which I spent most hours playing was a solitary one, unlike most of those on the road. Although almost amid the great rail and highway congestion of nearby U.P. roundhouse and 24th Street viaduct, it was lonely despite the surrounding bustle — a country-like railroad trestle of skeletonized construction with a tie-thin overhead and concrete profile upon which had been written an inconceivable, to me, number of crudely and finelydrawn obscenities for deciphering. But at my age, these words and pictures, tidbits of future knowledge, could not be appreciated to their full value, and I recall liking much better all the wonderful climbing the many viaduct structures afforded, except the 16th Street one (the only all-concrete) whose arches were too high to get onto, so that I often eyed this bridge in frustrated desire, wondering if anyone had, or indeed could have ever shimmied slowly along its graceful fearsome curves. Recurrent in my dreams of this period (along with many potent and vividly realistic ones in which I labored to climb into and out of all the empty freight cars filling the yards of Denver’s five class-A railroads) was another discovery of one of my early jaunts over this immediate area: The Pride of the Rockies flour mill whose long-disused interior I had explored several times before some industrial guard found me out. Ordered away, I dared not return for years, for I never disobeyed any stranger’s command until over ten years old and past the sixth grade of Ebert Public Grammar School. In fact, I seem to have undergone a permanent character change coincidental enough to be here remarked, with

the beginning of each new school: Ebert, 5 years; Cole Jr. High (the largest west of the Mississippi) 11 years; East Denver High, 15 years old. These vivid dreams, powerfully felt as were all my early ones, were filled with the geography of the building. It had a spacious basement floor supporting a great stationary boiler that rose three full storeys with narrow cement ledges jutting out and many iron catwalks laced over its sides. The upper floors had huge overhanging machines gathered so close that all the pathways were mere tunnels, even to one my size. Squares were cut in the concrete to allow enormous chainbelts to extend in mighty webs of leather through all the mill, while over the disarrayed broken machinery parts (many heavier than anvils, jagged pieces of strap too broad to wield, huge crates — still, for the most part, firmly ribbed with sheet steel strips, full of many small spare parts, springs, wheels, bolts, etc.) and over all the dormant building itself, was the accumulated dust of a score years. Hauntingly, it was a dead dust; although it lay ankle-deep no speck ever rose to filter inside my shoes as I wandered about in amazed somnolency. Everything was still, no activity and no sound, save one thing: hundreds of solar-energized flies buzzed over me. I felt entombed, so isolated was I by the thick walls from rumbling 20th Street viaduct only yards away. Also, and more oppressively, the heat of summer seemed to regularly intensify until in time its ebulliency became too entire to ever again escape.

Chapter 2 Since first we’d joined Larimer’s brigade of bums, Father had impatiently awaited the coming of summer and my release from school, so that we might begin our trip east, for all that year he’d talked of Missouri and the pleasant visit we’d have there, especially of the plentiful fine food to eat. Finally the day came, near the middle of June, 1932, when, with our extra clothes tightly tucked inside the bedroll on his back, Dad took me to U.P.’s north Denver freight yards. He had planned that we catch the early morning merchant’s train from 38th Street, but we made such a late start the train had departed before our arrival, so rather than await a drag, we stepped undeterred to the highway where instant luck befell us — a man on his way to Cheyenne picked us up before we’d walked a hundred yards. Now, accepting this first ride, Father illustrated the two ideas (as opposed to their two obviously sensible negatives) which I also held during my teen-aged hitchiking impatience: one was to always walk, even at night, rather than wait for someone to pick you up; i.e., we had not paused at a convenient stop sign but walked the 100 yards. The other, twin basic idea of this “trust-in-Providence” method of bumming transportation, was that any lift was better than none; i.e., our not staying on U.S. Highway 6 out of Denver (which slightly angled east as it wended north through Ft. Collins and Sterling to its southern Nebraska meet with U.S. 30, the Lincoln Highway). This shows he thought it better to gain our “main drag” while we had the chance, although we thus went way out of a straight path to our Unionville, Missouri, destination, since Cheyenne, some 100 miles due north, was yet several hundred miles west of 6 and 30’s junction in almost mid-Nebraska. Although we hitchhiked all the way in this haphazard fashion, it was out-of-one-car-into-another at every stop. Probably because my extreme youth for being on the road alleviated their natural fear and made them tend toward sympathy, few people hesitated in giving us a ride; and so, despite Father’s optimistic routine which often landed us in such inopportune spots for a ride as an open countryside at midnight, we enjoyed an incredibly fast trip. Interspersed amid the blur of recollection are some standout happenings that occurred on this first journey outside Denver. One was a carnival near Grand Island, Nebraska, through which Father kindly toured me. Another memory among those bound up with riding was the straining sensation of sitting tall to peer over the dashboard at the bouncing headlights splaying before the tractor of a semi-rig, then sweet sleep, lyric to the motor’s drone, deep in the enormous bed behind the driver. Again, too, vivid hours spent happily sighting a travel-changing landscape. These gratifying excitements were on the eastern hitchhiking leg of the trip; a couple of months later on the return swing through Missouri, Kansas and northern Colorado, the remembered incidents silhouette less pleasantly. We came back via freight trains, monsters so much more frightening than the accustomed automobile that for years afterward I used to wake with nightmares of their thunderous passage and, at the sound of any actual whistle, would desperately burrow beneath the blankets. I controlled this childish terror on my first train ride, one hopped before it hiballed, with my arms still burdened by cold chicken fried fresh off Aunt Eva’s farm near Unionville. We had ridden Cousin Ryal’s gasoline transport to Kansas City, then by sheer chance caught this long-car through-hotshot which rolled all night. Finally at a central Kansas town, the train was stopped and most of the dozenodd hobos crowded into our boxcar correctly assumed that the locomotive had exhausted its water supply; so, while the tender was being refilled, several of them, Father included, disappeared along a dark footpath in hurried search of drinking water for all of us. Although knowing that it takes only minutes for an engine to take on water, they felt forced to heed this perhaps only opportunity for some time to seek some quencher for themselves and me, the “poor kid.” In particular had I been thirsty, what with all the salty chicken glutted, and my complaining whimpers had the sympathy of the throatdry men to whom temporarily my presence lent the dignity of unselfish motivation, so much so that I, sensing how my noisy suffering dispensed their own usual whines, was enough buoyed into consciousness of self-importance to attempt a stifling of my slobbers. Suddenly, the freight car lurched forward under me. Instantly forgetting my reflected determination to still a contorted face, I turned anxiously from the others to watch the darkness for Dad’s return. He didn’t, so while the train inched into speed I stood bawling anew in the doorway. Soon we were going too fast to expect any little head to appear out of the night and leap into our boxcar, and the hobos, seemingly aware that I might jump, mutually came together to herd me from the door. First having a spasm frantic enough to be hysterical, wails, moans, et al., then subsiding in my corner with sobs that came more slowly, I started to think over my predicament, for, having lost Father and sure he could never return, I felt strictly on my own. Intermingled, two prime thoughts gradually dominated: how to get back to Denver alone, and how to absolve my blame for this catastrophe. Lying there, I strained to unfreeze my 6½-year-old mind so as to hurdle the worry of finding the route home. Yet I never really formulated anything, since geographically I could hardly half plan, and all the while, above this, there revolved many regretful thoughts such as, “If only he had not gone or was safely back, I’d swear not to ever drink any more water, thirsty as I am.” I knew how impractical this was, because I would then die, but that was why I chose and deliberately preferred it so, feeling that such extremities would somehow balance everything to get him back. Also, thus I might find forgiveness for what I considered my grievous fault of thirst which had sent him away. Naturally, the bums tried to soothe, but I refused them touch so that although it seemed a normal, really unwilling, stubbornness of pout, there was produced,

after several hours of continued refusal of such dismal consolement, a paradoxical pride of self-reliance which finally overcame my fright enough to allow numbing sleep. For miles that were endless to me our train rumbled on over the dreary plain, and it was late in the day in Goodland, Kansas, before it stopped again. I had spent the hours since early dawn tossing on huge cardboard carton sheets scattered in thick press along one end of the boxcar’s floor and, nearly recapturing a fitful sleep, still refused talk to the bums sharing my bed, try as they might to approach me. The train had been at rest hardly three minutes with myself just awake enough to toy with the idea of getting out for a moment’s stretch, although cramped with the dread of an embarrassed walk through the lolling talkative figures. I had not dared to raise my head when, swift and silent with the creep of surprise, my father caught me up to be awkwardly bent in a tearful embrace! It had never occurred to me that although the too-soon pulling train had made him miss getting back to our particular car, he could manage to catch one ahead of the caboose and so actually had been on the same train all this time. Yet, either through fear of traveling the top over such rough roads as lumber and machinery, or because he thought me all right in the care of his buddies who must have guessed him on the train, and even though he gained it, he couldn’t swing down into our car while in motion, he had decided to wait out a stop before returning. Thus I had been denied the reassuring yell that might have come minutes after the fated water-stop. If only Father had suspected the strange thing that with every thought their goodwill had come up with to convince that Papa would find me, the bums had never said that he could have hopped the rear of the train. My astonishment then that I had not been told of such a possibility, nor indeed had the idea myself, was doubly felt when hearing them discussing with reasoned self-excuses the realization of this collective lack of conception. And again, short hours later, I really thought I’d lost Father forever, only happening quickly before my eyes, this mishap more directly terrified me in truer thriller-movie fashion. Maybe we were walking through the yards in Sterling, Colorado, or might have already arrived home and had just detrained in U.P.’s downtown Denver yard. Whichever the case, while crossing the tracks, Father put his foot inside a switch point just as an operator in the interlocking tower threw it over by remote control. Thinking himself made to look silly by the stupidity involved in the foot pinning, Dad cussed (a rare thing indeed, being habitually most soft-spoken when sober) and wiggled for a few moments, feeling more anger than worry, when just then a train engine dramatically appeared and began to bear down on him from a few hundred feet away. Instantly, he saw the locomotive and had he been an experienced railroader might have judged whether it could stop in time; but not knowing, he began to tug violently with his whole body and yank in desperate haste at the laces of his shoe while bellowing at me, still standing beside and doing nothing but a frantic jig, to quickly run and halt the engine. Now completely wild, I felt like screaming, but afraid of that too, I became frozen and scared into a pale sweat at the sudden boom of his voice, yet sufficiently nerved up to start racing toward the frightful machine, when, as quickly and as unexpectedly as it had begun, the drama ended with Dad lifting his stockinged foot free and, to equalize and belittle the horrendous moments before, stepping clear of the rail in a glacier posturing of exaggerated calm. Still the engine and cars came on — it might have been a train, but I reason that unlikely since of the movements made daily in any yard, only a very small percentage are made by trains as such (i.e., an engine, or more than one engine coupled, with or without cars, displaying markers), so it must have been a yard-goat pulling a cut of cars onto the lead to fan out into their proper tracks or a drag bound elsewhere inside the yardlimits, or simply a straight doubleover with a handbull from one rail to another, in which case the engineer (hoghead) could surely have stopped in time — and Dad, handicapped by fear, was indecisive as to how to get the trainmen to stop — perhaps still too upset by his escape for the reaction to set in, or already too embarrassed by the near-accident to go about stopping what to him amounted to a whole train just to salvage a piece of footwear — stood icily by and watched helplessly as the engine crept up to crush his shoe completely. But the high point fear of those few awful moments when I thought him about to be killed, combined with the great emotional relief at his safety, had so effectively clouded my mind that it now fails to retain the circumstances of Father getting new footgear, and although memory will not tell how, when or where he did, reason built of experience says “Goodwill Industries’ main retail shop at 23rd and Larimer.” I do know the shoe was indeed crushed beyond wearing, because I recall examining it after; also, just now, while unsuccessfully trying to remember how he got new shoes, my stubborn blocked head finally releases the fact that Dad, although really quite flustered by all the above, was not beyond stooping to jerk at the trapped oxford in the minute allowed before the oncoming engine forced retreat. Incidentally, those two months at Aunt Eva’s (who was recently widowed by husband George’s autoaccident death but still continued to gently boss a great clan, including among these assorted hillbilly relatives, brother-in-law Henry and his still-living though senile parents, John and Sadie Simpson) had presented me with the mighty twin overtures of feeling that were to remain my steady goalposts, one rising in ratio as the other fell. First, almost daily I performed with Eva’s several daughters bunched near my age those actions of first involvement with sex. Memories of these girls, now forever latent, had returned to pleasantly stir my mind whenever some similar sexual object appeared there until, diminishing in strength with time’s passage and subtle changes in sex patterns, fallen into or striven for, they became nigh a zero before I had reached my teens, since by then I felt quite unaffected by girls that young; but it’s plain that, normal or not, I had my full share of an exhibitionalistic curiosity. Second, and naturally more important to me then, was begun the sheer ecstatic escape of great rounds of play with the cousins, which, sexual or not, are remembered as being enacted mostly in the secrecy of the enormous barn to avoid prying adult eyes. (Observe how this obsessive play-idea grew in dimensions so

strongly that years later it was still out of control enough to get me beaten often by my legal guardian, brother Jack, because, great though my fear of him was, in the excitement of games, I would completely forget the dictated time to be home.) So, although there were other things at kindly Aunt Eva’s — such as great and great-great relations all porch-still from dawn to dusk (most smoking the standard corncob) and many older boy and girl relatives I had met in town where they came with bare feet and scanty dress to purchase scantier needs, I remember thrilling chiefly to tiny girls and limitless play. * * * There had been an agreement reached: henceforth I was to stay with Father only the 90 days of summer and with Mother during the school year, for breadwinners Ralph and Jack, bootlegging prosperously, had in our absence moved her, Jimmy, and the baby Shirley, into a larger though not much better apartment in a building on the corner of 26th and Champa Streets. The preliminary to my initial transfer into this new double-back arrangement into the fold came one day soon after our return when the Dark Brothers strode through the Metropolitan doors — undoubtedly for the first time — ostensibly to see how I was faring. Father put his foot into it immediately. Standing in the lobby before his fellowwinos and conscious of their attentive eyes witnessing the big boy’s visitation, he began the habitual son-bragging he would have made to any one of them — and already had to many — a painfully proud though illiterately quaint and rambling account of my fortitude during the travails on our successfully completed 2,000-mile trip. It must have been the brothers’ silence that fooled him and their standing graciously by with father-son smiles, allowing him to talk on like that for a few minutes’ rare show of bloodless social amenity. Dad, having finally finished the naive child-bravery tale, began an innocent drunkard’s-mind monologue of Aunt Eva’s chicken, when all thought was suddenly battered from his brain as they reversed the coin from play-act of meek step-sons into vicious monsters pretending horrified self-righteousness and started taking turns punching him. One would knock him down, then stand him up for the other to smash him to the floor, all the while bashing him toward the exit as they kept flowing an upbraiding pep-talk only broken by occasional tight snickers or grunts of effort. Finally they were done but only because of being arm-weary, winded, or knuckle-sore, Father having been out cold long since. So with a last potent blow to leave him stretched aslant the doorway, my half-brothers disregarded as statues all his coward bum friends as though they weren’t even there, bug-eyed in frozen-sit, and huffled me off, still talking mock-shock, to Mother. Now, the apartment house I thus came into when I was approaching the age of reason was called The Snowden, so named for the very old rake of a landlord who never came near the place except to take rent in trade at those apartments so equipped. This mammoth red brick structure, four-storied in front, three-storied elsewhere, was located in the very heart of a region of lower eastside Denver that was to become intimate to me over the next periods of my childhood. Directly across the street was The Bakery, a combination grocery and bake shop noted for cheap prices that was off and on for years the store to which I was sent and in front of which I played for long hours, not being allowed even neighborhood freedom to roam (in this first and longest of three separate Snowden seasons) by cautious Mother, emphasizing “Don’t leave the block.” Next to The Bakery and nudged onto the street corner but for an even more wedged wane bungalow, was the very barber shop where my parents had last lived together, and in whose cramped rear quarter sister Shirley and I were “Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh” in the pulldown bed, using the broad foot-board leverwise to control our plucky “Spirit of St. Louis.” On The Bakery’s left, toward 25th Street was my first “Haunted House,” though it comes to mind better as the scene of an early sex experience gained the year before while still living in the barber shop. Against this long-vacant two-storey wooden frame house’s rotted wall, in the dark shadows of shingled overhanging eaves touching The Bakery wall, and while people strode the busy afternoon sidewalk closeby, a funny older boy kissed then put his mouth over it to drink my “pee-pee.” Later we ran through the ramshackled rickety of the hole-floored house together, even climbing the easy roof, and, perhaps because of being so frightened of him, I felt quite unafraid of the house. But I became so this year soon after making the snappy Metropolitan-to-Snowden move. My fear developed on a night fresh from first hearing someone’s Ghost Story, and doubting the probability of “haunts,” I foolishly hazarded an alley approach to the house and came upon its unfamiliar rearward aspect determined to explore, as I’d done daytimes before. But its quiet utter blackness and unexpectedly strange silhouette against the racing couds of winter sky was too much for me, and I turned back, shaken. I didn’t experience the “Haunted House” chill long, however, for this happened on one of the nights just before wrecking crews tore the building down, and its sorry arid space became a narrow vacant lot whose boundaries were scant inches beyond the concrete basement shell which I noticed over the years gradually came upward to ground level, receiving every sort of trash from broken bottle to auto chassis and even offal, human (in the corners) and otherwise (scattered haphazard) as its unsavory fill. On this lot’s left was The Crescent Arms, twenty yards indented from Champa Street, with a magnificent playing wall about four feet high and easily scrambled onto, although too wide for my jumping fingers to grasp its farthest side as a handhold. Each half of this snazzy wall came out from opposing apartment wings, themselves set flush with the walk’s innermost edge — from The Bakery to just past here this sidewalk had been poured into an apron thirty or forty feet wide and several times as long and, considering the after-dark limitation of playing places for younger children, was a popular center for neighborhood youngsters who, like myself, gathered there for brief adventurous after-supper games naturally made doubly ideal by the balance of bright Bakery lights (to see the people) and the Crescent

Arms front garden secrecy so very dark behind the wall (to avoid being seen by them, especially childcalling mothers). And they ended, these walls, in twin entrance-walk guardian pillars that were at least seven feet high and were made of the same red housebrick as the walls themselves. These square towers, each with two long-disused electrical cords coming out of their inches-thick concrete platform top, had enough diameter for me to stand on as “King of the Mountain” for a few moments after fighting free from the other players’ entanglement., And next left was Hubbard’s, larger and more elite, housing the block’s more affluent citizens. Then came The Avery, scene of many emotional events from the first ones of being chased by an irate manager, through countless domestic ones, as first brother Ralph and family, then sister Betty and husband lived there and, finally, adolescent ones of cigar-smoking slickhaired courtship calls on a flame, who after long indecisiveness jilted me and married (only for his supposedly spectacular genital development, as she herself told me only in an attempt, I think, to stir jealousy) a suited runt named Orville Farris. Last and least on the block was an unnamed rooming house for winos or worse, and on 25th and Champa Streets’ other three corners there was a gas station, a large private residence and a half-block-long (the short way toward Stout Street) row of horrible tenements, the cheapest room of which was just one of the dozens of flops I shared with Father over the years. I remember it was while living here that he started a long-continued habit of taking a large dose of Salts every Sunday morning. And it became the same for almost every building on this block and adjoining blocks — all held a personal connection for me, and each house had a meaning of its own, either because of some occurrence that had happened inside or very near it, or because it might be “soand-so’s” house, a person I knew. But I knew best The Snowden, that castle of my childhood around which centered the splintered domesticity of Depression-splotched families such as mine, until upon old Snowden’s heart-attack death, a new landlord (whoever he was and whatever his reasons — though I believe simply a realtor’s improving) had the whole mess cleaned up in January 1937 when everyone was evicted so that My Mansion might be partly demolished, semi-renovated, renamed The Queen City (coincidentally the name of Father’s birthplace) and re-tenanted with wholly new family pieces at a higher rental. In Autumn 1932, however, when I came fresh from The Metropolitan’s torpid bums, it was a a rather infamous place, mostly noted as a bootleg stronghold, although also notorious, over the eastside anyway, for its characters, who were typical yet unusual enough in their own right: ex-convicts, perverts, a jazz musician or two, several prostitutes (usually unpimped), addicts (mainly alcoholic), numerous wild young men. Though mostly visitors of lusty mind and crooked action, there was too a small normal core of pious parents such as Mother, struggling for their many children, and maybe even a few vicarious old maids or bachelors. And although The Snowden occupants were all poor, or perhaps more so because of it, they rocked the joint night and day, for the place had a noise mania; the air seemed always filled with assorted yelping catcalls, shouted curses, frightened screams and, topping all in my mind, those exciting feminine whoops of laughter. There was hardly a moment that something untoward wasn’t happening; especially did I notice the practically continuous poker games, strip and otherwise, monopolized by the basement apartments, and at any hour spooning couples might be jostled aside as drunken fathers were berated along the narrow halls by irate wives, while in early evening still-hungry kids forgot meager suppers by giving all their concern to games of serious logic played at the foot of the gigantic stairway inside the front entrance. Like some great Horn of Plenty this stairway began on the grand plane then systematically petered out at each landing upward. Jumbo rotund knobbed ground-floor posts guarded its mighty mouth which curved outward off deep-lipped steps inside sturdy carved spokes supporting mahogany railings much too wide for a handhold and almost too high for one of my stature. Since this remarkable reminder of The Snowden’s Victorian-times grandeur decreased in ascent, until at the topmost point it seemed built entirely of scraps and had no banisters, almost as an afterthought, hasty and weak, or as though constructed pragmatically aware that since it led to only one apartment, few persons would use it, I came to suppose that the carpenters had deliberately made spite of their perfect beginning below. This last unsafe rickety flight reached an isolated solitary room or two that jutted beyond the rooftop to crest the building like an Indian teepee, only covered with shining silver sheeting instead of hide, inside which, for less rent than anyone else, lived my first Snowden boyfriend, Bobby Ragsdale, and his beautiful Mother, whose only discernible flaw was a button nose. I came to know Bobby first as a love-rival for an exquisite blonde perhaps a year or so older than our half dozen plus and whose beauty even the most uncouth could see and might knowingly exclaim in front-porch talk as she passed beyond hearing. “That one’ll knock ’em dead in about ten years,” or, “She needn’t worry about money when she gets big.” Bobby and I were taught by her the meaning and pronunciation of that word after we three at play came upon it scrawled fresh across The Snowden’s high yard-boundary wall, atop which I, in particular, was always attempting to perch unaided, seldom successfully without her inspiring presence. And one sweet day shortly thereafter my lovely offered to show me hers if I’d show mine. For privacy we chose the nearest basement toilet but were soon sorry. For, betraying our ignorance of the game, our excitement made us momentarily forget (knowing full well, perhaps, but surely too young to realize how detrimental is bad odor) that it was the most ill-used and least-often cleaned of any in the building, being as it was the transient card players’ and beerdrinking party-makers’ urinal, as well as the common place of outlet for any regurgitating drunks. So, quickly overshadowing even the hurry of children indulging a furtive act, that puissant smell forced us to cut short the mutual self-exposure and to lament our poor choice of location, because before there was another opportunity to recommence our new game she became enamored of Bobby and cut me out

