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4^ S.
It shouldn't be said that the place was rough; neither was it benign. If one would listen uninterrupted to good jazz, he sat with his back judiciously placed next to the wall. In this way he could save his skull from being creased with a flying beer bottle.
In the west wall, toward the back, was a door with a dingy staircase ascending to nowhere. No one was ever seen to come down ox go up. Many were curious about what was at the top but no one felt hardy enough to venture a trip. The rats cavorted undisturbed and untrodden.
The "Men's Lounge" was a symphony in miasmic putrescence. This perhaps accounted for many trips to the alley back of the place. Even the sodden bums who came in out of the winter to nurse a nickel beer preferred relief in the bitter cold of a January dawn to spending a moment in that odious cell.
The piano was of an early vintage. So many fingernails had scratched the front board that the maker's name had long been obliterated. The keys were of naked ivory. A tuner hadn't touched the pegs for uncounted years. One end of the keyboard was charred to rocklike hardness from countless cigarette butts. Two .38 caliber bullet holes stared at the gloom from the sounding board, about head-high as the player sat. Some unnamed hero had ducked just in time, perhaps going on to become a high school band teacher. The sustaining pedal, once a noble shiny steel casting, was worn to a thin rusty sliver. It was never
August, 1945
used anyway. The instrument possessed an inherent sostenuto — courtesy of a herd of moths which had feasted on the felt dampers.
It is difficult to explain why such a strange atmosphere would foster long remembered jam sessions. Pure, unbridled, uninhibited jazz is an escape mechanism ior the benighted musician. He might have felt that the surroundings represented the acme of his frustration, the core of his yearning. He wanted his escape to be complete and far distant. From such a taking off place he knew that any