A Drinking Life
“Agnes and started playing hooky, the empty spring days spent wandering the city. Sometimes I sat in movie houses. Other times I worked my way through the dark caves of Book Row. In May, Willie Mays came up from the minors to play for the Giants.
They say he’s the greatest thing on two feet, my father said.
What do you think?
We’ll see, he said. We’ll see if he can hit the curveball.
Suppose he can?
Then the Dodgers are in trouble.
We talked about the Dodgers and about Kid Gavilan beating Johnny... Bratton. But we talked about nothing else. He went to work and then to Rattigan’s. I went to school and then to the Totem Poles. In June, I finished at St. Agnes. I never went back.
Instead, I took an examination to get into the apprenticeship program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. My uncle David worked as a sheetmetal worker in the Yard (as it was called) and he told my father about the program. One night over dinner, the kids all there, my father mentioned it to me.
It’s a goddamn good thing, he said, if you can get into it.MoreLess
They say he’s the greatest thing on two feet, my father said.
What do you think?
We’ll see, he said. We’ll see if he can hit the curveball.
Suppose he can?
Then the Dodgers are in trouble.
We talked about the Dodgers and about Kid Gavilan beating Johnny... Bratton. But we talked about nothing else. He went to work and then to Rattigan’s. I went to school and then to the Totem Poles. In June, I finished at St. Agnes. I never went back.
Instead, I took an examination to get into the apprenticeship program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. My uncle David worked as a sheetmetal worker in the Yard (as it was called) and he told my father about the program. One night over dinner, the kids all there, my father mentioned it to me.
It’s a goddamn good thing, he said, if you can get into it.MoreLess
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