Jailbird

Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor's sufferings and derring-do.

What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?

"That was the strength of the Nazis," she said. "They understood God better than anyone. They knew how to make him stay away."

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

Congressman Nixon had asked me why, as the son of immigrants who had been treated so well by Americans, as a man who had been treated like a son and been sent to Harvard by an American capitalist, I had been so ungrateful to the American economic system.

The answer I gave him was not original. Nothing about me has ever been original. I repeated what my one-time hero, Kenneth Whistler, had said in reply to the same general sort of question long, long ago. Whistler had been a witness at a trial of strikers accused of violence. The judge had become curious about him, had asked him why such a well-educated man from such a good family would so immerse himself in the working class.

My stolen answer to Nixon was this: "Why? The Sermon on the Mount, sir."

Sally In The Garden:

Sally in the garden,

Siftin' cinders,

Lifted up her leg,

And farted like a man,

The bursting of her bloomers broke sixteen winders,

The cheeks of her ass went (blam, blam, blam)

You couldn't help that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.