{"id":"01KG6FHSHCM7FAE02H56Z9EYDE","cid":"bafkreifxlw4ayh6z3ufjbsy7d7nw7tni6fr6brxbv2iuxmas364c2cggwq","type":"file","properties":{"cid":"bafkreifxggrgjagyphit462xdgcbgaqnizf6ompiw2tutj5obxgzp6vuwu","content_type":"image/jpeg","filename":"Rye_page_0021.jpg","height":2400,"key":"pdf-page-1769744163141-a52u2n1c5b","label":"Rye_page_0021.jpg","page_number":21,"pdf_type":"born_digital","size":832995,"text":"naturally. He was a virgin if ever I saw one. I doubt if he ever even gave anybody a feel.\nAnyway, finally I had to come right out and tell him that I had to write a composition for\nStradlater, and that he had to clear the hell out, so I could concentrate. He finally did, but\nhe took his time about it, as usual. After he left, I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and\nmy old hunting hat, and started writing the composition.\nThe thing was, I couldn't think of a room or a house or anything to describe the\nway Stradlater said he had to have. I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses\nanyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very\ndescriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He\nwas left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems\nwritten all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them\non it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at\nbat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18,\n1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty\ntimes as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing\nletters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their\nclass. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that\nhe was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways.\nHe never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,\nbut Allie never did, and he had very red hair. I'll tell you what kind of red hair he had. I\nstarted playing golf when I was only ten years old. I remember once, the summer I was\naround twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a\nsudden, I'd see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the\nfence--there was this fence that went all around the course--and he was sitting there,\nabout a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That's the kind of red\nhair he had. God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he\nthought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair. I was only thirteen, and\nthey were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in\nthe garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I\nbroke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all\nthe windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken\nand everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll\nadmit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. My hand\nstill hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist any more--\nnot a tight one, I mean--but outside of that I don't care much. I mean I'm not going to be a\ngoddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.\nAnyway, that's what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. Old Allie's baseball\nmitt. I happened to have it with me, in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied down the\npoems that were written on it. All I had to do was change Allie's name so that nobody\nwould know it was my brother and not Stradlater's. I wasn't too crazy about doing it, but I\ncouldn't think of anything else descriptive. Besides, I sort of liked writing about it. It took\nme about an hour, because I had to use Stradlater's lousy typewriter, and it kept jamming\non me. The reason I didn't use my own was because I'd lent it to a guy down the hall.\nIt was around ten-thirty, I guess, when I finished it. I wasn't tired, though, so I\nlooked out the window for a while. It wasn't snowing out any more, but every once in a\nwhile you could hear a car somewhere not being able to get started. You could also hear","text_extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:36:03.141Z","text_extracted_by":"pdf-processor","text_has_content":true,"text_source":"born_digital","uploaded":true,"width":1855},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFHMJM2J9JHQAQM1Q9SKBJWF","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KFF1K6A8V452X8SQKY55DD16","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6FHT8CWPG0YDRWJGECX2BK","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6FHSKG3AH19T2KNSG0KBTY","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KG6FK369HBFD8M7TPDY7Y2RB","peer_label":"Rye_page_0021_medium.jpg","peer_type":"file","predicate":"has_derivative"},{"peer":"01KG6FK6J418EHTBYFBA1BT665","peer_label":"Rye_page_0021_thumb.jpg","peer_type":"file","predicate":"has_derivative"},{"peer":"01KG6FT59BXAZ3C5HRJ6SW8F58","predicate":"has_assembly"}],"ver":6,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:36:04.396Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:40:41.587Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFFC4A8W8939TXGEXCK439ZK"}}