July 26, 2025 • 29 mins
Discover the untold story of renowned author Jack London, who tragically passed away at just forty years old. In this deeply personal memoir, London shares his life through the lens of his relationship with alcohol, personified as John Barleycorn. Despite the prevailing controversies surrounding his demise, Londons candid exposition of his battles with alcoholism was far ahead of its time, pre-empting modern theories of addiction. With an extraordinary blend of honesty and insight, he unveils his encounters with both the demons and deities of his life, personified by his friend and foe, John Barleycorn. (Summary by Peter Kelleher)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapters twenty one and twenty two of John Barleycorn or
Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org chapter
(00:28):
twenty one. But behold, as soon as I went out
on the adventure path, I met John Barleycorn again. I
moved through a world of strangers, and the act of
drinking together made when acquainted with men, and opened the
(00:48):
way to adventures. It might be in a saloon with
jingled townsmen, or with a genial railroad man well lighted
up and armed with pocket flasks, or with a bunch
of Alki stiffs in a hangout. Yes, and it might
(01:09):
be in a prohibition state, such as Iowa was in
eighteen ninety four when I wandered up the main street
of Des Moines and was variously invited by strangers into
various blind pigs. I remember drinking in barber shops, plumbing establishments,
(01:31):
and furniture stores. Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a
tramp in those halcyon days could get most frequently drunk.
I remember inside the prison at Buffalo, how some of
us got magnificently jingled, and how on the streets of
(01:55):
Buffalo after our release, another jingle was financed with pennies
begged on the main drag. I had no call for alcohol,
but when I was with those who drank, I drank
with them. I insisted on traveling or loafing with the livest,
(02:17):
keenest men. And it was just these live keen ones
that did most of the drinking. They were the more
comradeley men, the more venturous, the more individual. Perhaps it
was too much temperament that made them turn from the
commonplace and humdrum to find relief in lying and fantastic
(02:43):
sureties of John Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the
men I liked best, desired most to be with, were
invariably to be found in John Barleycorn's company. In the
course of my tramping over the United States, I achieved
(03:05):
a new concept. As a tramp, I was behind the
scenes of society aye and down in the cellar, I
could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of
the social machine go around, and I learned that the
dignity of manual labor wasn't what I had been told.
(03:29):
It was by the teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men
without trades were helpless cattle. If one learned a trade,
he was compelled to belong to a union in order
to work at his trade, and his union was compelled
(03:50):
to bully and slug the employers' unions in order to
hold up wages or hold down hours. The employer lawyers
unions likewise bullied and slugged. I couldn't see any dignity
at all, and when a workman got old or had
(04:11):
an accident, he was thrown into the scrap heap like
any worn out machine. I saw too many of this
sort who were making anything but dignified ends of life.
So my new concept was that manual labor was undignified
and that it didn't pay. No trade for me was
(04:35):
my decision, and no superintendent's daughters, and no criminality. I
also decided that would be almost as disastrous as to
be a laborer. Brains paid, not brawn, and I resolved
never again to offer my muscles for sale in the
(04:58):
bronze market. Brain and brain only would I sell. I
returned to California with the firm intention of developing my brain.
This meant school education. I had gone through the grammar
school long ago, so I entered the Oakland High School
(05:22):
to pay my way. I worked as a janitor. My
sister helped me too, and I was not above mowing
anybody's lawn or taking up and beating carpets when I
had half a day to spare. I was working to
get away from work, and I buckled down to it
(05:43):
with a grim realization of the paradox boy and girl
love was left behind, and along with it Haiti and
Louis Shaddock and the early evening stroll I hadn't. The
time I joined the Henry Clay Debating Society. I was
(06:07):
received into the homes of some of the members, where
I met nice girls whose skirts reached the ground. I
dallied with little home clubs, wherein we discussed poetry and
art and the nuances of grammar. I joined the Socialist local,
(06:28):
where we studied and orated political economy, philosophy, and politics.
