Page 61

By Jack Joseph Smith

strawberry milkshake, and go licking my lips again out across Beverly Road and over to the five and ten cent store run by anouther thick eyebrowed jew who pushed you out his red door if you walked around to many counters with your eyes up and your head down. After awhile, when I became a weekend part of the street, I couldn't even get past the red door. Except during yo yo season at the begining of spring, when I would walk in yelling, I want a yo yo with my hands in my pockets and a gleam in my eye knowing that his sigh would mean that he was at a loss for words and I would the master boss during our one moment of the year. Beverly Road was the begining of a reality world voyage that would be interwoven with a childs fantasy perception lasting for the coming few years. Lincoln school was at the lower end of Mount Lebanon where one of the working mens towns began. It was a grammer school ending at the sixth grade level. Cat Man was in sixth grade and was said tho be sixteen years old. He ran the school and I learned alot as a child watching him move within the little boys and girls making sure nobody ever picked on anybody smaller than their own size. Nobody seemed to know where he came from and it was like he just dropped in from outer space every day. He had long black hair and a square tight face like that of a down to it street kid. He was faster than all the Lincoln bums who were mostly his age or even older and he was the only one I ever saw jump off the Lincoln wall. There he was crouching over the edge with his hands wrapped around the iron fence behind his back. He was looking out over the wide dirt field like an eagle when he sprang with his hands far out into both sides of the sky. He went down fast and rolled when he hit the dirt and then turned his body up without looking at any one of the people watching and

Original Scan

Page 61

AI Interpretation

GPT

Beverly Road becomes the opening of a lasting reality voyage, and Lincoln school takes shape under the legend of Cat Man, a mysterious older boy who rules by force, speed, and protection of the small.

Cat Man is built like a local myth, part street kid and part guardian, and the child watches him with the same intensity once reserved for imagined figures in the field. School is no longer just institution here but a stage where power, style, and justice can be read in bodies.

Claude

After his milkshake the narrator crosses to the five and ten cent store, whose owner pushes him out the red door except in yo yo season, then introduces Lincoln school and Cat Man, a sixth grader 'said tho be sixteen years old' who protects smaller children and is the only one ever seen to jump off the Lincoln wall, crouching 'like an eagle' before springing and rolling in the dirt.

The page moves from petty storekeeper feuds to hero worship, and Cat Man becomes the first real legend of the street world, a figure who 'just dropped in from outer space every day'. The slow-motion jump, arms spread into 'both sides of the sky', shows how the child's fantasy perception turns a schoolyard stunt into myth.