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Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:20 am Post subject: |
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The Story of Chicago May
Hardcover
By Nuala O' Faolain
| Quote: | When he [May's husband, Dal Churchill) was away with the gang, she would have had nothing to do but play cards for cents and eat fatty sausage and boiled potatoes in some settlement where thirsty dogs howled and howled because they were kept from the well by a board fence and where men building houses struggled with sheets of tin in the hot wind. Newly settled America must have been full of people waiting. For tools and livestock to come from the East. For wives and children who would climb down onto the platform, wratithlike in the smoke from the engine, and shy. Sometimes, she says, when the boys went off, they'd send her to a village they knew in the Badlands, or they'd send her back to Chicago where one of them had a sister. So when Dal [Churchill] wanted her to work with him, just the two of them together, I was for the plan, full of enthusiasm and anxious to prove myself. It was as his comrade that she learned how to rob men and banks, out there in pioneer America.
...We're hearing her voice in her book now, but when she describes Dal she might as well be every girl who ever fell for a boy. He fearlessly rode the countryside, she wrote, and forded the rivers where fords there were none, dealing out rough justice to oppressors of the common people. He was strong, muscular and quick as a panther. Children and women were safe in his hands. His friends could count on him to the death and so could his enemies. An inveterate gambler, he rarely touched liquor and never indulged in dope of any sort. He was quick on the trigger and a good pistol shot. Add to all this that he had black eyes that fairly bored through you and wavy chestnut hair, with a complexion that was bronzed with exposure, and there is little wonder that I fell desperately in love with him. (From Nebraska to Chicago, 1890-1893 at pgs. 33-34) |
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Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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Welcome to Hard Times
Paperback
By E.L. Doctorow
| Quote: | A day or two later and the sun not even up, Bert Albany rapped on the door until I heard him, and with the sleep still in my eyes I went with him up the street to Zar's place. The faro dealer was lying on the floor there, ashen white, and a big red rent in his vest where he had been stabbed. Jenks was standing nearby, clutching the collar of that little hunchback, his gun was drawn and sticking in the man's back. Bert told me the faro dealer had been lending out money to people at high rates, sometimes winning it back at his table. He had a list, Bert saw it, of the men indebted to him. The hunchbacky had been sitting there losing all of his loan, and when it was gone he jumped up and stuck a knife in the dealer's belly.
The dealer was quiet, concentrating on his breathing, he was in his senses enough to know to lay still. I went out to John Bear's shack. It showed even then the signs of resentment, the door was splintered, a board or two was gone from the roof. I woke the Indian up and gave him to understand there was someone needed doctoring. He came with me up to the saloon but when he saw it was Zar's place and the Russian waiting at the door, he turned on his heel and went back the way he came. (-- pgs. 172-173) |
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Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Bad Dirt
Wyoming Stories 2
Hardcover
By Annie Proulx
| Quote: | Georgina and Linny shook hands like men, eyeing each other as though looking for toeholds.
Linny said, "I sure appreciate it that you let me come here. It's my plan to find a job and then get an apartment or something in town. I don't want to get in your and Dad's way." She scratched her dark thigh with mint green nails.
"That sounds like a plan, Linny. I'm happy to help if I can. The job thing might be tough. Wyoming is not a great place for jobs. What kind a work have you been doin?"
"Mostly I been in school, little bit a film school in California, which I couldn't hack after they showed us this nasty old Edison film, Electrocuting an Elephant. Then I worked in Reno at one of the casinos."
"The elephant thing does sound ugly. But Reno?"
"Sure. My mother lives in Reno. She works in one a the casinos and I got a job in the gift shop. You know, waitin on customers. Somebody wins some money, first thing they want a do is spend it. And the gift shop had real expensive stuff. It was sort of a crappy job, though. But paid pretty good so the employees wouldn't try to rip the shop off. That's how I could afford the Land Rover. And I did other stuff. The usual, like, let's see, I did waitressing, bartending, and the gift shop thing, then a summer as a fire spotter in this lookout tower for the Forest Service. Which was a headache - those horny USFS guys would come up there all the time to 'help me out.'"
