Read Online Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx, Rowland Barber - Free Book Online
Authors: Harpo Marx, Rowland Barber
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to get a laugh is quite a tribute to the original possessor of the face.
The little cigar roller was possibly the best straight man I ever had. He was certainly the straightest straight man. If Gookie had broken up or even smiled just once, my first act would have been a flop and the rest of my life might not have been much to write a book about.
Gookie-baiting was one of the few free pleasures I had left. As I got older, I acquired more expensive tastes.
I spent more time in the poolroom, and the price of pocket billiards had risen from a penny a cue to two for a nickel. That was big money. An evening’s pool cost more than I usually managed to bring home from a day’s hustling, doing odd jobs and hocking whatever loose merchandise I might chance to find lying around.
What took really big money was the Special Dinner at Fieste’s Oyster House. Dining at Fieste’s was the supreme luxury of my young life. Not that the food there was any better cooked than the food we had at home-when we had food. No common commercial chef could ever compete with Frenchie. But Fieste’s Special included things that Frenchie could only dream of putting on our table: Greenpoint oysters and cherrystone clams on the half shell, deviled crab, grilled smelts, French fried potatoes and onions, a juicy T-bone steak, hot rolls soaked with butter, apple pie with a slab of sharp cheese, and coffee rich with thick, sweet cream.
As I said, a meal like this took really big money. It cost thirty-five cents.
I soon learned what the main pitfall was in saving money. It wasn’t temptation, or the lack of will power. It was Chico Marx. Chico could smell money. Hiding my savings at home, anywhere in the flat, was useless. Chico always found it sooner or later.
Once I thought I had him outsmarted. I sold a wagonload of junk over on the West Side, items I had selected off a moving van hitched in front of a house on Both Street. The junk dealer gave me ten cents cash, the most I ever made on a single wagonload.
I swore that this dime would not wind up in Chico’s pocket. For once I was sure it wouldn’t, because I had finally found the perfect hiding place. In our bedroom there was a small tear in the wallpaper, near the ceiling. Before Chico came home that night I stood on the dresser and pasted my dime to the wall under the flap of the torn paper. It was a slick job. I went to bed with a feeling of security.
Next morning when I got up there was a bigger rip in the paper than before. My dime was gone and so was Chico. Chico was the only person I ever knew who could smell money through wallpaper. Maybe he didn’t have much of an ear for music, but he had a hell of a nose for currency.
So I learned that the only way to protect any money was to spend it as fast as I earned it. I also learned to spend it on something I could eat, or use up, like dinner at Fieste’s or a game of pool. My possessions were no safer from Chico’s clutches than my money. Chico was a devout believer in the maxim “Share and share alike.”
The way he shared my possessions was to hock them as fast as he got his hands on them, and then give the pawn tickets to me as my share.
I was growing up. I wasn’t getting much bigger, but I was a lot cockier and wiser. I won my first fight. I beat the hell out of a kid from next door, a detective’s son, who was two years older and fifteen pounds heavier than me. Nobody was more surprised than he was-except me. I had never been known as much of a scrapper. I was better known for ducking and running. But now I was a fighting man.
I’d come a long way as a workingman, too. Since the day I was ambushed by the bakery woodpile and got hooked in my first job, I had been hired and fired on the average of once a month. If a job didn’t offer any possibilities of fun, graft or petty thievery, I was not apt to take it very seriously. Like the time I spent a whole afternoon making a delivery for a butcher. I was bored delivering meat so I
The little cigar roller was possibly the best straight man I ever had. He was certainly the straightest straight man. If Gookie had broken up or even smiled just once, my first act would have been a flop and the rest of my life might not have been much to write a book about.
Gookie-baiting was one of the few free pleasures I had left. As I got older, I acquired more expensive tastes.
I spent more time in the poolroom, and the price of pocket billiards had risen from a penny a cue to two for a nickel. That was big money. An evening’s pool cost more than I usually managed to bring home from a day’s hustling, doing odd jobs and hocking whatever loose merchandise I might chance to find lying around.
What took really big money was the Special Dinner at Fieste’s Oyster House. Dining at Fieste’s was the supreme luxury of my young life. Not that the food there was any better cooked than the food we had at home-when we had food. No common commercial chef could ever compete with Frenchie. But Fieste’s Special included things that Frenchie could only dream of putting on our table: Greenpoint oysters and cherrystone clams on the half shell, deviled crab, grilled smelts, French fried potatoes and onions, a juicy T-bone steak, hot rolls soaked with butter, apple pie with a slab of sharp cheese, and coffee rich with thick, sweet cream.
As I said, a meal like this took really big money. It cost thirty-five cents.
I soon learned what the main pitfall was in saving money. It wasn’t temptation, or the lack of will power. It was Chico Marx. Chico could smell money. Hiding my savings at home, anywhere in the flat, was useless. Chico always found it sooner or later.
Once I thought I had him outsmarted. I sold a wagonload of junk over on the West Side, items I had selected off a moving van hitched in front of a house on Both Street. The junk dealer gave me ten cents cash, the most I ever made on a single wagonload.
I swore that this dime would not wind up in Chico’s pocket. For once I was sure it wouldn’t, because I had finally found the perfect hiding place. In our bedroom there was a small tear in the wallpaper, near the ceiling. Before Chico came home that night I stood on the dresser and pasted my dime to the wall under the flap of the torn paper. It was a slick job. I went to bed with a feeling of security.
Next morning when I got up there was a bigger rip in the paper than before. My dime was gone and so was Chico. Chico was the only person I ever knew who could smell money through wallpaper. Maybe he didn’t have much of an ear for music, but he had a hell of a nose for currency.
So I learned that the only way to protect any money was to spend it as fast as I earned it. I also learned to spend it on something I could eat, or use up, like dinner at Fieste’s or a game of pool. My possessions were no safer from Chico’s clutches than my money. Chico was a devout believer in the maxim “Share and share alike.”
The way he shared my possessions was to hock them as fast as he got his hands on them, and then give the pawn tickets to me as my share.
I was growing up. I wasn’t getting much bigger, but I was a lot cockier and wiser. I won my first fight. I beat the hell out of a kid from next door, a detective’s son, who was two years older and fifteen pounds heavier than me. Nobody was more surprised than he was-except me. I had never been known as much of a scrapper. I was better known for ducking and running. But now I was a fighting man.
I’d come a long way as a workingman, too. Since the day I was ambushed by the bakery woodpile and got hooked in my first job, I had been hired and fired on the average of once a month. If a job didn’t offer any possibilities of fun, graft or petty thievery, I was not apt to take it very seriously. Like the time I spent a whole afternoon making a delivery for a butcher. I was bored delivering meat so I
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