An underground speakeasy complete with wall murals emerged to light during the creation of a parking lot at M ing the creation of a parking lot at Muriel and Greeley Streets.

Old-timers remembered the hideaway as the haunt of “Gloves” Naugel and other Prohibition figures, as also the training-ground for musicians like “Red” Wenrich of sliding trombone fame who went on to become household names on a nationwide scale.

Also old sign-boards are common. Ingeniously shaped in the forms of cows, beehives, boots, mortars, plows, they advertise “dry goods and notions,” leather-work, drugs, and medicines, produce of infinite variety. Preserved underground, most are still easily legible and date from the nineteenth century.

Amid the old fieldstone foundations, metal tools and grindstones come to light.

Arrowheads are not uncommon.

Dr. Klaus Schoerner, vice-president of the Brewer Historical Society, spent a

At the coffee break, Buchanan struts up to Rabbit. “How’s little Jilly doing for you?”

“She’s holding up.”

“She worked out pretty fine for you, didn’t she?”

“She’s a good girl. Mixed-up like kids are these days, but we’ve gotten used to her. My boy and me.”

Buchanan smiles, his fine little mustache spreading an em, and sways a half-step closer. “Little Jill’s still keeping you company?”

Rabbit shrugs, feeling pasty and nervous. He keeps giving hostages to fortune. “She has nowhere else to go.”

“Yes, man, she must be working out real fine for you.” Still he doesn’t walk away, going out to the platform for his whisky. He stays and, still smiling but letting a pensive considerate shadow slowly subdue his face, says, “You know, friend Harry, what with Labor Day coming on, and the kids going back to school, and all this inflation you see everywhere, things get a bit short. In the financial end.”

“How many children do you have?” Rabbit asks politely. Working with him all these years, he never thought Buchanan was married.

The plump ash-gray man rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Oh … say five, that’s been counted. They look to their daddy for support, and Labor Day finds him a little embarrassed. The cards just haven’t been falling for old Lester lately.”

“I’m sorry,” Rabbit says. “Maybe you shouldn’t gamble.”

“I am just tickled to death little Jilly’s worked out to fit your needs,” Buchanan says. “I was thinking, twenty would sure help me by Labor Day.”

“Twenty dollars?”

“That is all. It is miraculous, Harry, how far I’ve learned to make a little stretch. Twenty little dollars from a friend to a friend would sure make my holiday go easier all around. Like I say, seeing Jill worked out so good, you must be feeling pretty good. Pretty generous. A man in love, they say, is a friend to all.”

But Rabbit has already fished out his wallet and found two tens. “This is just a loan,” he says, frightened, knowing he is lying, bothered by that sliding again, that sweet bladder running late to school. The doors will be shut, the principal Mr. Kleist always stands by the front doors, with their rattling chains and push bars rubbed down to the yellow of brass, to snare the tardy and clap them into his airless office, where the records are kept.