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W. C. Fields
ing anything in particular, and an occasional light showed where somebody had a wakeful baby or an early job. Just before daylight the birds arose with a noisy clatter, and not long afterward the first children began to chase the wagon. In general, Fields took care of the twenty-five-pound and fifty-pound cakes, and Wheatley carried the others. On especially heavy orders, for stores or restaurants, they worked together, each taking a handle of the prongs. Mostly, a proprietor would give them a little something at times like these — a sandwich, some cookies, a bottle of Bevo. As salary, Fields was getting three dollars and fifty cents a week and all the ice he could eat ; he made out comfortably. He had a room over a tailor shop. It cost him five dollars a month.
Each morning the job was finished by ten. Then they would visit some bartender customer who was getting the free lunch ready for the day. Wheatley would buy beer, Fields ginger ale, and they would eat their fill of the lunch. Fields took all of his meals in saloons that summer ; late that summer, too, he switched from soft drinks to beer. In the afternoons he juggled steadily. It had become an obsession with him. Around this time he had begun to know that he had an extraordinary talent and that a career awaited him. But he was in a hurry. The grim and dedicated aspect of his practice was awe-inspiring to boys who came to watch him. He refused all temptations to be distracted. Many days he persisted until time to go on the ice route. Years later, discussing this with a fellow worker at Paramount, for which he was making The Big Broadcast of 1938, Fields said, "I still carry scars on my legs from those early attempts at juggling. I'd balance a stick on my toe, toss it into the air, and try to catch it again on my toe. Hour after hour the damned thing would bang against my shinbones. I'd work until tears were streaming down my face. But I kept on practicing, and bleeding, until I perfected the trick.
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