entirely, although before moving away some weeks later, this already fickle beauty had switched back to me enough at odd moments to make it much easier for me to forgive Bobby my envying him. And we became firmer friends, i.e., we became friendlier rivals in other fields besides little girls, as over the years after leaving The Snowden our course of life crossed frequently. Especially on Wednesday and Saturday nights throughout the remainder of the Thirties did we consistently meet at the Bath House on 20th and Curtis Streets, a place of shower cleanliness and smut, pool joy and fatigue, gym exertion, shuffleboard and table tennis skill, which the city provided free for such as we, until, to finally end sharing a dozen years of similar boyhood experiences, I then discovered — but at the time cared too little to note as strange or interesting — that coincidentally we both spent the same dark months of benchsitting depression in separate poolrooms across the six blocks of downtown Denver between Glenarm and Curtis, I frequenting Peterson’s on the former street and he Bagnell’s on the latter. To counterbalance for the suffer of my reluctant admiration for Bobby, who was bigger, as handsome and — as I came to learn, although not before most of my childhood had passed and so was influenced after to look down upon any shade of “the average” — far more normal than I (and whose mother I loved from the time she was a black-haired and white-skinned beauty in her curvaceous twenties, always being squired by one man or another to the Tivoli’s stage show with dinner before and drinks after, until faded sweet and neat into a still much-escorted grey-streaked forty, and whom I desired far beyond those early moments of innocent child adorement with long months of heavy adolescent lust and wonder of how her slim naked body looked) there was another boy during this 1932-33 winter with whom was formed a friendship different in every respect from Bobby’s, save they paralleled in that he and I also knew each other as older boys. His name was Art “Sonny” Barlow, only son of the “Blackie” Barlow who had hired my brothers, Ralph and Jack, during his bootleg days, which even now were just ending so that in looking for more legitimate investment he’d recently bought a service station which, when last I heard, he had parlayed into a vast fleet of gasoline transports, besides owning seven or eleven Denver Texaco stations. I remembered having once met Sonny before this first Snowden period; it was on an afternoon of visit at Blackie’s beautiful mountain home where, though I’d waited in what struck me as admirable patience until he’d tired of it, Sonny had refused me a turn of play with his truck-mounted steamshovel that had instantly impressed me since its huge size allowed one to sit on it to work the controls. It was simply two 3- or 4-year-olds fighting over a prized toy, over which the host youngster had priority and had been given it anew in the adult decision my refusal to yield had forced, but to me it was an overpowering rejection, one of very few recallable ones that my child soul failed to overcome in proper emotional self-preservation, possibly because it marked a first instance of wanting something enough to have fought to the bitter end for it even while sensing defeat all along as I struggled. Perhaps it was the unjust losing of this battle which by fore-setting a pattern of compliance and surely helping weaken my courage, so that influenced not to face new skirmishes with proper assertiveness throughout my childhood, I’d give up efforts toward attaining a coveted object at the slightest sign of resistance by another. But now that the hated brat had fallen to the low position of being son to that drunken slattern, Peggy Barlow, instead of rich father Blackie’s pet, well-fed, housed and toyed, I found him less formidable and could easier look down in contempt on this smaller, more ugly and, as I truthfully enough thought, much dumber kid. While with child cruelty I often teased him for being an orphan, which I thought him to be having overheard it said in some adult conversation that Peg and Blackie, when still in the chips together, had adopted Sonny, usually I played the catty snob and acted most cordial toward him until, in time, undermined by this habitual pretense, my early dislike passed into a genuine softness, and besides coming to reflect much of his own shy nature, I gradually learned to respect a prowess far beyond my own in certain things, especially penis and swimming-poolwise — for Sonny had a development abnormally large; I can clearly remember the shock of disbelief a glimpse of it would give, and he also was the most daring of the Bath House gang of grammar school days, game to try almost any risk because no one ever noticed to admire him otherwise, before or since, except, I imagine by now, some healthy girl has found good reason to rave. Sonny had to endure a horrible flop called “Red,” of facial shade to match his name and hair’s flame, who spent all his time in bed being taken care of and given full freedom to indulge his sack-happy stupor by lover Peggy slaving the waitress life when not herself laid up drunk with this maroon moron whose pleasure seemingly came only, or mostly, from subjecting Sonny to mock stepfather training periods, judging by these being the only times I saw Red’s teeth. And so, mistakenly or not, I assumed them times of grin to deadpan Red, because he was the first (and hence not understood) man I knew closely who practiced the Poker Face accompanied by such constant use of harsh word and heavy hand that, far from being the cocky kid who refused me his steamshovel, Sonny was already browbeaten into a stuttering timidity of spirit by the time I moved into The Snowden. Peggy’s character was no more solid than her flabby body, and whatever kindness she possessed was offset by the distraction of a weary-eyed hopelessness; yet she yearned to protect Sonny and generally gave him some sorry show of wishywashy tenderness even though so flattened by the hurt of Blackie’s leaving her for a younger woman with plenty of independent income with which to buy the indispensable perfume and peroxide and by being mired deep in the inertia of wine and Red, her attitude had grown helplessly fatalistic. The best she ever mustered for Sonny’s consolation was a feeble, “You gotta take what life hands out.” Whereas Bobby Ragdale’s Mother, Alma, or Thelma, or some such name, was unquestionably the opposite: sweetly firm to give him everything in an unhurried cater of love for “her roughneck,” despite also accommodating her men friends (as I slowly came to sense from the frequent times her door was locked and I was abruptly ordered away to find Bobby and

play) she seemed to have been able always to keep Bob’s respect, for at young manhood he still looked to her in all confidence. As for my own mother, she was simply too much harassed in my early years by unruly Jim and whiney baby Shirley, and later by the demanding pair, Betty and Mae, when they got out of Queen of Heaven orphanage (still bedwetting even though well nigh adolescent), and continually by all the bitter emotional, monetary and health struggles of these last few years of her hard life, to show me her affection adequately. I knew it was there, but surely didn’t realize it, since not physical enough for sufficient satisfaction. With her grind-fatigued mind, while almost totally blind to such a thing, she probably shrank from emotional responsibility to her children in a fashion similar to Peggy’s, although from causes as different as are drinking and abstinence, thinking it quite unnecessary, I being the most golden of babies, never fussing or a problem to watch. Indeed, until well past her time of death I continued this little need for attention, for in my childhood and under brother Jack’s demanding eye I was the very personification of the policy that dictated kids “be seen and not heard.” Thus, I was not given enough love, despite her being the kindest and most gentle of women, as I knew both from my own times of least biased observation and from all the fine things I heard said of her; in fact, never did I hear anyone speak poorly of my dear mother. Through the eyes of being the same age, the trio of Bobby, Sonny and myself were the only boys who witnessed the frenzy of Snowden life about us, and, drawn even closer in seven-year-old isolation by there being no boys younger nor any male under a dozen years of age, we became intensely competitive. Luckily, the main requirements were agility, strength and climbing games, so Bobby and Sonny were usually subjected to fighting it out for second place behind me; especially in chinning, since I could consistently chin 35 or 40 times, and only the fatness of the overhead basement pipe we used in absence of a proper bar weakened the grip of my barely clinging fingers and curtailed a higher score, for soon after on school playgrounds I often cleared the half-century mark. There was a ladder fire escape that began too high off the ground for us to boost ourselves up to its bottom rung, but happily it passed Peggy’s bedroom window, and for the next few weeks Red’s voice, shrill in anger, was raised to shoo us away. Only when he necessarily shed his laziness to eat, which was often enough, or, protesting with curses, lifted himself to the hall toilet when nature forced, was the path clear for us to scurry past the bed’s mess and slip out the window to the thrilling ladder climb and roof excitement. Once, pursuing this route alone and returning after a happy time lost in contemplative gaze over a snow-streaked Denver hidden everywhere by bare-topped trees upthrust, I wisely paused to peek before reentering the apartment. There I saw Red and Peg in scorching throes of romance and was so unnerved that only after hanging frozen for some time in Peeping-Tom delay could I gather the courage to ease past the sickening scene of all that grunting flesh bouncing and rolling half off the bed and make the teeth-shattering forced drop of several yards. Neither Bobby nor Sonny ever duplicated this heroic maneuver off the ladder; in fact, they doubted that I had; but I knew I reigned alone as champion leaper-off-high-places as well as being the only one of us to see-people-do-it, unless, of course, although it is unlikely, they had seen coitus and hadn’t told me, just as I declined to mention my window encounter while describing the feat to them. * * * About this time, near the beginning of 1933, another girl (the second or third) came into my life, and we established what proved to be an enduring relationship, moreso than any other of its type, and one that instructed and highly influenced my childhood sexual desire, for off and on until puberty I shared enlightening intercourse that hardly any boy might obtain, although necessarily of a subjective sort with her, she being domineering. The beginnings were at the foot of the front hall’s beautiful stairway where, unable to play outside in the night’s zero cold, we sat together and sang in snappy child falsetto “The Red River Valley,” and at the line “From this valley they say you are leaving” I’d get up, hardly controlling squeaks of nervous delight, to hide on the vestibule-like steps of the tiny toilet nearby. Then, after she told of the cowboy that loved her so true, at the words “Come and sit by my side if you love me,” I’d jump out to grab while carefully flip-flopping atop her in the way she’d shown me. This simple game was but the start of ones that over the years grew so complex it strained our minds to repeat the various steps we’d assembled to go through. Of course, they all ended in the similar physical entanglement that was her genius to concoct. A year or two older than I and much less inhibited, her fertile imagination conceived so many variations of play-act to get us on the ground together that even now, and with little effort to recall, a full score of these complicated plots singe my mind, but being almost too much for detailed cataloguing, I forsake their telling here. At best they might be briefly noted when chronologically reached, or at any more sensible point than this one, because in our extreme youth the main concern was singing such songs as the above and “There’s a Tavern in the Town,” “Side by Side,” “Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder,” “Home on the Range,” “Around the Corner” (“and under a tree a Sergeant-Major made love to me”), “Moonlight and roses,” etc. Her name was Vera Cummings, the only daughter of a new Snowden tenant, Ann Sheehan. Ann was one of the few women (offhand, I can think of only two) who became close to my mother and who henceforth lived nearby until the climax of all of us living together. Besides Vera, this rank female, so full of gibberish herself, also mothered a spastic son. In his early twenties at this time, Harold was a horrible looking person that frightened me even when I got as used to him as I could, and, considering how he incessantly slobbered over himself (through thick chapped lips pulled in perpetual leer off massive food-caked brownish yellow fangs weakly embedded in ever-receding blooded gums) and dragged his scuffling foot and pawed in unison his curled baby arm with such desperate effort, it is

small wonder I was afraid to stand too near him, felt too embarrassed to attend his pleading eyes and often wouldn’t even pretend to listen to any throaty gurgle of inanity, swallowed beyond understanding anyway, that he might suddenly choose to voice. In Ann’s youth Harold had come as a result of union with her “true-love” first husband of whom she always spoke with glistening eye and reverent tone, mostly, I now suspect, because he’d died just before she’d started going to pot and bottle, and using this coincidence of heartrending demise by implication, she made it clear to everyone why unavoidably she began to drink. Vera had been born a dozen years later off a “no good Irishman” whom Ann blamed for her final downfall and vented her venom on by “seeing him rot in hell” and “if he was dying of thirst I wouldn’t piss on him.” Mysteriously, Vera kept his name, while Harold and Ann used the beloved Sheehan. Ann was an obnoxious old crow with thick glasses and thin hair, ever-changing from normal gray to loud henna to weird blue and silver or strange off-shades of gold. She talked continuously from the depths of a whiskey-voice which was, with dogmatic flatness, quickly prone to tell Vera and me not to do this or that — orders always restricting — and disregarding her own frequently-stated belief that experience is the best teacher, declared with usurped authority (riding high over any objection my mother might make by the sheer persistence and volume of her outpouring tongue) what was best for us at every turn, since, having lived much longer (but not too much) she knew everything that we children couldn’t yet see. * * * Brothers Ralph and Jack had deposited me in number 38, which was the first apartment on the left after coming through the main entrance off the big dozen-step-high brick and cement Snowden front porch. It was there, an apartment poor even by Snowden standards, that mother, now 43, Jimmy, approaching 12, Shirley, just 3 and I, turned 7, lived out the turbulent school year ending in June 1933. My new home had been quite an improvement over the Metropolitan, having a large room that was used for everything except whatever activity could be crowded into a small kitchenette, and where beneath long glass-doored cupboards, one much-marred wall of this low-ceilinged, carpeted, highwainscotted living room, there was an oblong wood panel centered with a handle, which was pulled to bring out on its always-sticking rollers a large bed we all used for sleeping, except corner-palleted Jimmy, or any tipsy overnight visitors. Unwillingly, I often used it in another way, for here it was that Jimmy would imprison me, with typical care to restrain any show of sadistic delight, knowing well that a revealing chuckle or two might betray his evil to Mother. When he shoved it, the bed went inside the wall horizontally, and my clearance was less than a foot; so, besides fear of this lack of room to rise up as I lay breathing ever so slowly in the total darkness, there were strong twin terrors of realization: one, that I couldn’t scream for release or Jim would surely beat me, and, two, that any yelling would also unnecessarily hasten to extinguish the all-too-small supply of oxygen. I had known about the agony of suffocation ever since having once seen a film with Dad. The plot had a villain who drugged well-to-do young girls to take compromising photos of them for purposes of blackmail. Inadvertently, although somehow through his own greed, he was locked inside one of his victim’s father’s banklike vaults, and while flailing about drmatically clutching his throat in obvious last gasp of strangulation, the villain was released in the final nick. But only after the hero-fiancé of one of the photographed half-clad girls (languidly lying there duped, doped and ill-used) still managed to persuade her shock-flustered, vengeance-determined, naturally uprighteously anti-smut father (the only one, of course, who knew the combination) to open up for the sake of his conscience later and the police now, despite the good moral and parent reason for letting the rascal die. And there was another thing my imagination infused with fear whenever I lay sweatsoaked in the humid closeness of the trap which sometimes only after hours of my quiet submission would Jim open, his demeanor registering contemptuous disdain, successfully hiding his glee by a show of concern for the building weight above (although I thankfully knew Denver was not subject to earthquakes) which might fall to crush me in some catastrophe such as a fire. These claustrophobic experiences caused another reaction even more unusual and less easy to explain — a reeling of my senses, caused, I imagined, by an offbalanced wheel whirling around with close clearance inside my skill, which, while slowly increasing in tempo, set up a loose fan-like vibration as it rotated into ever-tightening flutter. More exactly, it was simply an awareness that time in my head had gradually apexed to about triple its ordinary speed of passage, and as this thing happened, although I couldn’t realize it then, it was just thought of as a circular flying object twirling through my mind for lack of a better way to think about this spinning sensation. But, actually, it was felt (nervously) only for what it was — a strange, pleasant quickening of my brain’s action which was disturbing enough to frighten, yet resisted any rigorous attempt to throw it off and return to normal-headedness. This time-acceleration came and went of its own accord, making me thus dizzy-minded (although only while inside my mattressed jail, and then not every time) all through this first Snowden year. It was nearly a full score years later before I again had similar headspins (from different stimuli, such as marijuana) but which this time I tried to hold and analyze, and found by heavy concentration I could, for short moments, turn this time-quickening off and on at will once it had started. But the prime requisite — to hold still as death and listen intently for the inner ear to speed up its buzz until, with regular leverlike flips, my mind’s gears were shifted by unknown mechanism to an increase of time’s torrent that received in kaleidoscopic change searing images, clear as the hurry of thought could make them,

rushing so quickly by that all I could do was barely catch the imagery of one before another crowded — was much too difficult to continue for very long, since any outside distraction, such as noise, would disrupt the process of maintaining absolute body inertia, and I failed to match these mental eruptions firmly enough to any reasonable explanations in reality, so that the cause, cure or real workings of these singularly fresh and concise visions were forever beyond my diagnosis, in fact, beyond my remembering, except as residue, almost every flashing scene once it had spun by. While on the subject, I note that several writers, such as Céline and William Burroughs mention having mysterious fevers (?) in early childhood which gave off similar exhilaration sensations to their mind’s eye. Would that medical men could adequately explain these boldly etched and racing glimpses of hallucination’s brink; perhaps there is a regular child fever as there is, say, “the three-month colic.” Well, enough. Lastly, just one more happening closely related to those times of bed-imprisonments (though less significant and, on the face of it, related by coincidence only.) It was my contracting the “seven-yearitch,” and although mostly confined to the space of wrinkled skin between my right thumb and forefinger, this tiny area only seemed to accentuate the intolerable itch which even with baking soda was impossible to relieve, as if burned into the bone. Far harder for my will to face, and much more detrimental to my courage than either the fever (or whatever it was) or scabies was the fighting that Jimmy forced upon me. My chief antagonist was a Mexican boy about nine years old and small for his age. He and Jim decided between themselves — I recall the kid was timid by nature, so Jim’s threats always carried the decision — to undertake teaching me a few unethical courses in fisticuffs, and as I took the beatings (administered standing up, although I continually tried for a knee-chest position, despite the straightening uppercuts), my strongest thoughts usually contained a bewildering preoccupation with, “Why does Jimmy do this?” A couple of years ago, while traveling through Kansas City, where Jim now lives in typical insurancesalesmanship-frustration (as step-father Neal, had done 20 years before) I asked him this question during our brief hungry first-in-a-decade visit. He answered that he had hated my guts, for even though not quite five at my birth, his position as pampered baby boy had been usurped by me, so he plotted resentfully. “Neal, Buddy, every time mother showed you any kindness I resolved to get you for it, and usually did.” He was too young to sense that, increasingly beset by troubles, Mother emotionally failed us, the others less than myself. This Kansas City quiz confirmed anew that Jim, as well as my other halfbrothers, Jack and Ralph, had early acquired a vengeful readiness for violence and brutality — oldest half-brother Bill remarkably escaped (whereas the other boys were mostly sullen and vindictive, he was all humor and hope, tainted only by a bartender cynicism) perhaps because he alone had reached full growth while his Sioux City politician father and Maude, our mother, were harmoniously living the affluent life a Mayor commands. Incidentally, I might here mention that Jim developed into a beautiful pugilist; champion of his reform school, C.S.R. (which later proved to be mine as well) middleweight king, 150 lbs., 6′3″, at his C.C.C. camp, on Joe Louis’s boxing team when Joe was first in the Army and stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. (I saw Jim win an exciting bout while I was on a visit there — included in my hitchhiking itinerary mainly for this reason.) And besides he was the winner, often taking on three or four at once, in many a barroom brawl, as vividly described to me by brother Jack in later years. All this I’ve always admired and envied about Jim, but his matching sadism was something else again and quite abominably fierce. Of course, Jim’s actions were natural enough, considering he was motivated to look up to his brothers, imitating Ralph in particular. (There is memory of hearty arguments between us later as to which of the brothers had the best build. I preferred Jack while Jim always declared for Ralph by heatedly calling Jack an “old sway-back” that even he could conquer — but never did, for before Jim reached the age of challenge he had transferred affection from “loud-mouth Ralph,” which he was indeed, to “good old Jack.”) And he had extra good cause to seek approval by apeing their viciousness, for “the Daly Boys” were a potent factor in the Snowden setup, as crooks, that is. In his basement apartment number 3, leader Ralph — with scared wife, Mitch, and first-born boy, Robert (throughout his life called “Murphy” for some unknown reason) who, having a broken leg, raised spoiled 4-year-old havoc thumping about on his plaster weapon — and first lieutenant Jack, now sleeping mostly down the block when not at the Snowden or galavanting downtown with one Lois Chambers, a big beautiful blonde older sister to Jack’s first wife, Rita, who a year later, had stolen him from Lois and forced marriage before he could even touch (according to Jack) the temptation cause of it all: her unmatchable 40-inch bust. The brothers held round-table for a small pack of hoodlums that were young, dumb or desperate enough to admire and be instilled with the brothers’ toughness, becoming soon emboldened to proudly help them conduct raids — bursting through doors and leveling on the players with Ralph’s pride, a sawed-off shotgun — on “Dago” crap games, principally barbooth, that were generally held just outside the city limits of north Denver, the Italian stronghold. The youngest of Ralph’s punks was one “Red” Bennett who became Jim’s special friend and tutor. He was a bully, yet rather kind, I remember, and taught me words of the old jazz songs, “Chinatown” and “Dinah.” And then there was Jack Halverson, Jack’s particular buddy, whose mother constantly harped at my brothers, truly enough, for “getting her boy baby in trouble,” and whose younger sister, Ruth, called “Baloney-legs,” became an early friend of my sister Betty after her release from the orphanage. Another, perhaps most wild and by fate most rudely used of the bunch was one Clinton Frank, who was always in and out of jail between fry-cook jobs. (Ever notice the tendency to drink among cooks in general? And the one toward crime by short-order cooks in particular? Other tendencies being equal,

this may be the result of a vocational frustration due to stove heat and rush-hour hassle.) I first heard about and understood “In My Solitude” three years later when, in my impressionable 10-year-old presence, maudlin Clint told brother Jack all about the melancholy-stabs whenever singing the thennew Ellington song in his California jail cell. Mr. Frank prematurely ended his sad and spotty career in a Rocky Mountain ravine, smashed inside the stolen car he’d drunkenly mismaneuvered around a cliff curve. And another incident of Daly-boy ways: Mitch had been insulted by the leer of a “big buck nigger,” so Ralph and a demented friend, Seth Thompson — nicknamed “Sil” (silly) for his maniacal behavior — went a-gunnin’ in Five-Points, Denver’s Negro center very near the Snowden. Their expedition to find a dark goat to castrate fiascoed because during the four-block drive overstimulated Seth, slobbering in joyous bounce on the back seat of Ralph’s old Nash Touring, let off a deafening blast from the shotgun he was fingering so impatiently. The shot plowed into the front seat backing, but luckily didn’t injure the boy Murphy or Mitch, whom Ralph had insisted accompany avenging Seth and himself so as to identify the culprit (patently impossible) before they “took him for a ride.” The old car had a protective seatshielding that stopped the yet unspread buckshot. About this time also (early 1933) Ralph was picked up as suspect in a strong-arm murder, because he so well fitted the description of the real killer: 6 ft, 180 lbs., muscular frame, black hair, brown eyes, swarthy skin, regular features, and so forth. After two or three days of Ralph’s sweating out detective grillings they found the right man and Ralph was released. “Sheer luck,” he called it. As for my second schoolyear, I can remember barely three happenings, or rather, three incidents incurred on my path between Ebert and the Snowden. With my Metropolitan-established habit, I always zig-zagged the route. From 26th Street down the previously described block of Champa, turn at the line of shoddy tenements. On my left a vacant lot offset behind The Avery, and up 25th Street one block to The Style Inn on Stout’s corner. Then down Stout Street past rows of apartment houses to 24th’s corner of grocery, private homes and another beer joint. Up 24th a block to California’s corner of vacant lot, large and modern domed auditorium of Negro church, lawn before huge natural gas tank that filled a half-block, and the ballpark. Bisecting this unfenced square block of dirt where I was to spend all my free time for many years, to gain 23rd and Welton’s corner of ballground, N.Y. Furniture Co. (on alley behind which was an old man’s shoeshop next to the first of Dad’s barber shops) and its catty-corner stove and refrigerator warehouse, and lastly, a vacant building in the double-big first storied and woodwindowed elongated Parisian-like atticked row of shops-once-houses up which I went to cross the alley beyond and past the principal shop (to us kids anyhow), a candy store that was owned by a stinking old woman with a hundred cats, for whom later I erranded liver and received damaged merchandise as payment, mostly tasteless unbreakable jawbreakers and wormy, discolored licorice. Then came a final half-block of duplexes before reaching Glenarm Street and Ebert. This half-dozen-block walk took about twice that many minutes in the morning and about twice that returning home, and all three of the occurrences, I remember, came on the evening leg. The first and second are not unusual — and put down here just because they are all memory serves up about this schoolyear — nor is the third too much so, but it proved stronger in emotional disquiet and fear than any other of its type during childhood. Perhaps I can recall them now only because each of these three events were initial discoveries, although typically minor, excepting, as I said, maybe the third, for any American 7-year-old in the early Thirties. Between Stout and California on 24th Street was a Negro shanty bordering the alley (understand that Denver has an alley 20 or 30 feet wide dividing every block — one of the few U.S. Cities that does, and since travel had not yet revealed this fact, I, as a child, thought every town had fine alleys over which to roam, so I couldn’t appreciate their rarity and full value) and next to the shack was an unsightly doorless privy. Heading homeward one afternoon, I found myself in sudden panic fighting back an oncoming bowel movement until I could find a place for relief. By deduction, I was eliminating the neighborhood toilets as I scurried hard-pressed across the vastness of the ballpark. Gratefully, I thus remembered the nearby outlet and made directly for the Negro’s toilet and its apprehensive use in my dire need smelled out discovery number 1: the unpleasantness of those old-fashioned stools, built so that the seat was always up, balanced by weights, and when forced down for use discharged a continuous torrent of water as long as held depressed. My fear of discovery by the residents combined with the buttock-irritating swoosh to form for me such a dislike of toilet flushing, especially when on one, that it didn’t expire until under Jack’s jurisdiction. New knowledge number 2 had to do with wintertime, as I walked clear home without putting hands in pockets to prove to myself that I could take it without crying. By keeping tight the lips when starting to whimper (this not counted as an outcry) I proudly made it all the way without breaking my rule. Once home, Mother unthinkingly held my hands under the hot water tap to thaw them, and only some chance visitor’s quick action saved me from greater screeching. Thus, I learned the second point: cold water was better when one was frozen. The more important third revelation came about on a fine May day. Coming off the ballgrounds to cross the grass before the gas tank, I was stopped by a sexual deviate sitting on the curb. He was a big man about 40, and his first question was, “Do you want a sucker?” I asked what kind, and he answered, “An all-day one.” I said, “yes,” so he told me to wait until the other passing schoolkids were gone, and he’d give it to me then, not wanting to make them jealous. Agreeing, I sat beside him and listened to a half-hour spiel about what a swell sucker it was and how all the children loved one to suck on, especially the kiddies on Curtis Street. There began then a description: strawberry flavored and too big for easy licking, which I interrupted to find out if it cost more than a penny and why was the one he had

larger than those at the candy shops or something like that, and he assured me that it was extra-special different and not to be had in any store. This sort of talk kept up until I became time-conscious, impatient for the sucker and to be on my way. Of course, it never dawned on me that what he had in mind was a sweet of another kind. Finally, he sensed my wanting to skip, so, figuring the coast as clear as it would ever be, told me it was hidden in a garage behind the Negro church across the street, and he now offered to show me it at once. By now I was quite hesitant and thoroughly frightened, for the long delay worried me, and I was puzzled that it was not pocket-carried, yet I accompanied him so far that he got me inside, shutting the door, and into a corner before my reluctance grew enough to start me shying outright. Seeing this desperate nervous prelude to bucking to break away despite his anxious stream of reassuring words, he tore open his fly in a rush to pop out the “sucker.” With intuitive cunning I instantly sank floorward as though tottering toward a more submissive position, for indeed, I was momentarily stunned by reaalization and disappointment and suddenly scared stiff but confident of escape, and I made a complete crouch to emphasize my fake, and gathered to spring before the frantic leap to squirm between his tightening legs, then smash through the door and rush out to the alley before he could recover.

