Temperance

"Before long, public school children in every state, 22 million of them, were sitting through Temperance classes three times a week.

Kindergartners were taught to chant, tremble, King Alcohol, we shall grow up. Older children studied texts filled with lurid misinformation calculated to terrify. Just one drink, some books alleged, could burn away the lining of the throat and stomach and begin eating away at the liver and kidneys.

Little Johnny has one drink, and the next picture he's lying in the gutter unconscious. One of their most notorious things is they had

diagrams of body parts. You would have a diagram of the stomach. And then they had a diagram of an inebriate stomach, and what happens to you. Well, the inebriate stomach was full color.

Alcohol caused deafness, dropsy, lunacy, they claimed-- not only in those who swallowed it, but in their children and their children's children. 

And always, some textbooks warned, there was the fearful possibility that drinking could spark spontaneous combustion, bursting suddenly into fatal blue flame. Millions of children came to believe it all, and it would not be too long, Willard prayed, before they all were old enough to vote.

"In America, ballots are bayonets. You think maybe The Crusade is dead and its banner trailing in The Dust? I tell you, no.

In The Saloons, Life was different. Men talked with great voices, laughed great laughs. And there was an atmosphere of greatness.

Here was something more than the common everyday where nothing happened. Here, Life was always very live, and sometimes even lurid. Terrible, saloons might be. But then that only meant that they were terribly wonderful."

-- Jack London.

Despite The Washingtonians, despite The Woman's Crusade and The WCTU, despite legions of clergymen and Temperance lectures and school books meant to terrify, more and more saloons were opening every day in America. By the turn of the new 20th century, there would be some 300,000, as varied as the people who patronized them.

For millions of working men, saloons were a refuge from long hours at a clerk's desk or on a factory floor, or deep in a coal mine.

And from the responsibilities represented by The Family waiting at home. The brass rail was more than a foot rest, one man remembered. It was a symbol of Masculinity-emancipate, of Manhood free to put its feet on something.

"They were places where people got up and sang songs. They were places where The Laughter went on and on. And The Assumption was, they worked so hard during the week, if they thought Friday belonged to Them and The Boys, why not? You know, that was part of The Deal. It was essential to their survival that to get through a tough life and hard times, particularly for The Immigrants in this strange country, you know, that's not quite yours, I think it was essential to them that they have this."

The saloon is so many different things to different people. If you lived in a squalid tenement house, it was your living room. It was your social club. It was maybe where your translator was. Your bartender was there to watch out for you. Your bartender might have done a lot more for you than the local priest did, or the local cop.

Beer and whiskey were not The Saloon's sole attraction. A Man could cash his paycheck, pick up his mail if he didn't yet have an address of his own, read the paper, learn English, play cards or billiards, find out who was hiring -- even get himself a City job. Big city saloon keepers often doubled as politicians, doling out patronage positions.

In 1890, 11 of New York's 24 aldermen ran bars. In East Boston's ward two, an Irish immigrant's son named Patrick J. Kennedy use profits from two saloons and a wine and spirits import business to begin to build the political machine that would one day help put his grandson into The White House. Unions met in saloons. So did veterans groups, fraternal organisations, and immigrant associations.

Ballots were cast in them. Wakes were held. And so were christening parties.

They were the working class private clubs. The uptown white Anglo-Saxon Protestants had their clubs for the same reasons, you know, except that they were talking about, How would you like to buy Venezuela? But it was the same essential thing that there were contacts going on in these rough places.

And the majority of them were not buckets of blood, as they called them. They were not places where you walked in and you were hauled out by an ambulance. They were much more clubs. Most of them had basic rules-- pay your debts, vote the straight ticket, that sort of thing.

Regulars may have seen their corner taverns as familiar neighborhood businesses. But more often than not, they actually belonged to one or another of the big brewers. Brewing companies owned the saloons. And if Pabst opened a saloon on this corner, Busch was going to have one on this corner and somebody was going to have one on this corner and this corner. And the cities were overwhelmed by the brewery-owned saloons.

By agreeing to sell just one brand of beer, almost anyone could go into the saloon business. The brewery paid for his license, provided the pool table and artwork, the bar and bar stools-- even the spittoons-- everything needed to keep its beer flowing.

