Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New 'fork
NAME OF WORKER Clarence Meinstook
ADDRESS 43 Morton Street
DATE May 23, 1939
SUBJECT Ambulance Drives
1. Date and time of interview May 22, 1939
2. Place of interview New York Hospital
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms,
each bef,rinc the proper headin and the number to which the material
refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKLR Clarence Meinstodk
ADDRESS 43 Morton Street
DATE May 23, 1939
SUBJECT Ambulance Drives
LIKE A BIRD
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
You've got to take plenty of abuse in the ambulance
business, particularly on the night shift when you get the pie
eyes and psychos by the dozens, half of them boys they let out
of Rockland and Islip to make room when its overcrowded in them
institutions, the guys with the shivers and shakes and snakes
and god damn hallucinations. But there's one kind I never can
stand, the stiffs that started out with a hundred bucks at
8 P.M. and when you get them around one they got exactly 2Y and
a big voice askin for de -looks soivice. One doe I was riding
with he hated them too, used to be a full back from Alabama. One
night we get a call for the front of the Rival. We drive up and
there's a big stiff in all his glory abusing about 3,000 innocent
people while he wee woes on a taxicabl. We pick him up and get
going up the street and the first thing he does is look the doe
straight in the eye and toss his cookies. A sad sight that brave
guy was. All the guts out of him and on the doe's white suit.
Boy o boyi the doo just took that bottle o Scotch and heaved
him right through the back window. Like a bird he flew but he
didn't land like a bird. I hate to think of it. "Now he'll need
an ambulance," the doe said. "Just keep going."