I kept half a dozen membership cards, working in the
free library, and did an immense amount of collateral reading,
and for a year and a half on end, I
never took a drink, nor thought of taking a drink.
(06:52):
I hadn't the time, and I certainly did not have
the inclination between my janitor world, my studies, and innocent
amusements such as chess. I hadn't a moment to spare.
I was discovering a new world, and such was the
passion of my exploration that the old world of John
(07:17):
Barleycorn held no inducements for me. Come to think of it,
I did enter a saloon. I went to see Johnny
Heinhold in the last chance, and I went to borrow money.
And right here is another phase of John Barleycorn. Saloon
(07:39):
keepers are notoriously good fellows. On an average, they perform
vastly greater generosities than do businessmen. When I simply had
to have ten dollars, desperate, with no place to turn,
I went to see Johnny Heinhold. Several years had passed
(08:03):
since I had been in his place or spent a
cent across his bar. And when I went to borrow
the ten dollars, I didn't buy a drink either, and
Johnny Heinhold let me have the ten dollars without security
or interest. More than once in the brief days of
(08:27):
my struggle for an education, I went to see Johnny
Heinhold to borrow money when I entered the university, I
borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security, without
buying a drink. And yet, and here is the point
(08:48):
the custom and the code. In the days of my prosperity,
after the lapse of years, I have gone out of
my way by many a long block to spend across
Johnny Heinhold's bar, deferred interest on the various loans. Not
(09:11):
that Johnny Heinhold asked me to do it or expected
me to do it. I did it, as I have said,
in obedience to the code I have learned, along with
all the other things connected with John Barleycorn. In distress,
(09:31):
when a man has no other place to turn, when
he hasn't the slightest bit of security which a savage
hearted pawnbroker would consider, he can go to some saloon
keeper he knows gratitude is inherently human. When the man
(09:53):
so helped has money, again, depend upon it that a
portion will be spent across the bar of the saloon
keeper who befriended him. Why I recollect the early days
of my writing career, when the small sums of money
I earned from the magazines came with tragic irregularity, while
(10:19):
at the same time I was staggering along with a
growing family, a wife, children, a mother, a nephew, and
my mammy Jenny and her old husband fallen on evil days.
There were two places at which I could borrow money,
(10:40):
a barber shop and a saloon. The barber charged me
five percent per month in advance. That is to say,
when I borrowed one hundred dollars, he handed me ninety five.
The other five he retained as advance interest for the
(11:04):
first month, and on the second month I paid him
five dollars more, and continued to do so each month
until I made a ten strike with the editors and
lifted the loan. The other place to which I came
in trouble was the saloon. The saloon keeper I had
(11:27):
known by sight for a couple of years. I had
never spent my money in his saloon, and even when
I borrowed from him, I didn't spend any money. Yet
never did he refuse me any sum I asked of him. Unfortunately,
before I became prosperous, he moved away to another city,
(11:51):
and to this day I regret that he is gone.
It is the code I have learned. The right thing
to do, and the right thing I do right now.
Did I know where he is would be to drop
in on occasion and spend a few dollars across his
(12:13):
bar for old sake's sake and gratitude. This is not
to exalt saloon keepers. I have written it to exalt
the power of John Barleycorn, and to illustrate one more
of the myriad ways by which a man is brought
(12:35):
in contact with John Barleycorn, until in the end he
finds he cannot get along without him. But to return
to the run of my narrative, away from the adventure
path up to my ears in study, every moment occupied
(12:58):
I lived ali to John Barleycorn's existence, nobody about me drank.
If any had drunk, and had they offered it to me,
I surely would have drunk. As it was, when I
had spare moments, I spent them playing chess, or going
(13:20):
with nice girls who were themselves students, or in riding
a bicycle, whenever I was fortunate enough to have it
out of the pawnbroker's possession. What I am insisting upon
all the time is this in me was not the
(13:41):
slightest trace of alcoholic desire. And this despite the long
and severe apprenticeship I had served under John Barleycorn, I
had come back from the other side of life to
be delighted with this art, a Kadian simplicity of student
(14:03):
use and student maidens. Also, I had found my way
into the realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated,
alas as I was to learn at a later period,
Intellectual intoxication two has its Kats and Jammer Chapter twenty two.
