Word: runyon
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Life in the pages of a Damon Runyon story is a happy affair, but Harry the Horse. Dave the Dude, Light-Finger Moe and many other guys and dolls seem to have been less engaging in fact than in fiction. When Runyon brought one of the real-life models of his characters home, his wife broke up the party by shouting: "Get that bum out of here...
...Runyon drove her husband out of the house, and Mr. Runyon drove his wife to drink. None of this did Damon Jr. or his older sister any good. The sister had a nervous breakdown and Damon Jr. became an alcoholic. By 23, he had been through the D.T.s, jails and psycho wards before getting cured via Alcoholics Anonymous. In Father's Footsteps, Damon Jr., now 36 and a Miami newspaperman, gives his version of why Damon Sr. was everything a father should...
...long as Damon Sr. stayed at home, the house rule was: "Don't upset Father." The children were warned away until Runyon had gone through the groans and mutters of the painful rising at noon. He would then fling open his bedroom door and announce: "I'm up!" Runyon's education of his son consisted in handing down first principles of conduct, e.g., "Never give a sucker an even break," "All horse players die broke," "How to live with women: Don't." On turning away from the dice table at Saratoga, where he had dropped...
Like Sorrowful in Little Miss Marker, Runyon looked sad and sour, even when joking, and little Damon always thought he was angry at him. Sometimes Runyon made shy overtures, but "his stumbling attempt to play the palsey Pop [was] so patently gawky" that Damon Jr. thought his father was just performing an unpleasant chore. Even Runyon's presents were wrong. Damon Jr. was afraid of the huge electric train and could not even lift the sailboat with a five-foot mainmast...
...worst time of all came when Runyon worked on one of his gay little stories. He was an agony writer, suffering torment over every painfully minted wisecrack. The household suffered with him, paralyzed into a dread silence...