The Old Way

By Jack Joseph Smith

There I saw Geronimo save me from the fire When I was a child picking up a totem pole Over and down in Apache territory ten tops Waist nothing when you stand across the sand Says Che
Waist Nothing whEN you stANd Across thE sANd WAist NotiNg whEN you SEE All is so LUSH WAist NotiNg whEN you SEE Across thE coNcrEtE WAist NotiNg whEN OcEAN's wild ANd FLAppiNg thE Jig HAppy Now WE ARE Not Lost ANd A pENNy SAVEd is A pENNy EARNED
ChE Ten years old tops Over and down in Apache territory There I saw Geronimo save me from the fire When I was a child picking up a totem pole Waist nothing of your thought Che on the cliff The sand and the lushness The concrete and the aloneness Are so flapping and wild A body jib to swirl and turn out in measure Never saved always lost with youth A penny earned is a very long dream Is there romantic and depossed is true I live in a city were there still are a few stepping stones And all the way from the country how good those streets are for the heart

Original Scan

Page 15
Page 16
Page 17

AI Interpretation

GPT

Across three drafts, the speaker describes a childhood rescue in Apache territory and repeats a saying about wasting nothing. Sand, concrete, ocean weather and a penny proverb accompany changing accounts of being saved or lost.

The handwritten middle draft replaces a canceled Saved with Not Lost. The third draft returns to being lost with youth and places value in city paths and streets. Reading the versions together shows changes in emphasis without confirming the speaker's account as author biography. Some raised type and mixed-case handwriting remain uncertain.

Claude

'The Old Way' spans three pages: a typed draft beginning 'There I saw Geronimo save me from the fire', a handwritten chant repeating 'WAist NotiNg whEN', and a typed version ending 'how good those streets are for the heart'.

Read together, the drafts show the same childhood memory reworked into a refrain and then into reflection on youth and city life. The memory is the speaker's within the poem, and some handwritten case is provisional.