V2nd - Chapter 8 - how 'bout that Roonie anyway?

[Michael Bailey]

can't avoid it, have to look at that song!

Born in Durham in '23 - so in '56 he'd turn 34, but might not be but
33 as of yet...

article on lynching: http://eblackstudies.org/intro/chapter5.htm
nothing particular about Durham/1926,
but in 1920, of a lynching, the local paper the Herald reported: "The
lynching party performed its task quietly and in a well-organized
manner," although his conscience-stricken employer wrote a letter
later to the editor explaining he could have exonerated the man had he
had a chance to.
http://tinyurl.com/2ezbc3l

"down by the tracks he would frequently go
To change his luck at a dollar a throw."
with the implication that along with the tracks he may've been
crossing a color line as well?

Well he hit Winston-Salem with a rebel yell
---- which is a ways west from Durham; why there?  Sometimes something
will blare out from just a little research, but the only interesting
thing I noted from my exhaustive reading of part of the wikipedia
article about Winston-Salem is that the first Krispy Kreme store
opened there in 1937, which is the year Pynchon was born.  (checking
that, I find somebody's prevailed on somebody (or, somebody took it in
their mind) to remove the photo from the Wikipedia article on him - I
miss it...)

In the army:
He worked him a hustle with his first C.O. (commanding officer?)
Got transferred back to a PIO (Public Information Office)

which would be good experience for the job he eventually got with MCA, but
"[he] couldn't find a job till '51"
So if he was demobilized in 1946, that's time to get a degree on the
GI Bill at Columbia...
and probably throw a lot of parties.

A third of the profits plus salary - maybe a silent partner or two,
Mafia's dad...


He's a likeable rogue.  Or, at least, in the song-parody he's
composed, he seems to think of himself that way.






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-- 
- "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
 a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad