Word: mike
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...Manhattan East Side tenement in Chrystie Street. They were orthodox Jews, decent, kindly people, believed in dybbuks (evil spirits). Manhattan tenement life shocked their kindliness and decency, did not shake their faith in evil spirits. Chrystie Street was in the red-light district, under the protection of Tammany Hall. Mike Gold never forgot his fifth birthday, for that night two gunmen shot it out in the back yard...
...Mike and his gang played in vacant lots when they could, but mostly in the street. Once one of them was attacked by a pervert. Mike's little sister was killed by a truck...
Father Gold was a housepainter, until he fell from a scaffold and broke all the bones in his feet. He was also a wonderful storyteller: some of his tales took weeks to finish. Mike discovered afterward that they came from the Arabian Nights: his father had heard them in Oriental marketplaces, from Turkish or Rumanian peasants. Once his father tried voting. He was taken by a Jewish Tammany man to the polls, voted three times, was suddenly hit over the head with a blackjack. Groaned he to his wife: "Katie, you were right. Voting is only for Irish bums. Never...
...Blood, famed killer of Gambler Rosenthal, was in Mike's public school class. Some of Mike's pals grew up to be rich; one of them became a gunman. Mike ends his own story at the point where he tired of selling papers and began to look for a job-not because he wanted to be rich (he hated capitalism) but to stay alive...
...Sunday mornings the house cat taught him [Kitten Mike] to stalk pigeons in the colonnade. Mike was set to 'point' like a dog, and the house cat little by little drove the pigeons up into a corner. The pigeons became dazed, and fell down, and then each cat seized a bird and carried it into the house uninjured. The house keeper took the pigeons from the cats, and in return for them gave a slice of beef or mutton and milk to each cat. The pigeons were taken into a little side room, and after they had eaten...