I run ahead and swing around a lamp pole but Dad says Cut it out.   I say Why?   He says You're making me nervous.  

	"Afternoon Game at Table 2," by Wayne S. Miller, from his book Chicago’s South Side, 1946-1948, (c) University of California Press

But there's no one else out here.  

He says That's why.  

I don't get it.  

Grandpa says You don't know.   The shochers.  

I still don't get it.  

The shochers.   The shvartzes.  

Now I get it maybe.   Sometimes Grandpa talks those words,  I don't know them,  but they're bad words or maybe not bad but you've got to say them in Yiddish not English.   I don't know if that makes them bad.   But it might.  

I heard Grandpa say one of them before.   Not the other.   I never heard the other.   They probably both mean the same.   I think I know what the one means.   Shvartze.  

Negroes?

He says Yeah Negroes except he says it like kneegrows.   What do they teach you in school anyway?

I don't feel so good.   My stomach hurts.   Maybe it's just I've got to pee.   I should of gone after Seerey ruined the Appling card but I didn't because of how late.   I'm sleepy too,  even though I stay up this late sometimes reading comics by the hall light and they don't know it unless they catch me but I stuff the comics under the bed when I hear them coming so they don't catch me very often.   I'm going to be real sleepy at school tomorrow.   Mom almost didn't let me come to the game because of school and she wouldn't of except it's Tuesday and school's out Friday for summer.   And I haven't seen a White Sox game yet this year.   And maybe because it's my birthday Saturday.   I'll be ten.   Maybe that's why she let me.  

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