Page 95
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Corner boys turn Michael's fire and misbehavior into neighborhood legend, joking about Cubs, Protestants, Juvie, Papa Joe's protection, and the metaphysics of holding up the corner wall in a rich town.
The speech has the rhythm of street philosophy, half mockery and half initiation, with delinquency treated as local style and social intelligence. The corner itself becomes an idea as much as a place, where loafing turns into worldview.
The corner-boys' chorus takes over the page, narrating Frost's arson as connoisseurship: 'a nice fire Frost, indeed a nice fire... Nice smoke, a good twirl to it.' Between 'Ha ha, he he' they catalogue his record - thrown out of the Cub Scouts, going with 'the Prostants,' the dodge ball thrown at their projects - and predict 'Juvie' and 'a little time at the Hill.' The speech turns mock-philosophical about the corner that 'moves in two different directions at the same time,' so that loafing becomes a worldview and delinquency a local style of initiation.