Mike Rex

Destination Freedom. Station WMAQ presents Destination Freedom. Dromatization of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people. A part of the patterns of history, and of America's own destination freedom. Today we tell the story of the author of the best-seller, Knock on Any Door, in a chapter entitled Mike Wreck.

I don't know on what door I first knocked to find how the wheels of society can turn against a guy and grind him into what they call a menace. Maybe it began when I discovered I was a Negro.

I would have to live in Jim Crow towns below in the Baltimore-Dameson Dixon. I've been knocking about for a long time in juke joints, cheap diners, flea bag hotels, gospel missions, and the Twilight Alley where Jack Rolers, hobos, and conned men lived.

I had the habit of putting down what they said on paper. That's way too strong, I'm as square as to flip his arm behind his back and give him the half-nelson. Like this? Yeah, you know, mightily missed your colon.

You make a bed of burglar in the right of your sure-missed your colon. You see, when you're shooting a 45, you put your hands solid on the trigger, and you sort of squeeze the handle.

That's it. Heh heh heh. Keeps you from missing. Now you put the P between your fingers and your left of suckers, pick up the shells till times get better. The old shell game, Jack. Highly educational.

I got my education for the stories I had to write. And one year when the knock of a boy named Mike kept egging my head, I went up to a door to rent a room in the heart of the slums.