Just before Thanksgiving break, I was walking into home-room, head down, feeling sorry for myself. I was a few minutes early, and Madeline Feeney, a pale, angelic-looking blonde girl, was a couple of steps ahead of me. I happened to pick my head up just in time to spot Edward Farley standing in front of the big windows on the other side of the room. He had a crazed look in his eyes. Farley was the last guy you’d want to be alone with in a room. We all knew that he’d been to reform school. His idea of a good time was to grab some poor schlemiel in the hall or at recess and smack him around with his open hand. Everyone in homeroom kept a distance from him. Even the street gangs didn’t want any part of this guy. They knew he was a dangerous psycho.
Nobody knew anything about Farley’s family or his home life. He looked like a derelict. Every day he wore the same ratty clothes to school: ripped, grease-stained dungarees, scuffed leather boots, and tattered, hand-me-down shirts. His disheveled blonde hair and perpetual scowl made him seem even more menacing.
Last week in the schoolyard he picked a fight with Martin Ackereizen, who was not exactly a slouch when it came to defending himself. When Ackereizen got back from the nurse’s office he had a half dozen stitches and a bloody bandage on his forehead. A bunch of eighth graders had witnessed the fight, but no one had the guts to rat on Farley. All he got was two days of detention before he was back in class.
And now I was looking right into his steely green eyes. Before I could figure out what to do, he cocked his right arm behind his ear and released what looked liked a yellow pearl handled knife, its open blade glinting in the sun. I yelled “Head’s up!” and Madeline jerked her head forward just as the knife whizzed between us and lodged in the bulletin board, its handle vibrating and rattling in the cork.
Madeline was too stunned to even scream. Farley just stood there with a sneer on his face—as if he was challenging me to do something. But I was frozen in my tracks. Then the recess bell sounded and the classroom began to fill up. When homeroom was over, I got out of there as fast as I could.
All night I agonized over whether to tell someone about what I’d seen. I needn’t have worried, though. During homeroom the next morning, I got a note to report to the assistant principal’s office. Madeline’s father, it seems, had already reported the incident.
Madeline, Farley, and I were each called in separately. When it was my turn I described to Mr. Sanders about what I’d seen. He took notes on a clipboard pad, and then he abruptly ordered me to go back to class.
Was he nuts? Who would protect me from Farley? I had a momentary urge to sneak out of the building and go hide in my bedroom. It was one of the few times that I actually wanted to be invisible.
All day I worried about encountering Farley. Sure enough, he was waiting for me outside of seventh period biology. While the other kids headed out to catch the bus, he wrapped his right arm around my right shoulder blade and steered me down the empty hall. How could Sanders have been such an asshole? If I got killed, it would be his fault. I wanted to scream for help. But suppose this psycho had another knife on him?
When we were far enough out of sight, Farley grabbed me by the shirt collar and slammed my head against the concrete wall. The pain shot up my neck to the back of my head. Cascades of splintered lights erupted behind my eyes.
“You’ll pay for this, Jew boy,” he said. I was sure he was going to smack me around some more. Maybe even cut me. He was that crazy. But he just laughed and walked away. I was too numb to remember how I got home.
I couldn’t decide what to do. If I told my parents, my mother would surely order me to stay home from school. My father, I was certain, would tell me to go back. And he’d have been right. If I didn’t show up, things could go a lot worse with this weirdo.
I stayed up all night rereading The Amboy Dukes, asking myself what Frank Goldfarb would have done had he been in my place. Then it came to me. Of course, he’d have packed a weapon and arranged for the other Dukes to watch his back.
That’s when I hatched my plan. I’d been looking for an excuse to approach Manny and his guys. Now I had one. They thrived on this kind of stuff.
The next morning, just as the bus made the turn past McGuire’s, I leaned over in my seat, casually took out the switchblade I’d brought with me, and showed it to Manny and Stuie. Then, as if we’d been cohorts for years, I told them what had happened. I was hoping they’d see my dilemma as a big adventure. They did. Both of them volunteered to follow me around in the halls between classes. I was so grateful, I wanted to hug them.
I stuck close to them in the schoolyard until it was time to go to homeroom. They escorted me right up to the door.
“Don’t walk in the halls by yourself,” Stuie said.
“Pick anybody, even a couple of dorks,” Manny added.
Good. They were taking charge.
