Chapter V

by Jack London

　　This physical loathing for alcohol I have never got over. But Ihave conquered it. To this day I conquer it every time I take adrink. The palate never ceases to rebel, and the palate can betrusted to know what is good for the body. But men do not drinkfor the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink foris the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so muchthe worse for the body.

　　And yet, despite my physical loathing for alcohol, the brightestspots in my child life were the saloons. Sitting on the heavypotato wagons, wrapped in fog, feet stinging from inactivity, thehorses plodding slowly along the deep road through the sandhills,one bright vision made the way never too long. The bright visionwas the saloon at Colma, where my father, or whoever drove, alwaysgot out to get a drink. And I got out to warm by the great stoveand get a soda cracker. Just one soda cracker, but a fabulousluxury. Saloons were good for something. Back behind theplodding horses, I would take an hour in consuming that onecracker. I took the smallest nibbles, never losing a crumb, andchewed the nibble till it became the thinnest and most delectableof pastes. I never voluntarily swallowed this paste. I justtasted it, and went on tasting it, turning it over with my tongue,spreading it on the inside of this cheek, then on the inside ofthe other cheek, until, at the end, it eluded me and in tiny dropsand oozelets, slipped and dribbled down my throat. HoraceFletcher had nothing on me when it came to soda crackers.

　　I liked saloons. Especially I liked the San Francisco saloons.They had the most delicious dainties for the taking--strangebreads and crackers, cheeses, sausages, sardines--wonderful foodsthat I never saw on our meagre home-table. And once, I remember,a barkeeper mixed me a sweet temperance drink of syrup and soda-water. My father did not pay for it. It was the barkeeper'streat, and he became my ideal of a good, kind man. I dreamed day-dreams of him for years. Although I was seven years old at thetime, I can see him now with undiminished clearness, though Inever laid eyes on him but that one time. The saloon was south ofMarket Street in San Francisco. It stood on the west side of thestreet. As you entered, the bar was on the left. On the right,against the wall, was the free lunch counter. It was a long,narrow room, and at the rear, beyond the beer kegs on tap, weresmall, round tables and chairs. The barkeeper was blue-eyed, andhad fair, silky hair peeping out from under a black silk skull-cap. I remember he wore a brown Cardigan jacket, and I knowprecisely the spot, in the midst of the array of bottles, fromwhich he took the bottle of red-coloured syrup. He and my fathertalked long, and I sipped my sweet drink and worshipped him. Andfor years afterward I worshipped the memory of him.

　　Despite my two disastrous experiences, here was John Barleycorn,prevalent and accessible everywhere in the community, luring anddrawing me. Here were connotations of the saloon making deepindentations in a child's mind. Here was a child, forming itsfirst judgments of the world, finding the saloon a delightful anddesirable place. Stores, nor public buildings, nor all thedwellings of men ever opened their doors to me and let me warm bytheir fires or permitted me to eat the food of the gods fromnarrow shelves against the wall. Their doors were ever closed tome; the saloon's doors were ever open. And always and everywhereI found saloons, on highway and byway, up narrow alleys and onbusy thoroughfares, bright-lighted and cheerful, warm in winter,and in summer dark and cool. Yes, the saloon was a mighty fineplace, and it was more than that.

　　By the time I was ten years old, my family had abandoned ranchingand gone to live in the city. And here, at ten, I began on thestreets as a newsboy. One of the reasons for this was that weneeded the money. Another reason was that I needed the exercise.I had found my way to the free public library, and was readingmyself into nervous prostration. On the poor ranches on which Ihad lived there had been no books. In ways truly miraculous, Ihad been lent four books, marvellous books, and them I haddevoured. One was the life of Garfield; the second, Paul duChaillu's African travels; the third, a novel by Ouida with thelast forty pages missing; and the fourth, Irving's "Alhambra."This last had been lent me by a school-teacher. I was not aforward child. Unlike Oliver Twist, I was incapable of asking formore. When I returned the "Alhambra" to the teacher I hoped shewould lend me another book. And because she did not--most likelyshe deemed me unappreciative--I cried all the way home on thethree-mile tramp from the school to the ranch. I waited andyearned for her to lend me another book. Scores of times I nervedmyself almost to the point of asking her, but never quite reachedthe necessary pitch of effrontery.