(14:35):
Three years was the time required to go through the
high school. I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was becoming
financially impossible. At such rate, I could not last out,
and I did greatly want to go to the state university.
(14:56):
When I had done a year of high school, I
decided to attend a shortcut. I borrowed the money and
paid to enter the senior class of a cramming joint
of academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the
university at the end of four months, thus saving two years.
(15:20):
And how I did cram I had two years new
work to do in a third of a year. For
five weeks I crammed until simultaneous quadratic equations and chemical
formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And then the master
(15:42):
of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry,
but he was compelled to give me back my tuition
fee and to ask me to leave the school. It
wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood well in my
classes and did he graduate me into the university. He
(16:04):
was confident that in that institution I would continue to
stand well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about
my case. What in four months accomplished two years' work.
It would be a scandal, and the universities were becoming
(16:28):
severer in their treatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't
afford such a scandal. Therefore I must gracefully depart. I did,
and I paid back the borrowed money and gritted my
teeth and started to cram by myself. There were three
(16:50):
months yet before the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories, without coaching,
sitting in my bed room, I proceeded to compress that
two year's work into three months, and to keep reviewed
on the previous year's work nineteen hours a day. I
(17:13):
studied for three months. I kept this pace, only breaking
it on several occasions. My body grew weary, my mind
grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew
weary and began to twitch, but they did not break down.
(17:35):
Perhaps toward the last I got a bit dotty. I
know that at that time I was confident I had
discovered the formula for squaring the circle, but I resolutely
deferred the working of it out until after the examinations.
Then I would show them. Came the several days of
(17:59):
the exaulsations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes
in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And
when I turned in my last examination paper, I was
in full possession of a splendid case of brain fag.
(18:21):
I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want
to think, or to lay eyes on anybody who was
liable to think. There was but one prescription for such
a condition, and I gave it to myself, the adventure path.
I didn't wait to learn the result of my examinations.
(18:43):
I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food
into a borrowed Whitehall boat and set sail out of
the Oakland Estuary. I drifted on the last of the
early morning ebb caught the first of the flood bay
and raced along with a spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay
(19:06):
was smoking, and the Carquinez Straits off the Selby Smelter
were smoking too. As I picked up ahead and left
the stern, the old landmarks I had first learned with
Nelson in the unreafed reindeer Benicia showed before me. I
(19:28):
opened the bite of Turner Shipyard, rounded the Solano Wharf,
and surged along a breast of the patch of tools
and the clustering fishermen's arcs, where in the old days
I had lived and drunk deep. And right here something
(19:48):
happened to me, the gravity of which I never dreamed
for many a long year to come. I had had
no intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favored, the
wind was fair and howling, glorious sailing for a sailor.
(20:11):
Bullhead and army points showed ahead, marking the entrance to
Susan Bay, which I knew was smoking. And yet when
I laid eyes on those fishing arcs lying in the waterfront,
tools without debate on the instance, I put down my tiller,
(20:33):
came in on the sheet and headed for the shore.
On the instant, out of the profound of my brain fag,
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I
wanted to get drunk. The call was imperative, there was
(20:56):
no uncertainty about it. More than anything something else in
the world, my fraid and frazzled mind wanted Sir cease
from weariness in the way it knew Sir case would come.
And right here is the point. For the first time
(21:16):
in my life, I consciously deliberately desired to get drunk.
It was a new, a totally different manifestation of John
Barleycorn's power. It was not a body need for alcohol.
