Страница:
get acquainted at the trifling expense of some trifling money and
a jingle that was growing unpleasant. Who took me on board and
put me to bed that night I do not know, but I imagine it must have
been Spider.
And so I won my manhood's spurs. My status on the water-front and
with the oyster pirates became immediately excellent. I was
looked upon as a good fellow, as well as no coward. And somehow,
from the day I achieved that concept sitting on the stringer-piece
of the Oakland City Wharf, I have never cared much for money. No
one has ever considered me a miser since, while my carelessness of
money is a source of anxiety and worry to some that know me.
So completely did I break with my parsimonious past that I sent
word home to my mother to call in the boys of the neighbourhood
and give to them all my collections. I never even cared to learn
what boys got what collections. I was a man now, and I made a
clean sweep of everything that bound me to my boyhood.
My reputation grew. When the story went around the water-front of
how French Frank had tried to run me down with his schooner, and
of how I had stood on the deck of the Razzle Dazzle, a cocked
double-barrelled shotgun in my hands, steering with my feet and
holding her to her course, and compelled him to put up his wheel
and keep away, the water-front decided that there was something in
me despite my youth. And I continued to show what was in me.
There were the times I brought the Razzle Dazzle in with a bigger
load of oysters than any other two-man craft; there was the time
when we raided far down in Lower Bay, and mine was the only craft
back at daylight to the anchorage off Asparagus Island; there was
the Thursday night we raced for market and I brought the Razzle
Dazzle in without a rudder, first of the fleet, and skimmed the
cream of the Friday morning trade; and there was the time I
brought her in from Upper Bay under a jib, when Scotty burned my
mainsail. (Yes; it was Scotty of the Idler adventure. Irish had
followed Spider on board the Razzle Dazzle, and Scotty, turning
up, had taken Irish's place.)
But the things I did on the water only partly counted. What
completed everything, and won for me the title of "Prince of the
Oyster Beds," was that I was a good fellow ashore with my money,
buying drinks like a man. I little dreamed that the time would
come when the Oakland water-front, which had shocked me at first
would be shocked and annoyed by the devilry of the things I did.
But always the life was tied up with drinking. The saloons are
poor men's clubs. Saloons are congregating places. We engaged to
meet one another in saloons. We celebrated our good fortune or
wept our grief in saloons. We got acquainted in saloons.
Can I ever forget the afternoon I met "Old Scratch," Nelson's
father? It was in the Last Chance. Johnny Heinhold introduced us.
That Old Scratch was Nelson's father was noteworthy enough. But
there was more in it than that. He was owner and master of the
scow-schooner Annie Mine, and some day I might ship as a sailor
with him. Still more, he was romance. He was a blue-eyed,
yellow-haired, raw-boned Viking, big-bodied and strong-muscled
despite his age. And he had sailed the seas in ships of all
nations in the old savage sailing days.
I had heard many weird tales about him, and worshipped him from a
distance. It took the saloon to bring us together. Even so, our
acquaintance might have been no more than a hand-grip and a word--
he was a laconic old fellow--had it not been for the drinking.
"Have a drink," I said, with promptitude, after the pause which I
had learned good form in drinking dictates. Of course, while we
drank our beer, which I had paid for, it was incumbent on him to
listen to me and to talk to me. And Johnny, like a true host,
made the tactful remarks that enabled us to find mutual topics of
conversation. And of course, having drunk my beer, Captain Nelson
must now buy beer in turn. This led to more talking, and Johnny
drifted out of the conversation to wait on other customers.
The more beer Captain Nelson and I drank, the better we got
acquainted. In me he found an appreciative listener, who, by
virtue of book-reading, knew much about the sea-life he had lived.
So he drifted back to his wild young days, and spun many a rare
yarn for me, while we downed beer, treat by treat, all through a
blessed summer afternoon. And it was only John Barleycorn that
made possible that long afternoon with the old sea-dog.
It was Johnny Heinhold who secretly warned me across the bar that
I was getting pickled and advised me to take small beers. But as
long as Captain Nelson drank large beers, my pride forbade
anything else than large beers. And not until the skipper ordered
his first small beer did I order one for myself. Oh, when we came
to a lingering fond farewell, I was drunk. But I had the
satisfaction of seeing Old Scratch as drunk as I. My youthful
modesty scarcely let me dare believe that the hardened old
buccaneer was even more drunk.
And afterwards, from Spider, and Pat, and C]am, and Johnny
Heinhold, and others, came the tips that Old Scratch liked me and
had nothing but good words for the fine lad I was. Which was the
more remarkable, because he was known as a savage, cantankerous
old cuss who never liked anybody. (His very nickname, "Scratch,"
arose from a Berserker trick of his, in fighting, of tearing off
his opponent's face.) And that I had won his friendship, all
thanks were due to John Barleycorn. I have given the incident
merely as an example of the multitudinous lures and draws and
services by which John Barleycorn wins his followers.
And still there arose in me no desire for alcohol, no chemical
demand. In years and years of heavy drinking, drinking did not
beget the desire. Drinking was the way of the life I led, the way
of the men with whom I lived. While away on my cruises on the
bay, I took no drink along; and while out on the bay the thought
of the desirableness of a drink never crossed my mind. It was not
until I tied the Razzle Dazzle up to the wharf and got ashore in
the congregating places of men, where drink flowed, that the
buying of drinks for other men, and the accepting of drinks from
other men, devolved upon me as a social duty and a manhood rite.
Then, too, there were the times, lying at the city wharf or across
the estuary on the sand-spit, when the Queen, and her sister, and
her brother Pat, and Mrs. Hadley came aboard. It was my boat, I
was host, and I could only dispense hospitality in the terms of
their understanding of it. So I would rush Spider, or Irish, or
Scotty, or whoever was my crew, with the can for beer and the
demijohn for red wine. And again, lying at the wharf disposing of
my oysters, there were dusky twilights when big policemen and
plain-clothes men stole on board. And because we lived in the
shadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them with
squirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got stronger
stuff in bottles.
Drink as I would, I couldn't come to like John Barleycorn. I
valued him extremely well for his associations, but not for the
taste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongst
men, and all the time I nursed secret and shameful desires for
candy. But I would have died before I'd let anybody guess it. I
used to indulge in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crew
was going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free Library,
exchange my books, buy a quarter's worth of all sorts of candy
that chewed and lasted, sneak aboard the Razzle Dazzle, lock
myself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss,
reading and chewing candy. And those were the only times I felt
that I got my real money's worth. Dollars and dollars, across the
bar, couldn't buy the satisfaction that twenty-five cents did in a
candy store.
As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that it
was in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred. Drunks
were always memorable. At such times things happened. Men like
Joe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremen
all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We of the
oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we
got really started, though a scattering of drinks and a meeting of
a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.
In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and more
exciting things happened at such times. As, for instance, the
Sunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole the
stolen salmon boat from Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek. Changes
had taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats. Nelson had
got into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying a
bullet-hole through his left hand. Also, having quarrelled with
Clam and broken partnership, Nelson had sailed the Reindeer, his
arm in a sling, with a crew of two deep-water sailors, and he had
sailed so madly as to frighten them ashore. Such was the tale of
his recklessness they spread, that no one on the water-front would
go out with Nelson. So the
Reindeer, crewless, lay across the estuary at the sandspit.
Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and Scotty
and me on board. Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank and
gone on a raid "up river" with Nicky the Greek.
The result of this raid was a brand-new Columbia River salmon
boat, stolen from an Italian fisherman. We oyster pirates were
all visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, from
what we knew of their movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky the
Greek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat?
Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay,
had searched every slough and tule patch for it. When the owner
despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interest
increased and the mystery deepened.
One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit. The
conversation was confidential. He had just been fishing in his
skiff in the old Alameda ferry slip. As the tide went down, he
had noticed a rope tied to a pile under water and leading
downward. In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on the
other end. Farther along, to another pile, was a similar rope,
leading downward and unheavable. Without doubt, it was the
missing salmon boat. If we restored it to its rightful owner
there was fifty dollars in it for us. But I had queer ethical
notions about honour amongst thieves, and declined to have
anything to do with the affair.
But French Frank had quarrelled with Whisky Bob, and Nelson was
also an enemy. (Poor Whisky Bob!--without viciousness, good-
natured, generous, born weak, raised poorly, with an irresistible
chemical demand for alcohol, still prosecuting his vocation of bay
pirate, his body was picked up, not long afterward, beside a dock
where it had sunk full of gunshot wounds.) Within an hour after I
had rejected Captain Spink's proposal, I saw him sail down the
estuary on board the Reindeer with Nelson. Also, French Frank
went by on his schooner.
