Admitting any plans I’d had were nebulous and impractical, they had yet been plans of a kind, something in which I could put, or force, my hopes. My appearance had been presentable, I had the means to keep myself fed and sheltered for a few weeks at least. Now everything was changed, any future was gone, literally knocked out of existence and I had nothing to look forward to, nothing on which to exert my energies and dreams. To go back to Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not simply to dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but because I knew how relieved my mother and father must have been to be freed of my uselessness. Yet I had nothing to expect in the city except starvation or a life of petty crime. Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark, secretive place, gaslit even this early, with a steam piano tinkling the popular, mournful tune, _Mormon Girl_: There’s a girl in the state of Deseret I love and I’m trying to for-get. Forget her for my tired feet’s sake Don’t wanna walk to the Great Salt Lake. They ever build that railroad toooo the ocean I’d return my Mormon girl’s devotion. But the tracks stop short in Ioway.... I couldnt remember the next line. Something about Injuns say. “Shot,” Pondible ordered the bartender, “and buttermilk for my chum here.” The bartender kept on polishing the wood in front of him with a wet, dirty rag. “Got any jack?” “Pay you tomorrow, friend.” The bartender’s uninterrupted industry said clearly, then drink tomorrow. “Listen,” argued Pondible; “I’m tapering off. You know me. Ive spent plenty of money here.” The bartender shrugged. “I don’t own the place; anything goes over the bar has to be rung up on the cash register.” “Youre lucky to have a job that pays wages.” “Times I’m not so sure. Why don’t you indent?” Pondible looked shocked. “At my age? What would a company pay for a wornout old carcass? A hundred dollars at the top. Then a release in a couple of years with a med holdback so I’d have to report every week somewhere. No, friend, Ive come through this long a free man—in a manner of speaking—and I’ll stick it out. Let’s have that shot; you can see for yourself I’m tapering off. Youll get your jack tomorrow.” I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal was less surly and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a glass and bottle for Pondible and an earthenware mug of buttermilk for me. To my astonishment, I say, for credit was rarely extended on any scale, large or small. The inflation, though sixty years in the past, had left indelible impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was not only disgraceful, it was dangerous; the notion things could be paid for while, or even after, they were being used was as unthinkable as was the idea of circulating paper money instead of silver or gold.