The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under the...

I remember the Model-T. Sitting… friendly, and on cold days, in the… father had to fit the hand-crank i… many times in order to start the c… “A man can get a broken arm doing…

My father had two brothers. The y… “Neither of them amount to anythin… “You just come from a bad family,… “And your brother doesn’t amount t… My mother’s brother was in German…

It was another Sunday that we got… “He has no ambition,” said my fath… “I wish he wouldn’t chew tobacco,”… “If this country was full of men l… over and we’d he running the laund…

I had begun to dislike my father. He was always angry about something. Wherever we went he got into arguments with people. But he didn’t appear to frighten most people; they often just ...

I didn’t have any friends at school, didn’t want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me. During lunch one day I was a...

There were continual fights. The teachers didn’t seem to know anything about them. And there was always trouble when it rained. Any boy who brought an umbrella to school or wore a rainc...

I took the envelope home to my mother and handed it to her and walked into the bedroom. My bedroom. The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even ...

By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday. There were two pillows on my chair. I ...

Lila Jane was a girl my age who l… to play with the children in the n… often got dull. I would go out and… things, bugs mostly. Or I would s… thing I imagined was that I was a…

During the second and third grades I still didn’t get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I wo...

One night my father took me on his milk route. There were no longer any horsedrawn wagons. The milk trucks now had engines. After loading up at the milk company we drove off on his rout...

I was in the 4th grade when I fou… the last to know, because I still… me while I was standing around at… “Don’t you know how it happens?” h… “What?”

Later in the hospital they were dabbing at my knees with pieces of cotton that had been soaked in something. It burned. My elbows burned too. The doctor was bending over me with a nurse...

My father always ran the neighborhood kids away from our house. I was told not to play with them but I walked down the street and watched them anyhow. “Hey, Heinie!” they yelled, “Why d...

I didn’t know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up and they needed three on a side. I stil...

Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn’t need the other guys much. They had more or less kicked F...

Frank liked airplanes. He lent me… War 1. The best was Flying Aces.… and the Fokkers mixing it. I read… I liked going over to Frank’s pla… His mother wore high heels and had…

The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn’t chosen for the homeroom teams but I was threatened less. Da...

There were times when Frank and I were friendly with Chuck, Eddie and Gene. But something would always happen (usually I caused it) and then I would be out, and Frank would be partly ou...

Then I started attending Mt. Jus… Delsey Grammar School went there,… gang of giants came from other sch… the 9th grade class. When we lined… our guts hanging out, heads down,…

One day, just like in grammar school, like with David, a boy attached himself to me. He was small and thin and had almost no hair on top of his head. The guys called him Baldy. His real...

At Mt. Justin, biology class was neat. We had Mr. Stanhope for our teacher. He was an old guy about 55 and we pretty much dominated him. Lilly Fischman was in the class and she was real...

Our English teacher, Miss Gredis, was the absolute best. She was a blonde with a long sharp nose. Her nose wasn’t much good but you didn’t notice it when you looked at the rest of her. ...

Curly Wagner picked out Morris Moscowitz. It was after school and eight or ten of us guys had heard about it and we walked out behind the gym to watch. Wagner laid down the rules, “We f...

My mother went to her low-paying job each morning and my father, who didn’t have a job, left each morning too. Although most of the neighbors were unemployed he didn’t want them to thin...

Wagner wasn’t done with us. I was… “What are you doing, Chinaski?” “Nothing.” “Nothing?” I didn’t answer.

Jr. high went by quickly enough. About the 8th grade, going into the 9th, I broke out with acne. Many of the guys had it but not like mine. Mine was really terrible. I was the worst cas...

That summer, July 1934, they gunn… movie house in Chicago. He never… repealed and my father drank Easts… everybody feel terrible. Roosevelt… over the radio and everybody liste…

I got lucky the next day. They ca… doctor. I stripped down. He turne… “Hmmm, hmmmm,” he said, “uh huh .… I sat there. “How long have you had this?”

The next day I sat in the hall in my green tin chair, waiting to be called. Across from me sat a man who had something wrong with his nose. It was very red and very raw and very fat and...

The drilling and squeezing continu… result. When one boil vanished ano… of the mirror alone, wondering how… my face in disbelief, then turn to… horrified. No wonder people stared…

The ultra-violet ray machine click… sides. I took off the goggles and… What is she going to do to me, I… “Sit up on the edge of the table.” I sat there and she began rubbing…

The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed wit...

The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up with something. The boils drained. They didn’t vanish but they flattened a bit. Yet some new ones would appear and ri...

Back at Chelsey High it was the s… graduated but they were replaced b… cars and expensive clothes. I was… the poor guys in or out of class. About a week into my second semest…

But there were some good moments. My sometime friend from the neighborhood, Gene, who was a year older than I, had a buddy, Harry Gibson, who had had one professional fight (he’d lost)....

Abe Mortenson was had enough to be around but he was just a fool. You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn’t deceive anybody. It’s the deceivers who make y...

One Sunday Jimmy talked me into g… to go swimming. I didn’t want to h… body. But nobody would notice that… but nobody would see that. I here was nothing to do and I di…

R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Train… said, it was either that or gym. I… people to sec the boils on my back… sports or guys whose parents force… patriotic because they had more to…

R.O.T.C. kept me away from sports while the other guys practiced every day. They made the school teams, won their letters and got the girls. My days were spent mostly marching around in...

“You ought to try to be like Abe… “Henry is dead on his ass,” said m… “Don’t you want to be happy, Henr… “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,”… “What’s going to become of you? H…

Jimmy Hatcher worked part time in… could get jobs he could always get… “Why don’t you come up to the apar… “What for?” “I steal all the beer I want. I t…

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out,...

Graduation Day. We filed in with our caps and gowns to “Pomp and Circumstance.” I suppose that in our three years we must have learned something. Our ability to spell had probably impro...

Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears– Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of a...

The first three or four days at M… similarity was a very dependable t… was an accepted fact. There wasn’t… about it as I pushed my cart about… were more intelligent than the sto…

“So you couldn’t hold a job for a… We were eating meatballs and spagh… “What happened? Why did they can… I didn’t answer. “Henry, answer your father when he…

I looked for a job all summer and couldn’t find one. Jimmy Hatcher caught on at an aircraft plant. Hitler was acting up in Europe and creating jobs for the unemployed. I had been with J...

Everybody had gym period at the same time. Baldy’s locker was about four or five down from mine in the same row. I went to my locker early. Baldy and I had a similar problem. We hated w...

I only met one student at City College that I liked, Robert Becker. He wanted to be a writer. “I’m going to learn everything there is to learn about writing. It will be like taking a ca...

The war was going very well in Europe, for Hitler. Most of the students weren’t very vocal on the matter. But the instructors were, they were almost all left-wing and anti-German. There...

I found a room on Temple Street i… a week, upstairs on the second flo… My first night there I discovered… the entrance. I liked that. All I… home. The bar was full of little d…

A couple of nights later Becker w… my address or he located me throug… “I will do anything honest or othe… calls. Becker sat in a chair as I poured…

I saw a vacancy sign in the window… cabby pull up. I paid him and walk… had one black eye from the fight,… lips were puffed. My left ear was… An old man came to the door. He w…

After English class one day Mrs. Curtis asked me to stay. She had great legs and a lisp and there was something about the legs and the lisp together that heated me up. She was about 32,...

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn’t like what I saw down there. Those men and women had no special daring or brilliance. They wanted what everybod...