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Using the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, get a little slack and pull the film through this little thingamajig. Clamp here. Leave a small loop so it won't flutter, and then go up over this, down under this, around this, and then tight around the big one. (It has to fit tight on the sound drum). Then under this, over this, under this again, around this, and down. Insert the feeder in the lower reel and you are almost ready. Turn on the sound and let it warm up. See the tiny red light? Now out with the houselights and flip the toggle switch to ON. If the sound is loud enough the incidental slithering of the film won't bother you a bit....

Richard Hudson pressed the counter in his hand one more time before he took a look at it. 873. That was a lot of iron to pass one spot in fifteen minutes. And more passed the other way going toward Hollywood. 927. The Los Angeles Transit Company bus stopped at the comer every fourteen minutes discharging an average of six passengers, taking on five. Across the street on the other comer a streetcar stopped every seven minutes, and three men and one woman and one child got aboard, while two women and one child dismounted. That was the average for the location. Richard Hudson had been checking it for two days.

A beautiful average and a wonderful location. And yet, the used car dealer across the street sat on his big fat keister smoking cigarettes and gurgling Coca-Colas all day long when he had thirty-five unsold automobiles glaring under the California sun.

With an impatient movement of his fingers Richard noosed his rep tie and slid across the hot leather seat of his 1940 Continental convertible (a very clean car) and climbed out on the sidewalk side. It had been very warm for May sitting in the direct rays of the sun and he blotted his face with an Irish linen handkerchief, jerked his jacket down in back. He was wearing a new black silk suit, and it was well wrinkled. One day's wear and the suit was ready for the cleaners, but it gave Richard an air of prosperity, and at the moment he was prosperous.

Richard Hudson was about to steal a used car lot and every automobile on it.

At the corner he waited for the green light before crossing the busy street. In San Francisco he would have dashed across, dodging between cars, but in Los Angeles, to cross against a red light means a ticket for jaywalking and/or sudden death. This was Crenshaw Boulevard; 873 cars one way and 927 cars the other way every fifteen minutes.

Upon reaching the lot Richard walked slowly around a vintage Buick, eyeing it critically and kicking the tires. Such obvious shopping tactics should have roused the owner from his lethargy, but he didn't even look up from his comic book. A lazy mixed-up skid. Richard was forced to go to him.

"You selling used cars today?" Richard asked, smiling down at the heavy man in the chair. "Yes, sir. See anything you like?"

"Yeah," Richard mused, "I like all thirty-five."

"Can't make up your mind, huh?" The owner wiped his sweating neck with the back of his hand, leaned his chair back comfortably against the wall of the small stucco office building.

Richard broadened his thin smile. "Yeah," he said, "I can make up my mind. Can you?"

"What do you mean?" The dealer was beginning to get suspicious of Richard’s manner, and he got uneasily to his feet.

"I mean all thirty-five. You own them all. You have a lease on the lot with three more years to run and you aren't doing worth a damn. You should have hung onto the two apartment houses you owned in St. Louis."

"Now wait a minute, Mr.—"

"Don't get excited, Mr. Ehlers." Richard handed the dealer his card. "My name is Richard Hudson and my business is used cars. I'll take all of these heaps off your hands and buy your lease. You don7t want to work anyway. Why not retire permanently and enjoy the sun at the beach instead of sitting on a Crenshaw used car lot?"

"You've got a point there; Mr. Hudson, wasn't it?" Mr. Ehlers reached out a soft white hand for Richard to shake.

"Richard Hudson is right. Chief representative of Honest Hal Parker, San Francisco. And I'll give you seventeen thousand, five for the cars on the lot as they stand, including the lease. Final price. No dickering."

Mr. Ehlers looked blankly across the white gravel of the lot, at the flapping, fading bunting strung on wires above the shiny merchandise, and performed some slow mental arithmetic. Richard could have done it for him a lot quicker. At midnight the night before, Richard had gone through the lot with THE BOOK, and his offer was exactly $300 below list on every car, not counting two pre-WWII models Mr. Ehlers would probably have thrown in for nothing anyway.

Ehlers lit a filter-tipped cigarette and Richard perceived the trembling of his fingers. The price was very right for a slipping business and Ehlers knew it. But when a person offers good money for something it is the nature of man to want more than was offered.

