midnight
When Dad was my age he kept two sets of books , one by day and the other at night . How can I make my evenings pay ? '' I took long walks in Brooklyn and picked up night work here and there . It was monotonous clerical work , and being slow at figures I was often at it till midnight . Very late one evening , while making out bills in a hardware store , I suddenly came to a customer whose initials were J. K . It started me thinking of Joe Kramer and our last long talk -- about hay . `` So this is hay , '' I told myself .