Page 67

By Jack Joseph Smith

My friend and I had been traveling through Mexico during 1963 and 1964. I lost my eyesight in the desert once for a week, but was cured by some strange save..We rode in the back of pick up trucks watching stars. The buses we rode always fell thousands of feet through the air before letting us off. The markets were filled with the knowledge of intentional misunderstanding. It was gay and grand. But we were running out of money and American pop- ulated lakes when we went down to the port towns. Through the trip the air we knew in our eyes didn't pay for coffie and beer, but it kept us alive. I sware that when we laid our underware out we were respected. My friend had the sience of a doctor, and when I did crazy things, he let me do them alone. Picking up for what was to come, I once went with an outlaw to his hideout at a tavern. The men wore there guns as if Hollywood knew what they were talking about, and I drank and cried for three streight days. Then the shrimp got incredable and I forgot every- thing. The ship I got on was supposed to be Australian, but the crew told me it was New Zealand, while those who were cleaver said that it really came from Ireland. I even knew a beautiful man from Sweden jumping up and down trying to hop her, but he had a big beard then, and we sailed out away from him. My friend was right. He did not have to be a doctor. Actually we knew there were 4,000 dead sheep on the tanker when we had come out with some whores to wonder one night for laughs. That's a damn lie, for we had seen what was left of the live ones coming down the planks in the mid afternoon in that port of Manzanillo.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page reads like a rough travel memoir, moving from Mexico to sea passage through hunger, danger, bravado, and self-correction.

What gives this page force is its unstable voice. It keeps turning lived experience into myth and then undercutting itself, most clearly in the corrected line `That's a damn lie,`. The writing is interested in edge conditions: near blindness, outlaw company, exhausted money, shipboard death, and the strange prestige of simply surviving. Even in draft form, it has momentum.

Claude

Typed travel prose that mythologizes a 1963-64 Mexican drift and the boarding of the ship. Tall-tale registers stack up: eyesight lost in the desert 'for a week' then 'cured by some strange save', buses that 'always fell thousands / of feet through the air', markets 'filled with the knowledge of intentional misunderstanding'. The voice prizes mere survival, 'the air we knew in our eyes didn't pay for / coffie and beer, but it kept us alive', and brags of crying 'for three / streight days' with an outlaw until 'the shrimp got incredable'. The ship's nationality is comically unstable, 'supposed to be Australian' but called New Zealand, then Irish. The page's signature self-correction lands on the cargo: 'we knew there were 4,000 dead sheep on the / tanker', then 'That's a damn lie', the handwritten 'damn' inserted, since they had really seen 'the live ones / coming down the planks ... in that port of Manzanillo'. Source spellings 'coffie', 'sware', 'underware', 'sience', 'streight', 'incredable', 'cleaver' kept as written.