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THE DUKE OF BROOKLYN 37
At the end of the week Joe fired me, and I'm sure he never thought much of Cornell's agricultural students after that. But I had no trouble getting a job on the Vincent Astor estate. It was haying time and they needed fifteen or twenty men to pitch hay. That sounded like a nice bucolic pastime, so I signed up for twenty-five dollars a month.
The first day on the job I stepped on a rake and the handle came up and hit me squarely on the nose. It was very funny to everybody but me; my nose swelled up until I looked like Jimmy Durante with a mustache.
Then the hard work started. I never went through such a grueling experience in my life. The boss put a pitchfork in my hand and told me to start pitching. I had to lift huge bundles of hay from the ground and toss them up on the hayrack. It was broiling hot; my hands were soon covered with blisters; I thought my back would break. I finally begged the boss to give me a job in the barn where it was shady. But the barn was still hotter and the air was so full of chaff I couldn't breathe. At the end of a week I was having nightmares. I would dream that I was buried in a pile of hay a mile high and had to eat my way out.
At the end of two weeks the boss handed me a check for $12.50 and told me I had made good. I was such a success I could have a permanent job if I wanted it. But I knew it wouldn't be very permanent because I couldn't last that long, so at the end of the month I quit.
I landed back in New York with two bottles of champagne left, a few sardines, and a check signed by Vincent Astor for $12.50. I walked into the bar at the Astor Hotel, slapped the check on the bar, and ordered a Manhattan cocktail. The bartender looked at the check with a fishy eye until he saw the signature on it, which changed his manner completely. I drank my Manhattan and ate a free lunch that would have foundered Wally Beery.
That night I stayed at the Mills Hotel. I thought to myself,