"What about my lease?" Ehlers asked timidly. "I said I'd take that too."

"You didn't mention what you'd pay me for my lease."

"That's right." Richard lit a cigarette, but his hands did not tremble. "I’ll give you nothing for the lease," he said in a flat, even voice, "but I'll take over your burden of the $250 a month payments. Now just what in the hell would you do with an empty parking lot?"

"It cost me a lot of dough—"

"I'm not you!" Richard reminded the dealer sharply. "Is it a deal or isn't it?"

Mr. Ehlers sat down wearily in his chair, pressed the fingers of his right hand against his forehead, cradled his right elbow in the palm of his left hand. A few moments later a notebook came out of his shirt pocket and he started figuring with a ballpoint pen. After five minutes of figuring with the pen and notebook a beautiful smile creased his round perspiring face.

"I figure it at about $150 off list on each car, and you've made me a fair price, Mr. Hudson. I'll take it!"

Richard could hardly believe his ears. Ehlers was wrong, dead wrong, but so what? The deal was merely that much easier to wrap in a package.

"You've made a deal then, Mr. Ehlers. How about meeting me at my lawyers at three this afternoon. O'Keeffe and Cullinan. The Redstone Building. And bring your papers."

"That's pretty fast!" The fat dealer marveled.

"You bet it is!" Richard laughed. "I don't want you to change your mind."

"Don't worry. I'll be there." They shook hands. Richard returned to his car, drove to the Fig Hotel where he had been staying the past six weeks. He was in exceptionally good spirits, well-pleased with himself. Honest Hal would be happy with the transaction and the low price, and Richard was glad the search was over. Now he could get back to selling used cars.

In his hotel room Richard raised a glass of scotch and tap water to his reflection in the mirror above the chest of drawers.

"To me!" He said happily.

EXPOSITION

That was the beginning. It is also a flashback and narrative hook. This much about writing I have learned from the movies. Also, I don't want to fool anybody, including myself. Especially myself. I believe now, that I should have remained Richard Hudson, Used Car Dealer, and I should never have become Richard Hudson, Writer-Director- Producer. At least I think I know this, but I do not really know. Thereby this story, or narrative, or notebook, or whatever it turns out to be. Somewhere along the way I may discover the exact point, or the turning point perhaps, or the error, if it was an error that I made, or someone else made, or just exactly what it was that happened to me.

I have the time. God knows I have the time. If it were possible I would put down every thought, every word of conversation, every minute of every -day that followed this beginning. But I cannot. Not only is my memory too faulty for total recall, I would soon be bogged down in the in- significant. Instead, I intend to put on paper the sequence of events, some in order, some out of order. I shall include some of the people involved, and somewhere during this journey from backward to forward in time I may find myself. However, I doubt this very much. But in any case it will be an interesting journey. Long or short.

A movie is ninety minutes long, six short reels in time. This is something I learned in Hollywood. An insane rule, I know, but there it is; let no man tear it asunder.

This is not a story about used cars, and it isn't altogether about movies or the making of movies, although it has something of each. Mostly it is about people, and of and about me. Already I sense that I am breaking some cardinal rule of writing.

If I continue in this vein how will I be able to establish a strong reader-identification? The average reader has a tendency to identify himself with a lead character and to project himself into the story and actually live the story through the thoughts, emotions and actions of the lead character. Poor reader. I am the reader and I dread the thought of going through it all again, and at the same time I welcome and relish the opportunity. Perhaps I am a masochist?

This is what I learned about a story at Mammoth Studios: A likeable and sympathetic hero, one who affords a good measure of viewer-identification, and around whom the story revolves, is faced with the necessity of solving a serious and urgent problem which affects his vital interests. The hero makes an effort to solve his problem, but this only succeeds in making matters worse. (This is me all right.) The hero's efforts all lead to a series of increasingly harder complications. Each new complication is related to the original problem. (This isn’t me, or is it?) Anyway, there is an integrated series of complications which build up in intensity until a definite point or crisis is reached. It is here that the reader cannot possibly understand how the hero can possibly succeed. But now the hero makes one last and heroic attempt to resolve his difficulties, and in every case it must be his own individual efforts that solve the dilemma(s). Under no circumstances can he accept any form of outside aid to make things easier for him.

