Spoken:
And Chico was the gambler of the family. He pawned
everything. My father was a tailor, and a very bad one,
and Chico was always short of money, and he used to hock
my fathers shears, so whenever my father made a suit, of
course it didn't fit, and the shears would be hanging up
in the pawnshop on Ninety-first Street. Chico got a job
at Klauber Horn and Co. They used to manufacture paper,
different kinds of paper. And Chico never brought home a
salary, 'cause he was always in the poolroom, or he was
some place, and he never brought a salary. And my father
told him, "Next week, if you come home without your
salary, I'll k** you." They had a very close
relationship.
Chico didn't know what to do. His fahter was laying for
him - in a nice way, I mean. And Chico entered,
apprehensively, and there was my father waiting for him.
Chico said "Dad, I got a great surprise for you. They had
a sale today, on paper, and I took the three dollars,
that I was suposed to bring home, and I bought this
paper". And my father opened it, and it was toilet paper.
It was the first time we had ever seen toilet paper in
our house. We had always used either the Morning World or
the Herald Tribune. When I was really young, before that,
I used to smoke it. Roll it up into a small ball and I
would light it, and it was very good.