Page 124

By Jack Joseph Smith

KING THE DRINEING HTH: - J Swekh | 5 He, six months, Can you imagine, that kind of absurdity? What in the hell is six months? I ee EE ED ga OEM a: So __—-~sprenee cain caren enema the end of my last years at Saint Bernards, that they started passing laws againsst 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 Werehouie on lower fifth avenue dead center in the getto, The big boys began putt ing presure on him, and his movements became strained and his parkéfisin desease increased visibiliy; ee ee ee aa | EE illusions for meg, this is the business, and here is what it means, If you want it now, efter you have seen it clearly, then find your own way of dealing with it, You have the material nows How many people live lives ay weacihitany nothing aboutZ Or better yet, how many people live lives on refuse to look at, No wonder people are afraid of object iv@itys 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 bear talkigg =: about Dandi? = +s “ : . I remember walking around in that fancy building and seeing slot machines pilfed Nok hopiusk Th 9? OB/NI IE ALLL co Mf) | s Dée NG Taken a OT Efi A179]

Original Scan

Page 124

AI Interpretation

GPT

A noisy, fragmentary continuation 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.

OCR damage breaks the flow, 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

A heavily handwritten-over page where Michael names Papa Joe dead, reports the six-month anti-gambling-machine cut of his father's business from a block-long structure to a lower Fifth Avenue warehouse, and the big boys' pressure — handwritten marginalia crowds the bottom margin.