Word: mikes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Manhattan East Side tenement in Chrystie Street. They were orthodox Jews, decent, kindly people, believed in dybbuks (evil spirits). Manhattan tenement life shocked their kindliness and decency, did not shake their faith in evil spirits. Chrystie Street was in the red-light district, under the protection of Tammany Hall. Mike Gold never forgot his fifth birthday, for that night two gunmen shot it out in the back yard...
...Mike and his gang played in vacant lots when they could, but mostly in the street. Once one of them was attacked by a pervert. Mike's little sister was killed by a truck...
Father Gold was a housepainter, until he fell from a scaffold and broke all the bones in his feet. He was also a wonderful storyteller: some of his tales took weeks to finish. Mike discovered afterward that they came from the Arabian Nights: his father had heard them in Oriental marketplaces, from Turkish or Rumanian peasants. Once his father tried voting. He was taken by a Jewish Tammany man to the polls, voted three times, was suddenly hit over the head with a blackjack. Groaned he to his wife: "Katie, you were right. Voting is only for Irish bums. Never...
...years, erudite Sir Ernest A. Wallis Budge, Litt. D., D. Litt., D. Lit., was Keeper of the Museum's Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. His monograph on Mike may be considered the acme of obital biography, fit to rank with his monumental Coptic History of Elijah the Tish- bite. No more awful authority could be found for the statement that Mike "preferred sole to whiting, and whiting to haddock, and sardines to herrings; for cod he had no use whatever. He owed much to the three kind-hearted gatekeepers who cooked his food for him, and treated...
...Sunday mornings the house cat taught him [Kitten Mike] to stalk pigeons in the colonnade. Mike was set to 'point' like a dog, and the house cat little by little drove the pigeons up into a corner. The pigeons became dazed, and fell down, and then each cat seized a bird and carried it into the house uninjured. The house keeper took the pigeons from the cats, and in return for them gave a slice of beef or mutton and milk to each cat. The pigeons were taken into a little side room, and after they had eaten...