Chapter 3 THE BIG DAY had arrived. School was out, and Father showed up as per agreement, so, begrudgingly over the brothers’ protests, I was again given up to the happier life — supposedly for only the summer, but autumn and much of winter was to pass before I rejoined Mother at the Snowden. Pop and I immediately bummed off for the West Coast with no special plan in mind; we’d just go until something unforeseen stopped us, like work, women, wine or, as it turned out, jail, then on again to the next chance stop. We got to Salt Lake City (Dad blubbered anew when contrasting sweet memories of the February day I’d been born there in the County Hospital with the present sour life he’d sown for us all), and we even toured the Tabernacle for free before trouble started. How it happened is obscure but simple enough: Father, being very drunk on the night-time street, had been arrested. Naturally I was picked up also, and, separated from Dad because of my youth, quickly lodged in the juvenile jail. This particular place was frightening, mostly because of the steel everywhere; for, unlike many almost resident-like detention homes, the Salt Lake one had more metal about than some prisons. Not just wire mesh outside the windows, but wire mesh and bars, and not only steel doors, stairways, tables, benches, etc., but even the walls, and overhead as well, I think, were of this same frightfully clanging substance. For three long days I filed from our woven iron cages to eat mush and bread with a couple dozen other boys, most of whom, of course, were here for more serious anti-social behavior, and timid as I was, they seemed regular convicts, like the real bigtime criminals, to be stared at in fascinated wonder and fear. The rougher ones didn’t fancy this ogling much — as a new “fish,” I was in for it anyhow — and during the first play period on the roof-court, I was shoved, hit and kicked before eventually being ignored. Despite this, I played volley-ball with the best of them. It was our only organized game, the ball being tied to the net with a long rope to prevent knocking it over the parapet, and so I compensated rather easily, after all, and thinking of them as equivalent to murderers, I didn’t identify enough to feel their rebuffs deeply. After the 72-hour hold period — to find out if he was wanted anywhere — Father was released on a “floater” and came for me with chastisement and shame flooding his florid features. Heading south and eastward again, we soon ended up in Albuquerque, geography notwithstanding. I know it was Albuquerque because we camped there a week or so, but about all else I can remember is tortillas and beans of the poor Mexican families and the railroad section-hand handouts, off whose generosity we generally lived. Continuing our zig-zag of the West, we hi-balled to northern California above Sacramento for some reason (probably a work mirage) then backtracked slowly toward L.A. via Frisco — I remember the thrilling ferryboat ride across the bay from Oakland — until, at San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley, we were again separated. This time the circumstances were entirely different, coming about through an act of kindness motivated by the childlessness of a lonely rich man, rather than by chance dallying or the Law. Unhappily, at the time I couldn’t enjoy it because of yearning for Dad and for the dread thought that the wealthy man was trying to kill me. It was surely a strange assumption, this unreasonable distrust, neither indicative of my character or background nor, indeed, that of most 7-year-olds, and perhaps surprising mainly because of its strength, for all the time I was with him, despite my very real struggle to quiet it, my fear heightened, until near the end of the period, I was openly hiding from him and would not even stand his casual friendly touch. But not realizing why he was interested in me, and suspicious of him for reasons (besides others I know not) of accent and looks, I could never quite believe, for example, that he was well-to-do, although living in his beautiful home and watching him operate a lucrative business, because he wore the most godawful clothes; not at all what I thought a rich man should wear. So I was not at peace until safely out of his hands, comfortably bumming on the road with Dad once again. This first-time-abundant episode, so unwanted and overlooked, was the opportunity of a lifetime, had I but known, that started simply because first harvest had begun, and laborers being needed for a few weeks, Father had decided to work so as to have some capital when we arrived in L.A. In a downtown park we had joined a crowd of drifters signing up to pick prunes or apricots, but when our place in line reached the hiring desk, Father was rejected because of me, since they had no facilities for families or children down country where he was to work. Dad raised a fine hullabaloo, saying I could, and did, live anywhere, etc., but the employer said “no” very firmly and turned to the others. Nevertheless, Dad felt undeterred and went to the rear of the column to try again. It was then that this ugly fat Italian of about 50, in filthy baggy pants, equally dirty undershirt and runover grease-bespattered shoes (in the heat that was all he wore, for he did the fry-cooking in his bar and grill) nudged Father, and saying he’d overheard our plight, offered to care for me as long as was necessary for Dad to accumulate a stake. Almost pathetically overwhelmed and pleased at such an opportune solution, Father was all for it, but I balked strongly despite many words of plea and reassurance until Father pressed harder for decision, seeing that the work gang was about to leave. The would-be Samaritan thought to escort us across the street to his tavern, and there, plied with soda pop under the eyes of strangers, I began to waver. After that it was easy for them, so Dad and I ate a tear-blurred hurried last bite of food together, free, with the host, my new papa, hovering all smile and benediction. Then Dad boarded the truck of loading men and, with a feeble wave of the hand, was lost to me for a month or more.

Only a few scenes stand clear amid the jumbled recollections of my time with this well-meaning but unappreciated benefactor. There were days of lounging about his cafe, the poolhall behind, a penny arcade down the block and the park opposite, out of which Dad had been hired and where I lay on the grass for hours pining away with nostalgic memory of the fatal day. But ill-fated or not, that initial day had ended rather smoothly and with introduction to enough new pleasures to thrill away the earlier chill. It was later, as good living palled with continued usage, that its distraction proved insufficient balance for being scared An interest in beautiful things such as cars was given exciting birth in my life that night, as the rich man finished work and drove me home in his new Cadillac V-16. Rapidly followed by his even more impressive castle — my movie-trained mind seriously thought him only temporarily there, paying rent to put up a front for me as in a B-plot would one of the conmen, like Edward Arnold — with all its ornate furnishings, including an enormous bed, too soft and clean to believe. And especially the fine food, which was prepared and served in a nervous flurry by a woman I took for his wife, for I remember her only serving the dinner on this first and subsequent nights, and by since connecting with this the fact that I had later been led to a bed-ridden middle-aged woman upstairs, who insisted on looking me over, I suspected naturally this invalid to be his mother. Anyway, the anxiously catering housekeeper, if that she had been, very nicely urged on me the heavy wine they drank as a matter of course while eating, but which I politely refused, habitually following the pattern performed so many hundreds of times with Dad’s cronies. But the strongest remembrance of the period is one that assures me I really was afraid this man also plotted my death, and so, implausible as the thought seems now, the vividness of the happening in my mind validates it for my placement of it here. On a Sunday (I presume, since he was not the type to take a day off) the man had taken me with him to see someone about land, an orchard, to be exact. As he inspected, I noticed the strange fruit, never having seen figs before, and asked about them. This prompted him to offer me one and, by God I swear, at first bite I turned and ran in mortal terror to the car, convinced he was trying to poison me, despite having seen him pluck it straight from the tree — but why I ran to his car, I don’t know, perhaps being too frightened to try and really get away from him and thus lose all hope of renewing contact with Father — or could it have been nothing but shock at the unusual taste and ugly, seedy innards of a ripe fig? Whatever the cause of this foolishness, it’s forever lost since, honestly, the truth of my death-fear of the man is far beyond me now. When Father actually did come to take me away, the greatest surprise of the whole weird business was revealed by this generous man; he had somehow ignored, forgiven or understood my poor treatment of him enough to want to adopt and put me through college, besides which I’d receive the best of everything and be heir to his business! I seem to have forgotten the details or circumstances of our farewell scene and exactly how we refused his magnificent offer, but I do know that, as a parting gift, this amazingly kind man gave me a real dagger with jeweled handle and engraved sheath, which I treasured beyond measure until the following year in Denver’s Windsor Hotel when some wino stole it to hock for drink. * * * I instantly knew Dad was in high spirits, liquor and otherwise, and found the reason to be that he had met a woman while fruitpicking and had arranged a Los Angeles meet with her. So great was his haste, he splurged much of the money he had so recently sweated for on transportation, and thus I made my first bus trip which was a gleeful time of speed from San Jose’s Market Street to the terminal at 6th and Main in downtown L.A. By telephone from this depot Dad quickly established contact, and soon their rendezvous was an accomplished thing, and so within a few hours after losing my rich Italian papa I found a poor Okie mama. The prime difference between these chance-parents, aside from sex and way of living, was that the woman had a child my age — toward whom she was constantly throwing glances of glasses-magnified love, to receive in turn similar fawning looks cast through his own even thicker-lensed spectacles. This new bed-partner brother of mine was very ugly yet perfectly all right as a playmate despite his being excessively mothered (hardly what one might expect from a typical California Okie such as she, since many are noted for treating their young offspring rather loosely, especially in large families, but, there being here mother and son long alone together, a closeness formed that tended strongly opposite to the more impersonal domination one would find if she’d had more children) and the disturbing fact that without extreme effort I could not unglue my eyes from his which were turned out-of-focus so badly I often mistook where he was looking. Together he and I would sit atop Bunker Hill’s grass and gravel peak (somewhere nearby our parents had found suitable living quarters for us all in what I suppose was an apartment) to debate the relative death-dealing merits of my beautiful new knife and his own rusty-but-real .32 revolver (sole souvenir left him by an unknown father) and heated though our arguments grew as we each pursued our weapon’s salient points — my forté was the knife’s silence — I remember being even more excitedly impressed by the considerable height of our perch and its advantageous position for viewing all the miles of city lights stretched below. About my new step-mother I can recall nothing except that, in front of a drug store one night as we waited for someone, she told me the old joke with the punchline, “Giddy up Napoleon, it looks like rain.” And although I must have spent a half year in L.A., all else that sticks in the memory is many well-lit reverberating vehicular tunnels. Summer passed and still Pop stayed our leaving, probably hating the prospect of breaking his sweet

affair to face bumming crosscountry into a lonely Denver winter without having his son or the consolation of this woman. In bypassing the problem of getting me to Mother’s as promised, he made, after much delay, a declaration of destitution to the Travelers’ Aid, who would investigate the application, then send us home free if we qualified. This worthy bureau must have mislaid our file, been understaffed, short of funds, or, disbelieving, had doublechecked — since there must have been many who needed their services in 1933 — anyway, it was Christmas before Father received tickets for us. And so it was that, from September to December, I made the longest of two exceptions to my six straight years at Ebert — the other being a few weeks at Maria Mitchell grammar school across from Cole, the Jr. High I attended. This modern L.A. school had such classroom surprises as beginning each day with an oath of allegiance to the flag (not done in Colorado and now discontinued in California) and the thrill of having a seat behind an absolute beauty who was brunette and bright enough to name correctly (and chosen to sullenly lend pauper me) every color in her crayon box that stumped me. So despite the shame I felt, my desperately repeated efforts failing to identify most of them made for the major startling discovery of the semester: I was color blind. Memories of Father’s Charles Boyer-Irene Dunne-like midnight train platform farewell to his Okie mama is blurred less by intervening years than by the remembrance that I was paying somewhat stronger attention to the outgoing train we were to board; for our forthcoming trip as passengers represented another long-awaited first experience. Coming out of the Rockies, the good feeling of fortyeight hours as privileged traveler quickened afresh to keep me grinning in joy and wonder to be, after a full day, still curving cautiously off the Continental Divide winter grandeur into familiar home environs. Exuberant upon sighting the interurban to Golden, I blurted with glee, “there’s a Denver streetcar,” but my happiness at this first genuine sign of the anticipated destination, which would have made me content to call practically any streetcar a Denver one, was promptly attacked by a fat boy’s sudden unreasonable and formidable flurry of contemptuous derision deploring my ignorance. At last this fellow-passenger, a flabby product of a decade or dozen years mishandling, subsided his loud sputtering enough to froth an offer of wager that I was wrong, bragging he was making a monthly commute trip and knew it for the Golden Interurban and not a Denver streetcar proper. Of course it was just a misunderstanding of meanings, since the Denver Tramway Corporation owned and operated the hourly car over the 12-mile shortline as well as the older smaller models that plied Denver streets, which was what the obese monster had in mind, whereas I, judging only by its distinctive color (I could see yellow paint okay, especially if it was bright as were these streetcars) and thinking with the enlarged scope attained by coming from across a third of continent, naturally included the interurban as a Denver streetcar; but, taken aback, and surely not one to split hairs, I quickly surrendered to agreement. * * * My second Snowden period, from January to June, 1934, but half the length of the first, was accentuated by increased personal freedom with new knowledge of sexual happenings dominating. There was Beverly Tyler, an 8-year-old lovely whose older brother, Bill, was one of Jimmy’s fellowruffians. It was she who, discounting the folds of flesh, inaccurately taught me to draw with chalk on sidewalk a bisected perfect circle picture of her thing — like this Φ. And there was her lecherous uncle who had initiated her and various others into being fondled by his seeking paw while they looked at a pornographic collection, including “dirty books” depicting Bringing Up Father (Jiggs reads sign, “Casey’s Tool Works,” comments “So does mine, but I don’t brag about it”) and Buck Rogers (using an enlarger raygun) and many others even more indecent. I learned what rape meant, too; a skinny kid named Joe Murphy was my best buddy, chiefly because he had a big friendly police dog, and one day Joe’s mother, with whom he lived alone on top floor rear, was so puffily bruised and blackeyed she would hardly show her face when complaining to the investigating officers about the three Mexican men that had alley-laid her. I remember Peggy Barlow said, “Baloney, her trick just turned into fists instead of moola,” but to impressionable me she seemed a tightlipped hysterical victim in a real case of forced submission, and while learning the word for it, I had about completed my early sexual vocabulary, innocent even of such refinements as “fink” or “fag.” I remember I had wrongly interpreted several words, i.e., for years I thought a “fruit” was a man who went around smelling girls’ bicycle seats, surely a thing to which not many, including myself, have been reduced. Besides direct sex and indirect — such as rollerskating with barelegged girls to jostle into heaps — I appreciated Joe’s gregarious behavior; especially do I remember my awed listening to a whisperdistorted recital of Catholic rites in his dingy old church and school, Sacred Heart, (brother Jim’s too) while one dreary afternoon we made another of our unsuccessful treasure hunts — conducted so infrequently as to have our path always cobweb-blurred, from those hushed moments of entry to a hurried exit-time through tiny window carefully broken to camouflage after with stillintact pane — in a trespasser stealth of sweating struggle to adequately sift all the haphazardly crammed discarded furnishings massed inch by inch along this locked-door corridor of the forever-steeped-in-darkness Snowden basement. But, as always, I mainly felt the constant challenge to conquer a new tree or building, in fact, so fascinating became climbing to me that a mania developed powerful enough, when not actually engaged in besting some difficult height, to leave me balancing for hours atop the clothesline’s sturdy pipe anchor in the Snowden’s side yard. There, whether or not wash-hanging women disturbed, I had leisure to mull over every meticulously planned detail of plot in my fantasy of soon leaving on an overland hobohike for Paraguay, South America, with a select group to be gathered on the way and chosen by strict tests for agility approaching mine, so that together we could live out

our lives happily flitting from one 10 x 10 treehouse to another — and this idea, especially the Paraguay part, was so with me that all brother Jimmy’s able razzing and strong logic against failed to perceptibly sway it. * * * With summer 1934, Father again became my agreed custodian, but we made no trips, out of respect for the brothers’ admonition of stern punishment unless I be returned promptly this time, and because, from somewhere, Dad had hooked to a feeble-minded German drunkard with thick mustache and heavy accent, who was sire to a dozen kids from an even harder drinking wife who despite this productivity, was not bad looking, although she must have been nearly blind, so thick were her glasses. Our two mouths more seemed to make little discernible dent in the stewpot (which, indeed, probably had its contents increased by Father regularly taking me on tours around such steadily generous foodbumming spots as Bluehill Cheese on lower Market, American Beauty Macaroni in nearest north Denver on the South Platte at 15th, Booth Fish and Knowles Sausage right next to the Metropolitan, etc.) that we all freely shared together over a stall-table in their old barn (a real ex-barn) just inside southwest Denver’s Barnum district. Here, made freer by watching the numerous brothers unselfconsciously smoke, cuss and fight together on outlaw forays through sparse neighborhood between creekbed and field, I soon followed the leader in screwing all the sisters small enough to hold down — and those bold enough to lead. This was all great fun but much too briefly tasted, spawn dead before development, because one night, almost immediately as I remember, the German too, silently climbed into the loft bedroom and was upon them before wifie and Pop could cease pounding the hay, so hasty goodbyes were in order (nearly a decade later Dad and I repeated this whole performance with them, only much better) and a regretful return to the monotonous round of one-nighter, or at most, bi-monthly, exchange of flops; Hotel Victor, overshadowed on its 18th and Larimer corner by the Hotel Windsor, whose warm lobby we often used for 500 Rummy, played to 1 or 2,000 every sitting; Hotel Henry, up Lawrence from 20th, an absolute morgue that later always came to mind whenever quiet buildings did; The Great Northern, a standard two-bit type on Larimer near 15th, opposite the Crescent Moon, where later I sneakshared one of Dad’s women on a purely physical basis. * * * With September came time to leave Father soaking on Larimer and rejoin Mother for the 1934-35 school year. I found a changed setup for everyone but Ralph who, with his cohorts, still dominated the Snowden atmosphere. Bill, oldest and nicest of my four half-brothers, was doing a year in the State Pen at Canon City for non-payment of alimony. Jack, third oldest and by far the most loyal supporter of Mother, had switched in courting the Chambers sisters to marry big-bosomed Rita, and they, together with a crippled idiot named Frank, despite honeymoon, were now bootlegging from a rear apartment in the three-storied and pink stucco-fronted Evelyn which, being smack alongside, was forever enveloped in heavy sweet odor from the Puritan Pie Co. that so effectively killed the incriminating whiskey smell. It might be considered, knowing Jack’s mind, a prime reasoning behind this move half a block up Champa from the Snowden, of course, but such was probably not the case at all. Oldest half-sister Mae, together with my other one, Betty (there was a third sister, older, but not met until I’d passed yet a dozen more years) had at last been released from Queen of Heaven orphanage, and she at once married “Big Bill” Herzog, a gruff-mannered 32-year-old florid-faced German foreman at Blaney and Murphy meat packing plant, which job he lost when Cudahy took over shortly after. But the kicker is that since Mae was hardly 13, though sufficiently large, the Denver Post thought their nuptial ceremony newsworthy enough for a full photo of already curvaceous Mae accompanying a feature story slanted toward shock at dupe of another poor child-bride. So, as I rejoined them, Betty, Jimmy and the baby of the family, my only full sister, Shirley, made up the group still fettering a mother whose sudden fortune it was (so rare an instance of her luck being good that it must be noted) to have indirectly become recipient of favor from an old fart with whom her pal, Ann Sheehan, had recently set up housekeeping in his swanky duplex on 32nd and Downing, for this aged daddy had property, and generous Ann soon saw to it that Mother lived rent-free in one of his places right across the alley. While this house, a sturdy two-storey affair facing Marion Street, was not long our home, since it was but 90 days at most before Ann fell out with her moneyman, it is well remembered for a lot happened there. These events in themselves are no more interesting nor important than are, even to me, any of those child-dull ones yet told and which, like them, are put down mainly to get on, simply by recounting chronologically episodes that now plague memory more readily than others concerning a particular period. Like, here it was I entered that stage when a child overcomes naïveté enough to realize an adult’s emotional reaction as sometimes freakish for its inconsistencies, and can, on his own reasoning canvas, paint those early pale colors of judgment resulting from initial moments of ability to critically examine life’s perplexities, in tentative little brain-engine stirrings before they fade to quickly join that train of remembered experience carrying signals indicating existence which itself far outweighs traction effort by thinking’s soon-slipping drivers to effectively resist any slack-action advantage for starting, and thus necessitates continual cuts on the hauler — performed as if governed lifelong by the tagwork of a student-green foreman who, crushed under onrushing time and always building against his excessive load of emotional contents, is forever a lost ball in the high weeds of personal developments

— until, with ever-changing emphasis through a whole series of grades of consciousness (leading up from root-beginnings of obscure childish intuition in which there is still no clear world for a soul or selfconscious soul with a world), early lack — for what child sustains logic? — reaches a point of late fossilization, resultant of repeated wrong moves in endless switching of dark significances crammed inside the cranium where, through such hindering habits, there no longer is the flexibility for thought transfer and unloading of dead freight that a standard gauge would afford, and thus, as Faustian Destiny dictates, is an inept mind, limited being in existence firmly tracked just above the constant “I” biased ballast supporting wherever space yearnings lead the worn rails of civilized comprehension, so henceforth is restricted to mere pickups and setouts of drab distortion while traveling wearily along its familiar Western Thinking right-of-way. But Choo-choo nonsense aside, on Marion Street, delightful otherwise for the player-piano and backyard rhubarb there happened the first several of many subsequent occurrences of innocence being betrayed by abnormal decisions, either overly concerned or too weak with irresponsibility, which were often so far out of line, so mistaken of my simple child motives, that my awakening reason laughed in humorous contempt at their obviously silly process of law, sometimes bitterly, it is true — if judgment from this ludicrous mental and emotional behavior adversely, as so frequently it did, affected my peace of mind — though mostly I chuckled with tolerance, even pity, especially for Mother. To give a better idea, here are three examples of childplay resulting in harsh and improper punishment: The wizened goof whose flesh Ann had temporarily acquired for sake of what material he had permanently acquired, included among his more savory acquisitions the Red and White food store so conveniently adjoining his duplex, immediately behind which, with carcass of a model-T panel truck as theater, there danced for me eight-year-old tap-happy Vera Cummings, Ann’s ever-promiscuous daughter. Her dancing partner was another girl of maybe six, sister to a year-younger boy who, beside me on the buggy-type seatbox, shared equally my intent of carnal desire as well as intensity of impatience to satisfy it. And so we did, taking the girls turn and turn about after each provocative dance, until, whether through fear of detection (which might seem to belie the innocence just implied, were it not meant only to express our obvious sophistication) or displeased with the ex-vehicle’s narrow confines and hard bed that caused splinters, or simply the spontaneous idea to change locale, we decided to adjourn to our junior playmates’ big backyard, and so pranced gleefully down the alley to its location in the middle of the block where we fell quickly to the thrilling game anew. Right away we were caught by their parents, me atop Vera, brother on sister, and instantly came their unique punishment: Turpentine vigorously rubbed on our genitalia, the parents shrieking stern admonitions all the while. The second in this Marion-period trio of major chastisements disturbed me more for the disbelief evidenced than for the severe whipping administered by brother Jack. Here their consideration compensated my pride somewhat in that they made exempt the untraveled other children, for no one thought I could be lost a full twelve hours in face of the fact that I’d often gone over the whole town when living with Father. So, much as I insisted otherwise that I’d never been in these particular parts before, I was conveniently labeled by them and treated as a runaway — by Jack, anyway, Ma being too distraught. And worse, bottom-wise, at least, I, by nature disinclined to make big pronouncements, had led Vera and the incestuous brother and sister into this unhappy adventure which had started out to be simply a little junking jaunt down a few Downing street alleys. But, along with being subjected to the temporary deeper discomfort of my bottom was the hurt of being permanently put down as a liar. Besides, I was unable to feel any of the remorse Jack attempted to instill in me with blunt-worded shaming tactics, since my fast-developing reason, working upon the knowledge of what had really happened, clearly saw how weak and illogical was the basis for his conviction that I should be made ashamed, for it was simply a supposition, quite unsupported, and typical of his nature, so quick to assume an unverified conclusion, particularly if damaging to character. Though it must be said, it would usually come out later that he was right, that I had led Vera….

