But the latest, and perhaps really, next to Mexico in the jazz high, I'll tell in a minute,best vision, also on high, but under entirely different circumstances,was the vision I had of Neil as he showed me one afternoon in Januaryon the sidewalks of Workaday, San Francisco,just like Workaday afternoon on Moody Street in Lowell,when boyhood buddy Funny Guy G.J. and I played zombie piggybacksin mill employment offices and workman's saloons.The silver star it was.And what and how the three stooges are like when they go staggeringand knocking one another down the street.Moe, Curly, who's actually the ball-domed one, Big Husky,and Meaningless Goof, though somewhat mysterious as though he was a saint in disguise,can't remember his name, a masquerading super-duper witch doctor with good intentions, actually.Can't think of his name.Neil knows his name, the bushy, feathery-haired one.And Neil was supposed to be looking after his work.We just blasted a pint in the car.As we drove down the hill into wild mid-market trafficand out third past the Little Harlem,where two and a half years ago we jumped with the wild tenor cats and Freddy and the rest.I dig the Little Harlem and rainy midnightscoming home from work in the black slouch hat from the corner,the pale, pretty pink neons, the modernistic front,the puddles so rosy-glowing at the foot of the entrance,the long, arrowing, deserted Folsom Street,which, as I hadn't remembered in my back-east reveries,runs straight into the far lights of the Mission,or Richmond, or whatever district,all glitters in the indigo distance of the night,to make you think of trucks and long hauls to pass a Robleys,Leak Obispo or Monterey,or Fresno in the midst of highways,the ones with an end which is water-orientsand the empurpled Golgothian panoplies of Pacific bowl and abyss,past the dingy bars with their incredible names,colored bars like Moonlight in Colorado,that's one actually in Fillmore,or Blue Midnight or Pink Glass,and inside it's all wretched robs,raw brown whiskey and mauve boilermakers,past Mission Street earlier too,before Folsom, with its corner conglomerate of bums,or sometimes lines of dragged winos so torpidthat when pretty women pass they don't even look,even though they're waiting in line to give blood for four dollars at Cutter's,so they can cut off and buy wine and brandy for the Embarcadero night,and if they do look, it's accidental,and they seem to be too guilty to look at ordinary women,only steamboat annies of pier-front bougeswith knots in their sticks for calf musclesand hagglers' tooth marks in their purply gums,Jesus Christ,bums of Mission and Howard that live in miserable flop hotelslike the Skylark in Denver,that Neil and his father,old Neil Pomeray the Tinsmith,lived in and from which they tooktheir Sunday afternoon walks together hand in hand and amiableafter the previous Saturday night's hassles overhis over-drinking wine and the ceremonial saved-up evening movie,so he'd snore, but he wouldn't say a word.He'd snore at usher close-up time,and lights on in the showhouse would reveal to shuffling audiencesof whole Mexican and Arky familiesthe sight of one of their fellow Americansa bit under the weather in a seat.This being the capperto a whole day of Saturday joysif a little Neil, such as reading The Count of Monte Cristowhile his father worked in the busy weekend morning,clean up at the Skylark,and a regular good meal and a fairly good reston Saturday afternoon.Then maybe a moment's lingering with the majorityof non-celebrating Saturday night bumswrangled around in seated positions in the sitting roomthe longer winter nights of which Neil enduredaiming spitballs at plaster targetsand at celestial ceiling cracksas big ol' clocktalkety-talkeddegenuaries awayand like in a moviethe calendars flappedand still the land and the man survivedstood fixed and immovablein a blur flap of white pages, representingthe beginning timeusually the man was Neil's dadthe land, Coloradothe occasion and occupationhope, good boy hope for a changebut now it's Mayand they're going to a show and sayinggood evening to the bums who sit and stateover this old thingjust like French sewing sisters in a provincial townMayand Laramie Street is hum-buzzingwith that same excitementthat same country-fied wrangly sad tootand tinkle of old mainland shopping streetsin Charleston, West Virginiawith all its spotted farmer cars rangedand the canoa flowingin the southern railroad townwith moils of activityas sun-tortured five and tensacross from the tracksawningsnations of negroes lounging by beater storesin near the tobacco warehousesflashing aluminum lights in the southern day fireand Los Angeleswhen the parade goes up and downboth sidesand the cracked old crazy John Gauntfrom a rackety house in the telegraph groveoutside the Bakersfield flatswith his entire brood of ninepacked and pushed upto the torn flat-bass black tarpaulinroof of his fantasticancient 1929touring imperial Buickwith the wooden spokestwo of them crackedin a side rack for spareslike a snail's shell goof on the running boardold John Gauntand Ma Gauntwith her overalls in sorrowas to wait while Paulgets his fill at the shooting galleryat South Main two blocks fromSister Marta Parksit's May and little Neil and