Big City Blues

Bud Reeves: Oh, I don't think you got to really know New York.

Station Agent: I wonder. I wonder if I didn't. I was a telegraph operator and a process server. I was a part-time life guard at Rockaway Beach. I worked on the BMT and drove a taxi. I was a rubber in a Turkish bath. Had a job on the day shift in the Hymnbook factory and on the night shift in the bowery flop house---a job they handed to let me to work out my rent. I drew wages in a hash house and a 'chink' laundry and a pet shop. For a week I sorted stiffs in the morgue and for a month worked on a coal barge. I delivered gin for a drug store in Astoria and had my own ice business in the Bronx. I met tramps and bootleggers and bishops and reporters and gun men and borough presidents and you, you come-a tellin' me I didn't get to know New York.