Page 385
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Railroad whistles, the Summit House kitchen table, leftover wine, failed world-saving, and work remembered with Barb make gratitude stand beside stubborn, unamused endurance.
The letter moves through beer, wine, basement, and country visitors with the rough warmth of lived domestic memory. Saving the world step by step is described almost casually, which makes the failed attempt sound both grandiose and sincere. Thanking Barb for sticking with it turns the whole recollection into an acknowledgment of witness.
A prose letter to Barb that reconstructs a hard-drinking, world-saving solitude as fond memory. The 'whistle off the railroad train,' the canyon, the Summit House kitchen table, 'Beer; / quarts of them' and 'left over wine' down in the basement set the scene. The boast is also a confession of isolation: 'I drank tell the cows came / home and no man was inviated,' visitors who 'wouldn't last long.' The grandiosity - 'saving the world step by step' - is undercut by self-mockery at 'this failed attempt,' yet he 'never gave a thought to the outcome.' It closes in worn affection - 'Thanks for sticken. / I will keep finging' - the source spellings 'inviated,' 'sticken,' and 'finging' carrying the unpolished warmth intact.