As I think things over, maybe this is a conventional story after all. But not really, because it is too personal. It happened to me and therefore it is important to me, if not to anybody else. But everything a man does affects somebody else directly or indirectly. So my story should be important to everybody. Some of my story is too personal to write in the first person, and some of it is too personal to write in the third person. Most of it is too personal to write at all.

But the decision is mine. If nothing else, Richard Hudson has always made his own decisions. Right or wrong, they were his own. Maybe I am on the right track after all. Six months ago I would never have admitted, not even to myself, that I ever made a wrong decision.

FLASHBACK

The actual purchase of George Ehlers used car lot by Richard Hudson went back several months; it was not a quick business deal, by any means. For ten years Richard Hudson had been the star used car salesman for Honest Hal Parker in San Francisco. Honest Hal had gotten so big in San Francisco he wanted to expand his empire. He trusted Richard, and he had faith in the ability of Richard to, the tune of a transfer of $40,000 to a Los Angeles bank, and his blessing in the establishment of an Honest Hal used car lot in Los Angeles.

The distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles is approximately 447 miles, but the people who live and work in the two cities are as different as lox and cream cheese. This difference is well-known to the dealers in the necessity of fife in California: the used automobile.

Example: The driver of a laundry truck in San Francisco makes $75 a week. His counterpart in Los Angeles considers himself fortunate if he makes $60 a week. A clerk in San Francisco with simple filing and typing duties can easily command a $65 weekly salary. Her sister in Los Angeles will only take home $40 a week. Why is this? Union now in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, the unions lag behind. Perhaps this explanation is an oversimplification. Maybe it costs more to live in San Francisco and the employers must pay more to get employees. Maybe it costs less to live in Los Angeles, but I doubt it. I only know that these are the facts insofar as salaries are concerned. A cursory comparison of the classified advertisements in the San Francisco Chronicle with those of the Los Angeles Times will graphically show the difference in salary for the same types of work in the two California cities.

This difference in salaries has always been the same, even during the years of the Great Depression. Those who were working during the thirties made more money per week in San Francisco than those who were working in Los Angeles. These are the facts; the why is a question of economics or something that is not important to this chronicle. Except for the business of used cars. In San Francisco it is nice to own a used car. In Los Angeles it is necessary to own an automobile of some kind whether you want one or not.

A man in San Francisco who walks onto a used car lot may walk away from it. He must be sold an automobile. In Los Angeles, a man who walks onto a used car lot will drive away. He is already sold on buying some kind of transportation before he puts his tired feet on the gravel of the lot. It is only necessary for the salesman to determine his financial status and sell him an automobile slightly above his means.

As far as Richard Hudson was concerned there were no exceptions to these rules. Practically, there are bound to be some exceptions. But by not recognizing any exceptions, Richard Hudson was a used car salesman in the $ 1,000 per month class. His salary varied but slightly. There were bad months when he made but $850, but on the other hand there were months when he made as much as $1,500. It is a question of values. It is the American way of life. Once the American way of life is reasoned out and thoroughly understood, the achievement of success in any given field becomes a matter of the desire of the man concerned.

I find that it is almost impossible to write in the third person, if that is what I have been doing. Damn it all, anyway! Everything concerning myself is personal, and that is the way I am taking it. What gives me the right to state categorically that any man can become successful? (Even though I know it is true.)

The trouble with the American people is their credulity. Or is it idealism? Take the Hungarians. Big Deal! THE BID FOR FREEDOM. ESCAPE. RED CROSS. FREEDOM FUNDS. Millions of Americans, with tears in their eyes, donated millions of dollars for the BRAVERY, the SACRIFICES, the NOBLENESS of the Hungarians in their bid for FREEDOM. The gates were opened, the safeguards ignored, the McCarran Act forgotten. Six months later the same American who donated five bucks from his $65 weekly paycheck is working for some Hungarian who readily grasped the American way of life.

We see things and we do not see things. We say one thing and we do another. General MacArthur said, "There is no security, there is only opportunity." He was right, of course. And yet the man who stated this basic truth clung to the security of the U.S. Army until he was kicked out. But why should I go on?

