Document text
11:Cer1.14
Roaldus Richmond
JUST HANGING AROUID
Writers'
E—. SP 21 1940
"I've got to get out of this tome. There's nothin her. for me.
I've been out of high *shoal four years and what have I done nothing
but grit* for some of these lousy newspapers. A newspaperman ean't make
a living in this state. Of course they're underpaid in other plows,
but it's worse around here. Tou wouldn't believe hew little some of
these guys got. Guys that have been working for these papers for years.
They work like hell too, and they get ohickensteed. Welts eighteed bueks,
a week. 132 five or ten years perhaps they work up to a little better
than teenty. Isn't that smell pay? I've got to get eut-of here, I know
that.
"The problem is haw to et enough money to get out and look for a job.
I ewe plenty around town already. I don't know anybody who's very anxious
to stake me. So I'm stranded, like so many other runt: fellows. We MIA
to get out and work, find oupsolves, do some living. but when you're
busted fist it's not so easy to de. It's pretty tou#h, believe as. In
the old days a young fellow could borrow money to ;.st started with, but
try and do it today. You've get to have security to got anything from
the banks. And the finance COMpOides soak you so much you *ain't afford
to clip them. All you do is hang around and drink too much, and wise
Greek and laugh at everything booauer7 you feel licked and empty inside.
*I hate to see winter atoning again. When the leaves begin to fall
I vent to go, too. The winters rere are pretty bads I don't in much
for skiing or skating or any winter sports. I like basketball, but there's
not much of that here for fellows after they're out of sehoel. So there's
nothing to do but hang around the poolroom, bowling alleys and beer gardens;
3.
GR‘
Rodney was a tall lanky youth of twenty-two, who walked with an eager
loping stride and more, in all weather, a brown felt hat pulled low over
his spectacles. Be looked ism.ature and callow, but possessed to a high
degree all the hardboiled oyniciam and flippant bitterness of the youth of
the Great Uopression. He customarily associated with men older than him-
self, and it had left a mark on him.
"I bay* a lot of fun too. But it soars' no to think of all the time
and energy wasted. I've ert plenty of ambition. I don't mind hard work.
Put Pm dammed If I want to shovel gravel or clerk in an A P store or
jerk sodas. And I couldn't sell insures's or haler brushes either* I
can write sports and news. but I don't somata get started very fast, I
must admit.
"I got a lot of good material for stories when I traveled around
with the cops, but I guess I'm no fiction writer. You certainly see some
funny ones, cruising around with a police oar late at night. I VOA with
them when that orchestra leader went berserk and broke into old Mrs.
Phillips' house. He ems choking the old lady's son ebonies got there.
Red him down on the floor choking him and hammering his head. Crasy
drunli. that 4onkey was. Jud cracked him over the skull with the handcuffs.
"One night up at the rover' Jug this dizzy dame went into the women's
toilet, looked the door, and climbed out the window. The girls were lined
up outside waiting to get in. After awhile they thought sure the first
babe had bumped herself off. Maybe that place wasn't a madhoLse when in
got there. kverybody horrified and fascinated by the suicide, you know.
The ,irl who pulled that fast one was outside in a car laughing herself
sick.
4.
"Tully and heady worked together for years on a coal truck, great
pals, you know. Moody had a girl and she was pretty nice. A redhead.
Tully kept trying to make her. One night we were prowling past the plum
she lived when all at a sudden Tully oones out a second -story window and
down the porch. Wady pops out right after his. Tully starts across the
limn and trips over a hedge or something. hoody JUMQ0 onto his and starts
sluuing hies. We sat in the oar lane,hing until it began to leek as if
Moody might kill fully. Then we got out and stopped it."
"1 vent with then once 'ohm they broke up a dies gams over beat of
the tracks. Sow those guys scattered and rant They tore off in all
directions, half-drunk, stunb,ing, failing, crawling to their feet to
run some more. Another tine the police raided this nigger joint that
was here a few years ago, and the old mammy almost got Jud with a stove
poker. It took a groove out of the door jamb right beside Jud's head.
They ran the niggers out of town.
In the spring cruising around that way you learn a lot at interest-
ing things about some of our sweet young ladies, too. Very interesting.
The oops know where all tie favorite parking planes are, don't worry.
Some of those couples sure look fumy when the old spotlight hits eat
*When it was really bad here though, was when the CCC°8 were here
working on the flood -control dams. They were mostly World War Yet.,
tough and wild and slaPN'harP70 awl° d (lame into towo and sell their
jackets, blouses, *hoes, blank,ts, anythinr they had to get a drink.
Hemingway tells about the Vets down in lerida in his book, To have and
Have hot. 1411, these guys were the mai way. Punch-drunk and slug
nutty. They were an awful outfit. Those dams are a great thing, but
5.
tho populace certainly suffered during tho constructian of that.
"Most of the kids I played around with in high school went to college.
I'd aleays planned to go, wanted to go but I couldn't make it. Probably
wouldn't be much better off if I had gone anyway. It doesn't soon to
make muoh difference nowadays. They get on Wi's or pump gas for Standard
Oil or something like that. Still, I'd like to have gole.
"I don't have pouch homelife. Mnybe that's what I miss, along with
other things. My sister works and eats lunch downtown. It's too far to
walk homes anyway. I eat nearly all my meals downtown' oily go home to
sleep. You 4ot pretty sick of hanging around diners and restaurants and
beer pints, and it's net so ,:ood eating any old tins of day and night
or forgetting to eat at all. sines I stopped working I usually stay up
most of the night and sleep most of the day. sleep or lie around reading.
It's tter than loafing downtown all day. You know how the time drags
when you're doing nothing.
"Now that my job is finished I don't know what to do. I could pick
up a little money covering basketball games this winter* but not enough
to get by on. I couldn't make a livig at it. I've never really made a
living, I guess. If I could get hold of some money l'd go to Connecticut
or Ohio. I have relatives there, and I could stick around and lc)* for
work. But I can't very well To without a dime. I don't know. It makes
a guy wonder.
"I do know ono thing though. omohow„ some way, I've got to got
away from hero and get started in something. This is almost enough to
make a guy join the army."