It was not long ere they sailed back up the estuary, curiously
side by side. As they headed in for the sandspit, the submerged
salmon boat could be seen, gunwales awash and held up from sinking
by ropes fast to the schooner and the sloop. The tide was half
out, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row,
with the salmon boat in the middle.
Immediately Hans, one of French Frank's sailors, was into a skiff
and pulling rapidly for the north shore. The big demijohn in the
stern-sheets told his errand. They couldn't wait a moment to
celebrate the fifty dollars they had so easily earned. It is the
way of the devotees of John Barleycorn. When good fortune comes,
they drink. When they have no fortune, they drink to the hope of
good fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to forget it. If
they meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend and
lose him, they drink. If their love-making be crowned with
success, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they be
jilted, they drink for the contrary reason. And if they haven't
anything to do at all, why, they take a drink, secure in the
knowledge that when they have taken a sufficient number of drinks
the maggots will start crawling in their brains and they will have
their hands full with things to do. When they are sober they want
to drink; and when they have drunk they want to drink more.
Of course, as fellow comrades, Scotty and I were called in for the
drinking. We helped to make a hole in that fifty dollars not yet
received. The afternoon, from just an ordinary common summer
Sunday afternoon, became a gorgeous, purple afternoon. We all
talked and sang and ranted and bragged, and ever French Frank and
Nelson sent more drinks around. We lay in full sight of the
Oakland water-front, and the noise of our revels attracted
friends. Skiff after skiff crossed the estuary and hauled up on
the sandspit, while Hans' work was cut out for him--ever to row
back and forth for more supplies of booze.
Then Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek arrived, sober, indignant,
outraged in that their fellow pirates had raised their plant.
French Frank, aided by John Barleycorn, orated hypocritically
about virtue and honesty, and, despite his fifty years, got Whisky
Bob out on the sand and proceeded to lick him. When Nicky the
Greek jumped in with a short-handled shovel to Whisky Bob's
assistance, short work was made of him by Hans. And of course,
when the bleeding remnants of Bob and Nicky were sent packing in
their skiff, the event must needs be celebrated in further
carousal.
By this time, our visitors being numerous, we were a large crowd
compounded of many nationalities and diverse temperaments, all
aroused by John Barleycorn, all restraints cast off. Old quarrels
revived, ancient hates flared up. Fight was in the air. And
whenever a longshoreman remembered something against a scow-
schooner sailor, or vice versa, or an oyster pirate remembered or
was remembered, a fist shot out and another fight was on. And
every fight was made up in more rounds of drinks, wherein the
combatants, aided and abetted by the rest of us, embraced each
other and pledged undying friendship.
And, of all times, Soup Kennedy selected this time to come and
retrieve an old shirt of his, left aboard the Reindeer from the
trip he sailed with Clam. He had espoused Clam's side of the
quarrel with Nelson. Also, he had been drinking in the St. Louis
House, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspit
in quest of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He locked
with Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the mix-up
barely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irate
French Frank--irate because a two-handed man had attacked a one-
handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the iron
bar remains in the hard-wood rail of her cockpit.)
But Nelson pulled his bandaged hand, bullet-perforated, out of its
sling, and, held by us, wept and roared his Berserker belief that
he could lick Soup Kennedy one-handed. And we let them loose on
the sand. Once, when it looked as if Nelson were getting the
worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly into
the fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, who
whirled upon him and fell on top of him in a pummelling clinch
after a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course of
separating these two, half a dozen fights started amongst the rest
of us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or we
separated them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and Soup
Kennedy fought on. Occasionally we returned to them and gave
advice, such as, when they lay exhausted in the sand, unable to
strike a blow, "Throw sand in his eyes." And they threw sand in
each other's eyes, recuperated, and fought on to successive
exhaustions.
And now, of all this that is squalid, and ridiculous, and bestial,
try to think what it meant to me, a youth not yet sixteen, burning
with the spirit of adventure, fancy-filled with tales of
buccaneers and sea-rovers, sacks of cities and conflicts of armed
men, and imagination-maddened by the stuff I had drunk. It was
life raw and naked, wild and free--the only life of that sort
which my birth in time and space permitted me to attain. And more
than that. It carried a promise. It was the beginning. From the
sandspit the way led out through the Golden Gate to the vastness
of adventure of all the world, where battles would be fought, not
for old shirts and over stolen salmon boats, but for high purposes
and romantic ends.
And because I told Scotty what I thought of his letting an old man
like French Frank get away with him, we, too, brawled and added to
the festivity of the sandspit. And Scotty threw up his job as
crew, and departed in the night with a pair of blankets belonging
to me. During the night, while the oyster pirates lay stupefied
in their bunks, the schooner and the Reindeer floated on the high
water and swung about to their anchors. The salmon boat, still
filled with rocks and water, rested on the bottom.
In the morning, early, I heard wild cries from the Reindeer, and
tumbled out in the chill grey to see a spectacle that made the
water-front laugh for days. The beautiful salmon boat lay on the
hard sand, squashed flat as a pancake, while on it were perched
French Frank's schooner and the Reindeer. Unfortunately two of
the Reindeer's planks had been crushed in by the stout oak stem of
the salmon boat. The rising tide had flowed through the hole, and
just awakened Nelson by getting into his bunk with him. I lent a
hand, and we pumped the Reindeer out and repaired the damage.
Then Nelson cooked breakfast, and while we ate we considered the
situation. He was broke. So was I. The fifty dollars reward
would never be paid for that pitiful mess of splinters on the sand
beneath us. He had a wounded hand and no crew. I had a burned
main sail and no crew.
"What d'ye say, you and me?" Nelson queried. "I'll go you," was
my answer. And thus I became partners with "Young Scratch"
Nelson, the wildest, maddest of them all. We borrowed the money
for an outfit of grub from Johnny Heinhold, filled our water-
barrels, and sailed away that day for the oyster-beds.
Nor have I ever regretted those months of mad devilry I put in
with Nelson. He COULD sail, even if he did frighten every man
that sailed with him. To steer to miss destruction by an inch or
an instant was his joy. To do what everybody else did not dare
attempt to do, was his pride. Never to reef down was his mania,
and in all the time I spent with him, blow high or low, the
Reindeer was never reefed. Nor was she ever dry. We strained her
open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually. And we
abandoned the Oakland water-front and went wider afield for our
adventures.
And all this glorious passage in my life was made possible for me
by John Barleycorn. And this is my complaint against John
Barleycorn. Here I was, thirsting for the wild life of adventure,
and the only way for me to win to it was through John Barleycorn's
mediation. It was the way of the men who lived the life. Did I
wish to live the life, I must live it the way they did. It was by
virtue of drinking that I gained that partnership and comradeship
with Nelson. Had I drunk only the beer he paid for, or had I
declined to drink at all, I should never have been selected by him
as a partner. He wanted a partner who would meet him on the
social side, as well as the work side of life.
I abandoned myself to the life, and developed the misconception
that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks,
rising through the successive stages that only an iron
constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish
unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the
sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly
drunk. And I, who had saved and scraped, traded like a Shylock
and made junkmen weep; I, who had stood aghast when French Frank,
at a single stroke, spent eighty cents for whisky for eight men, I
turned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for money than
any of them.
I remember going ashore one night with Nelson. In my pocket were
one hundred and eighty dollars. It was my intention, first, to
buy me some clothes, after that, some drinks. I needed the
clothes. All I possessed were on me, and they were as follows: a
pair of sea-boots that providentially leaked the water out as fast
as it ran in, a pair of fifty-cent overalls, a forty-cent cotton
shirt, and a sou'wester. I had no hat, so I had to wear the
sou'wester, and it will be noted that I have listed neither
underclothes nor socks. I didn't own any.
To reach the stores where clothes could be bought, we had to pass
a dozen saloons. So I bought me the drinks first. I never got to
the clothing stores. In the morning, broke, poisoned, but
contented, I came back on board, and we set sail. I possessed
only the clothes I had gone ashore in, and not a cent remained of
the one hundred and eighty dollars. It might well be deemed
impossible, by those who have never tried it, that in twelve hours
a lad can spend all of one hundred and eighty dollars for drinks.
I know otherwise.
And I had no regrets. I was proud. I had shown them I could
spend with the best of them. Amongst strong men I had proved
myself strong. I had clinched again, as I had often clinched, my
right to the title of "Prince." Also, my attitude may be
considered, in part, as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness
and my childhood's excessive toil. Possibly my inchoate thought
was: Better to reign among booze-fighters a prince than to toil
twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour. There are
no purple passages in machine toil. But if the spending of one
hundred and eighty dollars in twelve hours isn't a purple passage,
then I'd like to know what is.
Oh, I skip much of the details of my trafficking with John
Barleycorn during this period, and shall only mention events that
will throw light on John Barleycorn's ways. There were three
things that enabled me to pursue this heavy drinking: first, a
magnificent constitution far better than the average; second, the
healthy open-air life on the water; and third, the fact that I
drank irregularly. While out on the water, we never carried any
drink along.