It was a mental desire. My overworked and jaded mind
(21:42):
wanted to forget. And here the point is drawn to
its sharpest. Granted my prodigious brain fag. Nevertheless, had I
never drunk in the past, the thought would never have
entered my mind to get drunk. Now, beginning with physical
(22:04):
intolerance for alcohol for years, drinking only for the sake
of comradeship, and because alcohol was everywhere on the adventure path,
I had now reached the stage where my brain cried out,
not merely for a drink, but for a drunk. And
(22:26):
had I not been so long used to alcohol, my
brain would not have so cried out. I should have
sailed on past Bullhead, and in the smoking white of
Susan Bay, and in the wine of wind that filled
my sail and poured through me. I should have forgotten
(22:48):
my weary brain and rested and refreshed it. So I
sailed into shore, made all fast, and hurried up along
the arcs. Charlie la Grant fell on my neck. His
wife Lizzie folded me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy
(23:10):
and Joe Lloyd and all the survivors of the Old
Guard got around me and their arms around me. Charlie
seized the can and started for Jorgensen's saloon across the
railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted whiskey, so I
(23:32):
called after him to bring a flask. Many times that
flash journeyed across the railroad tracks and back. More old
friends of the old free and easy times dropped in Fishermen, Greeks,
and Russians and French. They took turns entreating and treated
(23:57):
all around in turn again. They came and went, but
I stayed on and drank withal I guzzled, I swilled,
I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots
in my brain and clam came in. Nelson's partner before me,
(24:22):
handsome as ever, but more reckless, half insane, burning himself
out with whiskey. He had just had a quarrel with
his partner on the sloop Gazelle, and knives had been
drawn and blows struck, and he was bent on maddening
(24:43):
the fever of the memory with more whiskey. And while
we downed it, we remembered Nelson, and that he had
stretched out his great shoulders for the last long sleep
in this very town of Benicia. And we went over
(25:04):
the memory of him, and remembered only the good things
of him, and sent out the flask to be filled
and drank again. They wanted me to stay over, but
through the open door I could see the brave wind
on the water, and my ears were filled with the
(25:26):
roar of it. And while I forgot that I had
plunged into the books nineteen hours a day for three
solid months, Charlie la Grant shifted my outfit into a
big Columbia River salmon boat. He added charcoal and a
fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan, and the
(25:50):
coffee and the meat, and a black bass fresh from
the water that day. They had to help me down
the rickety wharf and into the salmon boat. Likewise, they
stretched my boom and sprit until the sail set like
a board. Some feared to set the sprit, but I insisted,
(26:14):
and Charlie had no doubts. He knew me of old,
and knew that I could sail as long as I
could see. They cast off my painter. I put the
tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes,
checked and steadied the boat on her course, and waved farewell.
(26:36):
The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in
the teeth of a fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff,
upstanding sea sous sin bee was white with wrath and
sea lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I
knew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove
(26:58):
her into it and threw it and across, and maundered
loud and chanted. My disdain for all the books and schools.
Cresting seas filled me a foot or so with water,
but I laughed at it, sloshing about my feet, and
chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I
(27:21):
hailed myself a master of life. Riding on the back
of the unleashed elements, and John Barleycorn rode with me.
Amid dissertations on mathematics and philosophy, and spoutings and quotations.
I sang all the old songs learned in the days
(27:43):
when I went from the cannery to the oyster banks
to be a pirate. Set songs as Black Lulu, Flying Cloud,
treat my daughter kindly, the Boston Burglar, Come, all you
rambling gambling men. I wished I was a little bird.
(28:09):
Shen Andah and Ranzo boys Ranzo. Hours afterward, in the
fires of Sunset, where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin
tumble their mighty floods together, I took the New York cutoff,
(28:31):
skimmed across the smooth landlocked water, past Black Diamond, on
into the San Joaquin, and onto Antioch, where, somewhat sobered
and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big potato sloop
that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends aboard
(28:55):
who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then too,
there was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and
crusty Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with
pint mugs of thick and heady claret. My salmon boat
(29:17):
was a soap, But in the snug cabin of the sloop,
dry blankets and a dry bunk were mine, and we
lay and smoked and yarned of old days, while overhead
the wind screamed through the rigging, and tot halliards drummed
(29:38):
against the mast end of Chapter twenty two.