After-word by Carolyn Cassady

In 1979 when Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs decided to devote an issue of their magazine, “Spit In The Ocean” to Neal Cassady, Babbs solicited contributions from the memories of Neal’s former friends and acquaintances. One of these, Ed McClanahan consulted his files and there discovered a long-forgotten sheaf of typewritten pages yellowed with age and heavily endowed with penciled corrections and additions. Babbs passed these pages on to me, and I recognized them as a carbon copy of the published manuscript of Neal’s The First Third, this new find being a later and last draft Neal had done. Ed says he got the manuscript from Gordon Lish, and Gordon says he got it from Neal along with some letters. He sold the letters, but neither man can remember the whys of the manuscript. My guess is that Neal gave it to Gordon to read and comment on, and when Gordon moved to New York he gave it to Ed to return to Neal. This must have occurred in the mid-60s when Neal wasn’t easy to pin down, so the manuscript was filed and forgotten. Buried in my own files was a mysterious page of Neal’s writing in progress and its carbon copy numbered page 118. The manuscript Babbs gave me ended on page 117. My orphaned page had found its mother. Subsequently, in comparing this manuscript with the published version, I found vast differences. Neal had worked on the book in erratic spurts of intensity over a six-year period between 1948-1954, during which time he was also reading the works of authors he admired. The then-current passion was Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. The last concentrated efforts to rewrite were made in 1954 while Neal was immobile from a railroad accident and we were living in San Jose. After our move to Los Gatos in the fall of 1954 he managed only half-hearted attempts in response to urgings by Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to polish and finalize for publication as much as he’d already written of his autobiography. We worked together on it from the beginning, but I made as few suggestions as possible to guarantee the book would reflect his thinking and his style exclusively, for better or for worse. The influence of Proust was clearly apparent to me as I worked to decipher and incorporate Neal’s revisions in the latest draft. The prose of the Prologue, on the other hand, written much earlier, is far simpler and more direct. The complexity of the later prose, however, is still true as a mirror of Neal’s personal style as well as Proust’s. He enjoyed the challenge of finding words or expressions that described his observations, feelings and impressions in as minute detail as possible. He reveled in the game of continuing a sentence as long as he could before resorting to a period. (Rather like his favorite feat of driving a car as far as possible before applying the brakes.) He knew he was neither trained nor equipped to think of writing in terms of literary merit, but he also knew what he wanted to convey, and in order to discipline himself to do it at all he invented games for motivation. I find his writing more enjoyable if read in the same spirit. Personally, I am grateful Neal played with his written words to the extent he did. We may find some of it uphill reading but from both his letters and his various drafts of this manuscript, we are fortunate to have a legacy of a far more intimate understanding and communication with the man himself. August 1981

Fragments I remember…. I remember being unusually pensive that May evening. Perhaps it was the heat of Spring’s first warm day which, encountering my thick winter blood, forced a dilution upward into a brain weary of straining the last six months to overcome freezing, and the long absent thinning of blood stirred a weakening desire for the softer things, a nostalgia, yet a death, a precognition, if you will….

One day as I looked the train over … One day as I looked the train over for brakes sticking etc. I happened to climb up on the top to check the indicators of a passing train (our pride, the Daylight, number 99) and on top of the reefer was a bum. I see at least 10 or 20 bums each day, however I was really stoned, the sun was so warm, and I had almost an hour to wait before my train pulled, so I sat beside this guy and we talked. Suddenly he began telling of his hallucinations; these were a collection of semi-ordinary bum ideas like the one about when he arrived in SF he walked along Mission and when he saw the patrol car he thought he heard the policeman announcing over the car’s loudspeaker, as his fellow policeman drove slowly by, these words over and over: “The time has come, everybody lie down so you won’t get hurt when the sun bursts.” His mind heard these words, but his emotions felt they were actually driving toward him to arrest him because his fly was open (zipper broke and no pins to hold it closed) so he ran to hide in an alley but they drove by there too; so he left SF and caught a freight to Watsonville. This is the simplest and most believable of his images. It all began after he had had sour wine and actually not eaten for four days. He was in the Sacramento Freight yards and he boards a flatcar to lie down. The world seemed normal and there was no indication anything unusual was to happen. It began slowly and normally also — the common thing of one’s mind taking up the sound of a big steam engine as it passes slowly and arranging its bark into a rhythm and then putting a short phrase to the rhythm. The particular accentuation of a steam engine is well known (like — He’s a nigger, he’s a nigger on and on with the accent on the first word, of course if one stays with it long enough you can place your accents anywhere because the exhaust of the engine changes with the amount of pull — like shifting gears) that most people if they do fall into creating a phrase to match the engine’s sound, so get bored with the project and stop soon. This bum began that way, his phrase — “What’s my name, what’s my name?” as he got stuck with those words while the engine was passing he didn’t attempt to answer himself because it was unnecessary. Once the engine was gone he idly asked himself what’s my name and with a shock found he didn’t know. He thought he’d just forgotten for a second and his mind confidently began to wrestle out the answer. He kept trying to wrest the words that were his name from his memory. Not succeeding he tried sounds that might be similar to it, John, Juan etc then he tried different words: John, Peter, etc. He finally exhausted himself lying there on the flatcar. He figured he’d go to sleep and it would come to him when he awoke. This failed too, so he got panicky. He said he felt an overpowering desire to jump down and run as fast and far as possible, but he felt an equaling overpowering inability to move. Then the train beside him began to move so he struggled to it and not caring where he was going laid there trying to remember his name by recalling his past including what he’d been doing recently. He remembered little about his early life but easily recalled what had happened recently. He had been out in no man’s land in the San Joaquin Valley heat picking fruit. Once he’d gotten a stake he’d gone to Sacramento and got hung up and friendly with a barkeep. A few days later someone snuck into his room and stole his money and shoes. The barkeep got him some old shoes and got him drunk on the house. Then he went to the yards to get a train to Salinas (south of WVille) etc etc.

To have seen a specter isn’t everything … To have seen a specter isn’t everything, and there are death masks piled, one atop the other, clear to heaven. Commoner still are the wan visages of those returning from the shadow of the valley. This means little to those who have not lifted the veil. The ward nurse cautioned me not to excite her (how can one prevent that?) and I was allowed only a few minutes. The headnurse also stopped me to say I was permitted to see her just because she always called my name and I must cheer her. She had had a very near brush and was not rallying properly, actually was in marked decline, and still in much danger. Quite impressed to my duties, I entered and gazed down on her slender form resting so quietly on the high white bed. Her pale face was whiter; like chalk. It was pathetically clear how utterly weak she was, there seemed absolutely no blood left in her body. I stared and stared, she didn’t breathe, didn’t move; I would never have recognized her, she was a waxed mummy. White is the absence of all color, she was white; all white, unless beneath the covers, whose top caressed her breasts, was still hidden a speck of pink. The thin ivory arms tapered inward until they reached the slight outward bulge of narrow palms, and the hands in turn bent inward with a more sharp taper only to quickly end in long fingers curled to a point. These things, and her head, with its completely matted hair so black and contrasting with all the whiteness, were the only parts of her visible. Quite normal, I know, but I just couldn’t get over how awfully dead she looked. I had so arranged my head above hers that when her eyes opened, after about ten minutes, they were in direct line with mine; they showed no surprise, nor changed their position in the slightest. The faintest of smiles, the merest of voices, “hello.” I placed my hand on her arm, it was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping on the bed to hold her. I saw she was too weak to talk and told her not to, I, however, rambled on at a great rate. There was no doubt she was over-joyed to see me, her eyes said so. It was as though the gesture of self-destruction had, in her mind, equalized all the guilt. The courage of committing the act seemed to have justified her to herself. This action on her conviction, no matter how neurotic, had called for all her strength and she was now released. Free from the urge, since the will-for-death needs a strong concentration of pressure to fulfill itself and once accomplished via attempt, is defeated until another period of buildup is gone through; unless, of course, one succeeds in reaching death the first shot, or is really mad. Gazing down on her, with a grin of artificial buoyancy, I sensed this and felt an instant flood of envy. She had escaped, at least for some time, and I knew I had yet to make my move. Being a coward I had postponed too long and I realized I was further away from commitment than ever. Would hesitancy never end? She shifted her cramped hand, I looked down and for the first time noticed the tight sheet covering a flat belly. It was empty, sunken; she had lost her baby. For a moment I wondered if she knew it, then thought she must know — even now she was almost touching her stomach, and she’d been in the hospital ten days — surely a stupid idea. I resolved to think better. The nurse glided up and said I’d better go; promising to return the next visiting day, I leaned over and kissed Joan’s clear forehead and left. Off to the poolhall, back to the old grind; I seemed to have a mania. From the way I loafed there all day one would scarcely believe I’d never been in a poolhall two short years before; why, less than six months ago I still couldn’t bear to play more than one game at a time. Well, what is one to say about things he has done? I never again went back to the hospital to bless Joan, oh, that’s what I felt like; blessing her. Each day I lacerated myself thinking on her, but I didn’t go back. “Sometimes I sits and thinks. Other times I sits and drinks, but mostly I just sits.” I must have been in a pretty bad way. Anyhow, two more weeks went by in this fashion, my inability to stir from my poolhall prison became a joke, even to me. It was the night before Christmas, about five PM, when a handsome woman near forty came inside the gambling gaol’s gates and asked for me. I went up front to meet her, as I came closer I saw she was better than handsome, a real good-looker and despite her age, making quite a stir among the boys. She introduced herself, said she was a friend of Joan and invited me to dinner. My heart bounced with guilty joy, I accepted and we walked the five blocks to this fine-though-forty lady’s apartment without talking. The fatherly taxidriver opened the door, my hostess said it was her husband and that Joan would be out in a minute. Preparations for a huge dinner were in the making, I sat on the sofa and waited. The bathroom — ugly word — door swung out and before my eyes was once again the gorgeous Joan, “second” of Jennifer Jones. Fresh from the shower, mirror-primped, stepped my heroine respendent in her new friend’s housecoat. Just when you think you’ve learned your lesson and swear to watch your step, a single moment offguard will pop up and hope springs high as ever. One startled look and I knew I was right back where I started; I felt again that choking surge flooding me as when first I’d seen her. I started talking to myself, determined to whip the poolhall rut and drag my stinking ass out of the hole. Over the prosperous supper on which we soon pounced hung an air of excitement. Joan and I were leaping with lovelooks across the roastbeef, while cabby and wife beamed on us. And we planned, yessir, all four of us, and right out loud too. I was kinda embarrassed at first when the host began without preamble, “Alright, you kids have wasted enough time, I see you love each other and you’re going to settle down right now. In the morning Joan is starting at St. Luke’s as a student nurse, she’s told me that’s what she would like to do. As for you, Neal, if you’re serious I’ll get up a little early

tomorrow and before I go to work we’ll see if my boss will give you a job. If you can’t get away with telling them you’re 21 — the law says you gotta be 21, you’re not that old yet are you? (I said no) so that you can drive taxi, you can probably get a job servicing the cabs. That okay with you?” I said certainly it was and thanked him; and everybody laughed and was happy. It was further decided that Joan and I stay with them until we got our first paycheck; we would sleep on the couch that opened out into a bed. Gorged with the big meal, I retired to the bathroom as the women did the dishes and the old man read the paper. (By golly, it seems everything I write about happens in a bathroom, don’t think I’m hungup that way, it’s just the incidents exactly as they occured, and here is another one, because —) A knock on the toilet door and I rose to let in my resurrected beauty. She was as coy as ever, but removed was much fear and embarrassment. We did a bit of smooching, then, seated on the edge of the tub she asked if I wanted to see her scar. I kneeled before her to observe better as she parted the bathrobe to reveal an ugly red wound, livid against her buttermilk belly, stretching nearly from naval to clitoris. She was worried I wouldn’t think her as beautiful, or love her as much now that her body had been marred by the surgeon’s knife performing a Caesarean. There might have been a partial hysterectomy too and she fretted that the production of more babies — “when we get the money” — would prove difficult. I reassured her on all counts, swore my love (and meant it) and finally we returned to the livingroom. Oh, unhappy mind; trickster! O fatal practicality! I was wearing really filthy clothes but had a change promised me by a friend who lived at 12th and Ogden Sts. So as not to hangup my dwarf cabbie savior when we went to see his buddyboss next A.M., my foolish head thought to make a speedrun and get the necessary clean impediments now. Acting on this obvious need — if I was to impress my hoped-for employer into hiring me — I promised to hurry back, and left. Where is wisdom? Joan offered to walk with me, and I turned down the suggestion reasoning it was very cold and I could make better time alone, besides, she was still pretty weak, and if she was to work tomorrow the strain of the fairly long walk might prove too much, — no sense jeopardizing her health. Would that I’d made her walk with me, would that she’d collapsed rather than let me go alone, would anything instead of what happened! Not only did the new promise for happiness go down the drain, and I lost Joan forever, but her peace was to evaporate once and for all, and she herself was to sink into the iniquity reserved for a certain type of beaten women! I rushed my trip to the clothes depot, made good connections and was quickly on my way back to the warm apartment and my Joan. The route from 12th and Ogden to 16th and Lincoln Sts. lies for the most part, if one so desires, along East Colfax Ave. Horrible mistake, stupid moment; I chose that path just to dig people on the crowded thoroughfare as I hustled by them. At midblock between Pennsylvania and Pearl Sts. is a tavern whose plateglass front ill-conceals the patrons of its booths. I was almost past this bar when I glanced up to see my younger blood-brother inside drinking beer alone. I had made good time and the hard habit of lushing that I was then addicted to pushed me through the door to bum a quickie off him. Surprise, surprise, he was loaded with loot and, more surprising, gushed all over me. He ordered as fast as I could drink, and I didn’t let the waitress stop, finishing the glass in a gulp; one draught for the first few, then two for the next several and so on until I was sipping normally by the time an hour had fled. First off he wanted a phone number — the reason for his generosity I suspect — and I was the only one who could give it to him. He claimed to have been sitting there actually brooding over the very girl on the other end of this phone number, and I believed him; had to take it true, because for the last five months it had become increasingly clear that he was hot-as-hell for this chick — who was my girl. I gave him the number and he dashed from one booth to the other. I had cautioned him not to mention my name, nor to tell her I was there, and he said he wouldn’t. But he did, although he denied it later. The reason for his disloyalty, despite the fact it cost me Joan, was justifiable since as one might when about to be denied a date of importance while drinking, he had used my whereabouts as a lastditch lure to tempt her out. He came back to the booth from the phonebooth crestfallen, she had said she couldn’t leave the house just now, but to call her back in a half-hour or so; this didn’t cheer him as it would have me, he’s richer and less easily satisfied. He called her again, about forty five minutes after I had first been pulled into the dive by my powerful thirst, and she said for him to wait at this joint and she’d be down within an hour. This length of time didn’t seem unreasonable, she lived quite a ways further out in East Denver. I thought everything was going perfectly. Bill got the Girl, I got my drinks and still had a short period of grace in which to slop up more before she showed (I certainly didn’t intend to be there when she arrived) and I’d only be a little late returning to Joan where I’d plead hassel in getting the clothes. O sad shock, O unpleasant time; had I just not guzzled that last beer all the following would not be written and I could end this story with “And they lived happily ever after.” Whoa, read slowly for a bit and have patience with my verbosity. There are two things I’ve got to say here, one is a side-point and it’ll come second, the first is essential to the understanding of this story; so, I gotta give you one of my Hollywood flashbacks. I’ll leave out the most of it and be as brief as possible to make it tight, although, by the nature of it, this’ll be hard — especially since I’m tired. Number 1: On June 23, 1945 I was released from New Mexico State Reformatory, after doing eleven months and 10 days (know the song?) of hard labor. Soon after returning to Denver I had the rare luck to meet a 16-year-old East Hi beauty who had well-to-do parents; a mother and pretty older sister to be exact. Cherry Mary (Mary Ann Fairland) was her name because she lived on Cherry Street and was a cherry when I met her. That condition didn’t last long. I ripped into her like a maniac and she loved it. A tremendous affair, countless things to be said about it — I can hardly help from blurting out twenty or thirty statements right now despite resolution to condense. I’m firm (ha) and won’t tell the story of our

five months’ intercourse — with its many incidents that are percolating this moment in my brain; about carnival-night we met (Elitch’s), the hundreds of mountain trips in her new Mercury, rented trucks with the mattress in back, at her cabin, cabins I broke into, day I got her to bang Hal Chase, time I gave her clap after momentous meeting between her and mother of my second child (only boy before Diana’s), time I knocked her up; and knocked it, mad nights and early A.M.’s at Goodyear factory I worked alone in from 4 P.M. to anytime I wanted to go home, doing it on golf-courses, roofs, parks, cemeteries (you know, dead peoples’ homes), snowbanks, schools and schoolyards, hotel bathrooms, her mother’s vacant houses (she was a realtor), doing it everyway we could think of any-old-place we happened to be, in fact, we did it in so many places that Denver was covered with our pecker-tracks; so many different ones that I can’t possibly remember, often we’d treck clear from one side of town to another just to find a spot to drop to it, on ordinary occasions, I’d just pull it out and shove — to her bottom if we were secluded, to her mouth if not, the greatest most humorous incident of the lot: to please her mother she’d often babysit for some of their socially prominent and wealthy friends several times a week, I drove out to that particular evening’s assignment, after she called to give the address and say the coast was clear, (funny English joke; man and wife in livingroom, phone rings, man answers and says he wouldn’t know, better call the coast guard, and hangs up, wife says, “Who was it, dear?” and man says, “I don’t know, some damn fool who wanted to know if the coast was clear,” har-har-har) and we quickly tear-off several goodies, then, I go back to work; in Goodyear truck, don’t you know. We’d done this numerous times when the “most humorous” evening came up. It was a Sunday night, so no work, I waited outside 16th and High Street apartment till parents left and then went in and fell to it. I had all my clothes off and in livingroom as she was washing my cock in bathroom, (let this be a lesson to you, men, never become separated from your clothes, at least keep your trousers handy, when doing this sort of thing in a strange house — oops, my goodness, I forgot for a second that some of you are out of circulation and certainly not in any need of “Lord Chesterfield’s” counseling — don’t show this to your wives, or tell them that I only offer this advice to pass on to your sons, or, if that’s too harsh, to your dilettante friends, whew!, got out of that) there’s a rattling of the apartment door and into the front room walks the mother of one of the parents of the baby Cherry Mary is watching, so fast did this old bat come in that we barely had time to shut the bathroom door before she saw us. Here I was, nude, no clothes, and all exits blocked. I couldn’t stay there for what if the old gal wanted to pee, and most old women’s bladders and kidneys are not the best in the world. There was no place in the bathroom to hide, nor could I sneak out due to the layout of the apartment. Worse, Mary suddenly remembered the fact that this intruder was expected to stay the night. We consulted in whispers, laughing and giggling despite all, and it was decided Mary would leave the bathroom and keep the old lady busy while suggesting a walk or coffee down the street and still try to collect my clothes and get them to me; no mean feat. My task was to, as quietly as a mouse, remove all the years-long collection of rich peoples’ bath knicknacks that blocked the room’s only window, then, impossible though it looked, I must climb up the tub to it and with a fingernail file pry loose the outside screen. Now, look at this window, it had four panes of glass 6” long and 4” wide, it formed a rectangle of about 12 or 13” high and 8 or 9” across, difficult to squeeze through at best, but, being modern as hell, the way it was hooked to its frame was by a single metal bar in direct center! which when opened split the panes of glass down the middle and made two windows. I could hardly reach outside to work on the screen — since the window opened outward — but I pushed and making a hellova noise, split the screen enough to open the window. Now the impossible compressing of my frame for the squeeze. I thought if I could get my head through I could make it; I was just able to, by bending the tough metal bar the slightest cunthair (in those days I cleaned and jerked 220 lbs.) and of course, I almost tore off my pride-and-joy as I wiggled out into the cold November air. I was damn glad I was only on the second floor, if I’d been higher I would have been hungup in space for sure. So I dropped into the bushes bordering the walk along the side of the building, and hid there shivering and gloating with glee. There was a film of snow on the ground, but this didn’t bother anything except my feet until some man parked his car in the alley garage and came walking past my hideaway, then, much of my naked body got wet as I pressed against the icy ground so he wouldn’t see me. This made me seek better shelter since it was about 9 P.M. — I’d been in the cold an hour — and a whole string of rich bastards with cars might start putting them away. I waited until no one was in sight then dashed down the walk to the alley and leaped up and grabbed the handy drainpipe of a garage and pulled myself up. The window I’d broken out of overlooked my new refuge and if anyone went in that bathroom they’d see the havoc wrought the place and be looking out to see me. This fear had just formed — I was too cold to be jolly now — when I saw Mary at last come into view. She had my pants, shoes and coat, but not my T-shirt and socks, having skipped these small items as she bustled about in front of the cause of my predicament “straightening up.” The woman had only noticed my belt and Mary had said she had a leather class at school and was engraving it. When I’d bashed out the window Mary had heard the crashing about, (the old lady must have been deaf; while I was escaping kept talking about Thanksgiving turkey!)*** and had come in the bathroom to clean up, close the window and otherwise coverup. I put on my clothes and chattering uncontrollably from my freezeout walked with Mary to the Oasis Cafe for some hot coffee. And so it goes, tale after tale revolving around this Cherry Mary period; here’s just a couple more: At first the mother of this frantic fucking filly confided in me and, to get me on her side, asked me to take care of Mary, watch her and so forth. After awhile, as Mary got wilder, the old bitch decided to give me a dressing down, (I can’t remember the exact little thing that led up to this, offhand anyhow) and