The world was opening up to me. Already I knew several hundred
miles of the water-ways of it, and of the towns and cities and
fishing hamlets on the shores. Came the whisper to range farther.
I had not found it yet. There was more behind. But even this
much of the world was too wide for Nelson. He wearied for his
beloved Oakland water-front, and when he elected to return to it
we separated in all friendliness.
I now made the old town of Benicia, on the Carquinez Straits, my
headquarters. In a cluster of fishermen's arks, moored in the
tules on the water-front, dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and
vagabonds, and I joined them. I had longer spells ashore, between
fooling with salmon fishing and making raids up and down bay and
rivers as a deputy fish patrolman, and I drank more and learned
more about drinking. I held my own with any one, drink for drink;
and often drank more than my share to show the strength of my
manhood. When, on a morning, my unconscious carcass was
disentangled from the nets on the drying-frames, whither I had
stupidly, blindly crawled the night before; and when the water-
front talked it over with many a giggle and laugh and another
drink, I was proud indeed. It was an exploit.
And when I never drew a sober breath, on one stretch, for three
solid weeks, I was certain I had reached the top. Surely, in that
direction, one could go no farther. It was time for me to move
on. For always, drunk or sober, at the back of my consciousness
something whispered that this carousing and bay-adventuring was
not all of life. This whisper was my good fortune. I happened to
be so made that I could hear it calling, always calling, out and
away over the world. It was not canniness on my part. It was
curiosity, desire to know, an unrest and a seeking for things
wonderful that I seemed somehow to have glimpsed or guessed. What
was this life for, I demanded, if this were all? No; there was
something more, away and beyond. (And, in relation to my much
later development as a drinker, this whisper, this promise of the
things at the back of life, must be noted, for it was destined to
play a dire part in my more recent wrestlings with John
Barleycorn.)
But what gave immediacy to my decision to move on was a trick John
Barleycorn played me--a monstrous, incredible trick that showed
abysses of intoxication hitherto undreamed. At one o'clock in the
morning, after a prodigious drunk, I was tottering aboard a sloop
at the end of the wharf, intending to go to sleep. The tides
sweep through Carquinez Straits as in a mill-race, and the full
ebb was on when I stumbled overboard. There was nobody on the
wharf, nobody on the sloop. I was borne away by the current. I
was not startled. I thought the misadventure delightful. I was a
good swimmer, and in my inflamed condition the contact of the
water with my skin soothed me like cool linen.
And then John Barleycorn played me his maniacal trick. Some
maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me.
I had never been morbid. Thoughts of suicide had never entered my
head. And now that they entered, I thought it fine, a splendid
culminating, a perfect rounding off of my short but exciting
career. I, who had never known girl's love, nor woman's love, nor
the love of children; who had never played in the wide joy-fields
of art, nor climbed the star-cool heights of philosophy, nor seen
with my eyes more than a pin-point's surface of the gorgeous
world; I decided that this was all, that I had seen all, lived
all, been all, that was worth while, and that now was the time to
cease. This was the trick of John Barleycorn, laying me by the
heels of my imagination and in a drug-dream dragging me to death.
Oh, he was convincing. I had really experienced all of life, and
it didn't amount to much. The swinish drunkenness in which I had
lived for months (this was accompanied by the sense of degradation
and the old feeling of conviction of sin) was the last and best,
and I could see for myself what it was worth. There were all the
broken-down old bums and loafers I had bought drinks for. That
was what remained of life. Did I want to become like them? A
thousand times no; and I wept tears of sweet sadness over my
glorious youth going out with the tide. (And who has not seen the
weeping drunk, the melancholic drunk? They are to be found in all
the bar-rooms, if they can find no other listener telling their
sorrows to the barkeeper, who is paid to listen.)
The water was delicious. It was a man's way to die. John
Barleycorn changed the tune he played in my drink-maddened brain.
Away with tears and regret. It was a hero's death, and by the
hero's own hand and will. So I struck up my death-chant and was
singing it lustily, when the gurgle and splash of the current-
riffles in my ears reminded me of my more immediate situation.
Below the town of Benicia, where the Solano wharf projects, the
Straits widen out into what bay-farers call the "Bight of Turner's
Shipyard." I was in the shore-tide that swept under the Solano
wharf and on into the bight. I knew of old the power of the suck
which developed when the tide swung around the end of Dead Man's
Island and drove straight for the wharf. I didn't want to go
through those piles. It wouldn't be nice, and I might lose an
hour in the bight on my way out with the tide.
I undressed in the water and struck out with a strong, single-
overhand stroke, crossing the current at right-angles. Nor did I
cease until, by the wharf lights, I knew I was safe to sweep by
the end. Then I turned over and rested. The stroke had been a
telling one, and I was a little time in recovering my breath.
I was elated, for I had succeeded in avoiding the suck. I started
to raise my death-chant again--a purely extemporised farrago of a
drug-crazed youth. "Don't sing--yet," whispered John Barleycorn.
"The Solano runs all night. There are railroad men on the wharf.
They will hear you, and come out in a boat and rescue you, and you
don't want to be rescued." I certainly didn't. What? Be robbed of
my hero's death? Never. And I lay on my back in the starlight,
watching the familiar wharf-lights go by, red and green and white,
and bidding sad sentimental farewell to them, each and all.
When I was well clear, in mid-channel, I sang again. Sometimes I
swam a few strokes, but in the main I contented myself with
floating and dreaming long drunken dreams. Before daylight, the
chill of the water and the passage of the hours had sobered me
sufficiently to make me wonder what portion of the Straits I was
in, and also to wonder if the turn of the tide wouldn't catch me
and take me back ere I had drifted out into San Pablo Bay.
Next I discovered that I was very weary and very cold, and quite
sober, and that I didn't in the least want to be drowned. I could
make out the Selby Smelter on the Contra Costa shore and the Mare
Island lighthouse. I started to swim for the Solano shore, but
was too weak and chilled, and made so little headway, and at the
cost of such painful effort, that I gave it up and contented
myself with floating, now and then giving a stroke to keep my
balance in the tide-rips which were increasing their commotion on
the surface of the water. And I knew fear. I was sober now, and
I didn't want to die. I discovered scores of reasons for living.
And the more reasons I discovered, the more liable it seemed that
I was going to drown anyway.
Daylight, after I had been four hours in the water, found me in a
parlous condition in the tide-rips off Mare Island light, where
the swift ebbs from Vallejo Straits and Carquinez Straits were
fighting with each other, and where, at that particular moment,
they were fighting the flood tide setting up against them from San
Pablo Bay. A stiff breeze had sprung up, and the crisp little
waves were persistently lapping into my mouth, and I was beginning
to swallow salt water. With my swimmer's knowledge, I knew the
end was near. And then the boat came--a Greek fisherman running
in for Vallejo; and again I had been saved from John Barleycorn by
my constitution and physical vigour.
And, in passing, let me note that this maniacal trick John
Barleycorn played me is nothing uncommon. An absolute statistic
of the per centage of suicides due to John Barleycorn would be
appalling. In my case, healthy, normal, young, full of the joy of
life, the suggestion to kill myself was unusual; but it must be
taken into account that it came on the heels of a long carouse,
when my nerves and brain were fearfully poisoned, and that the
dramatic, romantic side of my imagination, drink-maddened to
lunacy, was delighted with the suggestion. And yet, the older,
more morbid drinkers, more jaded with life and more disillusioned,
who kill themselves, do so usually after a long debauch, when
their nerves and brains are thoroughly poison-soaked.
So I left Benicia, where John Barleycorn had nearly got me, and
ranged wider afield in pursuit of the whisper from the back of
life to come and find. And wherever I ranged, the way lay along
alcohol-drenched roads. Men still congregated in saloons. They
were the poor-man's clubs, and they were the only clubs to which I
had access. I could get acquainted in saloons. I could go into a
saloon and talk with any man. In the strange towns and cities I
wandered through, the only place for me to go was the saloon. I
was no longer a stranger in any town the moment I had entered a
saloon.
And right here let me break in with experiences no later than last
year. I harnessed four horses to a light trap, took Charmian
along, and drove for three months and a half over the wildest
mountain parts of California and Oregon. Each morning I did my
regular day's work of writing fiction. That completed, I drove on
through the middle of the day and the afternoon to the next stop.
But the irregularity of occurrence of stopping-places, coupled
with widely varying road conditions, made it necessary to plan,
the day before, each day's drive and my work. I must know when I
was to start driving in order to start writing in time to finish
my day's output. Thus, on occasion, when the drive was to be
long, I would be up and at my writing by five in the morning. On
easier driving days I might not start writing till nine o'clock.
