The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [41]
“Yeah, I was once near tommy-hawked at the place where White City now stands.”
“He’s always trying to bunk a guy,” Johnny said.
“That’s the trouble with this kid of mine. He never believes anything I say,” Mr. O’Brien said.
He turned and smiled good-naturedly at them. In the moment that he turned, the car swerved, and he had a narrow escape from hitting a rattling Ford.
He got sore, and cursed after the other driver, telling him to take his junk in the alley where it belonged, and to try riding a bicycle until he learned how to drive.
“They ought to prohibit those goddamn Fords from being driven in the streets. They are nothing but a pile of junk.”
“They are automobile fleas,” Johnny said.
Studs told a joke he had read in a Ford joke book. A rag man was going down the alley one day, and he was called in a back yard. The man who called him said how much will you give me for this, and he pointed to a Ford. The rag man looked, and he looked some more. Then he said vel if you give me five dollair, I’ll take it avay for you. They laughed at the joke. Old Man O’Brien said it was a pretty good one.
Old Man O’Brien spoke of the good old days, gone by, of the Washington Park racetrack, with its Derby day in the middle of June and the huge crowds it attracted, its eighty acres, its race course with a gentle slope from east and north that made it a faster track than a dead level one, its artificial lakes and garden works on the inner sides of the main track, its triple deck stands, its bandstand at one end of the stand, why, it was a dream. And all the color and noise and foment, and the crowds shouting, the betting and the excitement, when Burns, or Turner, or Burnett would lead a horse into the home stretch. And some of them horses, too, they were beauts, Hurley Burley, Enchanter, Imp, and them two horses that were god-damn good nags, Ben Hadad and Saint Cataline. Johnny’s mother knew how good them horses were, because she had had a good time more than once on their winnings, right after she got married, and yes, sir, them horses had bought Johnny’s sister Mary something when she was learning to walk. Yes, sir. And he told them of Garrison. Garrison, he said, was the jockey who was such a good man in the home stretch that they took the word, Garrison-finish, from the way he rode a horse. He’d seen Garrison ride, and Sloan too. And he spoke of the trolley parties and picnics of yore, and the dances and prize fights at Tattersalls. All the kids used to sneak in, the way kids always sneak in. They had a million ways of crashing the gate. One of their tricks was to bribe a stable man to let them in through the stables. Well, one night during a big fight, all the lights in the place went out and the management had to give tickets for the next night. Well, you should have seen the crowd that came. Every newsboy and teamster in town must have had a five-dollar ringside seat. And of all the old fighters he’d seen in action, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Britt, Jim Jeffries, Gentleman Jim Corbett, who could wiggle a mean tongue, and don’t think old Gentleman Jim didn’t know how to curse. Terrible Terry McGovern, ah, there was a sweet fighting harp for you, a real fighting turkey with dynamite in each mitt and a fighting heart that only an Irishman could own. Young Corbett, who was born with a horseshoe in his hands and a four leaf clover in his hair, and who put a jinx on Terrible Terry; Benny Yanger; the Tipton Slasher whom Old Man O’Brien knew personally; Stanley Ketchell who didn’t know when to quit fighting even when he had a gun jammed against him; Joe Wolcott, Dixon, Joe Gans, Young Griffo, the most scientific fighter of all times with maybe the exception of Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, who came before Mr. O’Brien’s time; Tom Sharkey--all of them old boys. They didn’t have fighters like that nowadays. None of ‘em were no-fight champions like Jess Willard, and most of them were real Irish, lads who’d bless themselves before they fought; they weren’t fake Irish like most of the present-day dagoes and wops and sheenies who took Hibernian names. None of them were no-fight champions like Jess Willard, the big elephant. Why, an old timer like Philadelphia Jack O