since she wasn’t the type to do it herself — and to impress me, I guess — she got the pastor of the parish to give me a lecture. Now, her home was in one of the elite parishes and so she got the monseigneur — it was a Catholic church — to come over for dinner the same evening she invited me. I arrived a little before him and could at once smell something was cooking. The slut just couldn’t hold back her little scheme, told Mary to listen closely and began preaching a little of her own gospel to warm me up for the main event. The doorbell rang and her eyes sparkled with anticipation as she sallied forth from the kitchen to answer it. The priest was a middlesized middleaged pink featured man with extremely thick glasses covering such poor eyes he couldn’t see me until our noses almost touched. Coming toward me across the palatial livingroom he had his handshake extended and was in the midst of a normal greeting, the mother escorting him by the elbow all the while and gushing introduction. Then it happened, he saw me; what an expression! I’ve never seen a chin drop so far so fast, it literally banged his breastbone. “Neal!! Neal!, my boy!, at last I’ve found my boy!,” his voice broke as he said the last word and his Adam’s apple refused to articulate further because all it gave out was a strangled blubber. Choking with emotion, he violently clasped me to him and flung his eyes to heaven fervently thanking his God. Tremendous tears rolled down his cheeks, poured over his upthrust jaw, and disappeared inside his tight clerical collar. I had trouble deciding whether to leave my arms hanging limp or throw them around him and try to return the depth of his goodness by turning to it. Golly and whooooeee!, what a sight! The priest’s emotion had been one of incredulous joyous recognition, Mary’s mother’s emotion was a gem of frustrated surprise; startled wonder at such an unimaginable happening left her gaping at us with the most foolish looking face I’ve ever seen. She didn’t know whether to faint or flee, never had she been so taken aback, and, I’m sure, didn’t think she ever would be, it was really a perfect farce. Mary and her sister — who was there to lend dignity to her mother’s idea — were as slackjawed as any of us. Depend on sweet Mary to recover first, she did, with a giggle; which her sister took as a cue to frown upon, thereby regaining her senses. The mother’s composure came with a gasp of artificial goo, “Well! what a pleasant surprise!!” she gurgled with strained smile, feeling lucky that she’d snuck out from under so easily. Oho!, but wait, aha!, she’d made a mistake! Her tension was so unbearable — and she had succeeded so well with her first words — that she decided to speak again, “Let’s all go into supper, shall we?” she said in a high-pitched nervous urge. The false earnestness of her tone struck us all as a most incongruous concern and she’d given herself away by being too quick — since her guest was still holding me tightly. The ecstatic priest was Harlan Fischer, my Godfather when I was baptized at age 10 in 1936. He had also taught me Latin for some months and saw me occasionally during the following three years I served at Holy Ghost Church as altar boy. At our last meeting I was engrossed in the lives of the Saints and determined to become a priest or Christian brother, then, I abruptly disappear down the pleasanter path of evil. Now, six and a half years later, he met me again in Mary’s house as a youth he’d come to lecture. Well, he didn’t get around to the lecture, it never seemed to enter his head because it was too full of blissful joy at finding his lost son. He told me how he’d never had another Godson — it just so happened that way — and how he’d prayed night and day for my soul and to see me again. He could hardly contain himself at the dinner-table, fidgeted and twittered and didn’t touch his food. He dragged the whole story of the long wait for this moment out into the open and before the sullen-hearted (she gave me piercing glances of pure hate when Father Fischer wasn’t looking) mother actually waxed moistly eloquent. When the meal was over the dirty old bitch knew her sweet little scheme had backfired completely for Fischer at once excused himself, saying he was sure everyone understood, because he wanted to talk to me alone, and we left. We drove to his church and then sat in his car for two hours before I got out and walked away, never to see him to this very day, now five years since. He started in with the old stuff, and I, knowing there could be no agreement and not wanting to use him unfairly, came down right away and for once I didn’t hesitate as I told him not to bother; I was sorry for it, but we were worlds apart and it would now do no good for him to try and come closer. Oh we did a lot of talking, it wasn’t quite that short and simple, but as I say, I finally left him when he realized there was nothing more to be said, and that was that. The other incident I wanted to tell you about can wait, I must cut this to the bone from here on out because I haven’t the money for paper. Anyhow, the reason for this little glimpse into the months just prior to meeting Joan was to show there was some cause for what happened to me in the bar with my younger blood brother. Mind you, I hadn’t seen Mary’s mother for at least a month before this night in the bar, although I’d seen Mary about two weeks earlier. Ah, what’s another few lines, I gotta break in here and tell you that other funny little thing about C. Mary. It is this; she was such a hypochondriac that she often played at Blindness. Now wait a minute, this was unusual, because she never complained of illness or anything else, in fact, she didn’t complain about her eyes either, just the opposite, she played at having a true martyr complex toward them. Often we’d spend 12-16 hours in a hotel room while she was “blind.” I’d wait on her hand and foot (and cock) during these times. They’d begin casually enough, she’d simply announce that she couldn’t see and that would go on until she’d just as quietly say she could see again. This happened while she was driving — I’d grab the wheel — while we were walking — I’d lead her — while we were loving — I’d finish anyhow — in fact, this happened any old place she felt like it happening. It was a great little game, she didn’t have to worry, if she smacked up the car, or anything, the old lady would come to the rescue with lots of dough, wouldn’t she? Oh enough! Continuing then, from about 1,500 words ago, as to why Joan and I didn’t live Happily Ever After; Very simple, we were given no chance.

You see, as I drank the last Blood-Brother beer — I remember deciding in all seriousness that it was definitely the last one — 2 plainclothesmen approached, asked if I was Neal C. and promptly hauled me away! It seems Cherry Mary’s Mother, listening on the phone extension to my friend give my whereabouts, had called the police — and she was politically powerful! Why, why, after release on statutory rape with testifying flatly refused by panicky Mary and not a shred of evidence otherwise — flatly panicky, I continued to be held in jail charged with suspicion of Burglary! Of my poolhall hangout yet. Because the charge had a superficial plausibility, since I racked balls there a couple of times and knew the layout — I knew a lot of fearful moments before Capt. of Dicks admitted he knew I was clear all along, released me finally weeks later. Joan had disappeared completely!

I walked into the poolhall … I walked into the poolhall and found Jim waiting, just as we had arranged, but without his suitcase. I was highly concerned about the time and said, “Say, boy, we gotta be there at two, where’s your gear?” “I got us a ride, don’t worry, we’ll make it O.K.” he answered without taking his eye off the cueball being placed down carefully for a spot shot. His father would take us to the Inglewood share-the-ride office in his 37 Lincoln. “You get the money alright?” I asked as casually as possible. “Yep” he returned as calmly. Well, we’re all set, I thought to myself as I sat down to wait and watched Jim’s poor shooting. He shouldn’t be losing like that, the guy’s too good for him. Other worrisome ideas bubbled in my head. I hope the old gal doesn’t ask for a driver’s license. Wonder if her car’s a new one. It is too bad we’re going so damn far south to where she’s stopping, we’ll have a good 500 miles to hitchike to get to L.A. I seem to always fret to myself like this, especially lately, here on this good-for-nothing bench. Oh well. Suddenly I hear Penoff’s old man honking a horn out in front. Jim hung up his cue and paid for the game. We hustled into the car and drove quickly to our Clarkson St. address. I lived with Jim in the front room of his parents’ small apartment, and picked up his clothes. Then we went out Broadway to extreme south Denver. The cordial funny looking owner of the travel agency said our woman driver had already been there and would be back in a few minutes. We waited next door in a drugstore fountain lunch and sipped coffee while I played the only Coleman Hawkins number on the juke box. “Body and Soul”. A middle-aged woman, obviously unsexed, even to herself, I thought, drove up in a 1938 Buick sedan. Jim and I looked at each other with eyes that mirrored mixed triumph and relief. We walked up to her car and introduced ourselves. I told Jim to pay her the fee of 25 dollars we had agreed to pay for taking us to southern Arizona. I knew if he didn’t pay up right now his furtive mind would start thinking of beating her out of the money. Thanking the agency man thru whom we’d gotten the ride, we put Jim’s suitcase, with the few clothes I possessed, in the trunk and got into the rear seat of the big Buick. We were on our way to my fast living LA at last. * * * Say, I haven’t told you about Clara Johnson, have I? With surprise I realize I haven’t told anyone about her simply because the memory of this sweet dish has for years, almost 10 in fact, laid dormant and unthought upon in my mind. She was really a lovely with her golden blonde hair, pale unblemished skin that covered with startling whiteness the tall body whose thinness properly accentuated the rounded curves so firmly in place, clear grey eyes emitting a calm curiosity for the most part, i.e., her usual look was a steady gaze of unexcited wonder at whatever she was seeing, and best of all her tiny organ, the tender lips of which had never been parted save perhaps by her own adolescent finger of exploration. She had more years than I, 20 to 16, really more tho because I recall the last time I saw her was the anniversary of her coming of legal age. Actually she was not too tall, only about 5’ 7”, but her walk was the tall girl’s graceful slouching stride and the recollection of this provocative amble makes me remember her as taller than she was and so classify her as a “tall” girl. She was very Swedish, more so than even her light coloring and typical name would indicate, for she had not been in this country long, not more than a year I should say. Because of her tremendous brogue she wanted to practice speaking English at every opportunity; this, and the fact of her innocence, was undoubtedly why I succeeded so well … To start at the beginning is always a difficult task for me since when it comes to doing it I find that by thinking back just a little more, so as to begin just a little earlier in my story, I can bring things into a better balance and by rounding out all that went on give a truer focus to the characters. But this desire must be resisted in an “episode” letter since the purpose of such a letter is defeated by being too long. Because one thing recalls another I get into trouble by starting back too far and in giving full treatment to everything have soon lost my subject by not having the time, and so never catching up to it. I would not have this happen here and so curtail what in a novel would be a necessary preamble. And so to give semblance to my beginning while retaining a minimum of involvement I desist from launching into even a bare description of the season or two that preceded Clara Johnson. Suffice then to say that it was the hot summer of 1942 in sunny southern California and as the manager of one of “System’s” downtown parking lots my youth was at the height of its sophisticated glory and so paid little serious heed to the few ominous baubles it had made. Altho this period was that just before a succeeding series of stumbles that was to raze and make unrepeatable forver the cocksure actions now committed daily, I was clinging somewhat to the erstwhile buddies of the Denver of a much earlier time. Chief among which, in fact about the only one of us still in LA, was Warren Hall. He was a clown, a real dum at least that’s how he began to appear to all of us from the moment he arrived on the Denver scene I knew, but that was in 1939 and later in 1940, now he had changed. From his 28th and Curtis Street home of drunken mother and screaming stream of 4, 5, 6, 7, and maybe more brothers and ununderweared sisters, he had finally fled by following the footsteps of an older sister, Margie. She

had gone to LA in 1937 and married a Greek Dairyman and in early 1940 Warren got enough nerve together to dare to hitchike to their home in Venice, Calif. I took advantage of our slight acquaintanceship and proceeded to follow him for the sake of a few free meals, to try and fuck his sister, get a job from her husband who was supposed big wheel in plant, and to see Calif. After a horrible trip, which was really the absolute worst I ever made — and that’s pretty bad, I made a 22 mile foot-hike to 139391/22Washington Blvd. and took up residence with John the greek, Margie the whore, her 2 yr baby, and Warren the stoop. (Locomotive Hall I called him, because he ran so slowly and began just as does a 2-10-2, i.e., SP engines with numbers 3173 thru 4499. Principally used in Central valley around Bakersfield, Stockton, San Juaquin and LA divisions are the 3200 and 3300 series, on the Coast Division, tho with increasing rarity, are the 36 and 37 hundred series, and the best of the lot, of the 210-2’s I mean, the 4300’s are used mostly on our trains. The 4300-’s can be used both in freight or passenger service and are very good engines for speed and tonnage rating, their souped-up daddies are the mammoth 80” divers and streamlined built 4401 to 4499 series pull our world famed Daylight and starlite and the movie stars’ delight, the Lark.) And I worked at the dairy and washed 5,000 bottles a night and had a good time. Eventually I left Warren and moved in with a guy who was a rival for me with Denver cunt, Mary Hosie. But I’m not going to tell you about any of that, or of the incidents that led up to J.W.B., or of my subsequent return to L.A. And skipping Tony Reznick, Betty Moore, Mexican whores and their waitress counterparts on First St. and all the joyous evenings preceding my early incarcerations in L.A. jails, I finally approach sweet virgin Clara. The occasion itself was a rarity; I had a day off, and that only because I had become stinko and when I awoke in the A.M. managed to persuade parking partner that he could handle lot alone, since he’d already put away the morning cars and had the lot pretty well set up, until I came in for evening rush. At that time I was not one to waste a few free hours and if there wan’t something to do I would manufacture it if possible. This was one of those days and so as not to make a false start I decided to go thru my bi-weekly workout before involving myself for the rest of the day. So into my snazzy basketball outfit, on with my gone dressing gown, down from the 10th floor in the squeaky elevator, thru the bustle of the crowded lobby and circling its fringe with a confident strut I pass busy phone booth sailors and make for the basement gym. I skirt the cluster of middleaged fags in the locker room and making a flight of stone steps three to a bound, I come into the cold air of the mammoth workout area. Off with the robe, then 20 minutes of rushing up and down the court, practicing shots with either hand, running and while stationed at the most unlikely spots. Into the weight room and an immediate clean and jerk of 200 lbs., without warmup, a 155 lb. military press, a 190 lb. jerk, a 110 lb. one arm jerk, a 90 lb. one arm press and to avoid the complete exhaustion of 40 chin ups, or 50 pushups, a quick, but competent one arm chin with both hands, satisfactory enough with the right hand and a cunt hair short with the smaller left. A shower, a careful hair comb and back to my room inside the hour alloted when I left it. I dress for work altho I’ve at least 7 hours before I’m to show, this to eliminate a return to my YMCA home and also because I look well in the uniform of bus-driver trousers and close fitting brown System shirt. A two block walk to my restaurant, I say “my” even tho as yet it was not and I was not to possess any of its waitresses until later in the year. Right at the moment my restaurant was a dozen blocks away near Olivera St. and was mine only because I’d won a healthy wager from Tony by making all seven of its Mexican girls, without payment of fee, as the conditions of the bet stipulated. This was achieved by the lure of our house at the beach, a ritzy joint that was Tony’s and mine from midnite to 8 A.M. because its three niggar-rich occupants were his buddies and all worked at Douglas Aircraft during those hours. I ate my Grapenuts and Ham and eggs and made for the Drive-ur-self place near Figuroa and Fifth. Down with the $25 and out with the 1941 Mercury convert. Where to go? It was not yet 11 and I had friends available at such an hour only in Denver or my imagination. Then I thought of driving to Santa Monica and looking up Warren Hall. I had his address from his almost as stupid father whom I’d met before leaving Denver and who worked in a downtown L.A. steel spring mill. So out a main drag to a magnificent home near the foothills and up to the door with the surprised thought that Warren could ever have it so good. And a dark haired lovely answered and said Warren wasn’t up yet, but would I come in and wait? Out of a gorgeous bed of satin I roused my ludicrous pal-of-old and watched him dress in beautiful clothes and eat in the breakfast-nook the meal served by the brunette twist. At once I could see the soft life had changed him, he seemed indolent and very cocky whereas before, to me especially, he had always been quite anxious to please. But being independent of him now I was unperturbed and more carefree than he himself, despite a surface air of bored unconcern, I looked at him all day with analytical eyes and saw with objective wonderment his newly acquired demeanor of presumptuous Hollywoodian superiority which in its awkward display made for an unconvincing takeoff on Blaséness that was so preposterous when my mind compared it with the Denver Warren that I doubted I was seeing aright even while I chortled at his increasingly transparent actions. But to Warren it was all very important, taking himself so seriously everything went over his head and entirely blinded to the incredible caricature his figure cut in my eyes, he moved about making debonair gestures and assumed himself a dilettante dealing, albeit it restrained his haughty grandeur, with democratic feeling and tolerance with us poor inferiors. The girl meekly reacted as tho this was so and besides her he must have properly palmed off this BS on her mother because as we drove away he say he was in like Flynn and had them eating from his pampered palm. He had always been a pathological liar, so I paid all his tales of “making out” an adequate lip-service while we toured the places he mentioned might have girls … We didn’t find any girls, even tho he was the kind of a guy who would say, “Stop here, I know a girl with a sister who lives in that house,” Then he’d hop out of the car and go to the door and aks whoever

answered if they would like to buy a bible, or which way is this or that, or does so and so live here. After three or four hours of this, and stopping for a beer or two, the clock’s hour hand going steadily downward made a necessary halt to his shinnanigans. Warren’s sister had left the greek and, besides selling what she used to give away, was now working in a downtown Woolworth store. He decided to ride in with me and see her when she got off at five. With the top down to expose us to the hot sun, his pimply skin especially needed it; with the warm breezes blowing our hair, his especially went array, and with Basie’s “One O’clock Jump” blasting from the loudspeaker, we rolled L.A. ward still watching for girls. Then a biff from an idea that bowled him over. It was the first time he’d been excited all day, so I felt the return of a slight degree of hope. “What time is it, where are we, turn left, now right, here we are, slow down, cruise.” We were approaching an aircraft factory just changing afternoon shift. Hundreds of men and women were coming toward us, most of them detoured to the parking lots on right and left, others hopped in cars that drove by for them, but some of them, and a good percentage were lovelies in slacks and sweaters, stood on the corners where lined up buses were loading. We eased along, pausing at every likely looking prospect. Several times we almost made a pickup, alone I surely would have succeeded, but as each of the girls began to step toward our car they’d take one look at Warren’s massive nose with its bourbon tan and heard his snide wheezing voice call them “babe” and urge a little speed; quickly their stride would hesitate, come to a full stop, then switching their lunchpail into the other hand they about faced to continue their original direction. After a few of these failures I told him to cover his face with a handkerchief, as tho blowing his nose, and to let me do the talking. Right away things picked up; within a minute I had met my Clara. It happened this way: I saw a very light blonde with pale skin coming toward us, so I made a quick Uturn and pulled up to the curb along side her. I asked her to direct me to the nearest Postoffice, this always gets them and it got her, but not in the usual way, i.e., with her ignorance of America she didn’t know what a postoffice was, not until I’d carefully explained it …

Leaving L.A. by Train at Night, High … Dark streets, hundreds of silent autos parked almost too close to the rail, mammoth buildings, many still lit, now looming in blacker outline, isolated houses, houses of dirt, of noise, cheery ones, then dark, dark ones; one wonders, the occupation of its owners. Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, EVERYONE, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets; it is the dark between that attracts one — what’s happening there at this moment? What hidden thing, glorious perhaps, is being passed and lost forever. The congestion slackens, a cone of widening sparcity stretches before the train, now one has left the center and its core is burst past as the interlocking plants terminate grip and entrust us to the automatic block system’s meticulous care. The maze of tracks have unwreathed from cross-over webs of railroad intellectuality to become simple main line dignity; these ribbons of accurate gauge so ceaselessly toiled over, respected, feared. Oh, unending high rail of intrigue!

Adventures in Auto-eroticism I stole my first automobile at 14 in 1940; by ‘47 when swearing off such soul-thrilling pleasures to celebrate advent into manhood, I had had illegally in my possession about 500 cars — whether just for the moment and to be taken back to its owner before he returned (I.E. on Parking lots) or whether taken for the purpose of so altering its appearance as to keep it for several weeks but mostly only for joyriding. The virgin emotion one builds when first stealing an auto — especially when one can hardly make it function properly, so takes full minutes to get away — is naturally strenuous on the nervous system, and I found it most exciting. I was initiated into this particularly exhilerating pastime (tho undeniably utterly stupid) by a chance meeting with the local bad-boy, whom I had known at school. We came upon a ‘38 Olds sedan which was parked before the well-light entrance of an apartment house. It so happens this model Olds is a bastardized type — Olds being GM’s “experimental” car — and since the ignition, lights, radio etc. are unconventionally set off the dashboard by bull horn-like dials; and because this unfamiliarity heightened his panicky condition, John’s efforts to start the car seemed really ludicrous from my tree-trunk vantage point. He turned on the radio, the lights, everything but the key I guess, anyhow, when he finally became so flustered as to honk the horn, he bolted away, failing to even close the door. So it was with a genuine fear, so well-based as to make me think I was pretty brave indeed, that we sneaked back for another try. John, altho belittling his own fright, kept assuring me how easy it was, and this (besides the many minutes of quietude that passed after we had resumed our observation point behind a big tree) finally bolstered my courage enough to run over and drive away in the car. We left it on the premises of an army post south of town, after stalling the motor on a U turn and even though two soldiers helped hand push us and the engine did sputter a bit we finally had exhausted the battery and had to hitch hike home, arriving so near dawn as to create complications there which, emotional tho they had been, now proved nothing beside my night-long thrill — from which I literally tingled for days until, in fact after serving mass as usual one morning, I left the rectory to find before it a current model Mercury with keys dangling! Naturally, having never driven so powerful an automobile, I burned rubber most of the block, before even realizing how to overcome it. And tho still quite inexperienced a driver I know it took so long to halt the tires’ squeel only because each additional release of the accelerator, whether fractional or full-inch, was still not enough to ease the power — hell, come to think of it, I might have even been in high gear! Anyhow, the erotic nature of the Mercury experience happily included exploring the anatomy of the school girl picked up in it, and therefore has no further, sharper, stronger, more meaningful remembrance than the one of its get-away moments, which included wading thru a three-phase traffic signal in the first block ….

