Agnes Bolton

I have to move back. No back. That's just the sign out in front of my office says. Pat, no back for the hire.

It's about the only way to make a living down on the waterfront in San Francisco. Because around here a set of morals won't cause any more stir than Mother's Day in an orphanage. Maybe that's not good, but that's the way it is.

And I wouldn't do any good to build a church down here, because some guy had muscle in and start cutting a wine with wood alcohol. All you can do is try to make the books balanced, And he's just way to do that.

If you keep one hand on your bill fold, and the other hand on somebody else's, rent boats and do anything else, it'll buy a warm winter. Works out all right. It saves the government a lot of money.

But if anything goes wrong, your trouble comes hard. That doesn't do any good to sing the blues, because down here, you're just another guy in the chorus. I found that out Wednesday afternoon. It started to rain up by Pier 19, and I knew there was a storm on the way.

The bay looked flattened, smoothed over. But you can say that for a lot of quarrels. So I closed the office and walked down to the barber shop for a shave. The barber lattered me up so I couldn't answer back.

And started to tell me how Dean Addison, how'd I handle things. About five minutes later, somebody walked into the shop and started tapping my foot. We got tired of that and moved up to my chest.