Page 60

By Jack Joseph Smith

out of my head as I walked by the Lincoln bums bending low and pitching crap over flatened out used bubble gum against Mr. Cantaloupes wall in an afternoon of wind blown shirt sleeves and ants being whisked across the sidewalk on their backs under old gray teachers skirts leading themselves by their horn rimmed noises and being careful not to bump the shoulder of any lincoln bum. Lincoln school and Mr. Cantaloupes store were on Beverly Road, and it was a crazy place alright, where all the devils of all ages came around to loaf. There was an icecream store in the middle of the block and lick lick I would go after waiting in line for my chocolate chip cone that came to a point and up up I would go with my toung in a rhythm without time and way away my eyes would go crossing a street of honk honks and passing down the other side I would listen to the snip snip of the many barber fingers cutting the ends of childrens tops and warming secrets in business mens ears. The barber shop was a long line of Italian mustaches and they were all said to be bookies too. Everyone that was Italian was supposed to be a bookie except the man, who was really the little old shoe maker. Once he threw a hammer through his own window at Pumpkin. Pumpkin was the toughest kid around, but he went too far when he gave the finger to the little old shoe maker. At the other end of the street was another drug store run by a mean and clean old jew. I would slip around to the back alley and steal his empty bottles stacked up by his back door and then go back around and trade them into him for a strawberry milkshake. I have to admit, they were better than Mr. Cantaloupes and I would giggle sipping them down thinking of my father saying, the price is right. You sure make thick milkshakes, I would say, and he would say, you can't loaf in here you know, and I would say, okay, thanks for the thick

Original Scan

Page 60

AI Interpretation

GPT

Beverly Road thickens into a comic and crooked little economy of bums, barbers, Italians, Jews, stolen bottles, and milkshakes, all watched through a child's delighted sense of petty crime and neighborhood rank.

The street is dirty, ethnic, noisy, and full of whispered adult labels like bookie, but those labels only make it more alive. Stealing bottles and trading them back for milkshakes shows how quickly the child learns to move through this world with mischief instead of awe.

Claude

The narrator walks Beverly Road past the Lincoln bums 'pitching crap', licks a chocolate chip cone, listens to the barbers' 'snip snip', recalls the little old shoe maker throwing a hammer through his own window at Pumpkin, and steals empty bottles from a drug store's back door to trade them back for strawberry milkshakes.

The page is a child's catalogue of a street economy, full of rumored bookies, ethnic labels, petty crime, and sensory rhythm like 'lick lick' and 'honk honks'. The bottle scam, justified with his father's 'the price is right', shows the boy absorbing the neighborhood's hustle with glee rather than guilt.