"Uh-huh," said Georgina, biting back a remark that anyone who wore clothes as skimpy as Linny's would always be bothered by men with horn colic, and went off to the kitchen to talk with the cook. (From The Indian Wars Refought a pgs. 26-27) |
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Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Classic western
DVD
| Quote: | Mexican kid: State lottery, senor?
Fred C. Dobbs (played by the inimitable Bogart): Beat it! I ain't buying no lottery tickets!
Kid: 4,000 pesos is the big prize.
F: Get away from me, you little bugger!
Kid: The whole ticket is only 4 pesos. It's a sure winner.
F: I ain't GOT 4 pesos.
Kid: Buy a quarter of a ticket for 1 peso silver.
F: If you don't get away from me, I'll throw this water right in your face!
Kid: Then 1/10th of a ticket, senor, for 40 --- (Dobbsy throws a glass of water in the kid's face). -- (undaunted) Senor, buy 1/20th. 1/20th costs you only 20 centavos. Look, senor, add the figures up. You get 13. What better number could you buy? It's a sure winner.
F: Yeah? How soon's the drawing?
Kid: Only three weeks off.
F: Alright, give me a twentieth so I don't have to look at your ugly face.
Kid: Gracias. Come again next time. |
Thus is ol' Dobbsy able to stake himself and a partner for a chance at the mother lode - and they'll get one, too - if only they can stay square with the man leading them to the magic mountain, a spry, goat-footed Walter Huston, who cannot help stealing the show. Even girls like this western.
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Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:40 am Post subject: |
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Doc Holliday
The Life and Legend
Hardcover
By Gary L. Roberts
| Quote: | | Doc slipped into the town's rhythms easily enough, although he doubtlessly watched with some amazement a town "where men drank, gambled, quarreled and fought, indifferently dumped hundreds of dollars over the bar and killed each other over a quarter suspiciously taken in a poker game or because of some trivial, perhaps wholly imaginary insult, [and] daily supplied mule and ox train loads of merchandise to the wants of man." (footnote omitted) Holliday had met sports, peace officers, and a few toughs in Dallas and Denison, but at Fort Griffin he encountered a rougher and more desperate class at the bars and gambling tables. At the Bee Hive Saloon and John Shaughnessy's place, John Henry found all the action he needed. (From Gone to Texas at p. 75) |
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Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels
A Treasury of the Best of Harper's
Magazine from 1850 to the Present (1972,
in our case)
Hardcover
Edited by Horace Knowles
| Quote: | Bill stood six feet and an inch in his bright yellow moccasins. A deer-skin shirt, or frock it might be called, hung jauntily over his shoulders, and revealed a chest whose breadth and depth were remarkable. These lungs had had growth in some twenty years of the free air of the Rocky Mountains. His small, round waist was girthed by a belt which held two of Colt's navy revolvers. His legs sloped gradually from the compact thigh to the feet, which were small, and turned inward as he walked. There was a singular grace and dignity of carriage about that figure which would have called your attention meet it where you would. The head which crowned it was now covered by a large sombrero, underneath which there shone out a quiet, manly face; so gentle is its expression as he greets you as utterly to belie the history of its owner, yet it is not a face to be trifled with. The lips think and sensitive, the jaw not too square, the cheek bones slightly prominent throughout, and you would not believe that you were looking into eyes that have pointed the way to death to hundreds of men. Yes, Wild Bill with his own hands has killed hundreds of men. Of that I have not a doubt. "He shoots to kill," they say on the border.
In vain did I examine the scout's face for some evidence of murderous propensity. It was a gentle face, and singular only in the sharp angle of the eye, and without any physiognomical reason for the opinion, I have thought his wonderful accuracy of aim was indicated by this peculiarity. He told me, however, to use his own words:
"I allers shot well; but I come ter be perfeck in the nmountains by shootin at a dime for a mark, at bets of half a dollar a shot. And then until the war I never drank liquor nor smoked," he continued, with a melancholy expression; "war is demoralizing, it is." (From Wild Bill by George Ward Nichols, February, 1867, in Part V, Scalawags and Hard Cases), at p. 321) |
A terrific historical resource!
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Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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Conde Nast Traveler
Magazine Subscription
Romancing the Rails
The Union Pacific Railroad opened the immensity of the frontier to Gilded Age adventurers. Tony Perrottet retraces the first transcontinental train trip and recaptures the spirit of 1869.
