Page 57

By Jack Joseph Smith

1916. General "Black Jack" Pershing orders Pancho Villa caught dead or alive. And Old Crow is 81 years old. 1916. Pancho Villa raids Columbus, New Mexico. Brig. Gen. Pershing invades Mexico with orders to get Villa at any cost. But the guerrilla proves harder to catch than a cucaracha. Men knew the taste of real Bourbon whiskey then. You know it today. Old Crow... since 1835 it's been the original sour mash Bourbon. The Bourbon. Mellow. Smooth. With a flavor the man who knows Bourbon has appreciated for generations. Accept no substitutes. When you know OLD CROW you know Bourbon. Aged a full six years.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page is not a poem draft but a period advertisement whose Pancho Villa headline and bourbon copy preserve part of the visual-cultural atmosphere around the manuscript.

Including the ad matters because it shows the sort of found material that could surround or seed the writing: military spectacle, outlaw mythology, Americana, and branded masculinity all compressed into one page. Read beside the manuscript, it functions less as literature than as context, a fragment of the printed world that the work was moving through.

Claude

A transcribed Old Crow bourbon advertisement, kept as found material. It opens on a 1916 dateline yoking outlaw history to whiskey age, 'General "Black Jack" Pershing orders / Pancho Villa caught dead or alive. / And Old Crow is 81 years old', then recounts Villa's Columbus raid and Pershing's failed pursuit, 'harder to catch than a cucaracha'. The bulk is pure brand copy ('sour / mash Bourbon ... Mellow. / Smooth ... Accept no substitutes') ending 'When you know / OLD CROW / you know Bourbon. // Aged / a full / six years.' The writer collects it as Americana, military spectacle and branded masculinity feeding the book's drinking-world atmosphere.