old mango cutting together into the adventuresof a hard one eveningand one which of course like all lifeis doomed to the tragic unnameableto make you speechless and sad-facedforever deathjust as I used to hurry with my fatherin May dusks of Saturdaytowards unspeakable sea shoresand swooping spaces fit for gullsand cloud scudstowards ramps of yellow sulfur lamplightoverdrivessudden dank side alleyswhen there came among the greases and ironsand black dust of rampsand cobbled avenues like the avenuesof factories in Germanythose secret chop suies from Boston Chinatownto make my mouth water and my thoughtshasten to the wink of Chinese lanternshung in red doorwaysat the base of golden tinselport steps leadingup to the Mandarin secrets of withinso when Neil dreamedof being Christo thrown in the seain a bag I was kidnappedin Shanghai and orphaned to strange but friendlyold Chinamanwho was my only contact with hopesof returning to my former lifeorphaned in the interesting old void ehMay nighton Larimerwhen the sun is red on green storefrontsand army navy suitsby the door and makes a rayand a frazzle by an empty bottleof a hydrantilluminates the reveries of an aged ladyin the window above the windows of empty store roomsshe looks on wine coupewazi in the railwe passed third street and all thatand came driving slowly noticingeverything talking everything to the rail yardswhere we worked and got out of the car to cross the warmairy plazas of the day and there particularlywith a fine soot scent of coal and tideand oil and big worksa fly across hazel oil shimmersthe tar soft under shoenoticing how great the dayand how in the experience of our lives togetherwe were always finding ourselves in a golden sleepy good afternoonjust like a fishinor really like the afternoons that must have been experiencedby the noble son of his hostNestor's friendwild night charioteeringsacross the ghosts and white horsesa phallic classical fatein the grey plain to the searewardful afternoonsfor tired winnerscaresses of cups and figsin the lull of heroesjust like thatNeil and meonly American and Neil sayingnow damn it boy you gotta admit that we're highand that was real good wineand more instant and interestingand always happening and everything always all rightwe sauntered thuscome in the green clunker for some reasonwore our usualgreasy bum clothesput real bums to shamebut nobody with the power to reprimand and arrest usin his housebegan somehow talking about the three stoogeswe're headed to see Mr. So-and-soin the office and on business and around usconductors, executives, commuters, consumersrush stores, sometimes just maybe amblingRussian spies carrying bombs and briefcasesand sometimes ragbagsI betthis foolishnessand the station therethe creamy stucco suggestive of palmslike the Union Station in LAwith its palms and mission arches and marblesis so unlike a railroad stationto an Easterner like myselfused to old red brick and soot ironsexciting gloom fit for snowsand voyages across pine foreststo the seawell at that great station out thereI ran over that ice that morningen route to Pittsburghand Pittsburgh so unlike a railroad stationthat I couldn't imagine anything goodand adventurous coming from itwe in our youth had spent goof hoursaround railroad stationsin fact the last time I was in Lowellwe staggered and laughed past the depotat the nearest bar and jumped and whoopedbareheaded and coatlessbut here nothingonly bright California gloom and proprietyI suppose because Neil works for them therenothing but whiteness and everythingbusy officialists say Californianno spittingyou know you're at the carving archesof a great white temple of commercial travelin America if you're going to blank your cigardo it on the slyand so on but really when it came into Neil'shead to imitate the staggerof the stooges and he did it wildcrazy yelling in the sidewalk right thereby the arches and by hurrying executivesI had a vision of him whichat first manifold it iswas swamped by the idea that this wasone hell of a wild unexpected twistin my suppositions about how he might nowin his later years feelabout his employers and their temple conventionsI saw his againrosy flushing faceexuding heat and joy his eyes poppingin the hard exercise of staggeringhis whole frame of clothescapped by those terrible pants with six sevenholes in them and streaked withdirty food ice cream gasolineashes I saw his whole lifeI saw all the movies we'd ever been inI saw for some reasonhe and his father on Laramie Streetnot caring in Maytheir Sunday afternoon walkshand in hand in back of great baking sodafactories and alongdead head tracks and rampsat the foot of that mighty red brick chimneya la Chirico or Chico Velasquezthrowing a huge long shadow across theirpath in the gravel in the flatsupposing the three stoogeswere realso I saw them spring into being at the side ofNeil in the street right there in front of the stationCurly Moe and Larrythat's his name LarryMoe the leaderMopishMowbrey MopemouthedMealy MadHanking making the othersquake whacking Curlyon the iron patebackhanding Larry who wonderspicking up a sledgehammer HONKand ramming it down nozzle firston the flat pan of Curly's skullBOINGand all big dumb convict Curly does ismuckle and yuckle and squeal