Page 124

By Jack Joseph Smith

TAKING THE DRINKING OATH. six months. Can you imagine, that kind of absurdity? What in the hell is six months? It was toward the end of my last years at Saint Bernards, that they started passing laws against gambling machines. The money coming in was cut in half, and my fathers location went from a structure one block long at the peak of Balm Bulavard, to a little warehouse on lower fifth avenue dead center in the getto. The big boys began putt ing pressure on him, and his movements became strained and his parkinson desease increased visibility. No illusions for me, this is the business, and here is what it means. If you want it now, after you have seen it clearly, then find your own way of dealing with it. You have the material now. How many people live lives they absolutely know nothing about? Or better yet, how many people live lives they absolutely refuse to look at. No wonder people are afraid of object ivity. It can not only be cold and distant, more threatening is the heat that rises inside through discovery. Is that closer to what you have been talking about Daniel? Yes, it is. I remember walking around in that fancy building and seeing slot machines piled

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Under the handwritten title Taking the Drinking Oath, the surviving text turns toward Saint Bernard's, new anti-gambling laws, the collapse of the father's slot-machine business into a smaller warehouse in the ghetto, mounting pressure, visible Parkinson's disease, and the hard demand to look at the business clearly for what it is.

The blacked-out passages leave gaps, but the surviving lines still show a shift from barroom legend to family economics and bodily decline. The insistence on objectivity and discovery lands harshly beside the image of machines piled up and a father losing ground.

Claude

Under the heading 'TAKING THE DRINKING OATH,' the page shifts from barroom legend to family economics and bodily decline. The anti-gambling-machine laws cut 'The money coming in... in half,' shrinking the father's location 'from a structure one block long at the peak of Balm Bulavard, to a little warehouse on lower fifth avenue dead center in the getto,' while 'the big boys began putting pressure on him' and 'his parkinson desease increased visibility.' Around this hard economic fact runs Daniel's challenge about looking clearly - 'No illusions for me, this is the business' - and his question of how many people 'absolutely refuse to look at' their own lives, the discovery that brings a threatening 'heat that rises inside.'