Page 59
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Autumn brings the child out of summer legend and into the rough social world of Lincoln school and Beverly Road, where quitting kindergarten, monkey bars, candy stores, loafers, and rumors start teaching a different kind of street reality.
The tone shifts from fields and orchards to sidewalks, storefronts, and neighborhood types, but wonder does not disappear. Mister Cantaloupe and the Lincoln bums are seen with the same fascinated exaggeration that once belonged to ghosts and Mister Metzes.
Chapter IV opens on a cold-night vision - 'a shaded moon crossing in journey behind silver gray clouds' - that registers the turn from summer legend to autumn, 'big eyes poping out of heavy sweaters'. The terrain then becomes social and urban: kindergarten quit 'after a couple of mounths of swinging around on the monkey bars', the 'wooden heat room' that 'grabbed the sweat and threw it back at you', and the comic gallery of Beverly Road - the Italian candy man 'named Cantaloupe' whose son draws 'hey Cantaloupe I like watermellon better', and the bookie rumor that explains why he 'never changed his name'. The same exaggerating wonder once spent on ghosts now lands on the loafers 'laughing out loud like a bunch of kids'.