Chapters twenty one and twenty two of John Barleycorn or
Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org chapter
(00:28):
twenty one. But behold, as soon as I went out
on the adventure path, I met John Barleycorn again. I
moved through a world of strangers, and the act of
drinking together made when acquainted with men, and opened the
(00:48):
way to adventures. It might be in a saloon with
jingled townsmen, or with a genial railroad man well lighted
up and armed with pocket flasks, or with a bunch
of Alki stiffs in a hangout. Yes, and it might
(01:09):
be in a prohibition state, such as Iowa was in
eighteen ninety four when I wandered up the main street
of Des Moines and was variously invited by strangers into
various blind pigs. I remember drinking in barber shops, plumbing establishments,
(01:31):
and furniture stores. Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a
tramp in those halcyon days could get most frequently drunk.
I remember inside the prison at Buffalo, how some of
us got magnificently jingled, and how on the streets of
(01:55):
Buffalo after our release, another jingle was financed with pennies
begged on the main drag. I had no call for alcohol,
but when I was with those who drank, I drank
with them. I insisted on traveling or loafing with the livest,
(02:17):
keenest men. And it was just these live keen ones
that did most of the drinking. They were the more
comradeley men, the more venturous, the more individual. Perhaps it
was too much temperament that made them turn from the
commonplace and humdrum to find relief in lying and fantastic
(02:43):
sureties of John Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the
men I liked best, desired most to be with, were
invariably to be found in John Barleycorn's company. In the
course of my tramping over the United States, I achieved
(03:05):
a new concept. As a tramp, I was behind the
scenes of society aye and down in the cellar, I
could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of
the social machine go around, and I learned that the
dignity of manual labor wasn't what I had been told.
(03:29):
It was by the teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men
without trades were helpless cattle. If one learned a trade,
he was compelled to belong to a union in order
to work at his trade, and his union was compelled
(03:50):
to bully and slug the employers' unions in order to
hold up wages or hold down hours. The employer lawyers
unions likewise bullied and slugged. I couldn't see any dignity
at all, and when a workman got old or had
(04:11):
an accident, he was thrown into the scrap heap like
any worn out machine. I saw too many of this
sort who were making anything but dignified ends of life.
So my new concept was that manual labor was undignified
and that it didn't pay. No trade for me was
(04:35):
my decision, and no superintendent's daughters, and no criminality. I
also decided that would be almost as disastrous as to
be a laborer. Brains paid, not brawn, and I resolved
never again to offer my muscles for sale in the
(04:58):
bronze market. Brain and brain only would I sell. I
returned to California with the firm intention of developing my brain.
This meant school education. I had gone through the grammar
school long ago, so I entered the Oakland High School
(05:22):
to pay my way. I worked as a janitor. My
sister helped me too, and I was not above mowing
anybody's lawn or taking up and beating carpets when I
had half a day to spare. I was working to
get away from work, and I buckled down to it
(05:43):
with a grim realization of the paradox boy and girl
love was left behind, and along with it Haiti and
Louis Shaddock and the early evening stroll I hadn't. The
time I joined the Henry Clay Debating Society. I was
(06:07):
received into the homes of some of the members, where
I met nice girls whose skirts reached the ground. I
dallied with little home clubs, wherein we discussed poetry and
art and the nuances of grammar. I joined the Socialist local,
(06:28):
where we studied and orated political economy, philosophy, and politics.
I kept half a dozen membership cards, working in the
free library, and did an immense amount of collateral reading,
and for a year and a half on end, I
never took a drink, nor thought of taking a drink.
(06:52):
I hadn't the time, and I certainly did not have
the inclination between my janitor world, my studies, and innocent
amusements such as chess. I hadn't a moment to spare.
