Page 32
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
In a piece titled Neal Cassady, the speaker recounts preparing oatmeal, leaving work to sit with a man Louise calls the master, then considering death, memory and a drunken mind.
The speaker describes cooking before the summons interrupts the work. The encounter combines admiration, embarrassment and a return to the kitchen. The title supplies a name without confirming the identities or circumstances of the people described.
A typed piece titled 'Neal Cassady'. The speaker, working at 'hot springs', describes cooking oatmeal with care ('Ten stirs and I took it off'), then a dialogue that begins 'Hey man, they want to see you out front' and ends 'Just go to that table by the window.' A prose section follows, in which a man says 'you serve nice oatmeal' and 'asked if I was satisyed'.
The kitchen ritual builds up to a meeting the speaker treats as momentous, though little is said in it. The last lines, 'And why don't you live for an ever and let these things be behind / Because I have read says my drunken mind', turn the encounter into a question about memory and reading.