Page 62

By Jack Joseph Smith

walked off the field. There were the Lincoln bums saying, say hey, Big Duke, and Turtle and Hambone and others laughing and giving acknowledgement to the Cat Man, the eagle of the Lincoln wall. After I left Kindergarden the world went on into a moment of excitement. There was Thanksgiving with my fathers parents on the farm and watching the pigs being slaughtered and the chickens heads being cut off on the stump. The pigs became nothing but blood falling the deep red of the dead. They had no motion and only hung there as I watched in amazement standing next to my grandfather who had insisted that I witness this part of mans earth work. But the chickens nervous system was alive for many moments after the axe cut through their trembling necks. I watched them go jumping without heads and felt that they were really talking to those with wide eyes around them. I would walk alone along the creek watching the frost leaving the bent weeds touching the slow water in the morning. The breakfasts were hot and big and the milk was thick and sweet and everything around me was busy and interchangeable. My grandmother Frost played the acordian in the evening while we all sat around eating sweets without my father smoking because of their Methodist beliefs. Christmas with my mothers parents was loud with Irish whiskey instead of cozy with German hot chocolate and my father would pass out expensive cigars in his new found family freedom. I finally went sleigh riding on Hickeys hill and watched my cousins play hockey on lake ice with their new skates before I would go away from them with my streak painted sleigh to feel the wind cutting across my face as I sped down Hickeys hill alone in the crystal day. My Grandfather Faolain was dying the next time we went to Hoboken and I

Original Scan

Page 62

AI Interpretation

GPT

After kindergarten, family holidays split between German farm slaughter and Irish whiskey mourning, while sledding, creek mornings, and the first approach of Grandfather Faclain's death place pleasure and death side by side.

The page moves abruptly but coherently between blood work, thick breakfasts, accordion evenings, and crystal sled days, making family identity feel sharply divided by custom and mood. Farm killing and winter sport are both absorbed as ordinary childhood texture, which makes the mention of the dying grandfather arrive with extra force.

Claude

Cat Man lands and the bums salute him - 'Big Duke, and Turtle and Hambone' - confirming 'the eagle of the Lincoln wall'. The page then swings to the grandparents' farm, where the boy is made to 'witness this part of mans earth work': pigs reduced to 'nothing but blood falling the deep red of the dead', and headless chickens whose 'nervous system was alive for many moments', seeming to be 'really talking to those with wide eyes'. Holiday identity splits by lineage - Methodist evenings of accordion and no smoking against Christmas 'loud with Irish whiskey', the father passing 'expensive cigars in his new found family freedom' - before the solitary thrill of sledding 'alone in the crystal day' and the quiet dread that 'My Grandfather Faolain was dying'.