I was discovering a new world, and such was the
passion of my exploration that the old world of John
(07:17):
Barleycorn held no inducements for me. Come to think of it,
I did enter a saloon. I went to see Johnny
Heinhold in the last chance, and I went to borrow money.
And right here is another phase of John Barleycorn. Saloon
(07:39):
keepers are notoriously good fellows. On an average, they perform
vastly greater generosities than do businessmen. When I simply had
to have ten dollars, desperate, with no place to turn,
I went to see Johnny Heinhold. Several years had passed
(08:03):
since I had been in his place or spent a
cent across his bar. And when I went to borrow
the ten dollars, I didn't buy a drink either, and
Johnny Heinhold let me have the ten dollars without security
or interest. More than once in the brief days of
(08:27):
my struggle for an education, I went to see Johnny
Heinhold to borrow money when I entered the university, I
borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security, without
buying a drink. And yet, and here is the point
(08:48):
the custom and the code. In the days of my prosperity,
after the lapse of years, I have gone out of
my way by many a long block to spend across
Johnny Heinhold's bar, deferred interest on the various loans. Not
(09:11):
that Johnny Heinhold asked me to do it or expected
me to do it. I did it, as I have said,
in obedience to the code I have learned, along with
all the other things connected with John Barleycorn. In distress,
(09:31):
when a man has no other place to turn, when
he hasn't the slightest bit of security which a savage
hearted pawnbroker would consider, he can go to some saloon
keeper he knows gratitude is inherently human. When the man
(09:53):
so helped has money, again, depend upon it that a
portion will be spent across the bar of the saloon
keeper who befriended him. Why I recollect the early days
of my writing career, when the small sums of money
I earned from the magazines came with tragic irregularity, while
(10:19):
at the same time I was staggering along with a
growing family, a wife, children, a mother, a nephew, and
my mammy Jenny and her old husband fallen on evil days.
There were two places at which I could borrow money,
(10:40):
a barber shop and a saloon. The barber charged me
five percent per month in advance. That is to say,
when I borrowed one hundred dollars, he handed me ninety five.
The other five he retained as advance interest for the
(11:04):
first month, and on the second month I paid him
five dollars more, and continued to do so each month
until I made a ten strike with the editors and
lifted the loan. The other place to which I came
in trouble was the saloon. The saloon keeper I had
(11:27):
known by sight for a couple of years. I had
never spent my money in his saloon, and even when
I borrowed from him, I didn't spend any money. Yet
never did he refuse me any sum I asked of him. Unfortunately,
before I became prosperous, he moved away to another city,
(11:51):
and to this day I regret that he is gone.
It is the code I have learned. The right thing
to do, and the right thing I do right now.
Did I know where he is would be to drop
in on occasion and spend a few dollars across his
(12:13):
bar for old sake's sake and gratitude. This is not
to exalt saloon keepers. I have written it to exalt
the power of John Barleycorn, and to illustrate one more
of the myriad ways by which a man is brought
(12:35):
in contact with John Barleycorn, until in the end he
finds he cannot get along without him. But to return
to the run of my narrative, away from the adventure
path up to my ears in study, every moment occupied
(12:58):
I lived ali to John Barleycorn's existence, nobody about me drank.
If any had drunk, and had they offered it to me,
I surely would have drunk. As it was, when I
had spare moments, I spent them playing chess, or going
(13:20):
with nice girls who were themselves students, or in riding
a bicycle, whenever I was fortunate enough to have it
out of the pawnbroker's possession. What I am insisting upon
all the time is this in me was not the
(13:41):
slightest trace of alcoholic desire. And this despite the long
and severe apprenticeship I had served under John Barleycorn, I
had come back from the other side of life to
be delighted with this art, a Kadian simplicity of student
(14:03):
use and student maidens. Also, I had found my way
into the realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated,
alas as I was to learn at a later period,
Intellectual intoxication two has its Kats and Jammer Chapter twenty two.
