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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

Page 10

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

A memoir-toned prose page centered on Foxie, a Pittsburgh transplant working at 'Ducommon Metal and Supply Company down on lower Alemeda street'. The narrator dates it precisely - 'June of 1966 on Hart Street' - and sketches the migrant gang who came west 'from Pittsburgh in nineteen sixty': 'Gibbons, and Hambone and Sparky, and Turtle and Bud'. Class and labor saturate the scene: the factory's 'big, clean steel down the line', the 'Huge sound', the 'accountants up and behind large, thick windows' whom the narrator assumes Foxie hates, before correcting himself - 'Basically Foxie didn't like / the noise.' Catholic and rough biography mix ('Father Flanegin's Boy's / Town', 'a rats ass', yet 'solumn'), and the narrator confesses his own past: 'kicked out of highschool / for booking numbers.' Provisional: the typed page carries a heavy handwritten overlay with canceled lines omitted.