They would do anything to sell beer. The free lunch? You say there's no such thing as a free lunch? Well, in the 1890s and a couple decades after, the free lunch was something that was served in nearly every saloon. You would go in and you would get your cheese and your salami, and your sardines and your saltines. And what do these things have in common? They're incredibly salty.

And so you would drink a lot of beer. It was a wonderful marketing device.

Decent citizens were appalled that most big cities had a carefully delineated district in which vice, although technically illegal, was tolerated-- a place where pimps and thugs and strong-arm men worked hand in hand with corrupt cops and accommodating politicians. And all of them were centered around saloons. In Manhattan, it was the Midtown Tenderloin, denounced by reformers as Satan's circus. New Orleans had its Storyville. San Francisco, the Barbary Coast.

In Seattle, it was named for the street along which lumbermen skidded logs to the docks before looking for a place to have a drink -- Skid Row. In Chicago's notorious Levee District, 20 square blocks on the south side, there were said to be 500 saloons, 500 whorehouses, 56 pool rooms, 15 gambling halls, and too many peep shows and cocaine parlors and bawdy theaters to count. All of it was overseen by a flamboyant saloon keeper and democratic committee man, Mike "Hinky Dink" Kenna.

He had a tavern, and he was the alderman of the first ward. And of course, if you don't think that's a conflict, to own a tavern and be the alderman at the same time. But he controlled the levee. And of course, if you controlled the Levee, you controlled all the votes. They could elect Mickey Mouse because they'd tell you who to vote for. And they did.

It fostered a lot of corruption. The bar became completely intertwined with politics in a lot of cities. So you could buy votes with a whiskey and a cigar. You could always make the argument that the saloon was a place where morals were loose, where prostitution was a danger, where people were taken advantage of.

My great grandmother remembers as a child walking the streets of Philadelphia and crossing the street so she would not have to cross in front of a saloon, because it was so scary-- the noises that were coming out of it, the men lying in the gutter in front of it-- that was the face of alcohol consumption.

One of the terrifying stories of my childhood was my mother telling me what it was like-- she was an Irish immigrant-- growing up in Hell's Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan-- of the men who would be paid on Saturday afternoon and taking it directly to the saloon-- coming home drunken, abusive, with all the money gone. And the mother trying to figure out how she was going to hold

the family together, how the children were going to be fed. And as a little boy, identifying myself with those children, I wondered how I was going to be fed.

The only way to solve the problem of drunkenness, many believed, was to get rid of the saloon.

When I went to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, there were seven dives where drinks were sold. I began to ask, why should we have the saloon when Kansas was a prohibition state, and our constitution made it a crime to manufacture, barter, sell, or give away intoxicating drinks? These dive keepers really were not as much to blame as the city officials who were in league with this lawless element, and could see the wicked walking on every side, and the vilest men exalted. Carrie Nation.

Carrie Nation's life was filled with tragedy. Her mother died in an insane asylum, convinced she was Queen Victoria. Her first husband drank himself to death. A second unhappy marriage would end in divorce. She determined to give herself over to the struggle against what she called "the place where the serpent drink crushed the hopes of my early years," the saloon.

Kansas had already banned the sale of alcohol in every one of its 105 counties. But the state's dusty cow towns and large cities alike were filled with thirsty men, and no one paid much attention to The Law. As President of the Barber County WCTU, Carrie Nation had led peaceful marches that had had little effect, wrote letters to legislators and lawmen that were never even answered, and eventually became convinced God wished her to Do more.

"On the 6th of June, 1900, before retiring, I threw myself downward at the foot of my bed and told The Lord to use me in any way to suppress the dreadful curse of liquor. I told him I wished I had 1,000 lives, that I would give Him all of them. And I wanted Him to make it known to Me in some way. The next morning before, I awoke, I heard these words very distinctly -- Go to Kiowa, and I'll stand by you."

The next morning, with an armload of what she called "smashers," rocks and bottles wrapped in paper to look like harmless packages, she strode into a saloon in Kiowa.

I told the owner, Mr. Dobson, get out of the way. I don't want to strike you, but I'm going to break up this den of vice. I began to throw at the mirror and the bottles below the mirror. Mr. Dobson and his companion jumped into a corner, seemed very much terrified. From that, I went to another saloon, until I had destroyed three.