March, 2007
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: There is no exotic holiday destination sufficiently compelling to withstand the spoiler effect of the magazine's ombudsman column. Read it and weep. Buckets. What we have learned from Om so far: Never, ever for any reason board a cruise ship! |
| Quote: | A day later, I was on Amtrack's California Zephyr, rolling westward from Denver. Sure this wasn't exactly Gilded Age luxury - nor does Amtrack have the panache of European railways - but the Zephyr is a Western train, which means it has more generous lines and more comfortable carriages than the trains back East. What's more, there was a definite sense of occasion felt by both passengers and staff, a buzz of excitement as we slowly conquered the Rockies. The California Zephyr still has its mystique.
In the observation car, crowds had gathered to gape at the scenery. The train wound through alpine fields of purple sage and yellow wildflowers; serrated bluffs towered above raging torrents. But the passengers were almost as striking as the landscape. A fair cross-section of America had gathered on this diesel stagecoach, as if frontier society had merely been slightly updated: There were Midwestern farmers, affluent Florida retirees, a Buddhist monk, and a family of pink-skinned Mennonites - the women in white lace bonnets - eagerly spotting prairie dogs through binoculars. A wiry gambler had set up a friendly game of three-card monte (playing for coins only, he insisted), while a Christian zealot filled me in on evolutionary creationism ... (-- p. 110) |
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Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:29 am Post subject: |
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Spirit of the West
Cooking from Ranch House and Range
Hardcover
By Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs
| Quote: | Cheyenne Club Crown Roast of Pork
In 1870, Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the richest town, per capita, in the United States. Wealthy Easterners and Europeans came to Wyoming Territory because of the lure of the potential profits in grazing cattle on the open range and the romance of living a cowboy life. Finding that the hotels and eating establishments in Cheyenne were not up to their standards, twelve of these men, all members of the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association, formed the Cactus Club.
By the summer of 1871 - at a cost of $25,000 - the group had constructed a three-story, mansard-roofed, brick-and-wood building with thick carpets and hardwood floors that became known as the Cheyenne Club. The facilities included a dining room, a reading room, and a billiard room on the ground floor, with six bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and wine cellar in the basement.
Club members were expected to observe strict decorum. Profanity and obscenity were forbidden, as was cheating at cards. No games were to be played in the clubhouse for "money's sake." Despite these rules, thousands of dollars were said to have exchanged hands in private card games in the members' rooms at night.
The Club was handsomely and comfortably furnished, with paintings by Albert Bierstadt and the 17th century Dutch artist Paul Potter on its walls.
To oversee this elegant establishment the members hired Francois de Prato and his wife from Ottawa, Canada. As steward, Monsieur de Prato made the club an oasis for the culture-starved sophisticates on the Prairie. The servants were well-trained and the wine cellar and larder were stocked with the finest of everything. Although beef was king, the chef - who had the reputation of producing the best food between St. Louis and San Francisco, sometimes served a festive crown roast of pork... (-- p. 64) |
Deeply satisfying cowboy fare.
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Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 11:30 am Post subject: |
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Poker Nation
Hardcover
By Paris Review editor Andy Bellin
| Quote: | | The repercussions of cheating were much worse back in the Wild West. A legendary American Indian poker player named Poker Tom was said to have cheated a California merchant named Ah Tia out of $2,000. Two days later, the remains of Poker Tom were apparently fed to members of his own tribe in a stew that Ah Tai (sic) had cooked himself at a county fair. (-- p. 146) |
Not even a dyslexic editor can spoil the fun of this poker classic.
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Paperback
By California Dreamer Joan Didion
| Quote: | .. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks "STARDUST" or "CAESAR'S PALACE." Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with "real" life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. All of which makes it an extraordinarily stimulating and interesting place but an odd one in which to want to wear a candlelight satin Priscilla of Boston wedding dress with Chantilly lace insets, tapered sleeves and a detachable modified train.
And yet the Las Vegas wedding business seems to appeal to precisely that impulse...All of these (wedding) services, like most others in Las Vegas (sauna baths, payroll-check cashing, chinchilla coats for sale or rent) are offered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, presumably on the premise that marriage, like craps, is a game to be played when the table seems hot. (From Marrying Absurd, pgs. 60-61) |
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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The Poker Face of Wall Street
Hardcover
By Aaron Brown
| Quote: | ...When economic opportunities start to narrow, towns have to cultivate a middle class, people who value security over the chance to get rich. In those circumstances, a bank looks more sensible than a poker game.
