Page 2

By Jack Joseph Smith

We cut to Ben and his paper truck behind the Pittsburgh Press building. He is with his father on the dock. They are obviously related. Both of stocky build, with ethnic Irish faces. The father also is a paper truck driver, but a laborer is loading his truck, while Ben loads his own. The time The dock is one long masive fill of gray concrete. The father is speaking. "Ya gonna stay down on dis cement slab for da rest of your life, and be an ass like me. All those rich boys from Mount Lebanon gonna call ya dumb Ben some day when they quit their part'in and their old man's get'um the big homes and put them behind the office glass in the factory so that they can give orders through the air conditioner. Ben, why in the hell don't you go up and run me' tavern. Be full time at it. You can drop some of that beer belly, get some fancy duds and you'll be hav'in it. Maybe even a lady that don't chew gum. Ya know what I mean son. We know the boy in the rackets can marry the fashion designer if he takes to the urge. Not saying you have to get involved with dat kind of stuff. It's to much of an intellectual pain in the ass. But pushing good booze ain't bad, if ya got a good polished wooden joint. We got the antique mirrors, we know where to get the good cheese, and... Ben interrupts: "This boy don't want nothing to do with running the bars."

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Ben's father urges him to leave paper-truck labor for tavern ownership, tying class advancement to local power, style, and masculine protection.

The father pitches tavern ownership through polished wood, antique mirrors, fancy clothes and local connections. He resents the rich boys who can leave manual work for offices, but Ben refuses to run bars. Smith struck the weather sentence and relocated that setting to page001's margin; the surviving page leaves the typed phrase The time unfinished.

Claude

Behind the Pittsburgh Press building, Ben and his father, 'Both of stocky build, with ethnic Irish faces,' load paper trucks on a dock that is 'one long masive fill of gray concrete.' The father urges Ben to leave 'dis cement slab' and run his tavern, promising 'fancy duds,' 'a lady that don't chew gum,' 'antique mirrors' and 'the good cheese,' until Ben cuts in: 'This boy don't want nothing to do with running / the bars.'

The page is almost all the father's dialect monologue, and its run-on pitch mixes resentment of the 'rich boys from Mount Lebanon' with a working man's picture of respectability. The typed and penciled corrections, including 'da' for 'the' and the struck weather sentence, show the author tuning the voice and moving setting detail elsewhere. Ben's flat one-line refusal lands harder for coming after so much talk.