(14:35):
Three years was the time required to go through the
high school. I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was becoming
financially impossible. At such rate, I could not last out,
and I did greatly want to go to the state university.
(14:56):
When I had done a year of high school, I
decided to attend a shortcut. I borrowed the money and
paid to enter the senior class of a cramming joint
of academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the
university at the end of four months, thus saving two years.
(15:20):
And how I did cram I had two years new
work to do in a third of a year. For
five weeks I crammed until simultaneous quadratic equations and chemical
formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And then the master
(15:42):
of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry,
but he was compelled to give me back my tuition
fee and to ask me to leave the school. It
wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood well in my
classes and did he graduate me into the university. He
(16:04):
was confident that in that institution I would continue to
stand well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about
my case. What in four months accomplished two years' work.
It would be a scandal, and the universities were becoming
(16:28):
severer in their treatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't
afford such a scandal. Therefore I must gracefully depart. I did,
and I paid back the borrowed money and gritted my
teeth and started to cram by myself. There were three
(16:50):
months yet before the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories, without coaching,
sitting in my bed room, I proceeded to compress that
two year's work into three months, and to keep reviewed
on the previous year's work nineteen hours a day. I
(17:13):
studied for three months. I kept this pace, only breaking
it on several occasions. My body grew weary, my mind
grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew
weary and began to twitch, but they did not break down.
(17:35):
Perhaps toward the last I got a bit dotty. I
know that at that time I was confident I had
discovered the formula for squaring the circle, but I resolutely
deferred the working of it out until after the examinations.
Then I would show them. Came the several days of
(17:59):
the exaulsations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes
in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And
when I turned in my last examination paper, I was
in full possession of a splendid case of brain fag.
(18:21):
I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want
to think, or to lay eyes on anybody who was
liable to think. There was but one prescription for such
a condition, and I gave it to myself, the adventure path.
I didn't wait to learn the result of my examinations.
(18:43):
I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food
into a borrowed Whitehall boat and set sail out of
the Oakland Estuary. I drifted on the last of the
early morning ebb caught the first of the flood bay
and raced along with a spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay
(19:06):
was smoking, and the Carquinez Straits off the Selby Smelter
were smoking too. As I picked up ahead and left
the stern, the old landmarks I had first learned with
Nelson in the unreafed reindeer Benicia showed before me. I
(19:28):
opened the bite of Turner Shipyard, rounded the Solano Wharf,
and surged along a breast of the patch of tools
and the clustering fishermen's arcs, where in the old days
I had lived and drunk deep. And right here something
(19:48):
happened to me, the gravity of which I never dreamed
for many a long year to come. I had had
no intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favored, the
wind was fair and howling, glorious sailing for a sailor.
(20:11):
Bullhead and army points showed ahead, marking the entrance to
Susan Bay, which I knew was smoking. And yet when
I laid eyes on those fishing arcs lying in the waterfront,
tools without debate on the instance, I put down my tiller,
(20:33):
came in on the sheet and headed for the shore.
On the instant, out of the profound of my brain fag,
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I
wanted to get drunk. The call was imperative, there was
(20:56):
no uncertainty about it. More than anything something else in
the world, my fraid and frazzled mind wanted Sir cease
from weariness in the way it knew Sir case would come.
And right here is the point. For the first time
(21:16):
in my life, I consciously deliberately desired to get drunk.
It was a new, a totally different manifestation of John
Barleycorn's power. It was not a body need for alcohol.