　　And then came the city of Oakland, and on the shelves of that freelibrary I discovered all the great world beyond the skyline. Herewere thousands of books as good as my four wonder-books, and somewere even better. Libraries were not concerned with children inthose days, and I had strange adventures. I remember, in thecatalogue, being impressed by the title, "The Adventures ofPeregrine Pickle." I filled an application blank and the librarianhanded me the collected and entirely unexpurgated works ofSmollett in one huge volume. I read everything, but principallyhistory and adventure, and all the old travels and voyages. Iread mornings, afternoons, and nights. I read in bed, I read attable, I read as I walked to and from school, and I read at recesswhile the other boys were playing. I began to get the "jerks." Toeverybody I replied: "Go away. You make me nervous."

　　And so, at ten, I was out on the streets, a newsboy. I had notime to read. I was busy getting exercise and learning how tofight, busy learning forwardness, and brass and bluff. I had animagination and a curiosity about all things that made me plastic.Not least among the things I was curious about was the saloon.And I was in and out of many a one. I remember, in those days, onthe east side of Broadway, between Sixth and Seventh, from cornerto corner, there was a solid block of saloons.

　　In the saloons life was different. Men talked with great voices,laughed great laughs, and there was an atmosphere of greatness.Here was something more than common every-day where nothinghappened. Here life was always very live, and, sometimes, evenlurid, when blows were struck, and blood was shed, and bigpolicemen came shouldering in. Great moments, these, for me, myhead filled with all the wild and valiant fighting of the gallantadventurers on sea and land. There were no big moments when Itrudged along the street throwing my papers in at doors. But inthe saloons, even the sots, stupefied, sprawling across the tablesor in the sawdust, were objects of mystery and wonder.

　　And more, the saloons were right. The city fathers sanctionedthem and licensed them. They were not the terrible places I heardboys deem them who lacked my opportunities to know. Terrible theymight be, but then that only meant they were terribly wonderful,and it is the terribly wonderful that a boy desires to know. Inthe same way pirates, and shipwrecks, and battles were terrible;and what healthy boy wouldn't give his immortal soul toparticipate in such affairs?

　　Besides, in saloons I saw reporters, editors, lawyers, judges,whose names and faces I knew. They put the seal of socialapproval on the saloon. They verified my own feeling offascination in the saloon. They, too, must have found there thatsomething different, that something beyond, which I sensed andgroped after. What it was, I did not know; yet there it must be,for there men focused like buzzing flies about a honey pot. I hadno sorrows, and the world was very bright, so I could not guessthat what these men sought was forgetfulness of jaded toil andstale grief.

　　Not that I drank at that time. From ten to fifteen I rarelytasted liquor, but I was intimately in contact with drinkers anddrinking places. The only reason I did not drink was because Ididn't like the stuff. As the time passed, I worked as boy-helperon an ice-wagon, set up pins in a bowling alley with a saloonattached, and swept out saloons at Sunday picnic grounds.

　　Big jovial Josie Harper ran a road house at Telegraph Avenue andThirty-ninth Street. Here for a year I delivered an eveningpaper, until my route was changed to the water-front andtenderloin of Oakland. The first month, when I collected JosieHarper's bill, she poured me a glass of wine. I was ashamed torefuse, so I drank it. But after that I watched the chance whenshe wasn't around so as to collect from her barkeeper.

　　The first day I worked in the bowling alley, the barkeeper,according to custom, called us boys up to have a drink after wehad been setting up pins for several hours. The others asked forbeer. I said I'd take ginger ale. The boys snickered, and Inoticed the barkeeper favoured me with a strange, searchingscrutiny. Nevertheless, he opened a bottle of ginger ale.Afterward, back in the alleys, in the pauses between games, theboys enlightened me. I had offended the barkeeper. A bottle ofginger ale cost the saloon ever so much more than a glass of steambeer; and it was up to me, if I wanted to hold my job, to drinkbeer. Besides, beer was food. I could work better on it. Therewas no food in ginger ale. After that, when I couldn't sneak outof it, I drank beer and wondered what men found in it that was sogood. I was always aware that I was missing something.

　　What I really liked in those days was candy. For five cents Icould buy five "cannon-balls"--big lumps of the most deliciouslastingness. I could chew and worry a single one for an hour.Then there was a Mexican who sold big slabs of brown chewing taffyfor five cents each. It required a quarter of a day properly toabsorb one of them. And many a day I made my entire lunch off oneof those slabs. In truth, I found food there, but not in beer.