Properties
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- 2026-01-30T03:41:20.744Z
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- She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on
or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't
had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate
key in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know what it is. She
thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid.
God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or
something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot
chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her
friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.
Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or
anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the
park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with
the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the
same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this
teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we
looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in
ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I
think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we
went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing
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Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and
Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him
and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot
of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice
smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the
only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had
to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you
were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two
rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named
Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky
or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your
hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a
helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell
was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long,
long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about
twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking
tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in
the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps,
but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything
while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything,
children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then
you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a
fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of
bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at
it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom
than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you
passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing
- title
- Chunk 4