A variant of this system was documented in Yukon gold rush camps later in the century. It probably happened elsewhere, but we have no record. Miners would work all season, then play poker all winter. The winners could leave, having accumulated as much as they could carry, and as much as they needed to be wealthy for life. The losers would mine for another season and try their luck again. This is much more efficient than everyone working until he gets a required stake. By concentrating assets, some people got to leave early, which opened places for newcomers. (From Chapter Five, Pokernomics, at p. 143) |
More Gambling for Gold. |
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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Women of Mythology
Hardcover
By Kay Retzkoff
| Quote: | At long last, the several gods who had advised the emperor revealed themselves to her (the empress): "We told him of the land to the west," said the first god.
"We revealed to him that it contained gold, silver, and gems that sparkle in the sunlight," said the second god.
"We promised him this country," said the third god.
"But he answered us haughtily," said the first god. "He said, 'There is no land to the west. One only has to climb a mountaintop to see that there is only ocean.'"
"He claimed that were deceivers," said the second god.
"For that sacrilege," said the third god, "we took his life."
"How can I undo the curse upon the land that my husband's sacrilege has brought about?" the empress asked.
"The land to the west is to be ruled by the child in your womb," said the first god.
"What child is in my womb?" asked the empress.
"If you go to seek the land to the west, you must make offerings to all the heavenly deities and all the earthly deities, to all the gods of the mountains, rivers and seas," said the first god.
"You must create a shrine at the top of the ship for us and put wood ashes into a gourd," said the second god.
"You must make many chopsticks and plates and cast them onto the ocean waves," said the third god.
"Then may you cross the waves to the land of the west," said the first god. (From the chapter, The Empress Jingo Kogo Conquers the Western Kingdom, at pgs. 152-153) |
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Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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Gamblers, Gunmen and Good-Time Gals
Living It Up in the Wild West
Paperback
By Valerie Green
Our copy was purchased at a third-rate cafeteria/tourist shop at the Saskatchewan River Crossing,
a stop along Alberta's magnificent Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff while aboard a cush,
air-conditioned Brewster Sightseeing Bus. The bus tour turned out to be a shimmering oasis
in an otherwise hot, dry, utterly inhospitable Alberta, which, sadly, has not yet discovered manners
or the scientific miracle of air conditioning, though they sure charge as if they had. We can't think of
even one nice thing to say about either Brewster's Mountain Lodge - not the same co. - or - ugh! -
the rough-and-tumble Inns of Banff - P.U.!
| Quote: | It is hard to believe that Alice Ivers, born in Sudbury, England in 1853, the only daughter of a schoolteacher, would end her life in Sturgis, South Dakota, having lived for at least 40 of her 77 years as a tough, cigar-chomping, gun-toting gambler. In Colorado, she became one of the greatest poker players and best faro dealers in the west, despite an upbringing that had offered her the education and polish of a young woman of breeding.
Her father had sent her to a women's seminary in Sudbury and had always instilled moral values in his daughter. When Alice was 12 years old, the family immigrated to America, settling first in Virginia, where Alice attended a fashionable southern school offering the best in education. With the Civil War at its height and with gold beckoning in the west, the Ivers family moved to Lake City, Colorado.
By then Alice was a beautiful young woman of breeding and class. She attracted the attention of many young men, including Frank Duffield, a mining engineer and gambler, who became her first, and perhaps only, true love. The two were soon married and, because of Frank's work, began to move from one boom mining camp to another, finally settling back in Lake City. The Duffields became the centre of social activity wherever they partied, and Alice enjoyed all the attention she received. She also enjoyed joining Frank at the poker tables, preferring that to staying home. Frank taught her all he knew about the game of poker, and she even sat in on games while Frank was at work. She gained some notoriety, because women were not expected to be poker players - and good ones at that. Alice's education served her well. Her math skills were excellent, and she developed a keen sense of the cards. Before long, she was a far better poker player than her husband and most of his friends. (From Chatper 7, Poker Alice to Her Friends, at pgs. 100-101) |
More on Poker Alice, including an excellent historical photo gallery, at True West.
