Maniac Magee
Chapter One
Maniac Magee was not born in a dump. He was born in a house, a
pretty ordinary house, right across the river from here, in
Bridgeport. And he had regular parents, a mother and a father.
But not for long.
One day his parents left him with a sitter and took the P & W
high-speed trolley into the city. On the way back home, they were on
board when the P & W had its famous crash, when the motorman was
drunk and took the high trestle over the Schuylkill River at sixty
miles an hour, and the whole caboodle took a swan dive into the
water.
And just like that. Maniac was an orphan. He was three years old.
Of course, to be accurate, he wasn't really Maniac then. He was
Jeffrey. Jeffrey Lionel Magee.
Little Jeffrey was shipped off to his nearest relatives, Aunt Dot
and Uncle Dan. They lived in Hollidaysburg, in the western part of
Pennsylvania.
Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan hated each other, but because they were
strict Catholics, they wouldn't get a divorce. Around the time
Jeffrey arrived, they stopped talking to each other. Then they
stopped sharing.
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