As a used car salesman I saw the world through a pair of dark glasses. They were necessary to protect my eyes from the rays of the hot California sun as I twisted arms on the used car lots of Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the lenses were purple, not rose-colored. To the really successful used car salesman there are only two types of people: Insiders and Feebs. Feebs are the feeble-minded, and Insiders are those who are wise to themselves and to things as the way they are. A simple uncomplicated distinction, but a true one nonetheless.

When a man knows the truth it is no longer necessary to search for it. As I see things now, in retrospection, the only thing the matter with me was my compassion for others. I felt sorry for the Feebs, and that was fatal. Down inside myself, in some hidden pocket of a fold in my heart, compassion lay for the poor ignorant slob. It was too bad.

When I made the move from San Francisco to Los Angeles I was being kicked upstairs, as the saying goes. I was at the top as a used car salesman. There are only so many hours in a day, and one salesman, no matter how good he is, can only sell so many cars in one day. My earning capacity as a salesman had been reached. It was necessary to either become a partner with Honest Hal Parker or leave him altogether and establish my own business. Honest Hal wanted it both ways so he took the road in the middle. Sensing my restlessness, Insider Hal handed me a golden deal on a platter.

For several months Honest Hal had wanted to expand. He too, was aware of the American way of life. An outlet and inlet was needed in Los Angeles to get rid of the cars that didn't move in San Francisco due to the discrimination that comes with the heavier paycheck of the San Franciscans -I've explained that- and to replace cars that were needed for his big lot. And a new big lot in Los Angeles would enhance Honest Hal's prestige.

By establishing a new lot in Los Angeles with a trustworthy hotshot in command, namely me, Richard Hudson, these birds could be stoned.

My commissions would roll in from all cars sold instead of only those I sold myself. Hal would make more money.

I would make more money. And the clincher for me was that it was Hal's dough that was going into the expansion. Not mine. Not a penny of mine. If everything went wrong, if every nickel was lost due to my lack of acumen, business sense, stupidity, or if things just didn't work out as they were planned, I was still way ahead of the game. I could still sell used cars. And if things did work out, I would, in time, make enough money to buy a partnership with Honest Hal. Or if I really made money, I could cut Honest Hal's throat and take the entire pie. Is not this the American Way?

DISSOLVE

The search for a likely location for an Honest Hal used car lot in Los Angeles was not as difficult as I had thought it would be. Los Angeles was my hometown; I had been born and reared there, and I knew my way around. A stranger who moves to Los Angeles as an adult will never learn the city like a native. Although many of the streets are numbered, many are named instead, and between the two systems, a stranger becomes confused and discouraged. Take 41st Street as an example. Next to 4 1st Street is 4 1st Drive and next to 41st Drive is 41st Place. If you were counting blocks from 9th Street to 60th Street your count would be wrong, and besides, 60th Street is actually Slauson Avenue to the native, although there is a 60th Street on the map.

San Francisco had been my home for ten years, and except for infrequent visits to Los Angeles to see Mother, the city had changed a great deal, even for me. About 200 families move into Los Angeles daily to stay permanently, and this migration has caused a fantastic outward growth. The resettlement, divided about equally between Negroes and Others, has caused the Negro section, as I used to know it, to become a mere suburb of the current Negro community. It was impossible for 500,000 Negroes to live in one small area, and they now have a city within a city extending from downtown all the way to Long Beach, and on either side of Central Avenue as far in each direction as they have been able to buy or rent.

Los Angeles is such a lousy city to live in it is a wonder to me why anybody would want to live there. But on the other hand, I moved back to make money and I suppose that is the reason everybody makes the move. There couldn't possibly be any other reason.

Another peculiarity is that no matter where a man lives in Los Angeles, he is required to drive at least twenty miles to get to work. If you live in Montebello you work in Inglewood. If you live in Inglewood your job is in Bur- bank. If you live in Burbank you work in Watts. And so on. Why Angelenos select a residence at least twenty miles away from their employment has always been a mystery. However, it is a well-known fact. The great masses of people moving in from the Dust Bowl and other areas of the United States have to live somewhere. So the project house came into being following World War II. These projects are a blight on the face of Southern California. Orange groves were torn down, desert land beyond Van Nuys was cleared and row on row of houses appeared from nowhere like peas in a pod. The Feebs moving in from elsewhere can buy one of these excellent $6,000 houses for $15,000.

