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By Jack Joseph Smith

I was staying at Foxies house in Santa Monica. Foxie was working at Ducommon Metal and Supply company down on lower Alemeda street. It was in June of 1966 on Hart Street. Foxie had come out to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh in nineteen sixty with a gang of other guys named Gibbons, and Hambone and Sparky, and Turtle and Bud. Gibb- & SPARKY WERN'T THERE ons now. Foxies father died young as a wine salesmen, and Foxie drank hard as well, but with it he had always labored. Gibbons was setting up REFACTORY JOBS IN THE MILLS around CHICAGO. BUT UP UNTIL THE END OF THIS STORY, HE would build Locks and Dams and Bridges.- BE BACK TO L.A. FOR VISITS. SPARKY HAD GONE BACK TO - AND HE WOULD NE COME BAC After a couple of days there on Hart Street I'm going down to Ducommon with FOXIE to get his check and he hates the place. Ringing COMING big, clean steel down the line. Lots of sound. Huge sound. The workers looked like they were doing Piece work. And then there were the accountants up and behind large, thick windows. I'm twenty five and I'm thinking, this is the part that Foxie dislikes most. These parted hair guys sitting back like that. But I don't think that was is just the way it ostensible. Basically Foxie didn't like the noise. Well the time cards of course. He was a rats ass, Foxie. But he could be solumn. When Foxie was fifeteen and sixteen he was at Father Flanegin's Boy's Town. Nebraska. Crazy Catholics on the plains. Anyway it's a Friday at 3:30. Foxie hasen't been to work, but he is difinetely picking up the check. We're walking out along the rolling, under the one swift on swivel I beam crane. I watch the man on top running up and down the with his ROMOTE control MACHINE. great bar. I think. I bet I could work here for a year bringing A BUCK. SO I TRIED TO GET ON but THEY didn't HIRE ME, Foxie had a Corvet back in sixty one. Now I just think of a regular Chevy. I'd been kicked out of highschool for booking numbers. Foxie had had some trouble as well that I can not recount. But we had picked up our papers over the counter in 1959...

Original Scan

Page 10

AI Interpretation

GPT

The narrator recalls Foxie and a group from Pittsburgh in Los Angeles, then accompanies Foxie to a metal company to collect his check. Factory noise, accountants behind windows, a crane and memories of cars and school trouble occupy the scene.

The narrator considers whether Foxie dislikes the accountants, then names noise and time cards. Handwritten additions describe mill jobs and an unsuccessful attempt to get hired; worn edges and canceled passages leave parts of the account incomplete.

Claude

A first-person draft recalls 'I was staying at Foxies house in Santa Monica' in 'June of 1966', Foxie's friends from Pittsburgh, and a visit to the Ducommon plant where 'Ringing' steel moves 'down the line' and the narrator thinks 'I bet I could work here for a year'.

The narrator watches Foxie's dislike of the plant and mixes memories of Boy's Town and old trouble. Many handwritten revisions crowd the page, and some margin words run off the scan edge.