Page 30
By Jack Joseph Smith
It was only nine in the evening, but Patrick wanted
the man's wife already. Venice in the early sixties
was not as romantic as decades earlier it had wanted
to be for its name sake. Even though the beach shanty
was full of people who knew how to use bottles and
glasses for two purposes; Patrick's emersed judgement
let the easy sway of alcohol glide nobly himself to
the side of a preconceived unwed mother. The Platers
were still playing on the rolling box. They sung their
high pitch back when sparrows danced apples from the
trees.
Patrick was thin. And he had buck teeth. But there
were the darting eyes, the black hair literally sticking
up from the brain the way a crows nest does for a pirate.
The veins in his wrists popped long and circular. His
forehead was similar, and his nostrils were a bit wide.
With ears like a clowns, and a neck long like a hunter,
he was even more interesting, because his hands seemed
that they should have been unknotted for music.
Back then, the sons of hillbillys had started to
gather into what would evolve into a distinct Los Angeles
culture. They counted their counties with gutars strung
out with beat-up cords. Patrick and his family were from
Ohio. They wern't into the gutar very well, and they
wouldn't oneday become movie writers who have friends
that are cowboys; but they were tough, and excited with
hell-raising to be out there by the sea.