MAGICS OF LEMOSTER, pt. 1 (nyc, 1967)

307. MAGICS OF LEMOSTER, pt. 1 (nyc, 1967):

A million fashions of bowler hats walking sideways along the water down by the Battery over by the ferry slips, along the waterfront downtown dives : it was all a makeshift dream a twisting of the real a notion made from nothing at all and then while I was standing right there this guy comes over with a wedge-shaped picket and stares straight at me and asks if I'd 'like a fuckin' day's work?' and all I had to do was give him 6 or 7 good hours of labor shoveling debris from the pit of an old basement into nearby waiting trucks and I said OK and we walked on - not knowing what I was doing but figuring thirty-five bucks would be good enough to find out with and we walked over to a row of very old buildings along Water Street or Front Street or whatever it was called and I could see immediately what was going on this old brick building which essentially was falling in on itself had gotten filled within with rubble - straight-out plain old rubble like a bombed-out Berlin apartment or something and the rubble had fallen straight down from the three or four upper floors - walls, doorways, plaster-paste glass wood metal the whole thing and the first thought that came to mind was that this guy was or must be operating on a shoestring because usually this kind of work was done by organized crews of workmen with a bulldozer or two or some sorts of power equipment skimming right over the surfaces but not this : one by one piece by piece makeshift block and hand-held tackle so to speak and nothing but grunt and groan poor-boy prison labor if you think about it really but here I was already hungry like an animal and probably headed for more with so much as nothing in front of me or in me for that matter so I went ahead and this guy gives me an enormous crazy-ass shovel and shows me the procedure they were keeping to - there were a few other guys in pretty much the same operation I was about to enter into - and he says 'just keep yer' face down and shovel but while you're doing so look at whatever you shovel watch out for things that look special we're looking for anything money jewelry coins anything that looks out of th'ordnary - you get it?' and I said yes not figuring for nothing that I'd spend an extra minute looking and as it was hours later nothing had transpired : piles of refuse and junk and heavy carrying and moving things about in fact one large long boring day of labor and as I later found out the old building had been a waterside brothel and tavern grog house hotel of sorts in the old days with legends of treasure and booty hidden within its walls and if any of this was to be found it would have to be there still which of course seemed unseemly more than a hundred years past and since the last squeak of the mattress there or straw-mat or whatever they did their jumping upon back then : nothing as good as the sex trade ever was to bring forth the promises and the magic of love's lost lurid lore leering : and anyway if I'd found a gold-encrusted silver-diamond necklace under wrap and key and lock and bolt anyway you think really I would have told him or anyone else about it?