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By Jack Joseph Smith

Coming of Age for a Friend It was the way we laughed and talked over beer and fought when we should have sung Then we did that too Only that it was always alone There was a brook And the buildings were stone ivy knarled And there was a chaple not for catholics We were all dreaded Irish with no place to go but the Grove Collage wasn't clear and I just sleept there The others didn't do there studies but the private prostents took them in for football We hangover roamed in the morning out of wind for milkshakes And we dreamed of lips like oysters over seas and seamen The hugeest smile belonged to a 21 year old character actor named Paul Cusick sounded German but the brown in his hair was too red And the cuts in his face to dimpled to forget that Irish freckles look like, you started to pour whiskey over the white cloth when suddenly your legs had reason to run from the glass Paul simply said he studied business because his father had made it clear that economics was not abstract If your going to be an actor best to learn the lines before your ass performes I left the sweetness and the bells and the mushrooms for Alaska because I knew Jack London was better than Europe Paul stayed on with the beer parties and bad knees I always knew that his blue eyes regretted everything did but his old man had throat cancer and his brothers keep on going to the grave because they were giants in a sugar world His mother was good until the end serving roast beef and carrots on a long thin thick wood When I found out that I didn't have the nerve not to have a friend in the wilds I went to Hollywood like a predictable punk Paul got his number from the little city in the grove and went on with going back to the Ohio river vally swimming strange green rivers to sell prehistoric machines that have buttons and leavers to make their cocks work

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns memorial recollection into a roaming poem about college drift, whiskey, Paul Cusick, Alaska, and the loss threaded through friendship.

The speaker remembers college drinking, Paul Cusick and family illness, then contrasts his departure for Alaska and Hollywood with Paul's life along the Ohio river valley. The handwritten Europe replacement changes the comparison with Jack London. Smith revises the title and adds marginal passages whose sequence remains uncertain; I have not assigned a settled age-of-Paul title or joined those passages into the poem.

Claude

Under the heading 'Coming of Age for a Friend', the speaker remembers college among stone buildings, a brook and 'a chaple not for catholics', where 'We were all dreaded Irish' and 'Collage wasn't clear and I just sleept there', and centers on Paul, a '21 year old character actor' whose 'blue eyes regretted everything'. The speaker leaves 'for Alaska because I knew Jack London was better than Europe', later goes 'to Hollywood like a predictable punk', while Paul stays with 'the beer parties and bad knees' and ends up selling 'prehistoric machines' along the Ohio river 'vally'.

The poem sets two paths side by side: the speaker's restless flights to Alaska and Hollywood, and Paul's duty to a father who made it clear 'that economics was not abstract'. Its tone mixes barroom comedy with grief, as the father's throat cancer and brothers 'going to the grave' sit next to jokes about acting and whiskey. The heavy handwritten revisions, including a struck title and marginal inserts, show a draft still being reworked.