The other dive keepers closed up, stood in front of their places, and would not let me in. By this time, the streets were crowded with people. One boy, about 15 years old, seemed perfectly wild with joy. I have since thought of that being a significant sign, for the smash saloons will save the boy.

She dared the sheriff to arrest her. He did not. She moved onto Wichita, to attack the most opulent solution in town, the bar in the Hotel Carey. When a policeman arrested her there for defacing property, she shouted at him, "I am defacing nothing. I am destroying. You put me in here a cub, she said from behind bars. But I will go out a roaring lion. 

And I will make all hell howl.

Wife-in-Laws

While in The City I looked up Sweet. 

I was careful because all the heat in the neighborhood knew me. Sweet insisted I give him all the details of My Escape. He shook his skull in awe when he heard them. 

Miss Peaches had died of old age. His eyes were sad when he told me about it. Glass Top was still out West in Seattle. Patch Eye did a little bookie business for him. Sweet had lost His Glory. He looked a hundred years old. His backbone was the old white broad who owned the building. 

Sweet had just beat a murder rap. He had killed some pretty jerk from St Louis who had insulted him in the Roost. The poor chump had called Sweet an ugly, gray-ass bastard. 

Sweet had drawn his pistol on him. He prodded him into an alley. He made him kneel and then he pissed on him. This was too much to take, so The Kid lost his temper. Sweet shot him through the top of the head. Sweet was laughing, in a good mood as he told me about it. It had cost him five grand to beat it. He told me he got a wire that Red Eye got life for croaking a whore in Pittsburgh. Sweet had a complete answer to my problem. He said that since Serena hadn’t beefed I should go back into Ohio. No state was better at the time for house or street. 

Before I left I went to his john. 

The door had a padlock on the outside. 

He looked at me grinned, 

and said, ‛Pal, my crapper is out of order.’ 

I went downstairs to the john in the bookie joint. 

On the way out I asked Patch Eye why 

Sweet didn’t get his toilet fixed. 

The old ex-pimp, without looking up answered, 

‛Shit, ain’t nothing wrong with the crapper. 

That cold bastard has his two whores 

locked in there for fucking with his scratch. 

They been in there three days.’ 

I walked toward my car. I wondered how long Sweet would keep them there and how long the whores could live with just water. I got back from The City. I stopped downtown at Rachel’s suite. I stayed for the night. I outlined The Move. 

The next morning I was looking out the window down on The Street. There was a stooped white-haired joker dumping barrels of hotel garbage into a huge truck. It was Steve. I’d know him in hell! 

A hot-flash shot through me. I don’t know what happened after that. Rachel told me I snatched my thirty-two from my coat pocket in the closet. I ran to the service elevator in my pajamas. She followed me all the way to The Street. I didn’t say a word. The truck had pulled away when we reached the sidewalk. She got me back upstairs. 

It had been A Sucker Play for A Fugitive. Lucky for me no rollers showed on the scene. I dressed and told Rachel I’d be back later and I wanted the rest of The Stable in her joint. 

I stopped at a leather-goods shop and bought a small valise. It was about the size that A Doctor carries. I stopped at several banks and cracked some of my big bills into enough singles to fill the bag. 

I went to Mama’s to prepare The Flash. I filled it almost to the brim with singles. I put the remaining big bills on top. 

I was getting ready to ship My Stable. 

With my plan I could ship them without a strong fix. 

Even new whores Think twice before leaving A Rich Pimp. That afternoon they were all in Rachel’s plush suite. She was The Boss bitch. They had twenty-five dollar a day, neat rooms on the same floor. I walked in. They were smoking gangster and eager for My Speech. They were anxious to get back on The Track. 

I had loosened the catch on The Bag. I casually hurled it onto The Table before them. A bale of hundred-dollar bills jumped from the bag. Reefer enhances what you see. I saw on those whores’ faces that they were seeing every dollar of the mountain of greenbacks they had given me for the years I had been Their Man. Confidence flooded their eyes. I finished My Briefing and My Instructions. I had built my shining castles in the air. Brother, I could have sent those whores to Siberia, in bikinis, in The Wintertime. 

Keeping her wife-in-laws and my scratch straight up there in Toledo was the first acid test for Rachel as a Bottom-Woman. 

