“Mr. Spitovesky,” I said to him one day not long since, “have you been reading anything about the Colorado mining troubles?”
“I never read de papers,” he said with a shrug of his shoulder.
“No? Not at all?” I pursued.
“Dere is nodding in dem—lies mosdly. Somedimes I look ad de baseball news in sommer.”
“Oh, I see,” I said hopelessly. Then, apropos of nothing, or because I was curious as to my neighbors, “Are you a Catholic?”
“I doaned belong to no church. I doaned mix in no politics, neider. Some hof de men aboud here get excided aboud politics; I got no time. I ’tend to mine store.”
Seeing him stand for hours against his doorpost, or sitting out front smoking while his darksome little wife peels potatoes or sews or fusses with the children, I could never understand his “I got no time.”
In a related sense there are my friends Jacob Feilchenfeld and Vaclav Melka, whom I sometimes envy because they are so different. The former, the butcher to whom I run for chops and pigs’ feet for my landlady, Mrs. Wscrinkuus; the latter the keeper of a spirituous emporium whose windows read “Vynas, Scnapas.” Jacob, like every other honest butcher worthy the name, is broad and beefy. He turns on me a friendly eye as he inquires, “About so thick?” or suggests that he has some nice fresh liver or beef tongue, things which he knows Mrs. Wscrinkuus likes. I can sum up Mr. Feilchenfeld’s philosophy of life when I report that to every intellectual advance I make he exclaims in a friendly enough way, “I dunno,” or “I ain’t never heard about dot.”
My pride in a sturdy, passive acceptance of things, however, is nearly realized in Vaclav Melka, the happy dispenser of “Vynas, Scnapsas.” He also is frequently to be found leaning in his doorway in summer, business being not too brisk during the daytime, surveying the world with a reflective eye. He is dark, stocky, black-haired, black-eyed, a good Pole with a head like a wooden peg, almost flat at the top, and driven firmly albeit not ungracefully into his shoulders. He has a wife who is a slattern and nearly a slave, and three children who seem to take no noticeable harm from this saloon life. Leaning in coatless ease against his sticky bar of an evening, he has laid down the law concerning morals and ethics, thus: no lying or stealing—among friends; no brawling or assaults or murdering for any save tremendous reasons of passion; no truckling to priests or sisters who should mind their own business.
“Did you ever read a book, Melka?” I once asked him. It was apropos of a discussion as to a local brawl.