Neal Talking Telling Story Fall ‘63 Following Fall 1963 story was taken down handwrit at kitchen table 1403 Gough Street San Francisco by Allen Ginsberg while Neal Cassady was cleaning a shoebox full of grass and describing the caracters of archtypal auto race heroes he’d imagined as for a story in True Magazine — I think the two Neals imagined would have met in a race had the story been completed. — Allen Ginsberg Now, let’s get this down in black & white. I still wanta do the race driver. Wouldn’t he be symbolic of this century & the other? It’s such a great story it deserves 2 pages. I once wrote a story about a guy in Indianapolis — the whole thing is what he had time to flashback — He had a lot of time to realize by flashback. Most accidents happen so quickly that a guy hasn’t got time to say this is it. He also set the record in his death. Well we’d had this mythological super race driver who was not only a national hero like Moss, but in England of course — you see he represented the Amaarican Frustration, he had an unhappy love affair with Marilyn Monroe or someone. In one-man duels in matching cars he’d bested the best in the world. Two man duels I guess it would be. Y’could hardly have a one-man duel — Essentially I want him balanced … a balanced character I don’t want him a freakish one … you can have him be a father — The point is he had not only peripheral vision — extremely wide vision — but also this faculty for thinking — perceiving actually — twice as fast as anybody else — He could see motion pix that were going 1/50th of a second & he could see them as stills — On top of that, what made him a world-beater was his fanaticism … he was a true fanatic — Under no circumstances would he allow anyone to pass him … he’d broadside in front of them, almost — Often the races could hardly be started because he couldn’t bear to let the other pole setter draw abreast of him to start even — it was just insufferable. (What I want to give here are some examples of his ability to justify this … impossible.) Like he’d wear elbow pads in the races around houses, in town, racing around buildings — so he could pivot, so he could stick out his elbow at crucial spots so he could ricochet around walls — Monte Carlo & all. In fact that was his racing style — arms akimbo — head forward — body crouched — teeth grimaced in fact everything opposite of good style, of great driving style — See, the real way to drive is back & arms as straight as you possibly can get them — comfortable straight see, comfortably, almost reclining — that way yr body’s relaxed & you can see — The point is he’s so anxious that he can’t even stand to sit back & drive, he’d sit on the hood if it would have helped, if it would have gotten him there any faster. Well see I could ah — no no — dammit — He had no concern for the machine — ah — even when he knew it was about to blow up, break down — he simply couldn’t ease off, & despite this he won many races with sick cars that somehow held together see, a correct driver would have eased off & tried to finish, but there’s nothing within him capable of rational race driving behavior. See there are stages in driving — first year or two a guy’s got to prove himself & be a tiger, get in over his head so many times that if he’s not dead, learns what he can & can’t do — there’s no other way. The second stage has to do with — ah — ah — I don’t wanta use “old pro” or “experience,” has to do with where on this scale of oh — I don’t have to name it — where on this scale he’s content to settle — Particular curves, circuits, cars even … give him, give raise to fears that he’s accumulated — imperceptibly he’ll slacken at this or that point — Then he’ll try to make up for it other ways. As for a third stage — for the few who reach it — of real old pro experience, know-how, where the fears have been controlled — mitigated as to be imperceptible … practically imperceptible … ah — where actually it’s almost the same as the Novice — not knowing — free of the form really — yet thru the experience you see brightened up, perfected — As for this stage you may as well forget about it, there are so few to begin with — This kid disproved all that from the beginning. He drove so continually over his head that even on the straightaway his car never seemed controlled — not just the mechanics blanching — white faced as they passed the signals, the crowd literally shuddering — The officials ever ready with the red & black flags — (You black flag a guy if you see he’s too dangerous, or mechanically unsafe — The red flag is Stop) — But the car owner … well you know nerves tortured, often vomiting — vowing never to watch again — None had any effect on our Hero — Uncontrollable as he was — When behind the wheel of course. What shall we do outside? I want to have a poignancy, a sadness — with a diametrical thing in the sex world — sort of like Judge Roy Bean & Lilly Langtry from afar, Eulogized Lionized — They even changed the front cover of Wheaties — Stuck on something that he can’t take, like a lesbian — hooked on something — continual torment — so that his only release was winning — take it out on tearing up these machines — tearing up racing. In the beginning, the car-owners felt he should practice like everyone else. But it soon became apparent that once begun they could hardly stop him from the trial spins — risk their lives in fact trying to wave him down — & he would, if not stopped quickly, usually end up in the wall, infield, spectator bleachers, anywhere but the pits — (I wanted to say pits) — but he could spin in the pits, he often spun

there as well — dash — all this purely & simply because he would just go faster & faster — couldn’t help himself, I think that’s pretty clear by now we oughta get into something. Flashbacking type — Chronologically, we’d just have a lotta dry races, or we cd even talk about, again, & emphasize, that he was never an in-&-outer, never had an off day, never had anything but the extreme of speed. Indeed he never drove without a broken torn ripped (Rip Torn) bone muscle tendon hip head shoulder rib foot hand — He himself was hurt like this on account of his having no sense of relativity. He was indestructible. You see all this time I’m telling this I’m wanting to — get the Le Mans Story on the road. Well the Le Mans character is different. About opposite in fact — a mediocre driver overshadowed by better, by 3 better racing driving brothers, even his own father had been captain of the Alfa Romeo team back in the 20’s — A position he certainly never even approached — to be Captain Of The Team you see. Yet like those persevering dull students who become college professors, he uh — singlemindedly overcame his inaptness — his initial ineptness — became almost good. Run of the mill. One of the pack. His initiation was in the garage practice circuit, country byways, & other scenes that his family used to increase their racing ability. His older brother was killed, as I remember, his father retired & I believe the other brothers eventually did too. But he persisted so that by now nearly middle aged & more or less suddenly without any outlet in the racing scene he found himself both frustrated and at a turning point. But he by himself continued to build his own race car, put in all his own practice & all in all was a one man team ….

Joe Hanns Under the flood of Montgomery Street ticker-tape tickling his upturned face and extended arms, feeling slight irritation from the occasional pressure of Mayor Rogers’ hand affectionately at his back, glimpsing with half-bored disbelief an envious, worshipping youth or sly maid’s seductive eye on him, Joe Hanns uneasily wondered for the first time when the United States public would finally tire of spontaneously giving him imprompty motorcades, testimonials, gifts, and other unabashed adulations everytime he ever arrived, left, or passed through another city; After all, he’d been officially retired for a couple of years now, excepting Indy, of course. But right now, reflecting he was still “Champ Hanns”, so obviously far and away America’s number one idol, hero, perfected one, he forced himself to quite abruptly check this momentary disquietude, so new to him, so alien to his nature, and turn with rather more affability to the prodding attention of his companion in the open limosine, Mayor Rogers, himself an old-time racer of sorts, before more recent San Francisco politics. And that evening, unconsciously basking in the familiar glare spotlighting him in the banquet hall, Joe Hanns succeeded even better in abating the vague new nervousness felt so suddenly under that afternoon’s crowds’ welcoming roar by simply attributing it to an absurd, quite ungrounded fear of his ebbing popularity — or was it? Perhaps he had lost his edge, — his luck — might really know fatal fear for the first time; but no, he mused, even now he was being reassured by each speaker scattered along the outsized table praising of the fabulous Hanns career; Who else had never lost a major race, with the few minor ones all due to mechanical trouble; this alone testified to his famous luck — NEVER a car breakdown when it seriously mattered; and even luckier for lack of accidents; “Old Untouchable”, “Sixth Sense”, “The Charmed One”, they called him for avoiding pileups that without his uncanny skill proved, disasterously or not, often unavoidable to others in the same race — like the first and most famous time, years back, when in his only Miglia Mille on an elongated S-curve patched with oil, gas, metal, etc., from the half dozen machines already crashed there, Hanns had miraculously slid around, in-between, or over everything at top speed while performing seventeen distinct driving changes, perhaps half that many separate changes of major line and half again as many down-shifts to end in a prolonged power slide so hot as to leave FOUR complete ribbons of rubber from one extreme of road to the other — an incredible exhibition of determined concentration and perfected finesse that it is still regarded in awe as the classic, even super-human racing scene by any enthralled newsreel audience viewing in slow motion this minuet of masterpiece some fortunate photographer had filmed. And who else held absolute lap records on every important track — sometimes minutes better than others? Who else an Indianapolis victory first time out? Indeed, who else since, for Joe had won all subsequent ones as well; in fact, as even he admitted, that was Joe’s one weak spot — the pride in a decade of consecutive Indy victories — and the only reason for his yearly one-day return from retirement. Who else a name so known as to be in all current colloquial dictionaries: anything perfect was performed “Hanns down”. Who else still sole symbol of such absoluteness because, after meeting every test devised for a driver, was, as yet unbeaten by any man, “and ever will be (speaker pauses expectantly for desired applause), just as he ever will be, (speaker pauses unexpectedly for undesired applause) un-met by fluke-death.” Who else such peripheral vision, and faculty for instantly acting on thought?, with perception proved nearly twice as fast as was anybody’s, by scientific tests undertaken (because of the fantastically fast intuitive “feel” shown in the Miglia Mille incident) that revealed Joe Hanns could see as stills, motion pictures going 1/50th of a second. At last rose Mayor Rogers, who began with eyes seemingly moist and in a voice at first clearly husky with emotion, “Gentlemen, while I plead your indulgence, please remember that I’m the principal speaker here, not by right as mayor or as ex-race driver, but by deep personal interest, and too, I’m forced to admit, as the one with the longest speech, (heh heh). Well, I’ve heard a lot about Joe Hanns said here tonight, and it seems most of his fearless accomplishments have been covered; so it looks like I’m stuck with about the only big point left — yet the one that above all makes Joe Hanns the world beater he is — his fanaticism. Yessir, (of course I’m just talking about the Joe Hanns I knew before he retired, lately more mundane matters have held my full attention; harrumph), yessir, I say he was a true fanatic since under no circumstances would he allow anyone to pass him — broadsiding in front of them, under or oversteering deliberately, almost anything but out & out ramming. Why, often the races would hardly get started because he couldn’t bear to let the other pace-setter draw abreast — as though it were an insufferable insult to him. What I need here is to give some more examples of his unique ability to justify all this prima donna-itis — but that’s been pretty well done already, and the evening’s not getting any younger, (ha, ha), still, I must mention one that does come to mind, Ala Nuvolari. Joe Hanns wore elbow pads in races through towns, courses and other narrow circuits, perhaps stick out elbows at crucial spots to advantageously pivot, ricochet off walls, buildings, trees, cars, or whatever. But whether or not he ever vaulted much with them, I know Joe was smart to wear elbow pads for that was the key to his driving style; having arms akimbo. Oh, there were other features, unorthodox, not to say ludicrous; head way forward, body crouched as if seeking the womb — teeth grimaced and lips fiercely snarled, hands all over the wheel and I don’t know what all about the feet, but everything I could see was just opposite of good style, let alone great driving style. You see, gentlemen, the real way to drive professionally is back, arms comfortably straight, spine, far from bending over, tilts slightly back — that way the body is relaxed and, besides seeing better, you can use

all your energy for driving instead of wasting it in holding unnatural positions — but Joe was so anxious he couldn’t even stand to sit straight and knowing him I bet he would’ve stood up if he thought it would have helped him go faster. “And not only was Joe’s style nutty — of course he knew how he should sit — but so was his attitude toward the cars for he had no concern whatsoever; even when he knew the motor was ‘bout to blow, suspension break down, anything — he simply couldn’t ease off. Naturally, with his luck it was despite this that he won so many races with sick cars that somehow held together; any sensible driver would have eased off and just tried to finish, but we all knew that there’s nothing within Joe Hanns capable of rational race-driving behavior. “For those few uninitiated among you, I ought to say here, there are about three general stages most drivers go though — first season or two a guy’s got to prove himself and that means being a tiger, getting in over his head so many times that if not already dead or too seriously banged up pretty much learns what he personally can and can’t do; there’s hardly any other way. “The second stage has to do with, ah, I don’t want to just say more skill or experience, because he hasn’t got anywhere near top form yet — has to do with exactly where on this, ah, say, standard of perfection — where on this scale of ultimates he’s content to settle: I mean is forced to: for in his learning, particular curves, circuits, cars, weather or whatever complexity of situation has come closest to previously overcoming him have given rise to fears imperceptibly, even perceptibly (should he suddenly give way to an apt one among those accumulated) giving cause to a slackening at this or that point, even tho giving more all out effort for increased speed at other places. “Finally, of the third stage, of the rare few achieving it, of real old-pro know-how — when the initial fears had been controlled, mitigated, cleansed, merged, forgotten or whatever it is that develops a strange inner-attitude that tho from an entirely different view point somehow produces an innocence comparing to the novice not knowing what he’s up against, really — Of the third stage, then, we can only speculate and say that if he lives that long, this hypothetical one of the top few, it is thru long experience and tightening almost beyond the outer limits of driving form that he has perfected, but I tell you all this about drivers in general only to emphasize how our unique guest dis-proved it all by breaking thru all such stages right from the beginning. “Our hero even as a kid drove so continually over his head that even on straight-aways his car never seemed controlled — not just the mechanics blanch-faced as they passed signals, the crowd shuddering, so nervous & excited, the officials doubly ready with black or red flag (black flag means instant stop, red just stop) and the car owner, waxen, often vomiting, or vowing never to watch again — nothing, I say, had any effect on our Hero who was as fierce behind a wheel as he now is docile in that chair ….

One night in the summer of 1945 … First Meeting with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University One night in the summer of 1945 I was with a fellow named Hal Chase. We had been drinking and since we were both young and full of the juice of life, we took to speaking of life. Hal, at that time was quite an influence on me, mainly because he had done the things I had not. It follows that what he said to me was more important than might otherwise be the case. “Another fellow I was most interested in was one Allen Ginsberg.” “Yea? who’s he?” “He’s a terribly decadent intellectual whom I roomed with last year at school.” “Tell me about him.” “Well, I don’t know of a proper beginning point. However, he’s a poet, but, unlike many when he composes rhyme he calls it shit and the like. Also he takes great delight in proving one wrong and even though he knows little of what one is talking about he’ll start contradicting, and through sheer perseverance wear one down and make one doubt oneself. In fact, he bothered me so much that near the end of the term I had to take defensive measures.” “Oh yeah? in what way?” “It’s most difficult to explain, but, the main point is —“ Then he described in a rather vague way what he had done to “defend himself” from this wild, terribly brilliant, yet terribly decadent young man. Hal then spoke of his friend’s homosexuality and its disasterous effects. In a short twenty minutes I had an extreme, abstract portrait of a young college Jew, whose amazing mind had the germ of decay in it and whose sterility had produced a blasé, yet fascinating, mask. His soul had dried up into a mind which excreted verbalistic poetry, and his handmade sexlife had created a cynical, symbolic outlook toward all the confusion of life. This picture, becoming more abstract as time passed, remained firmly with me. Occasionally I wondered about this Allen, but the speculation about him had ceased to be conscious. I had even forgotten he was queer when one evening 18 months later, I met him. I had gone to New york in the fall of 1946, and having just arrived, I looked up Hal Chase. After supper we went to a rather vapid bar near the campus. We had just ordered our drinks when Hal recognized a voice and said “that’s Allen Ginsberg” just as a head popped up from the next booth and looked at me. He had coal-black hair which struck my eye first. It was a bit too long yet not an overdone mass of garish distaste as some more normal poet of an intellectual nature might affect. I was pleased with the manner in which the hair parted and fell into a natural forelock and the swept back sides were perfect for his face, the appearance of its perfectous grooming was belied by the realization that he gave little attention to his crowning glory. Passing from his natural attribute my eyes fastened on his nose. It was plainly a jewish nose, but, more modified than most, in fact, instead of standing out on the face, as is the usual wont of jewish noses, his seemed to blend into a simple statement — “this is a nose, with which to breathe and smell” — his lips were heavy, over-full, almost negroid. At first glance I thought them sensual, yet, looking closer, I somehow felt they lay too peacefully when in repose and disappeared too quickly in a smile to be called sensual or lustful in the accepted sense. Rather, instinctively I felt them there just as the nose was, to be used, not accentuated. If there was any part of his face he was conscious of, it was the eyes. They were large, dark and brooding. I was not quite sure how much of the brooding was there as such; and how much he was putting there for us to read into. His voice, although I’ve heard it a thousand times, escapes my memory. I recall it was pleasant, varied and cultured, but the tone qualities are lost to me. Hal looked up and said “hello Allen.” Allen nodded, a bit curt I thought. “This is Neal Cassady, he just got in from Denver and has never been here before.” “Hello.” “How do you do.” “Neal’s looking for a place to stay, any suggestions?” “Has he tried the Mills Hotel?” “Hardly, since he’s got his wife with him.” “Oh well then, I don’t know of any place around here.” We both sat down again in our respective booths. Allen was with someone Hal didn’t know and since there were several in our party anyway, there was no attempt made for the two parties to get together. A few moments later Allen again stuck his head over the top of the booths. “Is your name LuAnne? What a strange name,” he said and sat back down. My wife mumbled “yes”, looked embarrassed, and suggested we leave. We did. I didn’t see Allen for over a month, then, about January 10, 1947, we met again. A close friend, Jack Kerouac, suggested that we go uptown and he would introduce me to a fabulous woman named Vicki. He had spoken of her many times before and since it suited my mood, I acquiesced.

She lived on 89th St. on the top floor of a large studio apartment building. When we got off the elevator and started down the narrow hall I hear a loud, rapidly talking male voice in eager and earnest oratory. I paused outside the door to listen. He was talking even faster than I had first supposed, so fast, in fact, I half expected the words to blur and run together, but they did not. “That’s Norman. He’s a nut on Reichian-Analisis.” “What’s that?” “You’ll find out,” said Jack and then lightly rapped on the door. The flow of words ceased at once and a girl’s voice inquired “Yes, who is it?” “It’s Jack.” “Just a moment.” The door bolts were unlatched and Jack shuffled forward, I followed. “Hello, greetings and all that, you wonderful boy,” slurped Vicki as she gushingly kissed his cheek. Jack quickly looked around the room and mumbled “hello,” and then perceiving Allen, “Hi, what you say?” My first view of the room saw how small it was. I judged it to be about 10 x 14 ft. with a bed and dresser the only furniture. On the bed, which obviously was the seat of all activity that took place in the room, sat Norman and Vicki. Jack and I stood and Allen occupied the small stool by the radio, which was playing….

Beginning of “The History of the Hip Generation” BOOK ONE The Hip Generation Went on Strike Against Man I WILLIAM HUBBARD WAS BORN in St. Louis in 1917 an heir to the Hubbard Typewriter; he never had to worry about money the rest of his life. He came into the world with the first hints of magnificent boredom written on his long, thin countenance, a patrician child, thinlipped, but with a greedy curiosity beneath these exterior defenses which in infancy and boyhood anyway wear an air of sweetness. The cantankerous aunt of forty comes after the man’s sweet smile went unnoticed, many timid advances sensitive with faith thrown back; the suspicious dwarf of middle age was gigantic with belief in the juicy days. Hubbard’s father, typically after the American style, owned a house on the outskirts of St. Louis where nothing ever happened; Clayton Road, in 1918 when Bill was old enough to notice bleak time as a burden he must now bear and make of it his wife, as a tot he could clearly see nothing but Tudor garages, winding drives and lawns for his pleasure on gray days. Later, he said: “There was a time when the best Americans lived right in town, the father of the house could walk around the corner to all his various business transctions and kicks. When the so called elite began moving to the country it meant the town and in fact the whole civilization was beginning to decay. The fat bourgeois businessman with his daily before dinner martini in the suburbs not only has lost contact with his pleasure and the world, but statistics show he dies on the average at the age of 55 with clocklike regularity from hypertension and heart failure. Naturally.” Here he does his characteristic nose-sniff, “thumpff.” Young Bill was carefully brought up, sent to the best schools one of them a riding school in New Mexico in the summer, prophetically near Almogordo, the site of the first atomic explosion, where on horseback this American prince stared at the desert through steel rimmed spectacles with cold blue eyes. By sixteen he was as high-horse as a Governor in the Colonies, as nasty as an old Aunt, and as queer as the day is long. II IN 1917 HERBERT HUCK was born, starting his life with an incongruity. He who would wind up specialized the color of blue cheese under main drag lights from L A to Chicago to Rikers Island, saw the light of life for the first time in the smoky raw woods of West Massachusetts, in a clearing of houses, near the town of Greenfield …. (Rocky Mount, August, 1952)

Letters Letter to Jack Kerouac, March 7, 1947 (Kansas City, Mo.) Dear Jack: I am sitting in a bar on Market St. I’m drunk, well, not quite, but I soon will be. I am here for 2 reasons; I must wait 5 hours for the bus to Denver & lastly but, most importantly, I’m here (drinking) because, of course, because of a woman & what a woman! To be chronological about it: I was sitting on the bus when it took on more passengers at Indianapolis, Indiana — a perfectly proportioned beautiful, intellectual, passionate, personification of Venus De Milo asked me if the seat beside me was taken!!! I gulped, (I’m drunk) gargled & stammered NO! (Paradox of expression, after all, how can one stammer No!!?) She sat — I sweated — She started to speak, I knew it would be generalities, so to tempt her I remained silent. She (her name Patricia) got on the bus at 8 PM (Dark!) I didn’t speak until 10 PM — in the intervening 2 hours I not only of course, determined to make her, but, how to DO IT. I naturally can’t quote the conversation verbally, however, I shall attempt to give you the gist of it from 10 PM to 2 AM. Without the slightest preliminaries of objective remarks (what’s your name? where are you going? etc.) I plunged into a completely knowing, completely subjective, personal & so to speak “penetrating her core” way of speech; to be shorter, (since I’m getting unable to write) by 2 AM I had her swearing eternal love, complete subjectivity to me & immediate satisfaction. I, anticipating even more pleasure, wouldn’t allow her to blow me on the bus, instead we played, as they say, with each other. Knowing her supremely perfect being was completely mine (when I’m more coherent, I’ll tell you her complete history & psychological reason for loving me) I could conceive of no obstacle to my satisfaction, well, “the best laid plans of mice & men go astray” and my nemesis was her sister, the bitch. Pat had told me her reason for going to St. Louis was to see her sister; she had wired her to meet her at the depot. So, to get rid of the sister, we peeked around the depot when we arrived at St. Louis at 4 AM to see if she (her sister) was present. If not, Pat would claim her suitcase, change clothes in the rest room & she and I proceed to a hotel room for a night (years?) of perfect bliss. The sister was not in sight, so She (note the capital) claimed her bag & retired to the toilet to change — — — long dash — — — This next paragraph must, of necessity, be written completely objectively — — Edith (her sister) & Patricia (my love) walked out of the pisshouse hand in hand (I shan’t describe my emotions). It seems Edith (bah) arrived at the bus depot early & while waiting for Patricia, feeling sleepy, retired to the head to sleep on a sofa. That’s why Pat & I didn’t see her. My desperate efforts to free Pat from Edith failed, even Pat’s terror & slave-like feeling toward her rebelled enough to state she must see “someone” & would meet Edith later, all failed. Edith was wise; she saw what was happening between Pat & I. Well, to summarize: Pat & I stood in the depot (in plain sight of the sister) & pushing up to one another, vowed to never love again & then I took the bus for Kansas City & Pat went home, meekly, with her dominating sister. Alas, alas — — — — — In complete (try & share my feeling) dejection, I sat, as the bus progressed toward Kansas City. At Columbia, Mo. a young (19) completely passive (my meat) virgin got on & shared my seat … In my dejection over losing Pat, the perfect, I decided to sit on the bus (behind the driver) in broad daylight & seduce her, from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM I talked. When I was done, she (confused, her entire life upset, metaphysically amazed at me, passionate in her immaturity) called her folks in Kansas City, & went with me to a park (it was just getting dark) & I banged her; I screwed as never before; all my pent up emotion finding release in this young virgin (& she was) who is, by the by, a school teacher! Imagine, she’s had 2 years of Mo. St. Teacher’s College & now teaches Jr. High School. (I’m beyond thinking straightly). I’m going to stop writing. Oh, yes, to free myself for a moment from my emotions, you must read “Dead Souls” parts of it (in which Gogol shows his insight) are quite like you. I’ll elaborate further later (probably?) but at the moment I’m drunk & happy (after all, I’m free of Patricia already, due to the young virgin. I have no name for her. At the happy note of Les Young’s “jumping at Mesners” (which I’m hearing) I close till later. To my Brother Carry On! N. L. Cassady