Of course, by the time the Feeb pays mortgage interest, assessments, loan charges, closing costs, etc., and finally pays off the house twenty years later, it has cost him $30,000 for his $6,000 house, which is then worth $1,500 due to the rundown condition of the neighborhood.

But this influx of migrant Feebs, in addition to the people already there, makes good business for used car dealers. The man who got along wonderfully in Ogden, Utah with a one-family car, now finds that he needs the car every day to drive twenty miles to work. His wife also needs a car to drive six miles to the shopping center, or fifteen miles to pay the light bill. The son has to have an automobile to drive to high school. His sister-in-law, who made the move to Los Angeles also, and shares the third bedroom with the youngest daughter, and who hopes to land a husband at the Hollywood Friendship Club for those who are over thirty-five years of age, needs a car to take an out-of-work plumber she met at this wonderful meeting place out to show him a good time at a drive-in movie.

Two-and-one/half automobiles per capita in Los Angeles. That is the official ratio. I checked it with the Chamber of Commerce. The single street of iron, Figueroa Avenue, which met the used car requirements of Los Angeles for many years, is just another used car center today. There are many others. Crenshaw Boulevard, an unpaved street twenty-five years ago, is one of the largest used car selling areas in the world today. Crenshaw Boulevard makes Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco resemble a small neighborhood parking lot. In every section of Los Angeles there were small and large used car centers and I investigated them all before concentrating my search to Crenshaw Boulevard. Figueroa Avenue no longer had the volume of traffic I wanted to move cars. The Los Angeles branch office of the Triple A Finance Company, which handles all of Honest Hal's credit business in San Francisco, opened their files to my investigations. More research unearthed Mr. George Ehlers' unhappy situation; personal investigation confirmed my findings; and when I made my indecent offer, he grabbed it.

That evening I called Honest Hal in San Francisco and told him we were in business.

"Already," Hal asked sarcastically over the 'phone. "After six weeks without a single call I was beginning to think you were on a vacation."

"I suppose I should have called you," I said, "but I wanted to wait until I was set."

"Do you need any help, Richard? I could send Don down for a couple of weeks—"

"Look, Hal," I replied belligerently, "we discussed all that. The deal was for me to run things in my own way, hire local people. When I need any help, I'll ask for it!"

"Okay, Richard, it's your baby. Sounds like you've made a good start, but keep in touch with me for Christ's sake. Don't wait six weeks before you call me again even if it's just to say, 'Hello."'

"Okay, Hal. I’ll drop you a line as soon as I find an apartment and get settled. I'm still staying at a hotel."

"Which hotel?"

"The Fig, but I'll probably move out tomorrow. So long, Hal."

That afternoon, after concluding the deal with Ehlers at my lawyers' office, I had promised to meet him for a drink at the 222 Club. Ehlers wanted to celebrate, and I sympathized with him, although he could have made a better deal than the one I gave him by merely lifting his telephone off the hook. The only trouble was that Ehlers was a Feeb and didn't know where to call. I didn't care about seeing him again. He was a bore. And besides, I wanted to see Mother.

Although I digress a lot I actually have a one-track mind once I have set myself a task, and I hadn't even called Mother during my six weeks stay. Much harder work lay ahead of me in getting the new lot under full-scale operation and I didn't want to get sidetracked into anything else. But now that I was committed to Los Angeles residence for at least a few years I wanted to see Mother.

She was wonderful!

ALEXANDRA HOROTSOFF HUDSON BLAKE STEINBERG

I didn't know how old Mother was at this time, and I still don't know. It isn't important. In order for her to be my mother she was bound to be older than me, and I was then thirty. But Mother didn't look thirty; in a flattering light she could easily pass for twenty-five. Alexandra was a retired ballerina and still worked four hours a day, seven days a week, at the barre in her basement rehearsal hall.

Her figure was the most remarkable I have ever seen for any woman of any age. Tall for a woman, with long slim legs, she was topped with the firm proud bust of a coloratura soprano. A narrow waist, flat, truly feminine hips, and a white, unblemished skin made her the most beautiful, woman in the world. In a vague way, she wasn't quite bright, but in my opinion, her vagueness added to her beauty.