But how to plan? As soon as I arrived in a town, and put the
horses up, on the way from the stable to the hotel I dropped into
the saloons. First thing, a drink--oh, I wanted the drink, but
also it must not be forgotten that, because of wanting to know
things, it was in this very way I had learned to want a drink.
Well, the first thing, a drink. "Have something yourself," to the
barkeeper. And then, as we drink, my opening query about roads
and stopping-places on ahead.
"Let me see," the barkeeper will say, "there's the road across
Tarwater Divide. That used to be good. I was over it three years
ago. But it was blocked this spring. Say, I'll tell you what.
I'll ask Jerry----" And the barkeeper turns and addresses some man
sitting at a table or leaning against the bar farther along, and
who may be Jerry, or Tom, or Bill. "Say, Jerry, how about the
Tarwater road? You was down to Wilkins last week."
And while Bill or Jerry or Tom is beginning to unlimber his
thinking and speaking apparatus, I suggest that he join us in the
drink. Then discussions arise about the advisability of this road
or that, what the best stopping-places may be, what running time I
may expect to make, where the best trout streams are, and so
forth, in which other men join, and which are punctuated with more
drinks.
Two or three more saloons, and I accumulate a warm jingle and come
pretty close to knowing everybody in town, all about the town, and
a fair deal about the surrounding country. I know the lawyers,
editors, business men, local politicians, and the visiting
ranchers, hunters, and miners, so that by evening, when Charmian
and I stroll down the main street and back, she is astounded by
the number of my acquaintances in that totally strange town.
And thus is demonstrated a service John Barleycorn renders, a
service by which he increases his power over men. And over the
world, wherever I have gone, during all the years, it has been the
same. It may be a cabaret in the Latin Quarter, a cafe in some
obscure Italian village, a boozing ken in sailor-town, and it may
be up at the club over Scotch and soda; but always it will be
where John Barleycorn makes fellowship that I get immediately in
touch, and meet, and know. And in the good days coming, when John
Barleycorn will have been banished out of existence along with the
other barbarisms, some other institution than the saloon will have
to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange men
and stranger men may get in touch, and meet, and know.
But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia,
my way led through saloons. I had developed no moral theories
against drinking, and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the
stuff. But I had grown respectfully suspicious of John
Barleycorn. I could not forget that trick he had played on me--on
me who did not want to die. So I continued to drink, and to keep
a sharp eye on John Barleycorn, resolved to resist all future
suggestions of self-destruction.
In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons.
When I hoboed, and hadn't the price of a bed, a saloon was the
only place that would receive me and give me a chair by the fire.
I could go into a saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb
my hair. And saloons were always so damnably convenient. They
were everywhere in my western country.
I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their
doors were not open to me; no seats were there for me by their
fires. Also, churches and preachers I had never known. And from
what I didn't know I was not attracted toward them. Besides,
there was no glamour about them, no haze of romance, no promise of
adventure. They were the sort with whom things never happened.
They lived and remained always in the one place, creatures of
order and system, narrow, limited, restrained. They were without
greatness, without imagination, without camaraderie. It was the
good fellows, easy and genial, daring, and, on occasion, mad, that
I wanted to know--the fellows, generous-hearted and -handed, and
not rabbit-hearted.
And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It
is these good fellows that he gets--the fellows with the fire and
the go in them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of
the human weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and
soddens the agility, and, when he does not more immediately kill
them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them,
twists and malforms them out of the original goodness and fineness
of their natures.
Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from
the most of the average run of male humans who are not good
fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke,
drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and
resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has
never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries
and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons,
nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths,
nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping
their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely
life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity.
And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. It is just
those, the good fellows, the worth while, the fellows with the
weakness of too much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and
flame of fine devilishness, that he solicits and ruins. Of
course, he ruins weaklings; but with them, the worst we breed, I
am not here concerned. My concern is that it is so much of the
best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys. And the reason why
these best are destroyed is because John Barleycorn stands on
every highway and byway, accessible, law-protected, saluted by the
policeman on the beat, speaking to them, leading them by the hand
to the places where the good fellows and daring ones forgather and
drink deep. With John Barleycorn out of the way, these daring
ones would still be born, and they would do things instead of
perishing.
Always I encountered the camaraderie of drink. I might be walking
down the track to the water-tank to lie in wait for a passing
freight-train, when I would chance upon a bunch of "alki-stiffs."
An alki-stiff is a tramp who drinks druggist's alcohol.
Immediately, with greeting and salutation, I am taken into the
fellowship. The alcohol, shrewdly blended with water, is handed
to me, and soon I am caught up in the revelry, with maggots
crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering to me that
life is big, and that we are all brave and fine--free spirits
sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-
four, cut-and-dried, conventional world to go hang.
Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the water-front
and renewed my comradeship with Nelson, who was now on shore all
the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time
on shore with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several
days on the bay to help out on short-handed scow-schooners.
The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of
open-air abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and
whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still
laboured under the misconception that the secret of John
Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I
became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I
practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and worse.
And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious
though no less deadly way than when he nearly sent me out with the
tide. I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I
scorned the thought of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a
pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men; and I
drank because these men drank and because I had to make good with
them. I had never had a real boyhood, and in this, my precocious
manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise. Though I had never
known girl's love even, I had crawled through such depths that I
was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and
life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being
pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap
and ordinary affair.
You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old stings and
prods of the spirit were no longer sharp. Curiosity was leaving
me. What did it matter what lay on the other side of the world?
Men and women, without doubt, very much like the men and women I
knew; marrying and giving in marriage and all the petty run of
petty human concerns; and drinks, too. But the other side of the
world was a long way to go for a drink. I had but to step to the
corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigy's. Johnny Heinhold still
ran the Last Chance. And there were saloons on all the corners
and between the corners.
The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and
body soddened. The old unrest was drowsy. I might as well rot
and die here in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so
rotted and died, and not in very long order either, at the pace
John Barleycorn was leading me, had the matter depended wholly on
him. I was learning what it was to have no appetite. I was
learning what it was to get up shaky in the morning, with a
stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy, and to
know the drinker's need for a stiff glass of whisky neat in order
to brace up. (Oh! John Barleycorn is a wizard dopester. Brain
and body, scorched and jangled and poisoned, return to be tuned up
by the very poison that caused the damage.)
There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to
inveigle me into killing myself. At this period he was doing his
best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with
that, he tried another dodge. He very nearly got me, too, and
right there I learned a lesson about him--became a wiser, a more
skilful drinker. I learned there were limits to my gorgeous
constitution, and that there were no limits to John Barleycorn. I
learned that in a short hour or two he could master my strong
head, my broad shoulders and deep chest, put me on my back, and
with a devil's grip on my throat proceed to choke the life out of
me.
Nelson and I were sitting in the Overland House. It was early in
the evening, and the only reason we were there was because we were
broke and it was election time. You see, in election time local
politicians, aspirants for office, have a way of making the rounds
of the saloons to get votes. One is sitting at a table, in a dry
condition, wondering who is going to turn up and buy him a drink,
or if his credit is good at some other saloon and if it's worth
while to walk that far to find out, when suddenly the saloon doors
swing wide, and enters a bevy of well-dressed men, themselves
usually wide and exhaling an atmosphere of prosperity and
fellowship.
They have smiles and greetings for everybody--for you, without the
price of a glass of beer in your pocket, for the timid hobo who
lurks in the corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may
establish a lodging-house registration. And do you know, when
these politicians swing wide the doors and come in, with their
broad shoulders, their deep chests, and their generous stomachs
which cannot help making them optimists and masters of life, why,
you perk right up. It's going to be a warm evening after all, and
you know you'll get a souse started at the very least.
And--who knows?--the gods may be kind, other drinks may come, and
the night culminate in glorious greatness. And the next thing you
know, you are lined up at the bar, pouring drinks down your throat
and learning the gentlemen's names and the offices which they hope
to fill.
It was during this period, when the politicians went their saloon
rounds, that I was getting bitter bits of education and having
illusions punctured--I, who had pored and thrilled over "The Rail-
Splitter," and "From Canal Boy to President." Yes, I was learning
how noble politics and politicians are.
Well, on this night, broke, thirsty, but with the drinker's faith
in the unexpected drink, Nelson and I sat in the Overland House
waiting for something to turn up, especially politicians. And
there entered Joe Goose--he of the unquenchable thirst, the wicked
eyes, the crooked nose, the flowered vest.
"Come on, fellows--free booze--all you want of it. I didn't want
you to miss it."
"Where?" we wanted to know.
"Come on. I'll tell you as we go along. We haven't a minute to
lose." And as we hurried up town, Joe Goose explained: "It's the
Hancock Fire Brigade. All you have to do is wear a red shirt and
a helmet, and carry a torch.