More Celebrated Women Gamblers.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2937#2937. |
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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CBC Radio Two
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera
Featuring Puccini's Girl of the Golden West
and artists of the fabulous Radio Filharmonisch Orkest
| Quote: | Show: SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA
Date: 2007/11/03
Time: 13:30:00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST (This performance is not commercially available) Duration: 02:02:23
Concert: LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST
Persons/Roles: DAVID BELASCO - AUTHOR
GIACOMO PUCCINI - COMPOSER
CARLO ZANGARINI - LYRICIST
EDO DE WAART - CONDUCTOR
NORBERT ERNST - TENOR
PETER GIJSBERTSEN - TENOR
STEPHEN KECHULIUS - BARITONE
NETHERLANDS RADIO MEN'S CHORUS - CHORUS
NETHERLANDS RADIO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA - ORCHESTRA
HUGH SMITH - TENOR
EVA-MARIA WESTBROEK - SOPRANO |
| Quote: | Act I
Sheriff Rance quiets a brawl that has broken out in Minnie's Polka saloon. Ashby announces that he is chasing the bandit Ramerrez and his gang. When Rance is told that Minnie is only toying with him, another fight follows. A plan is formed to capture Ramerrez, after reading a letter from Ramerrez's old girlfriend. Minnie rebuffs Rance's attentions. The stranger Dick Johnson enters who knows Minnie. When the miners demand to know his plans, she intervenes. Rance becomes angry when he sees Minnie and Johnson dancing. Ashby returns with the gang member Castro, and after they threaten to kill him, he promises to betray Ramerrez, who is actually Johnson. The miners follow Castro on a wild goose chase. Johnson stays behind to protect Minnie. They confess their love for each other.
Act II
Minnie tells Johnson about her life, and they kiss. Overwhelmed with guilt over his secret identity, Johnson tries to leave, but is stopped by snow. He swears his love to Minnie. Before the sheriff and his men enter, Minnie hides Johnson. She is shocked to learn that Johnson is Ramerrez. After the men leave, she confronts Ramerrez. He confesses, asks for forgiveness, and reforms. After leaving he is shot, but Minnie takes him back to care for him in secret. Sheriff Rance is about to give up searching for Ramerrez, when he discovers a drop of blood. Minnie desperately makes Rance an offer. If she beats him at poker, he must let Ramerrez go free. If he wins, she will be his. Minnie wins by cheating, and Rance honors the deal.
Act III
Rance is furious that Minnie loves Ramerrez. Ashby captures Ramerrez and turns him over to the sheriff. The men want to hang Ramerrez as a thief and a murderer. He denies killing anyone, but admits to stealing. He accepts the sentence, and only asks that Minnie be told that he escaped. Minnie gallops in before the hanging, and while Rance tries to proceed, she convinces the miners that they owe Minnie too much to kill the man she loves. Minnie and Ramerrez leave to start a new life together. (From Wikipedia) |
Not such a surprising plot development, perhaps. According to the composer's biography posted at Musician Biographies:
| Quote: | | ... Puccini was famously handsome and charming, but he also possessed a melancholic side that he drew on to give depth to his characters. He was wholly uninterested in religion or politics, and enjoyed racing sports cars on his property and gambling at cards. |
New program host Bill Richardson is breathing intelligent new life into this PokerPulse favorite, which has occasionally suffered from the weight of so many stars - quite literally. We have especially enjoyed recent selections from this summer's Salzburg Festival.
Link to this entry
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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Run With the Hunted
Audio Cassette
Masterfully edited by Buk's publisher, John Martin
Written and read by Charles Bukowski
| Quote: | Luck
Once we were young at this machine
drinking smoking typing
it was a most splendid
miraculous time
still is
Only now instead of
moving toward time it moves
toward us makes each word
drill into the paper
clear
fast
hard
feeding a closing space
(From Side One) |
| Quote: | To his publisher, John Martin (of Black Sparrow Press)
| Quote: | 8-12-86
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
"I put in 35 years . . . "
"It ain't right . . . "
"I don't know what to do . . . "
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. . .
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank |
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Last edited by editor on Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:14 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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