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 high, the running boards seemed friendly, and on cold days, in the mornings, and often at other times, my father had to fit the hand-crank into the front...
My father had two brothers. The younger was named Ben and the older was named John. Both were alcoholics and ne’er-do-wells. My parents often spoke of them. “Neither of them amount to a...
It was another Sunday that we got into the Model-T in search of my Uncle John. “He has no ambition,” said my father. “I don’t see how he can hold his god-damned head up and look people ...
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 lived next door. I still wasn’t allowed to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom often got dull. I would go out and walk...
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 found out about it. I was probably one of the last to know, because I still didn’t talk to anybody. A boy walked up to “Your mother has a hole . . .”—he to...
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 all his pulp magazines about World War 1. The best was Flying Aces. The dog-fights were great, the Spads and the Fokkers mixing it. I read all the stor...
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. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another gang of giants came from other schools. O...
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 standing in the yard during gym class when he walked up to me. “I’m putting you on garbage detail until further notice.” The kids had to work off their...
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 gunned down John Dillinger outside the movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered him. More than a year earlier the banks h...
I got lucky the next day. They called my name. It was a different doctor. I stripped down. He turned a hot white light on me and looked me over. I was sitting on the edge of the examina...
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 continued for weeks but there was little result. When one boil vanished another would appear. I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a...
The ultra-violet ray machine clicked off. I had been treated on both sides. I took off the goggles and began to dress. Miss Ackerman walked in. “Not yet,” she said, “keep your clothes o...
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 same. One group of seniors had graduated but they were replaced by another group of seniors with sports cars and expensive clothes. I was never confronte...
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 going to the beach with him. He wanted to go swimming. I didn’t want to he seen wearing swimming trunks because my hack was covered with boils and scars....
R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was for the misfits. Like I said, it was either that or gym. I would have taken gym but I didn’t want people to sec the boils on my back. There...
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 Mortenson,” said my mother, “he gets straight A’s. Why can’t you ever get any A’s?” “Henry is dead on his ass,” said my father. “Sometimes I can’t belie...
Jimmy Hatcher worked part time in a grocery store. While none of us could get jobs he could always get one. He had his little movie star face and his mother had a great body. With his f...
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 Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...
We were eating meatballs and spaghetti. My problems were always discussed at dinner time. Dinner time was almost always an unhappy time. I didn’t answer my father’s question. “Henry, an...
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 was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by guessing at the answers. I never had to cr...
I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub we...
A couple of nights later Becker walked in. I guess my parents gave him my address or he located me through the college. I had my name and address listed with the employment division at ...
I saw a vacancy sign in the window in front of a rooming-house, had the cabby pull up. I paid him and walked up on the front porch, rang the bell. I had one black eye from the fight, an...
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...