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By Jack Joseph Smith

260 lb. Eighty year old Scotsmen five foot six Wide-Mike married at eighteen to child bride come from Tennessee as foreigns to Oregon, Never married again after her death from snake bite thirty miles in the woods on their first night at his proud cabin sight. Swore all the way out with her on his back about how whiskey could have been her cure if he hadn't been nice about giving it up for the honeymoon. Still tells the story in the last lone dialect of a mountainman with the golden hell never out of his hip pocket near sleep nor out of his hand untill fiddle time. Then he continues the tale after the fiddle has deepened the ear how he had laid down beside the wife waiting for the rattler to bring down his darkness with her soul to soul. But it seems the curler wouldn't have anything to do with Mike's thick whiskey flesh already formed you see from starting the sipping at age four with a hillland daddy who had lost his gypsy family when the English made war on the tribes who hadn't subscribed to be civilized. Never in the new religion, let alone kneel their tongues to a change of speech. Which mike still clearly in harsh inflection carried as he stood up in the fire place music and wood room and said, "so I got up and cut the rattler in vengence with my knife, for I burried the little lady and left. so I got up ANd cuts to bits wi My KNifE thE sow of A bitch'EN iN VENgANcE, for I burriEd thE LittlE LAdy ANd lEft. MEMory

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

The narrator gives Wide-Mike's account of a bride's snakebite death, whiskey and revenge against a rattler. A handwritten revision restates the ending in dialect, with separate weight and memory annotations.

The narrator relates Mike's storytelling to speech, music and family history. The handwritten rewrite changes the ending's voice and source spelling. These are accounts within the work, not verified medical explanations or events in the author's life.

Claude

Typed prose about 'Eighty year old Scotsmen five foot six Wide-Mike', whose child bride died 'from snake bite thirty / miles in the woods on their first night', and who still tells how he 'cut the rattler in vengence with my / knife, for I burried the little lady and left.' A handwritten dialect version follows, ending 'for I burriEd thE LittlE / LAdy ANd lEft.', with a detached note 'MEMory'.

The story is a told tale, repeated 'after the fiddle has / deepened the ear', and the handwritten rewrite pushes it toward Mike's own voice. It belongs to the narrative, not to checked history.