I stayed around Mama’s for a week. She was bugging me to embrace The Holy Ghost and The Fire. She begged me to square up and repent my sins. No, it was a little late for that. I moved on to Ohio again. Cleveland was only a short hop to Toledo. I set up a mad apartment in the larger city. Cleveland was jumping. I was ready for the best pimping of my career. Kim ran off with a wealthy white trick. I didn’t miss her. Both towns were crawling with young fine whores. The name of the game was still cop and blow. Within four months I had the three girls in Toledo and five in Cleveland. I was pimping good. I had a connection for stuff. All was perfect except for one thing. Rachel’s Name was ringing. Every pimp, con man and rich dope-peddler was shooting for her. They offered soft, irresistible propositions. Her head was getting as big as a pumpkin. 

I didn’t want to lose her. I had another more serious reason for wanting to hold her. If I blew her, she might pull a Runt on me and Go to The FBI. 

I got it through the wire that a slick con-man out of New York was using his beautiful jasper white girl as bait to cop Rachel. The same wire said that Rachel was getting weak for The Broad. I went to Toledo one early morning to Rachel’s. Sure enough there they were, the three of them in Rachel’s bed. Believe me they hadn’t gotten in there to recite bedtime stories. 

I was cool, icy as always. I let her con me that it was A Party, all business of course. That wire had described that bastard con player and his freak woman. 

I was in Trouble. If it had been any other bitch in the stable except Rachel it wouldn’t have been worth a fleeting thought. I couldn’t lose Rachel, my bottom woman, in this shitty fashion to some ass-hole con player. It could kill my career as a pimp. The news would flash in a dozen states. No, I couldn’t afford to lose her. I still had that expensive friend riding with me, that monkey on my back. Sweet would have had The Solution to this tough problem right off the top of his head. 

Sweet, the week before, had shot himself in the temple. 

He left a bitter note, ‛Good-bye squares! Kiss my pimping ass!’ 

I felt nothing when I got the wire. 

I left her apartment and drove out into the country. 

I spun The Wheels in My Skull. 

I got The Key to The Riddle. 

It was cruel but perfect. 

If it worked I’d never have to worry 

that she’d blow or cross me with The FBI. 

Rachel called me the next day. She told me she had just sent me three bills. She got them for The Party I had crashed. When she cracked, I knew I had to go through with The Cross. The three bills she was sending had to be scratch she had been holding out. That con bastard was too pretty and slick to spend three fat-ones with a whore. I had to make an honest whore of her from now on. 

I faked excitement when I told her about a sucker who was visiting Akron. It’s a small town, thirty miles from Cleveland. 

I told her I got a wire that The Sucker had hit The Numbers for twenty Gs. He had it all with him in his hotel room. 

I sold her that she could take it off Smooth and Easy. 

She said she would be down the next day to get briefed in detail. 

I had already driven to Akron and set The Stage for her. I had rented a hotel room in a fair hotel. I contacted a dignified looking old ex-slum hustler down on his luck. He spruced up a wino friend of his for The Play. 

The whole arrangement – clothes, room, and a bill apiece for the actors – came to a half-grand. 

The slum hustler was to wait in a pool room 

nearby for my call. Rachel got to my apartment at three P.M. 

We got to Akron around six. I told her one of the bellhops had told the sucker she would be there before seven. He was waiting for her. I slipped a small vial of mineral oil into her palm. 

I told her it was Chloral Hydrate.

Only two drops would knock The Sucker out. 

I told her I would be waiting in the hotel bar for her. She stopped at the desk. Sure enough he was expecting her. She went up. She came down within an hour nervous and jumpy. The sucker was out cold. She had searched the room. She couldn’t find the scratch. I went back to the room with her. 

I went through another search. 

The wino was lying there motionless. We gave up searching. 

We moved toward the door. I looked back at the wino. 

I said, ‛Say Baby, he looks bad to me.’ 

I knelt beside him blocking her view with My Back. I wiped My Brow and turned My Face toward her. My eyes were wide in alarm. I said, ‛Baby, He’s Dead I think.’ 

Most women, even whores, are terrified of dead bodies. She stood there paralysed. 

I said, ‛Don’t get panicky. Shut that door. I’ve got it! 

I know an underworld croaker here in town. Maybe he can bring him to. I know he will keep Hisouth shut for A  Price, even if.’ 

