From ten to fifteen I rarely tasted liquor, but I was intimately in contact with drinkers and drinking places.

The only reason I did not drink was because I didn't like the stuff.

As the time passed, I worked as boy-helper on an ice-wagon, set up pins in a bowling alley with a saloon attached, and swept out saloons at Sunday picnic grounds.
Big jovial Josie Harper ran a road house at Telegraph Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street.

Here for a year I delivered an evening paper, until my route was changed to the water-front and tenderloin of Oakland.

The first month, when I collected Josie Harper's bill, she poured me a glass of wine.