Certainly I am prejudiced. Why not? A man's mother is always the most beautiful woman in the world. But more often than not, she is beautiful for what she has done for him. Homecooking, the biased admiration of his small achievements, and generous portions of daily love, including lavish endearments, strengthen a man's belief in the beauty of his mother. But my mother never did a damned thing for me. I never expected her to do anything for me. She was beautiful because she was beautiful and she had scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings to prove it.

Her pale face was narrow, and perhaps her eyes were set a mite too close together, but her waistlength hair was usually knotted in an enormous bun on the nape of her long white neck, and male attention was usually diverted from her blue eyes. I can remember, with amusement, the startling effect she created at parties when for one reason or another all of the attention was not concentrated upon her beauty. She would rise grandly to her feet, grasp a hairpin in each hand, make a quick movement with her arms, and the enormous mass of coal-colored hair would cascade down her back completely hiding her narrow waist. This little feminine display centered the attention on Mother immediately and brought gasps of admiration from all of the men present. In the 1930's, other women at the same party, with their short bobbed hair, feather cuts, and short permanents, never fully appreciated this display of Mother's crowning glory.

Mother's nose was overly large, but then it was thin enough to minimize the size. Her lips were full, generous, sensuous, and never painted off-stage. She bit them into redness instead. Most of the time Mother wore a pair of slanted, blue-tinted prescription glasses, and they successfully diminished the slight defection of her close-set eyes. But most striking, the absence of make-up on a clownwhite face gave Mother an appearance of clean phthisic beauty I have never seen any other woman equal.

I loved Alexandra as much as I could love anything or anybody, and I suppose she loved me, in her absent-minded way. Her way would have to be effortless, because except for her daily stint of dancing - which did everything for her figure and nothing for her mind - Mother did absolutely nothing.

Alexandra slept from eight p.m. to eight a.m., twelve restful hours every night. For breakfast she ate a head of lettuce which fortified her legs for dancing until noon in her basement studio. Lunch, for Mother, consisted of a cup of clear soup and a cup of hot tea. For dinner she ate a small steak with all of the fat trimmed away, a small boiled potato and a green salad with a dash of lemon juice. She was ravenous most of the time and it gave a kind of wild look to her eyes that showed behind the tinted glasses. Only when it was absolutely necessary did she ever leave the house; she filled her waking hours by painting insipid watercolors of food, by reading true love story magazines, and by listening to the radio.

I shall never understand how she managed to find and marry and divorce my father, an instructor of romance languages at the University of Chicago. And I do not know the circumstances surrounding her marriage to my first stepfather, Harry Blake. Harry Blake was a very good friend of mine when I was growing up and one of the world's worst songwriters. But he taught me how to play chopsticks, and he played a damned fine piano and I missed him around the house when he committed suicide.

My new stepfather was Leo Steinberg, an ex-movie director, thirty-seven years of age, and if it ever embarrassed him when I called him Pop he never gave any indication that it did. But more about Pop later.

DISSOLVE TO:

The House of Lumpy Grits occupied a full acre of expensive ground in an area containing mostly hotel-apartments and a large, sprawling shopping center. At one time a favorite residential neighborhood, when large houses were in style, and before the California stucco period, Mother's dilapidated three-story house was the only reminder of the spendthrift twenties when taxes did not have the meaning that they have today. The other homes that once poked their badly designed eaves at the sun were gone, sold to realtors, and this old section of Los Angeles, on the mythical boundary between Los Angeles and Hollywood, had taken on a new glittering life. But Mother doggedly hung on, refusing all offers for the house out of apathy, or reluctance to change, or perhaps sentimental reasons for dear old Harry Blake. There it squatted, its flaking, scaling exterior a mute reminder of the thousands of hot sunny days it had suffered. A small, square, cracking concrete swimming pool, half full of trash and debris, hadn't been filled in two decades. There was a four-car garage with empty servant's quarters above, and behind the house there was a huge greenhouse with all of the glass windows broken. This monster nestled, if nestled can be applied to such a monstrosity, in a full acre of dried, parched jungle, enclosed by an ivy-choked brick wall, ten feet high all of the way around.

I loved the place because of boyhood memories. A boy of twelve couldn't ask for a better yard to play Tarzan of the Apes, and a young teenager could find a dozen secret crannies to sneak a forbidden cigarette and drift quietly down the river with Huckleberry Finn.