Letter to Jack Kerouac, July 3, 1949 (Excerpted) Dear Jack: I feel like a remembering of things past. So, here’s a brief history of arrests. A case history. My first job was on a bike delivery around Denver. I meet a lad named Ben with whom I used to steal anything we saw as we cruised in the early A.M. in his 27 Buick. One of the things we did was smash the high school principal’s car, another was steal chickens from a man he disliked, another was strip cars and sell the parts. I bought the Buick from him for $20. My first car; it couldn’t pass the brake and light inspection, so I decided I needed an out of state license to operate the car without arrest. I went to Wichita, Kansas to get the plates. As I was hitchhiking home with the plates concealed under my coat I passed thru Russell, Kansas. Walking down the main drag I was accosted by a nosey sheriff who must have thought I was pretty young to be hiking. He found the plates and threw me in the two cell jail with a county delinquent who should have been in the home for the old since he couldn’t feed himself (The sheriff’s wife fed him) and sat thru the day drooling and slobbering. After investigation, which included corny things like a fatherly quiz, then an abrupt turnabout to frighten me with threats, a comparison of my handwriting etc. I was released and hiked back to Denver. As I think back, I can recall much of my crimes and little of my next arrest, but, I believe this was my second arrest. I had been to Indianapolis for the 39 Auto classic and to South Bend to see Notre Dame and to Calif. to live in L.A. and all this hitchhiking on my own had made me see the wisdom of hiking in the day and stealing a car when nite fell to make good time. Well, when I returned to Denver this became a habit and every nite I’d sleep in some apt. house bathtub and get up and find some friends place to eat then steal a car to pick up girls at school when they got out. I might change cars in midafternoon, but at any rate I’d get some girl and spend the night in the mountains, returning at daybreak to my bathtub. I got tired of this and decided to go back to Calif. I knew a fellow named Bill Smith and he wanted to come along. One day in the spring of 41, I was just 15, we stole a Plymouth on Stout and 16th Sts. We ran out of gas just as we pulled into Colo. Springs. I walked a block or so and saw a 38 Buick at the curb, got in, picked up Bill on the corner and we were off again. Passing thru Pueblo I saw a cop’s car behind and suggested we cut and run, but Bill was adamant, Sure enough they stopped us, disbelieved our story, and took us down. At the police station I found they had caught us so quickly because it happened I’d picked up the D.A.’s car. An hour later the C. Springs D.A. came to regain his car and take us back to be tried. They wouldn’t believe Bill’s name was really Bill Smith for it sounded so like an alias. They wouldn’t believe he was a hitchhiker too, as I told them. I had some Vaseline for my chapped lips and the desk copper leered and asked if we punked each other. We were confined in the Springs County jail for thirty days, then taken to trial. Smith’s father was there and got us off. Again, I returned to Denver. The next arrest was a year later. During that time I’d returned to my brother’s to sleep, but, didn’t work and kept up the car stealing routine with the girls each nite. I left my brother, lived with one Bill Matley (I had before). We started to Calif. again. This time Matley and I had no trouble until we got to Albuquerque. We were washed out in a really disasterous flood, (knocked out water supply, etc) We were stranded for two days, getting no rides and finding no cars to steal. We spent the night in a RR roundhouse. Bill wanted to return, me too. I finally saw a doctor park his Buick for a minute in front of the hospital. I dashed up, got in and picked up Bill, and we were off for Denver. After a 100 miles or so we were drunk from the pint we’d found on the floor, and Bill wanted to drive. He did, at 80 MPH he skidded in the still raining weather and we hit the ditch. We walked and etc. to get back. I was flirting with Justin that fall of 41 and living at his Aunt & Uncle’s. I was stealing cars with Ben again and strippin them. One night, we were cruising about and just happened to drive by a lot where I’d parked a hot car some months before, in the summer. I glanced at the spot and, believe it or not, my eyes saw the same car. We couldn’t believe it and creep warily up to it. As you know, Jack, a hot car, if left on a lot in the lower downtown section was sure to be found in a few days. (The lot was, since you’re in Denver, on Lawrence St. between 19th & 20th) Well, somehow this car had been sitting there for 5 months and still wasn’t found. Were we elated! This meant the car was cool by now and we could disguise it and keep it for our own. The local kids had played in it and pulled apart some, damaged the radio etc. but we got it going, put air in the tires at a station and were …. I just paused to reread this — — — too hastily done, silly: I stop. I been arrested 10 times and served an aggravated total of 15 months on six convictions …. Letter to Jack Kerouac, July 20, 1950 (fragment) On my first R.R. trip another brakeman I knew well & myself were standing between a morning freight & a passenger we were to board. As the end of the freight passed, an overwide boxcar approached us, (as the engine of the stopping passenger arrived) & seeing how really close it was, I extended my nerves & put all my effort into facing the wide car & turning my body sidewise; my nose grazed the car door, but I escaped. He didn’t; when I turned around as the caboose passed, he was lying under the passenger kicking & twitching like a dying rabbit. I lifted him to a bench 2 tracks away & told the passenger conductor to get an ambulance & doctor.

His head was bashed in, the area from the back of the neck to the midpoint of the skull, & from ear almost to ear, was flattened; blood was matted; in his hand he held the hat; he refused to part his fingers. It took me at least 10 minutes to fall asleep, after I had boarded the passenger train, I was so affected. You gotta watch your step in the West …. Letter to Jack Kerouac, September 10, 1950 Dear Jack: (Writing on engine of train) My great wonderful friend. I have done you the justice of reading your letter from Richmond Hill high and gone to inner-inner land. I must say you are M’boy, you beauty — well, ammit, Listen. I’m going to begin from the moment I left you & Frank & go to Now. This is such a gigantic task, I feel like Proust & you must indulge me. Left M. City, “tightening my belt” for long drive ahead. Became more engrossed in landscape & noting people as I drove. Being alone, I was not called upon to make summaries to any other mind & since I was not responding to other voices calling my attention to other views of countryside or otherwise, did not notice what I may have missed seeing as I drove, because there was no one to call my attention to it and thus having only my own mad thoughts to contend with, I responded to each emotion perfectly as it came. The arduous climb thru the mountain passes with the extreme beauty of handling the car so as to function perfectly on the road’s surface while my mind was thinking such thoughts that soon I actually thought of how at last I could tell you on paper perhaps the knowledge of action — But later — anyway — I must emphasize how wonderful it was. Now, eyeball kicks are among the world’s greatest, second to none actually in terms of abstract thought, because it is thru the way you handle these kicks that is what determines your particular conclusion (in abstraction in the mind) to each moment’s outlook. Remembrance of your life & your eyeball view are actually the only 2 immediate first hand things your mind can carry instantly. One’s mind carries at all times the pressure of its own existence, and remembers previous eyeball views to recall what its previous life has been & feeding on this stuff, carries a heavy understanding of things it is capable of knowing & this knowing is blocked from coming out, because while one’s mind carries one’s life’s past constantly, it also carries before it all day the world which comes in thru the eyeball. I became so engrossed in my eyeballs & what they brought me over each ridge & thru each town that I looked out into the world as one looks into a picture. My field of vision then became like the canvas, and as I looked, I saw 4 corners of the frame which held the picture. Since then, at any moment when I feel the slightest ennui, I simply look up from what I’m doing & note carefully the particular scene before my eyes. (Right now — to my left the fat greasy neck of the blubbery fireman carefully picking his nose.) Letter to Jack Kerouac, November 5, 1950, while on hold — down in San Luis Obispo (excerpts) Dear Jack: This picture is one of the mind that America can’t fathom; just what do these Indians think & feel as they walk all day loaded with heavy gear up & down 18,000 ft. mountains not eating nor having to because they are hi — get it — hi on cocoa leaves that give strength & hallucinations to body & mind. What’s their kick? You were talking of Koreans …. see, now everything you write to me is just as I said in my last letter — the same things I’m doing. The only show I’ve seen since last we met had a couple minutes of Korean pictures as they were “liberated” when US crossed the 38th parallel & one shot seen for less than 10 seconds showed a celebration dance & the characters! One guy I just caught a glimpse of — gone hi — out of this world — in a trance as his limp body jolted about, eyes closed & disjointed manniken steps. Where was he? Where are we? I just dig the other side of the Peru Indian picture. Have you got a conga drum? Buy one & a flute for me (or find where a flute can be bought) I dig what you mean about Nina (she’s same girl Allen raved about NY eve) I dug her. I was hi & she was nice to me instead of being antagonistic as per most cunts, & she looks fine, what tits & slim body. I bet her cunt is juicy & ripe, hunh? You lucky dog. I ain’t had a fuck in ages & no new girl (except whores) since 1945. In fact, pal, if you love me, you’ll do all in your power to find a girl, any girl (like em skinny) (for fuckin’ that is, you see, skinny girls are all CUNT) & tell her I can fuck all night & blow them till their belly falls out & get their cunt inside out so I can fuck them to the real bottom, not that I can’t anyhow, with a little cooperation, but get a cunt & your cunt & us’ll have a real orgy unless you want to go “lonely fucker”. I am expected in NY in Jan, March or May, unless long prongs are no longer acceptable. The beginning of my book is: “For a long time I held a unique position.” etc. etc. I really go into it a bit more than usual — the token fatherhood of bums on Larimer & me as their unnatural son, etc. Music is the only thing good that’s not dependent on the eyeball. What a nice thought to make one

unafraid of eyeball-falling. I have other means of retaining patience with my body & its demands. I can think of no better than a cunt tho, I love a pure & sweet cunt, one whose power is such as to prevent the owner of same from falling into any mistaken idea about what it’s for .. a cunt that makes the girl & thus creates a woman to take my cock everywhicholeway. I’ve got much more sense than anything I do indicates — just as in your case, Jack — But when it comes to letters I show up most badly. How does one meet a girl? I got no troubles once I get alone with them. To get into position to fuck by all the simple sensations that make my heart beat so rapidly that I sometimes feel I’ll faint; not now but soon, in a few years, when I get a girl. Listen to this … Most Important: I met my true love twice! One girl then another — one by eye & one by ear. Agnes & Luanne. On March 31st, 1948, I got accepted by SPRR to make a date and start my seniority going. I got on a streetcar on Geary Blvd. in SF to go to SP depot & go to Watsonville on April 7, 1948. As we rode down Geary & passed Van Ness & approached the true tenderloin of SF. I looked out the window avidly searching for any pretty skirt to feast my eyes & remember for that night alone in Watsonville dorms bed & knowing I would see no girl for weeks. The streecar was at top speed in mid-block when my glance took in a red-head that looked — WAS!!! — my old flame from Denver of ‘43 — Agnes, a true love, a whore like Luanne, but more — things you don’t know, Jack, things only I remember & feel. But by the time I reached the next corner I was sure it wasn’t Agnes but simply a similar looker & a wish look on my part, so instead of jumping off & catching her, I continued streecar ride. Was late for train (short time) & also not to spend dime, etc. I let her go ! But in next 6 weeks of lonely Watsonville hell — had many similar hard-life Watsonville weeks since — I thought of Agnes & all she had meant to me, etc. To continue: On Oct 13 (Friday) 1950, 2½ years later, I went downtown to buy necessary RR hat. On way home, since I had just blasted & was really gone digging SF & people, I stopped in drug store to indulge in soft drink on that hot day. I sat perhaps 2 & 3/4 minutes anticipating large coke I had ordered to remember summer of 47 & Burroughs & Hunke, et al, in Texas & 1 case a day of coke — drank by us, I look down counter to dig any women & LOOK — AGNES!! my love, Luanne’s sole predecessor. But keeping cool I compose my features consciously while my mind races — “It’s Agnes, it’s Agnes!” Then I look closely & see her dyed hair & see at once she’s a real whore now. She sees me — “Why, Neal! Come over & say ‘hello’ ”. I’m all smiles, but hi, understand, Jack, Hi & with this suddenly can’t speak; even harder to than usually is the case. I stumble to a stool beside her, I sense she’s known in this drug store so near the whore hotels & where I’d seen her in ‘48, so I try & underplay to suit her unexpressed wish. My heart!! It won’t stop pounding!! I think of death & how one wants to explode all his soul out thru his cock into these lovely creatures & how they make you do it, but, still you can’t get started. She asks what you’re doing now, as casually as tho you’d met just yesterday & you are thinking of the terrific orgies you & she had had, her tears & cocksucking!! You’re conscious of your ugly unshaven pimply face & the new weird sun-glass hat & instead of impressing, as it seems she needs to be impressed, you catch yourself saying over & over until you don’t know how many times you said it or when you began saying it, after you sat beside her & as she finished her drink: “I’m so glad to see you!!!” “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ etc. & as she ups & leaves, she just smiles & promises to call on Friday next & refuses to see the agony in your eyeballs. So, altho I lived in a gone bachelor apt. last month alone & had Ekotape & tea & wanted her so, she never came or called or anything & daily when I came in from RR I’d sit & wait for phone to ring or door to knock & so never saw her again & realized again about the girl — What a fuck she was, wooee! & how I truly loved her in ‘43. While I was in jail & it was to see her that I gained courage to make that glorious escape that only 4 before me had accomplished & in face of the tortures of those caught, so I knew I loved her. I dashed to Denver; I had left her loving me so wholly that I’d felt so guilty of leaving her crying as I went to Calif. earlier that I advised her to marry & forget me … a line not usually spoken by me. But when I returned after escape & waited hours outside her restaurant (waitress) & saw her figure & knew the dreams I’d had in prison wherein I got Agnes & we found a shack alone on the sea & never stopped fucking, etc. What dreams, asleep & awake — could still come true! I rushed to her as she exited the cafe. She played with me as a cat will a mouse, only not so maliciously; she was, I noticed at once, a bit broader of beam & when I touched her it was not as in my recent dreams & not so absolutely passionate as before, but I attributed this to the fact we had only been together a half hour or so & were still self-conscious as we walked from her cafe to (strangely) my old schoolhouse at 23rd & Fremont (grammar). At last she said “Aren’t you going to hold me?” I started to & just then the cops drove by the bushes & flashing light said, “move along there” & so we walked clear across town to another spot I knew & Jack, I confessed to her my dreams; I gathered her into an imaginary world of us & the future of fucking & life spent one for the other in bed & pure. We had a quickie; I didn’t come & was only telling of the future where there was better bed fucks &

us living contentedly as we walked slowly across town again to her home. 3 blocks from 30th & Downing St. she told me! She had just done what I’d said & was in love with me & so sorry she had believed what I’d advised was the thing to do. Yes, she had married while I was gone … a sailor. What emotion as I staggered to the nearby steps of the Negro Holy-Roller church, deserted at this hour — I almost cried. Anyhow, I had the weirdest relationship — simply gone — with her the next 3 or 4 yrs. always unexpected & really strange. So strong & genuine an emotion I felt, these three or 4 separate & distinct crazy gone periods we had & I won’t tell them & LOOK’ Yet, yet, she is here in S.F. & alive to me & NEVER will I see her again. Oh, Love! When I realized this after weeks of waiting, on Oct. 25th I turned, once again, to Luanne. Remember Jack, I hadn’t seen her since May 31st at 5 PM in 1949. So I was at last going to call her after almost 18 months of daily knowledge of her. I was to phone her number; I’d know it for weeks (in S.F. phonebook) I dialed & it rang! A voice I knew was her “Hello” I stammered out the exact months, weeks, days & hours since I’d seen her & said I felt I had the right, because of the past, to once again hear her voice. “Yes, I’d known she was 7 months pregnant.” “Yes, she had known I was married again.” Then she began a detailed description of how difficult to get her marriage confirmed in the Catholic church ‘cause they had trouble finding any Baptism or Confirmation papers in Denver. She asked if she should confirm their marriage. I told her to do so. Asking about us all, she made my cock hard, sitting there as I thought of her mouth & what it could do. I spoke of Jeff; she casually dis remembered him. She then asked if I’d called before; someone was always calling her. Surely, I thought, she can handle all the cocks that punch at her, then I got so heartsick I let her beg off meeting me & so lost her again, as I had done last on May 31, 1949. What is there to say? I’ll tell you. I am going to write a book, yessir, before I die & before I lose anything else, i.e. — mind, cock, cunt, etc. So until you & me get together to kill old NY by us knocking out ourselves on it, just by using the eye & hand. I don’t want any foolish nonsense falling from my sloppy lips anymore. I know to have a cunt to love & suck, one that is so perfect you can’t resist raising your tired body above it to spend all the pure feeling you’ve left into the hole that matters. Of course, any girl has it; just to get my hands on one & spread my filthy fingers all over the body so’s I’ll know it forever … Love, N. Letter to Jack Kerouac, February 1951 (Excerpt) I enclose here a real quickie I whipped off in just a couple of hours. Actually I wrote this poor little start of a thing around the first of January before I came east for a visit. I don’t feel badly as to its weak qualities because I just dashed it off without a pause. My second trip from Denver to Los Angeles was not the starved struggle the first one had been. I established a pattern used in later years when hitchhiking south from my home town, that is, I always afterward left the city in the fashion I did this time. The policy was to be on Denver’s southern outskirts at dawn and by not leaving the road for an instant, hope to gain Raton, New Mexico by nightfall. I never failed to achieve this goal. It seems I possessed the inordinary luck to conquor this 250-odd mile distance by catching quick rides that often got me into New Mexico in the early PM. Conversely, once on Raton’s highway junction — the right hand leg went to Texas and southeast, the left to the southwest and California — some blocks beyond the railroad underpass where the hotshot freights begin to pick up speed, I could never get a lift until I’d waited many hours. My first trip had switched it’s mode of travel at this point, when at midnight, after thumbing cars for eight full hours, I’d caught one of these hiball reefer trains and continued the balance of the journey by rail. A couple of years later I was to wait 2 days in this spot without being picked up by a friendly motorist. Now, however, I had the good fortune to make connections right away with one of the infrequently passing cars. He took me to Taos, and when I got out it was not yet dusk. I was cheered; this was making the fastest time ever and just escaping from the Raton Rut bouyed me no end. I was confident; I was happy. I bounced along the narrow blacktop with eager strides, breathing deep of the clean mountain air, marveling at the luxuriant vermillion gold of the sunset. Adobe buildings lined the way; every tenth structure housed a bar. From out their open doors came loud Mexican music and the aroma of spiced food. Drunken Indians, their long black hair braided under strange hats used the center of the hiway as a path upon which to stagger. Some were singsonging to themselves, none talked, and most passed me in dark silence with cold eyes. Ahead, half up a slight hill, I saw a white rancher leave one of these taverns and make for a pickup truck; he was finishing a bottle of beer as he slowly walked to the machine. I hurried to catch him and bum a ride. He sensed my intention before I had a chance to voice it, and looking me over for a second, he said, “Get in.” He didn’t take me far, but I soon caught another ride which took me into Santa Fe near middlenight. I sauntered thru this city in a fine state of hunger — fine, I say, because I hadn’t eaten since morning, and in my pockets was the money for a good feed. Knowing the unlikelihood of an auto stopping for me after nightfall, I anticipated taking in the sights I could of this State Capitol while hiking leisurely across it, then, settle in a cozy restaurant for a lengthy meal. I figured this program to get me “On The Road” and in position still in good time before dawn, so I followed it. I recall as I passed the State Police barracks two stern troupers left its well-lit interior and crunched

their swank boots on the gravel driveway for brief seconds before they piled into their radio-dispatched police car with automatic motions of tough efficiency. This flashing glimpse of their hard gestures and unslack jaws, clamped so tightly against the grim upper lip, and their faces immobile as steel emphasizing the sheen of their merciless eyes glittering with zeal to perform their duty made me shudder as I thought of the short shift they gave their prey. They spun the wheels and roared away while I was pitying any quarry they nabbed that night. Their ruthless tactics I well knew and couldn’t escape a twinge of relief that I wasn’t their intended victim. I went by crowded tourist cafes serving well-to-do travelers Mexican and American dishes, catering to their every wish, as their slick automobiles, parked in the rough street’s high curb at an angle, patiently waited in quiet splendor to carry them away — escorted in magnificent style — when it was their whim to leave. The downtown area was packed with throngs of humanity, altho it was a late hour, and I don’t think it was a Saturday night. The congested glob was heightened by the streets of alley width (20 ft. or so) along which cars crawled with exasperated honking. The sidewalks were over-flowing with people; men in cowboy apparel and otherwise, Indians, solemn and otherwise, Mexicans chattering and otherwise, whites drunk and otherwise, Indian girls encased in moccasins, Indian squaws encased in fat, Mexican chicks in tight skirts and provocative stride, old Mexican women in more fat and burdened with unwashed infants, white women of all kinds, waitresses, heiresses, etc. and kids, kids every place imaginable, leaping and yelling, lunging between cars in mid-block or quiet and morose, scuffling along with head down. Above all this mass of activity glared the lights. Edison’s greatest invention hung over the gathered heads in astonishing profusion. There wonderous dissipators of darkness were in every color and all shapes. Countless thousands of lights squeezed into a square mile displayed a garish brilliancy that plunged the surrounding parts of town into seeming blackness. They blazed from every wall, shone down from every cailing, illuminated every storefront from row upon row of arrayed bulbs. Gigantic markers jutted sharp fingers of flame beyond the rooftops. Enormous signs thrust out their bulk from the building face and drew the eye to multicolored letters proclaiming announcements with electric gleam. Long billboards in continuous circle covered the second-storys with emblazoned script. Big single ones popped from the wall over every dazzled doorway. Smaller ones, controlled by hand chains, had been flicked on inside every building. The tiny ones were obliviated in this steady stream of lights aiding the street-lamps to rival the sun. Under a theater marquee engaged in combat with night by flashing bright blasts of garbled glare at regular intervals, I paused in mid-step, struck with the size of this small city’s electric bill. Most of their overhead must be electricity, paying sums I couldn’t guess for the priviledge of this crazy glow. Were two thirds of the lights switched off, the remainder would still outshine Times’ Square with its artificial daylight. I envied the owners of the utilities company that supplied Sante Fe. My supper was consumed in a gaudy restaurant decorated with a Mexican motif. I lingered over a second coffee until 3 AM, then, stepped to the hiway. Instant luck … amazing luck! A 1941 Packard cream convertable (this in 1942) screeched to a halt some hundred feet past me. I raced forward and got in beside a lone man. He was going (believe this) to Los Angeles!! What a trip! I’ve never had it so good. He raced at 80 per for several hundred miles, then, pulled over and slept for a few hours in the front seat; I had the back one. We stopped here and there as whim dictated: Grand Canyon, wayside pottery stands, etc. He bought all the meals. It was, all in all, a dream come true, save he didn’t suggest I drive, and not to risk antagonizing him, I wouldn’t ask. We approached L.A. from the south, on hiway 101. Once in Venice, Calif., (actually a park of sprawling LA’s 444 sq. miles) I thanked him profusely and got out, within five blocks of the place I had traveled 1300 miles to reach …. Letter to Ken Kesey, August 30, 1965 (5 PM) Dear Ken, et al: Esp. you Girls! This letter may not get mailed for some time, since I’m sitting here in Wakeman, Ohio without a dime. Still, having jacked off in the toilet, feeling rested & tonite’s sleep (not to spoil it) being a long one, will write anyhow. Perhaps a rundown on the trip is first in order — — Never have I seen one of such disorder! — — — it’s been a Dietrip — — — O Mean! But a balldrive! If it is to continue remains to be seen: acct. mechanic is busy and can’t tear down engine until tomorrow and if this 1940 flat-head Cadillac 8 banger (not Bangor, that’s another Maine; not the one I fear is busted by this King of the Road, if that has any bearing) (Maybe I cracked the Cam too, woo!) can’t be fixed I’ll truly feel sorrow. Let me tell you about this machine, a real dream; whether or not turned nitemare — — — the best truck I ever fucked up. A 1947 3/4 ton, with overload springs, International (yep, it’s got an electric fuel pump, too — — — it must be characteristic of the stock ones to easily go out) pick-up that’s got a 1962 6 speed G.M.C. gear box — — never use compound Low so really a 5 speed — — — a 1957 Metro van rear end, 2 fuel tanks holding about 26½ or 7 7/8 gallons, the strongest truck type (like your bus) wheels sporting 2 brand new 8 ply Nylon 750 X 16 (cost $90) on the rear and a new 750 X 16 8 play rayon on R.F. and a 6 ply 750 X 16 on L.F. that’s got more tread than it’ll ever use since the 6 inch gash in its center that I’ve been fretfully watching must sometime go, tho after 2,500 miles there’s still no show that this is so. Plus another tire with over half-tread left — it gave me the one flat I had, in Utah — besides the smooth spare, another 750 X 16, as are all 6.

