Viewing page 92 of 99

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

26

The other wingding, however, is well recorded in a long memo that I'd evidently intended to use as the basis of a short story. I'm going to put it down here because it's true and an interesting slice of the life that some of the younger people lived in 1933-—and still do, only perhaps worse, today. It was a unique and disturbing experience to me because I got into it far deeper than I intended but was quite powerless to do much about it in spite of all my misgivings. The date was June 22nd, the day before my 31st birthday. Once again, Bill Hamilton had been in Erie that day, Maurice Guynes and I had taken him to dinner, and then put him on the train for New York. We'd had a half dozen rounds of 3.2 beer with Bill, who loved beer. After Bill had left, the evening was still young, the boss hadn't had much relaxation for some time, and he suggested we make an evening of it. He had his old Buick and I had nothing, so we traveled together and he did the driving. This automobile situation was the basic key to what happened and the reason that I was caught in a set of circumstances over which I had little control without doing something extremely drastic. But it sure taught me a lesson and I don't think I ever got into a similar bind again.

It was around 9:15 and I agreed to go along, assuming we'd have two or three more beers and call it a day and go home. I couldn't have been much farther from what happened. Maurice decided to drive to a dive called The Cave several miles out of town on the Waterford Road. I'd never even heard of it. It was a dancing and drinking place and filled largely with a crowd of kids ranging from say eighteen to twenty—two. They were drinking both beer and the hard stuff.  A three-piece orchestra supplied the music. Not only was there much dancing but also a lot of uninhibited necking being carried on throughout the place. Maurice and I sat at a table, ordered a beer, and watched the action. We expressed our thoughts sporadically. I was still feeling the warm but fading flush of youth. He was beginning to feel the oncoming chill of middle age. A girl at the next table with her back to us persisted in allowing a strap to slip off a very shapely shoulder and it was something to warm our hearts. "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" swung on. We continued to sit and look and sip our beer and maybe we wished in secret that we were like these kids again--without cares or responsibilities or restraints, free to love one today, another tomorrow. The beer gradually dulled our cares. We began to look more freely and with less feeling of restraint.

Two girls with a drunken escort sat down at a vacant table next to ours. They were drinking gin. Maurice went to the men's room where he befriended a 22—year—old who was out there both stoned and sick. This was a typical Guynesian act, to help a guy in trouble. Maurice took the boy to the Buick and laid him down on the floor in back and he went to sleep, then Maurice returned to the bull ring. The boy was one of a party of three girls and three boys who were at a nearby table. Maurice ex—