Long ago Mother and I had laughingly christened the house as The House of Lumpy Grits, because its purchase had been made possible by the popularity of the only hit song ever written by Harry Blake. The lyrics of this unspeakably rotten song are engraved forever upon my mind, because it took Harry three months to write it, pounding on the grand piano in the music room and singing at the top of his nastily nasal voice. Lumpy Grits was on the Grand Ole Opry radio program for twenty-four straight weeks, warbled by one overalled singer or another in a plaintive, mournful manner, and evidently it sent the ruralist Feebs. In turn, juke box popularity brought it to The Ten Top Tunes radio show for one week only when it became Number Ten in the overall poll of hit songs for the week. A rendition by Lupe Runoz, a calypso singer employed by Ten Top Tunes, and the horrid arrangement of the Ten Top Tunes orchestra finished off Lumpy Grits, and it disappeared like any other popular song. But Lumpy Grits fitfully lingers on, and Mother still gets a royalty check - every three months - for approximately $1.35. The melody, without the lyrics, isn’t too bad. How could it be? Harry stole the tune from a dozen New Orleans blues numbers, a measure at a time, and blended them beautifully.

Because such a hodge-podge could become popular, and roll blithely off the lips of children and grown-ups alike, I include the lyrics here as Americana. Not a single tear to either one of my eyes does it bring. Harry Blake, old songwriter, you broke many a heart with this one, and wherever you are, you left your mark upon us!

LUMPY GRITS*

By

Harry Blake

(Indignantly)

Lumpy Grits!

Ain't nothin' to serve no hongry man!

Lumpy Grits!

Ain't nothin' to serve no hongry man!

And when I saw your grits, I turned around and ran!

(Sadly, with feeling)

I love gravy,

With my grits and eggs.

I love gravy,

With my grits and eggs.

But when I ate your gravy, I used my longest legs.

(Sotto voce)

I bought you a 'lectric stove

And a lectric fryin' pan.

Yet you went ahead and served me-!

Lumpy Grits to a hongry man!

Lumpy Grits! Lumpy Grits! Lumpy Grits!

Is something no good man can stand!

(Bitterly, with much feeling)

Goin' to the Ho-tel

To get grits for my inner man!

Goin' to the Ho-tel

To get grits for my inner man!

An' if the Ho-tel won't feed me,

I’ll go where someone can. . . .

(Gradually fading away to heartrending, sobbing whisper)

Lumpy Grits…Lumpy Grits…

Lumpy Grits…Lumpy Grits…

Lumpy Grits has been reprinted with the permission of the M. N. Norton Music Pub. Corp.

And that is the song that bought the house that Mother now lives in. I believe I have already mentioned it, but it won’t hurt anything to put it down again: Harry Blake died by his own hand, probably because he could never again scale the heights reached by the epic Lumpy Grits.

FADEOUT

A roundfaced, sweet, chubby, adorable, cute, gayvoiced, brighteyed teenager of not more than sixteen and not less than sixteen opened the door to The House of Lumpy Grits in answer to my ring. A single bead of perspiration lay in the delicious hollow above her short, full upper lip. Her white forehead was also perspiring, and her shortcropped jet hair curled damply about tiny pink ears.

This sweet little girl shook her head and smiled. "I've been skipping rope!"

"Well," I said, "isn’t that nice? Now who are you, and why do you skip here?"

"I live here," she laughed happily. "My name is Becky Steinberg."

I remembered then. Leo Steinberg had a daughter; I knew that much, and this was she. I had never seen her before; she was supposed to be in an expensive private school in New Jersey.

"Do you know who I am?" I asked Becky. "I’m your big brother, Richard." I grinned disarmingly. She was bound to know about me, but she could hardly have thought of me as her brother. I was only seven years younger than her father, and to a girl of sixteen, thirty is near-senility. Becky's dark eyes widened and her face flushed prettily.

"Come in, come in," she stammered. "I don’t think Daddy's expecting you—"

"I wasn't expecting you," I cut in, "but now that we're both here I expect a brotherly kiss."

The color in Becky's round cheeks deepened to tomato. I grasped her elbows lightly, kissed her O of a mouth, and ran my tongue experimentally between her white, parted teeth. Becky spluttered, jerked away from me fiercely, and ran down the hall.

"Daddy! Daddy!" She called out loudly as she ran. I laughed and closed the door gently behind me.

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