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By Jack Joseph Smith

I was working at Foxie's house in Santa Monica. Foxie was working at Ducommon Metal and Supply Company down on lower Alemeda street. It was in June of 1966 on Hart Street. Foxie had come out to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh in nineteen sixty with a gang of other guys named Gibbons, and Hambone and Sparky, and Turtle and Bud. Gibbons wasn't there now. & Sparky weren't there Foxies father died young as a wine salesmen, and Foxie drank hard as well, but with it he had always labored. Gibbons was setting up refinery jobs in the mills Chicago, but up until the end of this story, he would be back to L.A. for visits. Sparky had gone back to -- and he would come back After a couple of days there on Hart Street I'm going down to Ducommon with Foxie to get his check and he hates the place. Ringing coming big, clean steel down the line. Lots of sound. Huge sound. The workers looked like they were doing Piece work. And then there were the accountants up and behind large, thick windows. I'm twenty five and I'm thinking, this is the part that Foxie dislikes most. These parted hair guys sitting back like that. But I don't think that was in Foxie's mind. That was ostensible. Basically Foxie didn't like the noise. Well the time cards of course. "Mother fucker." He was a rats ass, Foxie. But he could be solumn. When Foxie was fifteen and sixteen he was at Father Flanegin's Boy's Town. Nebraska. Crazy Catholics on the plains. Anyway it's a Friday at 3:30. Foxie hasen't been to work, but he is difinetely picking up the check. We're walking out along the rolling, under the one swift swivel I beam crane. I watch the man on top running up and down the great bar with his remote control machine. I think. I bet I could work here for a year bringing I remember that Foxie had a Corvet back in sixty one. Now I just think of a regular Chevy. Or Chevy. I'd been kicked out of highschool for booking numbers. Foxie had had some trouble as well that I can not remember. He had made our papers over the counter in 1959...

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A scan-verified Foxie passage follows Pittsburgh men in Los Angeles, Hart Street, Ducommon Metal and Supply, factory noise, time cards, Father Flanegin's Boys Town, and remembered trouble around cars, school, and papers.

The corrected page sharpens the social setting: labor history, Catholic institutions, factory hierarchy, and male friendship all press against Foxie's anger. The handwritten insertions make the page feel like a memoir draft being reorganized around who left, who returned, and what kinds of work held them.

Claude

Autobiographical Foxie-and-narrator passage set in June 1966 - Hart Street in Santa Monica, Foxie at Ducommon Metal and Supply on Lower Alameda, the Pittsburgh gang of Gibbons, Hambone, Sparky, Turtle and Bud. Narrator is 25 years old, walking down Duecommon with Foxie on a Friday check day. Heavy OCR damage over handwriting but the memoir substrate is visible.