She knew we couldn’t leave a murdered man here. She had stopped at The Desk first before coming up. She was painfully aware of the big gap between Theft and Murder. I picked up the phone and got the pool room. 

I gave the fake doctor the hotel and room number. He came within five minutes carrying his empty bag. She couldn’t see into it. I had told her to Hide in The Closet. Too many people had seen her already. 

He stooped down beside the wino. He fumbled with his pulse, his eyelids. 

Finally he stood up and said, ‛He’s Dead. I can’t help him. 

I’ll have to call The Police.’ I could almost hear Rachel’s heart booming in The Closet. We haggled for her benefit for ten minutes. Finally we had A Deal. For five bills, he would keep his mouth shut. He would also contact a hoodlum who would get the body out of there and dispose of it. He left. Rachel and I got out of there fast. 

Driving back to Cleveland, Rachel was in a trance. She squeezed tightly against me. I kept telling her she had nothing to worry about. 

After all we were together for life and Her Secret would always be safe with Me. 

She found out about The Hoax years later. 

Rachel straightened up with that Murder pressure on her. Toledo was on fire and in one month my three girls got nine cases between them. I pulled them out into Cleveland. Cleveland was lousy with pimps and whores and boosters from all over the country. The mob of hustlers set the torch to Cleveland. 

By nineteen fifty-three the streets were so hot a whore was lucky to stand up a week between falls. I was a fugitive. For almost a year I never left my apartment. I couldn’t risk arrest and a fingerprint check. I was down to four girls. That year in The Apartment was cramping My Style. 

Mama had hit a romantic and financial jack-pot. She had moved to Los Angeles. She called me every week pleading with me to visit her. She wanted me to meet my new stepfather, and stay for a while. 

I kept stalling her. I had heard that the smack in California was only six percent. The Pimps out there were only half serious. This makes for bad pimping conditions. Several Eastern pimps had gone to The Coast in good shape. They had returned torn down. 

They said The Western whores were lazy and were satisfied with making chump change. The Western pimps had spoiled them. I gave myself logical arguments against the move to California. Why should I expose my well-trained whores to that dangerous half-ass scene out West?

What if I blew My Family out there in the hinterlands? 

I was thirty-four now. In any square profession I would have been in My Prime. As a pimp I was getting elderly. I was stern and strict on My Women. 

Rachel wired me that a stud with a stable of boosters was in town with a load of wild Lilli Anne suits and Petrocelli vines at twenty percent of retail. She got me his number the next day. 

I called him and got an appointment to look his stock over. I only left the apartment for important reasons. I decided I would cop a piece of stuff and a fresh outfit before seeing him. He was staying at a crummy hotel on the East Side. He let me into a cracker-box three-room apartment. He sounded me down to make sure of my pedigree. ‛So, you’re Iceberg, huh? I was in your town not long ago. Philly sure is hot.’ 

He knew me by reputation and that I was from Chicago. I said, ‛Yes, I’m Iceberg from the Windy.’ 

He said, ‛Say Jim, how ’bout old Red Eye? I saw him in New York last month. He’s pimping a zillion. Surely you know him.’

I gave him that look, like I had caught him frenching a sissy. 

I said, ‛Listen carefully, Jack. I don’t have time for bull-shit. I knew Red Eye. 

You saw him last month, Jack? You better see a head-shrinker. You’re flipping your top. 

Red Eye caught the big one in Pittsburgh five years ago. He’s doing it all.’ 

He gave me a grin like he had swallowed a bottle of snot. 

He got the sizes from me. He said to cool it in his pad. He had to go to his stash across the street to get the merchandise. I glanced into the tiny bedroom. There was a naked broad lying on the bed. I said to myself, ‛I wonder what kind of dog that is.’ 

I went to the bed and looked down at her. She was drunk, stoned. It looked like The Runt. This broad was buxom, almost fat. I knew one way to be sure. I had lashed the blood out of her with that hanger whipping years ago. She would still have the scars. I flipped her over on her belly. They were there. I stood there looking down at her. I remembered that tough bit in Leavenworth. 