pressing his lipsshaking his old butt like jellynodding his jello fistseyeing Moe who looks back at himeyeing Moe who looks back at himwith that Lord and surlywhat are you gonna do about iton the thunderstorm eyebrows like the eyebrows of Beethovencompletely iron boundin surlsLarry in his angelic or ratherhe really looks like he conned the other twowho let him join the groupso they had to pay him all these yearsa regular share of the salaryto them who worked so hard with the propsLarry goof haired mopple lippedlisped mucked and completely flunktrips over a pale whitewashand falls face first in a seven inch nailthat remains embedded in his eye bonethe eye bones connect to the shadow boneshadow bones connect to theluck boneluck bones connect to the foul bonefoul bones connect to thehigh bonebones connect to the air boneair bones connect to thesky bonesky bones connect to the angel boneangel bones connect to thegod bonegod bones connect to the bone boneMoe yanks it out of his eyeimpales him with an eight foot steel rodit gets worse and worseit started on an innocent thumbingwhich led to backhandthen the pastries then the nose yanksblap bloopgoing going gongthis is a tricky dream set in Syrup universethey do muckle and moanand pull and mop about like I told youin an underground hell of their own inventionthey are involved and alivethey go haggling down the street at each others hairsocking remonstrating fallinggetting up flailing as the red sun sailssosupposing the three stooges were realand like Neil and me were going to workonly they forgot about thatand tragically mistaken and inter-alliedbegan pastingcuffing each otherdesk as clerks stare, supposing in real gray day, and not the gray day of movies and all thoseafternoons we spent looking at them in hooky or officially on Sundays among the thousand cracklingchildren of peanuts and candy in the dark show and the three stooges, as in that golden dreamB-movie of mine around the corner from the Strand, are providing scenes for wild vibrating hysteriasas great as the hysterias of hipsters at jazz at the Philharmonics. Supposing in real gray day yousaw them coming down 7th Street looking for jobs as ushers, insurance salesmen, that way.Then I saw the three stooges materialize on the sidewalk, their hair blowing in the wind of things,and Neil was with them, laughing and staggering in savage mimicry of them and himself staggeringand gooped, but they didn't notice. I followed and back. There was an afternoon when I foundmyself hung up in a strange city, maybe after hitchhiking and escaping something, half tearsin my eyes, nineteen or twenty, worrying about my folks and killing time with a beamof light, and I saw them. I saw them. I saw them. I saw them. I saw them. I saw them. I saw them.And suddenly the three stooges appeared, just the name goofing on the screen, and in the streetsof the same streets as outside the theater, only they are photographed in Hollywood by seriouscrews like Joan Crawford in the fog. And the three stooges were bopping one another, until as Neilsays, they've been at it for so many years and a thousand and climactic efforts super-climbing andworked out every refinement of bopping one another so much that now, in the end, if it isn't alreadyover, in the Baroque period of the third century, the three stooges were bopping one another. Andthe three stooges, they are finally bopping mechanically and sometimes so hard it is impossibleto bear wince. But by now they've learned not only how to master the style of the blows,but the symbol and acceptance of them also, as though inured in their souls, and of course longago in their bodies, to buffetings and crashings in the rixy gloom of thirties movies and B-shortsubjects of that cracked kind that made me yawn at 10 a.m. in my hooky movie of high school days.Intent I was on saving my energy for serious jawed features, which in my time was the cleft jaw ofGary Grant. Stooges don't feel the blows anymore. Moe is iron. Curly's dead. Larry's gone. Off therocker. Beyond hell and gone. So ably hidden by his uncombable mop, in which, as G.J. used to say,he hid it.Derringer pistol. So there they are, bonk, boing, and there's Neil following after them,stumbling and saying, hey, look out, hook, on Larimer or Main Street or Times Square in themist as they parade erratically like crazy kids past the shoeboxes of simpletons and candy cornarcades. And seriously, Neil talking about them, telling me at the creamy station, under palms,the suggestions thereof, his huge rosy face bent over the time and the thing like a sun in thegreat day. So then I knew that long ago,when the mist was raw, Neil saw the Three Stooges. Maybe he just stood outside a pawn shop orhardware store or in that perennial pool hall door, but maybe more likely on the pavings ofthe city on the tragic rainy telephone poles and thought of the Three Stooges, suddenly realizingthat life is strange and the Three Stooges do exist. That in 10,000 years, that all the goofshe felt in him were justified in the outside world.And he had nothing to reproach himself for. Bonk, boing, crash, skiddly boom, pow slam, bang, boom, wham, blam, crack, fap, kerplunk, clatter, clap, blap, fap, slap, map, splat, crunch, crouch, bong, splat, splat, bong.