“On the way home from school, I’d go two blocks out of my way to pass by Lopez’ Pool Hall to look for cigarette butts that the veteranos had flicked to the sidewalk. They had G. I. hair cuts, their old, spit-shined paratrooper boots and the same khaki uniforms they wore to fight the Japs. I’d pretend not to notice them leaning against the building. With my head down, I’d walk along the gutter and just casually push the longer butts with my toe as if I were kicking a can or a rock … just a barefoot boy with cheek humhumming along the road on a hot summer day in his Huckleberry Finn strides, oh yes!”

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 91.