Here at my mercy was that stinking bitch, Phyllis. Just the sight of her made me crazy. I grabbed a cologne bottle off the dresser. I jerked the big top off. I got My Bag out. I dumped enough of the twenty percent stuff into the top to croak a sick junkie. She was clean. I spotted a bottle of mixer water on the floor. I filled the top and struck a match. I held it beneath the top. I rammed my gun into it. I drew up her reckoning. I stabbed the outfit into a vein just back of her knees. Her red blood streaked up into the joint. 

I was just about to press the pacifier bulb. I looked out the window. I caught a glimpse of The Joker darting across the street. He had a steamer trunk headed toward the front door of The Hotel. I froze, jerked the spike out of her. I thrust the loaded outfit inside my shoe underneath my instep. I pinned the bag to my shorts between my legs. 

I collapsed into the living-room chair just as he came through the door. I was sweating like hell. He was suspicious. He kept looking from the corner of his eye at his broad. He thought I had been riding her in his absence. I wondered how long he’d had her. 

He was a wrongdoer. He’d cut her loose when he got hip to what he had. Sooner or later someone would pull his coat. He’d find out The Runt had sent me to The Joint. I was getting what I wanted from the merchandise. 

He slipped into the bedroom and checked her cat out. I left with the dozen items I had bought. I knew I had bought going-to-California clothes. I had quizzed him about his plans. He was going to stay in Cleveland for weeks. I had to leave town. Now. Phyllis was sure to get the wire from him that I was in town. I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to drop a dime in the phone to The Heat. She had to know about The Escape. I drove away. I tried to picture the expression on her face when her man cracked to her that Iceberg had been up there alone with her while she was stoned. 

I got a flight that night for L.A. It’s fabulous when a pimp’s bottom girl can be trusted to handle his scratch and his whores. She was welded to Me by that Murder Cross. The stable would drive out later in the Hog. 

Mama was radiantly happy out there and my stepfather was a wonderful square. They lived in a big house. L.A. was worse than the reports I had gotten. I got around in Mama’s Coupe de Ville. After the second night I went into the whore and pimp stomping grounds. 

I stayed around Mama for another week then went up to Seattle. Glass Top’s name wasn’t ringing. In fact he was almost unknown. One stud told me Glass Top had croaked. 

I copped a gorgeous hash-slinger up there. I turned her out that week. Lucky I did. I lost a girl back in Cleveland. Her appendix burst. I pulled the three left into Seattle. 

After I had been in town six months, Fate dealt me one off the top for a change. My bag was empty and the stuff in town was around six percent. I had to shoot three spoons to stay well. The girls were humping up a storm, I was getting no inside grief. 

I was sitting in the Hog one day. An old withered stud walked past me. He came back and stooped down looking at me. He shouted, ‛Ice, my old pimping buddy.’ 

I took a close look. It was Glass Top. He got in. He patted the scraggly processed hair on his nearly-bald head. He’d done a long bit in the state joint. He wasn’t pimping. An old square broad was feeding him. He was a drunk. Until I left town I bought him bottles and rapped with him. 

He croaked two days after I left town. 

I ran into the croaker who aborted Helen. He had lost his license and done a short bit back East for an abortion. We started rapping a lot to each other. He knew most of the hustlers I knew so we had much in common. 

He kept telling me how bad I looked. He told me how handsome I’d been when I brought Helen to him. He needled me. He expressed doubt that I had the guts to kick. 

He was Game to help me kick if I was Game to kick. I decided to let him help me. He warned me I would have to follow his every instruction. He had a house in town. He still took a fast buck from his old hustle. Rachel was the only girl in The Family who knew I was hooked. None of the rest knew. I was going to stay at the Doc’s to kick. They thought I was out of town. 

He used the system of reduction. We reached the tearing, puking, none-at-all stage. Let me tell you that beautiful croaker bastard was immune and rock-hard. I tried the raving, crying con on him. He would jab a needle into me to tranquilize me, so he couldn’t hear my bleating. 

I tell you, if you have ever had the flu real bad, just multiply the misery, the aching torture by a thousand. That’s what it’s like to kick a habit. It took two weeks. I was weak, but with an appetite like a horse. In another two weeks I was Stronger than I’d been in years. 

The Doc will always be My Man. If he hadn’t come to My Rescue, and I had kept that habit until nineteen sixty, I would have been a corpse within a week in that steel casket waiting for me.