They're going down on a special train to Haywards to parade."
a jingle that was growing unpleasant. Who took me on board and
put me to bed that night I do not know, but I imagine it must have
been Spider.
And so I won my manhood's spurs. My status on the water-front and
with the oyster pirates became immediately excellent. I was
looked upon as a good fellow, as well as no coward. And somehow,
from the day I achieved that concept sitting on the stringer-piece
of the Oakland City Wharf, I have never cared much for money. No
one has ever considered me a miser since, while my carelessness of
money is a source of anxiety and worry to some that know me.
So completely did I break with my parsimonious past that I sent
word home to my mother to call in the boys of the neighbourhood
and give to them all my collections. I never even cared to learn
what boys got what collections. I was a man now, and I made a
clean sweep of everything that bound me to my boyhood.
My reputation grew. When the story went around the water-front of
how French Frank had tried to run me down with his schooner, and
of how I had stood on the deck of the Razzle Dazzle, a cocked
double-barrelled shotgun in my hands, steering with my feet and
holding her to her course, and compelled him to put up his wheel
and keep away, the water-front decided that there was something in
me despite my youth. And I continued to show what was in me.
There were the times I brought the Razzle Dazzle in with a bigger
load of oysters than any other two-man craft; there was the time
when we raided far down in Lower Bay, and mine was the only craft
back at daylight to the anchorage off Asparagus Island; there was
the Thursday night we raced for market and I brought the Razzle
Dazzle in without a rudder, first of the fleet, and skimmed the
cream of the Friday morning trade; and there was the time I
brought her in from Upper Bay under a jib, when Scotty burned my
mainsail. (Yes; it was Scotty of the Idler adventure. Irish had
followed Spider on board the Razzle Dazzle, and Scotty, turning
up, had taken Irish's place.)
But the things I did on the water only partly counted. What
completed everything, and won for me the title of "Prince of the
Oyster Beds," was that I was a good fellow ashore with my money,
buying drinks like a man. I little dreamed that the time would
come when the Oakland water-front, which had shocked me at first
would be shocked and annoyed by the devilry of the things I did.
But always the life was tied up with drinking. The saloons are
poor men's clubs. Saloons are congregating places. We engaged to
meet one another in saloons. We celebrated our good fortune or
wept our grief in saloons. We got acquainted in saloons.
Can I ever forget the afternoon I met "Old Scratch," Nelson's
father? It was in the Last Chance. Johnny Heinhold introduced us.
That Old Scratch was Nelson's father was noteworthy enough. But
there was more in it than that. He was owner and master of the
scow-schooner Annie Mine, and some day I might ship as a sailor
with him. Still more, he was romance. He was a blue-eyed,
yellow-haired, raw-boned Viking, big-bodied and strong-muscled
despite his age. And he had sailed the seas in ships of all
nations in the old savage sailing days.
I had heard many weird tales about him, and worshipped him from a
distance. It took the saloon to bring us together. Even so, our
acquaintance might have been no more than a hand-grip and a word--
he was a laconic old fellow--had it not been for the drinking.
"Have a drink," I said, with promptitude, after the pause which I
had learned good form in drinking dictates. Of course, while we
drank our beer, which I had paid for, it was incumbent on him to
listen to me and to talk to me. And Johnny, like a true host,
made the tactful remarks that enabled us to find mutual topics of
conversation. And of course, having drunk my beer, Captain Nelson
must now buy beer in turn. This led to more talking, and Johnny
drifted out of the conversation to wait on other customers.
The more beer Captain Nelson and I drank, the better we got
acquainted. In me he found an appreciative listener, who, by
virtue of book-reading, knew much about the sea-life he had lived.
So he drifted back to his wild young days, and spun many a rare
yarn for me, while we downed beer, treat by treat, all through a
blessed summer afternoon. And it was only John Barleycorn that
made possible that long afternoon with the old sea-dog.
It was Johnny Heinhold who secretly warned me across the bar that
I was getting pickled and advised me to take small beers. But as
long as Captain Nelson drank large beers, my pride forbade
anything else than large beers. And not until the skipper ordered
his first small beer did I order one for myself. Oh, when we came
to a lingering fond farewell, I was drunk. But I had the
satisfaction of seeing Old Scratch as drunk as I. My youthful
modesty scarcely let me dare believe that the hardened old
buccaneer was even more drunk.
And afterwards, from Spider, and Pat, and C]am, and Johnny
Heinhold, and others, came the tips that Old Scratch liked me and
had nothing but good words for the fine lad I was. Which was the
more remarkable, because he was known as a savage, cantankerous
old cuss who never liked anybody. (His very nickname, "Scratch,"
arose from a Berserker trick of his, in fighting, of tearing off
his opponent's face.) And that I had won his friendship, all
thanks were due to John Barleycorn. I have given the incident
merely as an example of the multitudinous lures and draws and
services by which John Barleycorn wins his followers.
And still there arose in me no desire for alcohol, no chemical
demand. In years and years of heavy drinking, drinking did not
beget the desire. Drinking was the way of the life I led, the way
of the men with whom I lived. While away on my cruises on the
bay, I took no drink along; and while out on the bay the thought
of the desirableness of a drink never crossed my mind. It was not
until I tied the Razzle Dazzle up to the wharf and got ashore in
the congregating places of men, where drink flowed, that the
buying of drinks for other men, and the accepting of drinks from
other men, devolved upon me as a social duty and a manhood rite.
Then, too, there were the times, lying at the city wharf or across
the estuary on the sand-spit, when the Queen, and her sister, and
her brother Pat, and Mrs. Hadley came aboard. It was my boat, I
was host, and I could only dispense hospitality in the terms of
their understanding of it. So I would rush Spider, or Irish, or
Scotty, or whoever was my crew, with the can for beer and the
demijohn for red wine. And again, lying at the wharf disposing of
my oysters, there were dusky twilights when big policemen and
plain-clothes men stole on board. And because we lived in the
shadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them with
squirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got stronger
stuff in bottles.
Drink as I would, I couldn't come to like John Barleycorn. I
valued him extremely well for his associations, but not for the
taste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongst
men, and all the time I nursed secret and shameful desires for
candy. But I would have died before I'd let anybody guess it. I
used to indulge in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crew
was going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free Library,
exchange my books, buy a quarter's worth of all sorts of candy
that chewed and lasted, sneak aboard the Razzle Dazzle, lock
myself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss,
reading and chewing candy. And those were the only times I felt
that I got my real money's worth. Dollars and dollars, across the
bar, couldn't buy the satisfaction that twenty-five cents did in a
candy store.
As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that it
was in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred. Drunks
were always memorable. At such times things happened. Men like
Joe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremen
all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We of the
oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we
got really started, though a scattering of drinks and a meeting of
a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.
In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and more
exciting things happened at such times. As, for instance, the
Sunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole the
stolen salmon boat from Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek. Changes
had taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats. Nelson had
got into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying a
bullet-hole through his left hand. Also, having quarrelled with
Clam and broken partnership, Nelson had sailed the Reindeer, his
arm in a sling, with a crew of two deep-water sailors, and he had
sailed so madly as to frighten them ashore. Such was the tale of
his recklessness they spread, that no one on the water-front would
go out with Nelson. So the
Reindeer, crewless, lay across the estuary at the sandspit.
Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and Scotty
and me on board. Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank and
gone on a raid "up river" with Nicky the Greek.
The result of this raid was a brand-new Columbia River salmon
boat, stolen from an Italian fisherman. We oyster pirates were
all visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, from
what we knew of their movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky the
Greek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat?
Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay,
had searched every slough and tule patch for it. When the owner
despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interest
increased and the mystery deepened.
One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit. The
conversation was confidential. He had just been fishing in his
skiff in the old Alameda ferry slip. As the tide went down, he
had noticed a rope tied to a pile under water and leading
downward. In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on the
other end. Farther along, to another pile, was a similar rope,
leading downward and unheavable. Without doubt, it was the
missing salmon boat. If we restored it to its rightful owner
there was fifty dollars in it for us. But I had queer ethical
notions about honour amongst thieves, and declined to have
anything to do with the affair.
But French Frank had quarrelled with Whisky Bob, and Nelson was
also an enemy. (Poor Whisky Bob!--without viciousness, good-
natured, generous, born weak, raised poorly, with an irresistible
chemical demand for alcohol, still prosecuting his vocation of bay
pirate, his body was picked up, not long afterward, beside a dock
where it had sunk full of gunshot wounds.) Within an hour after I
had rejected Captain Spink's proposal, I saw him sail down the
estuary on board the Reindeer with Nelson. Also, French Frank
went by on his schooner.
It was not long ere they sailed back up the estuary, curiously
side by side. As they headed in for the sandspit, the submerged
salmon boat could be seen, gunwales awash and held up from sinking
by ropes fast to the schooner and the sloop. The tide was half
out, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row,
with the salmon boat in the middle.
