{"id":"01KG6FVJVQF4N89BM3CQNEBZSN","cid":"bafkreiatsuwd3mvx6ebseg7ji5izzfzloetuck2xcfzwngivdwp7zb366a","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3025,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:41:20.744Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG6FT59BXAZ3C5HRJ6SW8F58","start_line":2978,"text":"She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on\nor anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't\nhad a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate\nkey in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know what it is. She\nthanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid.\nGod, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or\nsomething. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot\nchocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her\nfriend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.\nEven though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or\nanything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the\npark over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with\nthe skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the\nsame school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this\nteacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we\nlooked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in\nancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I\nthink about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we\nwent to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing\n\n\nColumbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and\nIsabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him\nand all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot\nof candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice\nsmell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the\nonly nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had\nto go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you\nwere only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two\nrows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named\nGertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky\nor sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your\nhand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a\nhelluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell\nwas going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long,\nlong Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about\ntwenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking\ntough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in\nthe back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps,\nbut I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything\nwhile you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, \"Don't touch anything,\nchildren,\" but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then\nyou'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a\nfire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of\nbending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at\nit, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom\nthan we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you\npassed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6FV1MQGZTR8V97C5G417T5","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FT59BXAZ3C5HRJ6SW8F58","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KFF1K6A8V452X8SQKY55DD16","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6FVJ7BYZESFAAH4TBH9PSA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6FVJVQNXH7W5TA86DE25D6","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:41:25.239Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:41:30.576Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}