This long wheel base — about 145 inches, I guess — green colored (dark) gasser also has wonderful twin-pipes with chrome mufflers topped by a rakish cut that extend along each side of the cab — — like a big diesel rig — — & burble in one’s ear so one can really hear the big cubic inch Caddy engine. There’s also a new rear U-joint a repacked recently front, new plugs, points, condenser, coil, fan belt, fan (only 4 bladed instead of 6, tho) radiator — a Ford truck one — the one it had, a 1932 Cad V-16, 4 inch thick one holding 32 quarts, was repaired in Ely, Nevada & replaced in Denver. New left rear brake kit, no vacuum assist tho — it was full of water, so took it off — so must pump brakes a couple times before they take. A Tacks Meter that needs a cable to work & a broken bell housing a steel strap holds. But enuf truck: & only one day — in Denver — did I get enuf fuck; (or any) one was a truly sweet, small, dark-haired 19 yr. old Grinnell, Iowa college girl, whose defenses — I somehow “just evaporated” (made it to drive her new Buick) & the other — both within hours, in the same apt, mind you; this one got in bed after the college girl left to be home when her parents got up, a tall, white-skinned Red-head with green eyes from Big Sur Country now working in an aged Rest Home after flipping; (was I playing doctor again?) without drugs, yet! I could’ve had others, of course, but no time of course, or their old man was present of course, or they were Black of course, or some other damn thing of course, Anyhow, the above was my only sex; so maybe not show this page to girls. Har. Har. Oh yes, the trip; well, chronologically then: (for over an hour now Gypsy has been “meditating” under the pup tent he’s erected in the back of the pickup using aforementioned twin-stacks — they are actually made of 2” plumbing pipe; by the mad Piute Indian from Carson City who put this wild runner together — one must pass 60 before slipping it into 6th or it’ll lug, altho 5th is so versatile one may lug along at 25 or so before winding up to the 60 MPA shift point — — — I’ve learned each and every shift point by the clatter the (by 5” steel that took over 5 minutes to bore a hole thru, that holds up to 5,000 lbs per sq. inch) reinforced bell housing the gears sets up — even neutral has its own discernable chatter from this bell as uniquely cracked tho certainly not as uniquely important, as that famed liberty of “meditating”, I say by “plunking the twanger” (his guitar) as I sit in the cab trying to write — only he and I are left of the 5 that began — but now he’s stopped & gone to sleep so maybe I can now concentrate, but doubt it, since “music hath charms” Oh yes, the trip; well, chronologically then: (Oh yes, the trip; like I say, never make the same one) (Oh yes, the trip; like I say, one’s image can be remade in 21 days & since I’ve been on the road longer than that this time already; it’s become a way of life.) Chronologically then: after leaving your place about this time of day that Sunday over 3 weeks ago — there goes a motorbike now — it was an unusually sad trip over the hill to S.F. then cross-bay, only undoubtedly, ahem, because the owner of the ‘55 Olds — just like the one of Dale’s I tore up — Chan, his name, wouldn’t let me drive; altho I did get to do so leaving the city because he stayed there overnite while Gypsy & his old lady, Jenny, (after we’d stopped at Frenchie’s, the snag-toothed, openfaced thin, dark-haired Hell’s angel (after being rejected by them several times) was got badly burned lately (hospitalized) from too slowly retreating after pouring gas into a carburator (?) to see if the coat Chan wanted & Gypsy’s got on now was his) & myself went on to Berkeley to a solitary sleep. The next day, Monday, Aug. 9th, I slept (alone!) The next day, Tuesday, Aug. 10th, I left before dawn, &, after helping Gypsy in a vain search over the streets on foot for a car part that’d fallen off, drove to the closing-too-fast auto wreckers for a fruitless attempt in a similar vein; so the 1951 Hudson Jet we were to make the trip in became instead the auto first left behind; the second one eventually also left behind was the car used to search for parts, a 1951 fucked-up gearshift Chev. with a cracked block & bald tires belonging to a fellow as new to me as was the car — which I drove, after Gypsy worked all Monday to get it running, exclusively until leaving it in Virginia City, Nevada — one Pete Livvy, who, with his friend Doug Samson, we took to Chicago after Doug Samson’s car, a 1957 MG sports car which I drove only around Carson City to try out, broke down in Ely, Nev. where it now is; altho I pulled it a 100 miles further before the first of 3 fans — into — radiator of truck curtailed that. Now, since it appeared we’d have only the ‘51 Chev. to get us to N.Y.C., albeit in tandam with Pete & Doug in the ‘57 M.G. as far as Chi, Gypsy, Jenny (his girl) & I spent the rest of the nite relentlessly pressuring the little girl who, (Faye might remember, she asked to meet you, Ken, just before I left that day) along with a couple others that day arrived with Gypsy; hopelessly pressuring, I say, her, altho she gave us $50, & $25 later, to loan for the trip her ‘64 Saab: yet she did let me, this Mon. midnite, along with Gypsy & Jenny (Pete & Doug, all packed in the M.G., stayed behind on this so as to sleep) drive the Saab back over to S.F. to get money from Ginsberg — I’d already driven it to get $5 from Pete Orlovsky in Berkeley — and say Goodbye to others, etc. I forgot to mention that Sunday night, after seeing Hell’s Angel Frenchie, we, despite my protestations of fatigue, went to see a R. & R. group that Chan insisted on observing — — well, who was it? that’s rite — Signee & The HiWires or the Sextones or the Jefferson Hi Bandits, our pals, ya know; & they sounded great, esp. on one about a HiFlyin Bird; Of course, Jerry Anderson was there, the first time I’d seen him since his hasty departure in Ukiah & he dashed over all greetings, put on a U.S. flag as a cape & in general showed he was swinging again — besides getting me a beer or two, so here we are now, back to Mon. mid., actually Tues. A.M. I’ve gone around looking for Bradley & anything else — — Paul of the HiWires gave me a leaper, as did Beth, so finally Gypsy, Jenny & I in the Saab end up in North Beach at a bar just down from Mr. Otis’s as they were closing. Who should be at the very end of the bar, all-sloppy-lips nuzzling a big floozey Blonde bar fly, but Allen Ginsberg. Who at once turned to nuzzling me in between, introducing me to the few poets all gathered there whom I didn’t already know — Charles Olsen, Bob Duncan — to shorten this … suffice that no less etc., than 30 or more young D. Moriarty admirers, old queens, serious poets from Ireland,

County Cork, drunk poets from the local gentry & others all staggered down Grant to Francisco Street & carrying a full case of beer, went to a party as I regaled them from front to back of the block in two long columns with stories, homilies, introductions, warnings & other assorted Cassady Crap until by party-time we were all swinging up a storm. I asked everyone for a car to go to NYC in & the aforementioned Blonde Barfly led me to believe she had one, but didn’t. Other happenings more fun occurred & all had a great party, so it was about 5 A.M. before I finally left for N.Y.C. Gypsy, Jenny & myself — driving — in the ‘51 Chev., Pete & Doug closely following in the ‘57 M.G., got thru Sacramento just ahead of the commute fleet that Tues. Aug. 10th A.M. & promptly had — about 20 miles further the first (& I might try counting them as I write this letter) of countless delays — a flat L.R. on the Chev. so, no spare, but a spare car. I took it off, threw it in the M.G. went back & on the Shell credit card belonging to Doug’s mother — poor soul; even if a millionairess, she’ll faint when she gets her August bill — at least 350 or 400 dollars! — — Credit. Whoo — flash, flash (not that kind, nothing to produce it with, sob, sob) word just reached my ear & I was right, as usually am — heh, heh, twas the main bearing, front, & worse, the damn cam or crankshaft I mean, torqued itself right off its slat in the block — so no can fix — here we are broke, 39 miles S.W. of Cleveland (the Babbs moved just yesterday!) with tons of gear to hitchhike east with, gulp, grrr! A night of really vicious raining having passed; everything (but me) in the truck having gotten wet; Gypsy didn’t erect a tent designed to stop a flood; we set out to look for someone to trade a motorless truck for practically anything that runs — & after all day looking (including as near misses a 1949 Black Chev. a 1953 green one with smooth tires & a 1938 ton & ½ flatbed Dodge truck) we’ve come up with a 1955 Studebaker yellow station wagon with 49,000 ties, but no spare wheel or tire, radio, heater & such a badly leaking muffler that not only must all the windows be left down, but one must take aspirins hourly for the headaches produced; also right smarting is the eye irritation: anyhow, it runs, altho burning so much oil the hiway behind is festooned with smoke & fumes. I know all this from having ridden in it as the war-injured man with eight (8) kids — He wears a brace like Babbs had — who traded us drove me to the station to steer the truck as he pushed it home. Understand, I’m continuing this letter; here in the truck cab since the flies in the house — yes, house flies — are just too much (& because the oldest of the 8 urchins, a good-looking blonde about 17 or so has discontinued the goo-goo eyes & has gone to the show with boy friend, Billie, in his ‘55 Chev. that also has a slight miss) instead of getting on the road because we have to wait until tomorrow to go to the courthouse here in Milan, Ohio — birthplace of Tom A. Edison, ya know — to get the car title transfered to us. So it was about this time of day & raining too as it is here now that after fixing the flat & pushing it as hard as I could over the mountains we wheeled the ‘51 Chev. into Virginia City, Nev. where Chan, Gypsy & Jenny jumped into Chan’s ‘55 Olds (he had gone on ahead the day before) & drove out to Dave’s place in the desert to pick up the 6 months deserted truck I’m now sitting in. Tell Anne her ex-lover wasn’t there “gone North to Alaska”. Pete, Doug & I stayed on a Knoll outside town sleeping in & under the ‘51 Chev. while they went for the truck — finally returning toward midnite & as Tues. 8-10 ended we were all huddled in the truck — save Pete & Doug behind in the M.G. — as we barrelled it into Carson City where the Piute Indian who’d 1st put it together — — he ran a junkyard — was to spend all of Wed — 8-11 just getting it ready for the road again. We mostly stood around the garage as he worked, but I did take the M.G. for a spin & visited the gambling spots for awhile till, about 10 P word came that all was ready & again with Pete & Doug behind in the M.G., we finally started east in earnest! (mind you, we left the ‘51 Chev. & two lids with Chan in exchange for the truck — that’s all it cost!) (9-2, 5P) 9-1 at 5 PM. I was starting thru all of Pittsburg, Pa’s commute fleet in the noxious ‘55 Studebaker & despite having no power relative to the other machines I didn’t let a damn one of them get past me in the long run & by adroitly switching lanes very few, one or two a mile, I’d say, got by me in the short haul; so there! But back to recounting Cassady’s torpid trip East; 50 miles west of Ely, Nev — the truck ran out of gas — — altho holding 27 or 8 gallons it got only 78 miles per same — — so about daylight on 8-12, a thursday, we sent doug & pete ahead in the MG to fill our 5 gallon can with gas, well, hours later a tow truck came with the gas ‘cause Doug’s M.G. broke down about 25 mi. out of Ely — which itself is 200 from anywhere — & they’d hitchhiked. So, as I was pushing the M.G. into Ely at about 50 M.P.H. he decided to try starting it again — after numerous failures — — of the subsequent bump put the truck fan into the radiator — the 1st of several times this was to happen — so the tow truck pulled both cars to Ely. We were there over 24 hours, until late afternoon on Friday the 13th, acct. several reasons: 1, the $50 Gypsy’s parents sent arrived before the 5 P. W.U. closing time but we didn’t pick it up before then. 2, The truck bell-house was to be fixed the next day — & was — by a R.R. brakeman we fell in with who let us stay overnite at his house of wife & 2 kids. 3, The MG. decision was dependent on a generator arriving the next day — it didn’t — so, after towing it 100 miles north toward Wendover, the truck fan hit the radiator again — it was a loose fan bolt, not motor mounts as we thought & we left the M.G. behind for good. Bumming water & a crescent wrench from passing cars to get us to the next station, leaking like a sieve, we finally made Wendover after dark … Utah. At last — a pen provided by Jenny whose house we are at present staying—here in Bridgeton, New Jersey — some 40 miles south of Willmington, Delaware & Philadelphia & will be for a day or so; her Daddy is the Methodist minister for this town of 25,000 & when he arrives from N.Y.C. — where I’ll be going in due time this weekend — Tonite I’m anticipating a

spirited homily oration. Anyway, we left Wendover after using mud, tar, flaxseed, clay & spit to cover hole in radiator & got into Salt Lake City at 12:01 A.M. Sat. 8-14. I called Anne’s mother & she said it was much too late an hour & if I’d call at a respectable 8 A.M. she’d give me Anne’s phone number — — — so I did — — — and Anne’s Daddy answered & said Mama was gone already & he didn’t didn’t know his daughter’s phone number, so that was that & I never did see Anne. So no pussy, no money (Gypsy had spent it buying a shotgun in Ely, Nev.) no leapers, etc., etc., but we limped along — 5 of us; 3 of us in the cab, 2 in back of the pickup — filling radiator every few miles until, approaching daylight, we finally pulled into my hometown — & Gypsy’s — of Denver on Sun 8-15. Going directly to an Art Gallery owned by a nice little Toulouse-Lautrec named Phil, whose sister married Gypsy’s handsome, blond younger brother, we all slept till late afternoon then went to Gypsy’s parents in extreme So. Denver, then to Jenny’s friends in Boulder, Colorado where we spent the night. Returning to Denver that Mon. the 16th about noon, I had the brakes suddenly go out as I was approaching toll-plaza so I had to coast thru, missing everything and shouting (no horn) for all to watch out, pull over & fiddle around an hour or so before again we could go. That afternoon they sold all the pot & we’ve had none since, save a little weak Indiana Green in Chicago & some about as poor in Detroit. That nite Gypsy’s irate father took a swing at me!! — held in check by a browbeaten mother — so Gypsy called the aforementioned Iowa College girl I got tight with & she (I) drove us all back to Boulder — no, wait, it was Gypsy’s brother that took us to Boulder this Monday nite & Jenny’s ex-old man who drove us back about noon on Tues. the 17th & I went directly to the P.O. & got Anne M.’s letter which I will now take the time to answer, O.K.? Dear Anne: Glad you got some “satisfaction (I can’t get no”) from the reassurances in my letter & that you’ve proved unsuccessful in your seduction attempts. I don’t want my old lady to be fucked by everybody; just almost every body — & that two weeks at the Lishes was a ball, but could have been so much better; for one reason or another, right? “To endure, and be clean” — how difficult! & I do believe you are trying, tho on the surface you’ve very little reason to & if you sometimes fail, don’t worry about it, for I love you anyhow whether you try or not, succeed or not, altho just trying is mainly what I need to know you are doing — if only for my weakened ego. “Your love is the nourishment of my life” — would that my life were the nourishment of your love — or at least moreso. Thanks for the quote from Ken you sent, I don’t think it’ll ever be that way again (all those girls, I mean). “After all we are still alive” — that’s Right!! & you damn well better keep it that way or I’ll spank your bottom good in the astral plane too. Hoping to see you again, Love Always, Neal. So it was Tuesday nite, the 17th that the college girl let me drive her new Buick & all of us back to Boulder, Colo, some things to get done there in Boulder; so Gypsy could stay at home a day or so where the truck was all this time & get things straight there, so Doug & Pete could stay at the Art Gallery complex & so I could — heh, heh — get a little as I mentioned on page 4 of this soon-to-be book. Thursday nite, the 19th & half of Fri/ -20th, we all got hi on various goodies & I wailed for about 20 people at the Art Gallery & at the Red Head’s apt. whose regular boyfriend is, I believe, Sid .. remember him? I stayed at the red-head’s as did Doug & Pete, too, by now the Art Gallery crowd was tired of us I guess Fri nite — altho having to sleep alone since she worked the graveyard shift at the nursing home &, after calling Justin, he really wants to see me on the way back West — if I go back West — & a few other things, including reading a couple of J. Updike books, Gypsy, having gotten Jenny from Boulder, Doug & Pete & myself left Denver; the truck having been all fixed finally — we thought!! — with a new radiator, clutch rod extension, new L.R. brake, etc, Just after dark on Sat. Aug 21st we barrelled directly to Akron, Colo. where Jenny loaded down the truck with a lot of wedding presents she’d left there & charged straight on — myself driving all the way, of course — to a town just short of Omaha, Neb. called Wahoo, it was at Wahoo, last year, that I let Bob M. & Joe R. drive their only time in my ‘55 Ply. I left N.Y.C. in after the bus trip, remember? — they drove from Wahoo to Lodgepole, Neb — when, suddenly, whang — the blade of the fan tore loose (the same thing cut short Sterling Moss’s great drive in a GT Ferrari in the 1961 La Mans 24 hr) ripped a hole in the hood & sob, sob, tore another hole in the radiator!! Here we were, on a Sunday afternoon with no fan, 2 blades had flown off, not opposing ones either, no money again, and worse, no Shell station to save our necks. Gypsy had a distant friend in Omaha, who came out took one look at us & drove right away again! So we fucked around Wahoo until dark — getting the local punks to help us — offering to steal fans etc. — when we drove off minus a fan & with the motor backfiring very loudly, very loudly, Once in Omaha, after going to the friend’s house & being turned down for a flop, we spent the night sleeping beside a Sinclair station man, who said he’d pull the left bank and grind the valves for us — it wasn’t the fucking valves at all; instead the kids in Wahoo had put the plug wires back wrong & two or more were firing in opposition. Of course, we didn’t find this out until Des Moines, & so drove hundreds of miles making a truly terrible racket — but we didn’t & so we spent Monday morning, Aug 23, going back & forth between Omaha and Council Bluffs trying to find a Shell garage that would take us. None would since it took a deep-seated grinder, the valves being in the block on the ‘40 Caddy engine; but we did find how to plug the leak in the radiator — a raw egg!! — permanently, so no more trouble on that score & we ended up sitting for hours in front of the Western Union in Downtown Omaha — a lot of pretty girls there — waiting for the money that Jenny had wired her folks for before we finally took off for Chicago still minus a fan.

We fucked around Drake University in Des Moines looking for a prof. that Jenny knew; never found him; fixed the plug fuck-up there & roared — much less loudly now — into Chicago just before daylight Tuesday, Aug. 24, two weeks to the hour after we’d left Berkeley, Calif. It seemed more like 2 months! My timing proving as good as ever, we pulled up in front of Pete’s Japanese buddy’s house just as he arrived from all-nite binge & so we went immediately to bed & slept all of the 24th then got up late that night, got loaded on acid & went barhopping to hear some great Rock & Roll, finally ending up just before dawn running up & down the great sea wall guarding Lake Michigan’s Chi yacht harbor. We were taken over to a gone chick’s house where Doug, Gypsy & I were to sleep the rest of our time there; Jenny had flown home to New Jersey earlier & where, altho I could have had some nookie from several assorted ones, I failed to follow thru & get any ass. But I’ll be back there! Ha, ha. Last nite we went to see Moll Flanders & Lord Jim: Fair film fare. 9-3. 5 P. Today I spent mostly eating & sleeping; Gypsy went to Camden, but failed to fix the muffler, Jenny went shopping while the rest of the household, including her 19 yr. old brother who is majoring in radio & TV — he’s told me some informative things in that field, i.e., it takes only $100,000 to buy or build a TV station, a little less for an FM station, etc. — went on their usual ways. I haven’t discussed theology yet with Jenny’s father — & doubt I will since they say he doesn’t like to, but we are having fish for supper this Friday nite because I mentioned I was Catholic — their bugaboo. Wednesday, the 25th in Chi we got up late, socialized around a little, turned on, heard more live music, went to Pete’s partner to be & got a tape recorder for Gypsy to play some guitar on & goofed in general. Thursday, the 26th we finally got a fan in the truck, they being hard to find, decided to leave the hood of the truck off permanently; we’d had it off since Iowa, and tuned truck up. Early Fri. 27th AM was spent making a talking tape with a guy, artist, who defended Hitler vehemently, both as a guy who was great & as a fellow German; the artist being one. “But look at all the ass he kicked” he kept saying of Hitler, UGH. Late Fri. PM we took in a spade party that was just too much; drinking, dancing & of the 100 or so there 90 percent of them was hustling something; the girls their ass & the boys their shit. Which reminds me — I can get all the straight old white cross benny’s you want at $85 a thousand. I’ll let you know from Chicago when I go there next week if the deal’s still firm, tho I’m sure it is. Anyhow, I had a few & they are certainly OK, as well as the guy who’s got them, & he digs me very much as well — another Irishman. Anyhoo, late Saturday, Aug. 28th with only a $5 bill & Doug’s poor Shell credit card — Doug & Pete stayed behind of course, Chicago being their destination — Gypsy & I took off for N.Y.C. via Canada because he knew a girl in Toronto who supposedly would give us money. Sunday the 29th at 2 AM we tried to cross the border at Windsmont, & they kicked us back to Detroit acct. insufficient funds, so we went to a buddy of Gypsy’s – also a R.R. brakeman — & spent the nite & continued non-stop to go around Lake Erie on the U.S.A. side & enter Canada closer to Toronto — to the point where we broke down completely & this letter began — Wakeman, Ohio, on the same say your trial began 8-30-65. Now, Ken & all of you dear hearts, esp. Anne, Sharon & June — are any or all of them still around? If I were there they’d damn well know it; from putting my arms and legs around any or all of them, singly or collectively — — my schedule is this: Tomorrow AM we drive, Gypsy, Jenny & I, after I mail this, at last, so you’ll get it Tuesday, Sept 7th, to Pemberton, N.J. for some art frames, then Beach Haven, N.J. for a bikini beach party — pant, pant, pant, ogle, then finally to NYC in the late PM, a full 28 days after leaving SF — could’ve made as good time on a racing bike or a good go kart, huh? — where I’ll go rite to the Village for some leapers, acid, grass or what have you on a Saturday nite; then after see Bill Burroughs at 803 10th Street — you can write me there, but since I don’t anticipate being around to get any letters, why not write me at Chicago General Delivery since I’ll be there about Wed. at at earliest or Fri. at latest next week; anyway I’ll tell Bill Burroughs to forward any & all mail to Chicago Gen. Delivery & that way you have an excuse to write him on your own if you want — slick, huh? & Ed at the bookstore at 210 8th street, etc. I’ll check on Al Aronowitz, the N.Y. Post feature writer & Lucien Carr, the UPI Nite desk chief editor before taking off for North Port, Long Island & Jack Kerouac at No. 7 Judy Ann Court there; anyway Sun. & Mon. in NYC & environs then back here Mon. nite & if we put rings in the ‘55 Studebaker on Tuesday we’ll leave that night, if not, we’ll leave Tuesday AM the 7th about the time you get this. Once in Chicago I might very well stay there until Halloween or Thanksgiving cold weather drives me out. Not that I want to — I sincerely don’t, believe me, I dislike the place; as I do all the east — but account I’ve been offered a hundred & a quarter a week truckdriving job there, tho the boss himself has not seen me yet, & ya know damn well how much back child support I owe — almost $1,600 now — incidentally my oldest girl is 17 on Sept 7th & the youngest boy is 14 on Sept. 9th — so I figure to work a couple of months — sending my ex-wife $100 a week — If I don’t get the job, but I’m pretty sure I will, I very well might return as far as Ely, Nev. to pick up Doug’s MG for him & drive it back to Chicago; if so you may be sure I’ll continue on to your place to pick up my clothes & maybe a girl (or 2 or 3, or 4 or more! ha) altho that red-head in Denver needs a vacation & is already half-promised same by both Gypsy & me, i/e., I’m sure she’d dig the drive. Anyway, if I get the job, collecting things for the Disabled American Veterans, I’ll see you all in Nov. sometime, early or late. If I don’t I’ll see ya in Mid-Sept, with or without the red-head (shall just go back as far as Denver anyway) & if Anne, who still has first call on my heart (what’s left of it) — still wants me I’ll take her at least off your hands — if not, or if I don’t have to drive Doug’s car back to Chicago for him, he may come with me to pick it up — I’ll take Sharon (if she’ll still have me) & go directly to LA for

the winter. If neither girl is available, June (if she’ll still have me) & I will take off together & be very happy I’m sure! I mean it all! And otherwise in strict seniority order, I’ll take the Denver red-head & be very happy, I’m sure. Love, Neal.