Immediately Hans, one of French Frank's sailors, was into a skiff
and pulling rapidly for the north shore. The big demijohn in the
stern-sheets told his errand. They couldn't wait a moment to
celebrate the fifty dollars they had so easily earned. It is the
way of the devotees of John Barleycorn. When good fortune comes,
they drink. When they have no fortune, they drink to the hope of
good fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to forget it. If
they meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend and
lose him, they drink. If their love-making be crowned with
success, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they be
jilted, they drink for the contrary reason. And if they haven't
anything to do at all, why, they take a drink, secure in the
knowledge that when they have taken a sufficient number of drinks
the maggots will start crawling in their brains and they will have
their hands full with things to do. When they are sober they want
to drink; and when they have drunk they want to drink more.
Of course, as fellow comrades, Scotty and I were called in for the
drinking. We helped to make a hole in that fifty dollars not yet
received. The afternoon, from just an ordinary common summer
Sunday afternoon, became a gorgeous, purple afternoon. We all
talked and sang and ranted and bragged, and ever French Frank and
Nelson sent more drinks around. We lay in full sight of the
Oakland water-front, and the noise of our revels attracted
friends. Skiff after skiff crossed the estuary and hauled up on
the sandspit, while Hans' work was cut out for him--ever to row
back and forth for more supplies of booze.
Then Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek arrived, sober, indignant,
outraged in that their fellow pirates had raised their plant.
French Frank, aided by John Barleycorn, orated hypocritically
about virtue and honesty, and, despite his fifty years, got Whisky
Bob out on the sand and proceeded to lick him. When Nicky the
Greek jumped in with a short-handled shovel to Whisky Bob's
assistance, short work was made of him by Hans. And of course,
when the bleeding remnants of Bob and Nicky were sent packing in
their skiff, the event must needs be celebrated in further
carousal.
By this time, our visitors being numerous, we were a large crowd
compounded of many nationalities and diverse temperaments, all
aroused by John Barleycorn, all restraints cast off. Old quarrels
revived, ancient hates flared up. Fight was in the air. And
whenever a longshoreman remembered something against a scow-
schooner sailor, or vice versa, or an oyster pirate remembered or
was remembered, a fist shot out and another fight was on. And
every fight was made up in more rounds of drinks, wherein the
combatants, aided and abetted by the rest of us, embraced each
other and pledged undying friendship.
And, of all times, Soup Kennedy selected this time to come and
retrieve an old shirt of his, left aboard the Reindeer from the
trip he sailed with Clam. He had espoused Clam's side of the
quarrel with Nelson. Also, he had been drinking in the St. Louis
House, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspit
in quest of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He locked
with Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the mix-up
barely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irate
French Frank--irate because a two-handed man had attacked a one-
handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the iron
bar remains in the hard-wood rail of her cockpit.)
But Nelson pulled his bandaged hand, bullet-perforated, out of its
sling, and, held by us, wept and roared his Berserker belief that
he could lick Soup Kennedy one-handed. And we let them loose on
the sand. Once, when it looked as if Nelson were getting the
worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly into
the fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, who
whirled upon him and fell on top of him in a pummelling clinch
after a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course of
separating these two, half a dozen fights started amongst the rest
of us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or we
separated them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and Soup
Kennedy fought on. Occasionally we returned to them and gave
advice, such as, when they lay exhausted in the sand, unable to
strike a blow, "Throw sand in his eyes." And they threw sand in
each other's eyes, recuperated, and fought on to successive
exhaustions.
And now, of all this that is squalid, and ridiculous, and bestial,
try to think what it meant to me, a youth not yet sixteen, burning
with the spirit of adventure, fancy-filled with tales of
buccaneers and sea-rovers, sacks of cities and conflicts of armed
men, and imagination-maddened by the stuff I had drunk. It was
life raw and naked, wild and free--the only life of that sort
which my birth in time and space permitted me to attain. And more
than that. It carried a promise. It was the beginning. From the
sandspit the way led out through the Golden Gate to the vastness
of adventure of all the world, where battles would be fought, not
for old shirts and over stolen salmon boats, but for high purposes
and romantic ends.
And because I told Scotty what I thought of his letting an old man
like French Frank get away with him, we, too, brawled and added to
the festivity of the sandspit. And Scotty threw up his job as
crew, and departed in the night with a pair of blankets belonging
to me. During the night, while the oyster pirates lay stupefied
in their bunks, the schooner and the Reindeer floated on the high
water and swung about to their anchors. The salmon boat, still
filled with rocks and water, rested on the bottom.
In the morning, early, I heard wild cries from the Reindeer, and
tumbled out in the chill grey to see a spectacle that made the
water-front laugh for days. The beautiful salmon boat lay on the
hard sand, squashed flat as a pancake, while on it were perched
French Frank's schooner and the Reindeer. Unfortunately two of
the Reindeer's planks had been crushed in by the stout oak stem of
the salmon boat. The rising tide had flowed through the hole, and
just awakened Nelson by getting into his bunk with him. I lent a
hand, and we pumped the Reindeer out and repaired the damage.
Then Nelson cooked breakfast, and while we ate we considered the
situation. He was broke. So was I. The fifty dollars reward
would never be paid for that pitiful mess of splinters on the sand
beneath us. He had a wounded hand and no crew. I had a burned
main sail and no crew.
"What d'ye say, you and me?" Nelson queried. "I'll go you," was
my answer. And thus I became partners with "Young Scratch"
Nelson, the wildest, maddest of them all. We borrowed the money
for an outfit of grub from Johnny Heinhold, filled our water-
barrels, and sailed away that day for the oyster-beds.
Nor have I ever regretted those months of mad devilry I put in
with Nelson. He COULD sail, even if he did frighten every man
that sailed with him. To steer to miss destruction by an inch or
an instant was his joy. To do what everybody else did not dare
attempt to do, was his pride. Never to reef down was his mania,
and in all the time I spent with him, blow high or low, the
Reindeer was never reefed. Nor was she ever dry. We strained her
open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually. And we
abandoned the Oakland water-front and went wider afield for our
adventures.
And all this glorious passage in my life was made possible for me
by John Barleycorn. And this is my complaint against John
Barleycorn. Here I was, thirsting for the wild life of adventure,
and the only way for me to win to it was through John Barleycorn's
mediation. It was the way of the men who lived the life. Did I
wish to live the life, I must live it the way they did. It was by
virtue of drinking that I gained that partnership and comradeship
with Nelson. Had I drunk only the beer he paid for, or had I
declined to drink at all, I should never have been selected by him
as a partner. He wanted a partner who would meet him on the
social side, as well as the work side of life.
I abandoned myself to the life, and developed the misconception
that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks,
rising through the successive stages that only an iron
constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish
unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the
sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly
drunk. And I, who had saved and scraped, traded like a Shylock
and made junkmen weep; I, who had stood aghast when French Frank,
at a single stroke, spent eighty cents for whisky for eight men, I
turned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for money than
any of them.
I remember going ashore one night with Nelson. In my pocket were
one hundred and eighty dollars. It was my intention, first, to
buy me some clothes, after that, some drinks. I needed the
clothes. All I possessed were on me, and they were as follows: a
pair of sea-boots that providentially leaked the water out as fast
as it ran in, a pair of fifty-cent overalls, a forty-cent cotton
shirt, and a sou'wester. I had no hat, so I had to wear the
sou'wester, and it will be noted that I have listed neither
underclothes nor socks. I didn't own any.
To reach the stores where clothes could be bought, we had to pass
a dozen saloons. So I bought me the drinks first. I never got to
the clothing stores. In the morning, broke, poisoned, but
contented, I came back on board, and we set sail. I possessed
only the clothes I had gone ashore in, and not a cent remained of
the one hundred and eighty dollars. It might well be deemed
impossible, by those who have never tried it, that in twelve hours
a lad can spend all of one hundred and eighty dollars for drinks.
I know otherwise.
And I had no regrets. I was proud. I had shown them I could
spend with the best of them. Amongst strong men I had proved
myself strong. I had clinched again, as I had often clinched, my
right to the title of "Prince." Also, my attitude may be
considered, in part, as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness
and my childhood's excessive toil. Possibly my inchoate thought
was: Better to reign among booze-fighters a prince than to toil
twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour. There are
no purple passages in machine toil. But if the spending of one
hundred and eighty dollars in twelve hours isn't a purple passage,
then I'd like to know what is.
Oh, I skip much of the details of my trafficking with John
Barleycorn during this period, and shall only mention events that
will throw light on John Barleycorn's ways. There were three
things that enabled me to pursue this heavy drinking: first, a
magnificent constitution far better than the average; second, the
healthy open-air life on the water; and third, the fact that I
drank irregularly. While out on the water, we never carried any
drink along.