It was a mental desire. My overworked and jaded mind
(21:42):
wanted to forget. And here the point is drawn to
its sharpest. Granted my prodigious brain fag. Nevertheless, had I
never drunk in the past, the thought would never have
entered my mind to get drunk. Now, beginning with physical
(22:04):
intolerance for alcohol for years, drinking only for the sake
of comradeship, and because alcohol was everywhere on the adventure path,
I had now reached the stage where my brain cried out,
not merely for a drink, but for a drunk. And
(22:26):
had I not been so long used to alcohol, my
brain would not have so cried out. I should have
sailed on past Bullhead, and in the smoking white of
Susan Bay, and in the wine of wind that filled
my sail and poured through me. I should have forgotten
(22:48):
my weary brain and rested and refreshed it. So I
sailed into shore, made all fast, and hurried up along
the arcs. Charlie la Grant fell on my neck. His
wife Lizzie folded me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy
(23:10):
and Joe Lloyd and all the survivors of the Old
Guard got around me and their arms around me. Charlie
seized the can and started for Jorgensen's saloon across the
railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted whiskey, so I
(23:32):
called after him to bring a flask. Many times that
flash journeyed across the railroad tracks and back. More old
friends of the old free and easy times dropped in Fishermen, Greeks,
and Russians and French. They took turns entreating and treated
(23:57):
all around in turn again. They came and went, but
I stayed on and drank withal I guzzled, I swilled,
I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots
in my brain and clam came in. Nelson's partner before me,
(24:22):
handsome as ever, but more reckless, half insane, burning himself
out with whiskey. He had just had a quarrel with
his partner on the sloop Gazelle, and knives had been
drawn and blows struck, and he was bent on maddening
(24:43):
the fever of the memory with more whiskey. And while
we downed it, we remembered Nelson, and that he had
stretched out his great shoulders for the last long sleep
in this very town of Benicia. And we went over
(25:04):
the memory of him, and remembered only the good things
of him, and sent out the flask to be filled
and drank again. They wanted me to stay over, but
through the open door I could see the brave wind
on the water, and my ears were filled with the
(25:26):
roar of it. And while I forgot that I had
plunged into the books nineteen hours a day for three
solid months, Charlie la Grant shifted my outfit into a
big Columbia River salmon boat. He added charcoal and a
fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan, and the
(25:50):
coffee and the meat, and a black bass fresh from
the water that day. They had to help me down
the rickety wharf and into the salmon boat. Likewise, they
stretched my boom and sprit until the sail set like
a board. Some feared to set the sprit, but I insisted,
(26:14):
and Charlie had no doubts. He knew me of old,
and knew that I could sail as long as I
could see. They cast off my painter. I put the
tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes,
checked and steadied the boat on her course, and waved farewell.
(26:36):
The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in
the teeth of a fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff,
upstanding sea sous sin bee was white with wrath and
sea lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I
knew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove
(26:58):
her into it and threw it and across, and maundered
loud and chanted. My disdain for all the books and schools.
Cresting seas filled me a foot or so with water,
but I laughed at it, sloshing about my feet, and
chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I
(27:21):
hailed myself a master of life. Riding on the back
of the unleashed elements, and John Barleycorn rode with me.
Amid dissertations on mathematics and philosophy, and spoutings and quotations.
I sang all the old songs learned in the days
(27:43):
when I went from the cannery to the oyster banks
to be a pirate. Set songs as Black Lulu, Flying Cloud,
treat my daughter kindly, the Boston Burglar, Come, all you
rambling gambling men. I wished I was a little bird.
(28:09):
Shen Andah and Ranzo boys Ranzo. Hours afterward, in the
fires of Sunset, where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin
tumble their mighty floods together, I took the New York cutoff,
(28:31):
skimmed across the smooth landlocked water, past Black Diamond, on
into the San Joaquin, and onto Antioch, where, somewhat sobered
and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big potato sloop
that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends aboard
(28:55):
who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then too,
there was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and
crusty Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with
pint mugs of thick and heady claret. My salmon boat
(29:17):
was a soap, But in the snug cabin of the sloop,
dry blankets and a dry bunk were mine, and we
lay and smoked and yarned of old days, while overhead
the wind screamed through the rigging, and tot halliards drummed
(29:38):
against the mast end of Chapter twenty two.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com