The world was opening up to me. Already I knew several hundred
miles of the water-ways of it, and of the towns and cities and
fishing hamlets on the shores. Came the whisper to range farther.
I had not found it yet. There was more behind. But even this
much of the world was too wide for Nelson. He wearied for his
beloved Oakland water-front, and when he elected to return to it
we separated in all friendliness.
I now made the old town of Benicia, on the Carquinez Straits, my
headquarters. In a cluster of fishermen's arks, moored in the
tules on the water-front, dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and
vagabonds, and I joined them. I had longer spells ashore, between
fooling with salmon fishing and making raids up and down bay and
rivers as a deputy fish patrolman, and I drank more and learned
more about drinking. I held my own with any one, drink for drink;
and often drank more than my share to show the strength of my
manhood. When, on a morning, my unconscious carcass was
disentangled from the nets on the drying-frames, whither I had
stupidly, blindly crawled the night before; and when the water-
front talked it over with many a giggle and laugh and another
drink, I was proud indeed. It was an exploit.
And when I never drew a sober breath, on one stretch, for three
solid weeks, I was certain I had reached the top. Surely, in that
direction, one could go no farther. It was time for me to move
on. For always, drunk or sober, at the back of my consciousness
something whispered that this carousing and bay-adventuring was
not all of life. This whisper was my good fortune. I happened to
be so made that I could hear it calling, always calling, out and
away over the world. It was not canniness on my part. It was
curiosity, desire to know, an unrest and a seeking for things
wonderful that I seemed somehow to have glimpsed or guessed. What
was this life for, I demanded, if this were all? No; there was
something more, away and beyond. (And, in relation to my much
later development as a drinker, this whisper, this promise of the
things at the back of life, must be noted, for it was destined to
play a dire part in my more recent wrestlings with John
Barleycorn.)
But what gave immediacy to my decision to move on was a trick John
Barleycorn played me--a monstrous, incredible trick that showed
abysses of intoxication hitherto undreamed. At one o'clock in the
morning, after a prodigious drunk, I was tottering aboard a sloop
at the end of the wharf, intending to go to sleep. The tides
sweep through Carquinez Straits as in a mill-race, and the full
ebb was on when I stumbled overboard. There was nobody on the
wharf, nobody on the sloop. I was borne away by the current. I
was not startled. I thought the misadventure delightful. I was a
good swimmer, and in my inflamed condition the contact of the
water with my skin soothed me like cool linen.
And then John Barleycorn played me his maniacal trick. Some
maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me.
I had never been morbid. Thoughts of suicide had never entered my
head. And now that they entered, I thought it fine, a splendid
culminating, a perfect rounding off of my short but exciting
career. I, who had never known girl's love, nor woman's love, nor
the love of children; who had never played in the wide joy-fields
of art, nor climbed the star-cool heights of philosophy, nor seen
with my eyes more than a pin-point's surface of the gorgeous
world; I decided that this was all, that I had seen all, lived
all, been all, that was worth while, and that now was the time to
cease. This was the trick of John Barleycorn, laying me by the
heels of my imagination and in a drug-dream dragging me to death.
Oh, he was convincing. I had really experienced all of life, and
it didn't amount to much. The swinish drunkenness in which I had
lived for months (this was accompanied by the sense of degradation
and the old feeling of conviction of sin) was the last and best,
and I could see for myself what it was worth. There were all the
broken-down old bums and loafers I had bought drinks for. That
was what remained of life. Did I want to become like them? A
thousand times no; and I wept tears of sweet sadness over my
glorious youth going out with the tide. (And who has not seen the
weeping drunk, the melancholic drunk? They are to be found in all
the bar-rooms, if they can find no other listener telling their
sorrows to the barkeeper, who is paid to listen.)
The water was delicious. It was a man's way to die. John
Barleycorn changed the tune he played in my drink-maddened brain.
Away with tears and regret. It was a hero's death, and by the
hero's own hand and will. So I struck up my death-chant and was
singing it lustily, when the gurgle and splash of the current-
riffles in my ears reminded me of my more immediate situation.
Below the town of Benicia, where the Solano wharf projects, the
Straits widen out into what bay-farers call the "Bight of Turner's
Shipyard." I was in the shore-tide that swept under the Solano
wharf and on into the bight. I knew of old the power of the suck
which developed when the tide swung around the end of Dead Man's
Island and drove straight for the wharf. I didn't want to go
through those piles. It wouldn't be nice, and I might lose an
hour in the bight on my way out with the tide.
I undressed in the water and struck out with a strong, single-
overhand stroke, crossing the current at right-angles. Nor did I
cease until, by the wharf lights, I knew I was safe to sweep by
the end. Then I turned over and rested. The stroke had been a
telling one, and I was a little time in recovering my breath.
I was elated, for I had succeeded in avoiding the suck. I started
to raise my death-chant again--a purely extemporised farrago of a
drug-crazed youth. "Don't sing--yet," whispered John Barleycorn.
"The Solano runs all night. There are railroad men on the wharf.
They will hear you, and come out in a boat and rescue you, and you
don't want to be rescued." I certainly didn't. What? Be robbed of
my hero's death? Never. And I lay on my back in the starlight,
watching the familiar wharf-lights go by, red and green and white,
and bidding sad sentimental farewell to them, each and all.
When I was well clear, in mid-channel, I sang again. Sometimes I
swam a few strokes, but in the main I contented myself with
floating and dreaming long drunken dreams. Before daylight, the
chill of the water and the passage of the hours had sobered me
sufficiently to make me wonder what portion of the Straits I was
in, and also to wonder if the turn of the tide wouldn't catch me
and take me back ere I had drifted out into San Pablo Bay.
Next I discovered that I was very weary and very cold, and quite
sober, and that I didn't in the least want to be drowned. I could
make out the Selby Smelter on the Contra Costa shore and the Mare
Island lighthouse. I started to swim for the Solano shore, but
was too weak and chilled, and made so little headway, and at the
cost of such painful effort, that I gave it up and contented
myself with floating, now and then giving a stroke to keep my
balance in the tide-rips which were increasing their commotion on
the surface of the water. And I knew fear. I was sober now, and
I didn't want to die. I discovered scores of reasons for living.
And the more reasons I discovered, the more liable it seemed that
I was going to drown anyway.
Daylight, after I had been four hours in the water, found me in a
parlous condition in the tide-rips off Mare Island light, where
the swift ebbs from Vallejo Straits and Carquinez Straits were
fighting with each other, and where, at that particular moment,
they were fighting the flood tide setting up against them from San
Pablo Bay. A stiff breeze had sprung up, and the crisp little
waves were persistently lapping into my mouth, and I was beginning
to swallow salt water. With my swimmer's knowledge, I knew the
end was near. And then the boat came--a Greek fisherman running
in for Vallejo; and again I had been saved from John Barleycorn by
my constitution and physical vigour.
And, in passing, let me note that this maniacal trick John
Barleycorn played me is nothing uncommon. An absolute statistic
of the per centage of suicides due to John Barleycorn would be
appalling. In my case, healthy, normal, young, full of the joy of
life, the suggestion to kill myself was unusual; but it must be
taken into account that it came on the heels of a long carouse,
when my nerves and brain were fearfully poisoned, and that the
dramatic, romantic side of my imagination, drink-maddened to
lunacy, was delighted with the suggestion. And yet, the older,
more morbid drinkers, more jaded with life and more disillusioned,
who kill themselves, do so usually after a long debauch, when
their nerves and brains are thoroughly poison-soaked.
So I left Benicia, where John Barleycorn had nearly got me, and
ranged wider afield in pursuit of the whisper from the back of
life to come and find. And wherever I ranged, the way lay along
alcohol-drenched roads. Men still congregated in saloons. They
were the poor-man's clubs, and they were the only clubs to which I
had access. I could get acquainted in saloons. I could go into a
saloon and talk with any man. In the strange towns and cities I
wandered through, the only place for me to go was the saloon. I
was no longer a stranger in any town the moment I had entered a
saloon.
And right here let me break in with experiences no later than last
year. I harnessed four horses to a light trap, took Charmian
along, and drove for three months and a half over the wildest
mountain parts of California and Oregon. Each morning I did my
regular day's work of writing fiction. That completed, I drove on
through the middle of the day and the afternoon to the next stop.
But the irregularity of occurrence of stopping-places, coupled
with widely varying road conditions, made it necessary to plan,
the day before, each day's drive and my work. I must know when I
was to start driving in order to start writing in time to finish
my day's output. Thus, on occasion, when the drive was to be
long, I would be up and at my writing by five in the morning. On
easier driving days I might not start writing till nine o'clock.
But how to plan? As soon as I arrived in a town, and put the
horses up, on the way from the stable to the hotel I dropped into
the saloons. First thing, a drink--oh, I wanted the drink, but
also it must not be forgotten that, because of wanting to know
things, it was in this very way I had learned to want a drink.
Well, the first thing, a drink. "Have something yourself," to the
barkeeper. And then, as we drink, my opening query about roads
and stopping-places on ahead.
"Let me see," the barkeeper will say, "there's the road across
Tarwater Divide. That used to be good. I was over it three years
ago. But it was blocked this spring. Say, I'll tell you what.
I'll ask Jerry----" And the barkeeper turns and addresses some man
sitting at a table or leaning against the bar farther along, and
who may be Jerry, or Tom, or Bill. "Say, Jerry, how about the
Tarwater road? You was down to Wilkins last week."
And while Bill or Jerry or Tom is beginning to unlimber his
thinking and speaking apparatus, I suggest that he join us in the
drink. Then discussions arise about the advisability of this road
or that, what the best stopping-places may be, what running time I
may expect to make, where the best trout streams are, and so
forth, in which other men join, and which are punctuated with more
drinks.
Two or three more saloons, and I accumulate a warm jingle and come
pretty close to knowing everybody in town, all about the town, and
a fair deal about the surrounding country. I know the lawyers,
editors, business men, local politicians, and the visiting
ranchers, hunters, and miners, so that by evening, when Charmian
and I stroll down the main street and back, she is astounded by
the number of my acquaintances in that totally strange town.
And thus is demonstrated a service John Barleycorn renders, a
service by which he increases his power over men. And over the
world, wherever I have gone, during all the years, it has been the
same. It may be a cabaret in the Latin Quarter, a cafe in some
obscure Italian village, a boozing ken in sailor-town, and it may
be up at the club over Scotch and soda; but always it will be
where John Barleycorn makes fellowship that I get immediately in
touch, and meet, and know. And in the good days coming, when John
Barleycorn will have been banished out of existence along with the
other barbarisms, some other institution than the saloon will have
to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange men
and stranger men may get in touch, and meet, and know.
But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia,
my way led through saloons. I had developed no moral theories
against drinking, and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the
stuff. But I had grown respectfully suspicious of John
Barleycorn. I could not forget that trick he had played on me--on
me who did not want to die. So I continued to drink, and to keep
a sharp eye on John Barleycorn, resolved to resist all future
suggestions of self-destruction.
In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons.
When I hoboed, and hadn't the price of a bed, a saloon was the
only place that would receive me and give me a chair by the fire.
I could go into a saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb
my hair. And saloons were always so damnably convenient. They
were everywhere in my western country.
I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their
doors were not open to me; no seats were there for me by their
fires. Also, churches and preachers I had never known. And from
what I didn't know I was not attracted toward them. Besides,
there was no glamour about them, no haze of romance, no promise of
adventure. They were the sort with whom things never happened.
They lived and remained always in the one place, creatures of
order and system, narrow, limited, restrained. They were without
greatness, without imagination, without camaraderie. It was the
good fellows, easy and genial, daring, and, on occasion, mad, that
I wanted to know--the fellows, generous-hearted and -handed, and
not rabbit-hearted.
And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It
is these good fellows that he gets--the fellows with the fire and
the go in them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of
the human weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and
soddens the agility, and, when he does not more immediately kill
them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them,
twists and malforms them out of the original goodness and fineness
of their natures.
Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from
the most of the average run of male humans who are not good
fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke,
drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and
resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has
never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries
and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons,
nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths,
nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping
their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely
life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity.
And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. It is just
those, the good fellows, the worth while, the fellows with the
weakness of too much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and
flame of fine devilishness, that he solicits and ruins. Of
course, he ruins weaklings; but with them, the worst we breed, I
am not here concerned. My concern is that it is so much of the
best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys. And the reason why
these best are destroyed is because John Barleycorn stands on
every highway and byway, accessible, law-protected, saluted by the
policeman on the beat, speaking to them, leading them by the hand
to the places where the good fellows and daring ones forgather and
drink deep. With John Barleycorn out of the way, these daring
ones would still be born, and they would do things instead of
perishing.
Always I encountered the camaraderie of drink. I might be walking
down the track to the water-tank to lie in wait for a passing
freight-train, when I would chance upon a bunch of "alki-stiffs."
An alki-stiff is a tramp who drinks druggist's alcohol.
Immediately, with greeting and salutation, I am taken into the
fellowship. The alcohol, shrewdly blended with water, is handed
to me, and soon I am caught up in the revelry, with maggots
crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering to me that
life is big, and that we are all brave and fine--free spirits
sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-
four, cut-and-dried, conventional world to go hang.
Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the water-front
and renewed my comradeship with Nelson, who was now on shore all
the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time
on shore with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several
days on the bay to help out on short-handed scow-schooners.
The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of
open-air abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and
whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still
laboured under the misconception that the secret of John
Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I
became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I
practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and worse.
And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious
though no less deadly way than when he nearly sent me out with the
tide. I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I
scorned the thought of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a
pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men; and I
drank because these men drank and because I had to make good with
them. I had never had a real boyhood, and in this, my precocious
manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise. Though I had never
known girl's love even, I had crawled through such depths that I
was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and
life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being
pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap
and ordinary affair.
You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old stings and
prods of the spirit were no longer sharp. Curiosity was leaving
me. What did it matter what lay on the other side of the world?
Men and women, without doubt, very much like the men and women I
knew; marrying and giving in marriage and all the petty run of
petty human concerns; and drinks, too. But the other side of the
world was a long way to go for a drink. I had but to step to the
corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigy's. Johnny Heinhold still
ran the Last Chance. And there were saloons on all the corners
and between the corners.
The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and
body soddened. The old unrest was drowsy. I might as well rot
and die here in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so
rotted and died, and not in very long order either, at the pace
John Barleycorn was leading me, had the matter depended wholly on
him. I was learning what it was to have no appetite. I was
learning what it was to get up shaky in the morning, with a
stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy, and to
know the drinker's need for a stiff glass of whisky neat in order
to brace up. (Oh! John Barleycorn is a wizard dopester. Brain
and body, scorched and jangled and poisoned, return to be tuned up
by the very poison that caused the damage.)
There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to
inveigle me into killing myself. At this period he was doing his
best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with
that, he tried another dodge. He very nearly got me, too, and
right there I learned a lesson about him--became a wiser, a more
skilful drinker. I learned there were limits to my gorgeous
constitution, and that there were no limits to John Barleycorn. I
learned that in a short hour or two he could master my strong
head, my broad shoulders and deep chest, put me on my back, and
with a devil's grip on my throat proceed to choke the life out of
me.
Nelson and I were sitting in the Overland House. It was early in
the evening, and the only reason we were there was because we were
broke and it was election time. You see, in election time local
politicians, aspirants for office, have a way of making the rounds
of the saloons to get votes. One is sitting at a table, in a dry
condition, wondering who is going to turn up and buy him a drink,
or if his credit is good at some other saloon and if it's worth
while to walk that far to find out, when suddenly the saloon doors
swing wide, and enters a bevy of well-dressed men, themselves
usually wide and exhaling an atmosphere of prosperity and
fellowship.
They have smiles and greetings for everybody--for you, without the
price of a glass of beer in your pocket, for the timid hobo who
lurks in the corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may
establish a lodging-house registration. And do you know, when
these politicians swing wide the doors and come in, with their
broad shoulders, their deep chests, and their generous stomachs
which cannot help making them optimists and masters of life, why,
you perk right up. It's going to be a warm evening after all, and
you know you'll get a souse started at the very least.
And--who knows?--the gods may be kind, other drinks may come, and
the night culminate in glorious greatness. And the next thing you
know, you are lined up at the bar, pouring drinks down your throat
and learning the gentlemen's names and the offices which they hope
to fill.
It was during this period, when the politicians went their saloon
rounds, that I was getting bitter bits of education and having
illusions punctured--I, who had pored and thrilled over "The Rail-
Splitter," and "From Canal Boy to President." Yes, I was learning
how noble politics and politicians are.
Well, on this night, broke, thirsty, but with the drinker's faith
in the unexpected drink, Nelson and I sat in the Overland House
waiting for something to turn up, especially politicians. And
there entered Joe Goose--he of the unquenchable thirst, the wicked
eyes, the crooked nose, the flowered vest.
"Come on, fellows--free booze--all you want of it. I didn't want
you to miss it."
"Where?" we wanted to know.
"Come on. I'll tell you as we go along. We haven't a minute to
lose." And as we hurried up town, Joe Goose explained: "It's the
Hancock Fire Brigade. All you have to do is wear a red shirt and
a helmet, and carry a torch.
They're going down on a special train to Haywards to parade."