I walked into homeroom head down, frozen with fear. When I got to my seat, I turned around slowly. Farley’s desk was empty. My heart skipped. He’s probably waiting for me right outside the door. Who could I walk with to first period Algebra? Before I could decide, the bell rang and Mr. Aaron called me up to his desk.
I was in a panic watching everyone file out for first period classes. The idea of walking the halls alone terrified me. When the room was empty Mr. Aaron sat me down and calmly explained that Farley wouldn’t be back.
“He’s already on his way to reform school,” he said. The knot in my stomach began to dissolve.
I found out later that Mr. Sanders had alerted every teacher in school, in addition to calling my parents. It was the right thing to do. But it seemed odd that no one had bothered to inform me until now. Still, I was elated by the news. At lunch, I told Manny and Stuie what had happened. I could see the disappointment in their eyes.
By the end of the day, the story had already made the rounds. On the bus ride home, everyone—even the clique and the greasers—were anxious to hear about what had happened. Of course, I exaggerated. When would I get this kind of attention again?
While I was holding court I wondered what Manny and Stuie were thinking. If I built myself up too much, maybe they’d blow my cover. But neither one said a word. I could have sworn that Stuie gave me the thumbs-up sign.
When the bus got to Beach 132nd Street, Manny got off with me—at my stop, not his.
“Drop by some night for a game of pool and a few beers.” He said it like we were best friends.
Me, play pool? Drink beer? My impulse was to say yes immediately. But I held back. This time, I’d play it cool—like Frank Goldfarb, or even Manny himself would have done.
“Thanks,” I said. “I just might take you up on it.”
I was wildly ambivalent about Manny’s offer. A part of me was curious to see what went on inside his inner sanctum. But compared to those guys, I was a Goody Two Shoes. How would I ever fit in?
It’s funny how something like the Farley incident can take on a life of its own. My worst nightmare had turned into a brief moment of celebrity. As word began to spread, I became more and more of a hero in each new version of the story. One particularly outlandish variation even had me putting a switchblade to Farley’s throat.
Needless to say, I thrived on being in the spotlight. When questioned, I neither admitted nor denied what had happened. My answer frequently was that “My lawyer advised me not to talk about it.” The fib embarrassed me, though obviously not enough to remove it from my repertoire.
The fallout from the incident had even gotten me a moment of attention from the clique. And I wanted to make it last for as long I could. That week, Mandel invited me to fill in for him in one of Pearlman’s pickup basketball games. And when Freddy Klein had a Friday night Bar Mitzvah lesson, I got asked to a party at Bonnie Lerner’s house. There was no turning that invitation down.
I was beginning to think that maybe I’d finally arrived. Perhaps this would be my big chance to make an impression on the popular crowd. Two nights before the party, I was already rehearsing what I’d say to anyone who asked me about the Farley episode.
As soon as I arrived, the first thing I saw was the coterie of popular girls surrounding Manny and his boys. They were fawning all over them. That evening, no one paid any attention to me. By the end of the night, I felt like an idiot. I was disappointed and angry with myself for being so hopeful and so naive. By the time the lights were lowered and the make out music was on, I was burning with envy. How could stuck-up, prissy girls like Elaine and Alice be attracted to such cocky, crude guys? How come those guys could get away with it and I couldn’t? What was their secret?
The next morning, I decided to take Manny up on his offer.
Manny’s parent’s rec room had faux knotty pine paneling, a well stocked Naugahyde and stainless steel bar with a mirror behind it, a green felt pool table, an oversized sofa, a Dumont TV set, a roulette wheel, a card table, and a Schaeffer Beer wall clock. Where on earth did Manny get all this stuff? Maybe his father really was in the Jewish Mafia.
The basement room was an ultra stylish version of the Amboy Dukes clubhouse. Depending on Manny’s whim, the group would shoot pool, or play five card stud, black jack, or roulette. It was also the setting for the monthly circle jerks.
All the guys—Stuie Issacs, Jerry Shapiro, Paul Goldman, and Larry Rabin—looked and dressed just like Manny: slicked back DAs, and sculpted, rooster-like pompadours with a wispy spit curl winding down the forehead. They had expensive black leather jackets, tight Levi’s or pegged pants, and black motorcycle boots. Each one carried a switchblade in his jacket pocket, a packet of Trojans or Ramses in his wallet, and a comb in his back pocket. Like every other group in junior high, they thought of themselves as trendsetters.
For the next few weeks, I tagged along wherever they went. On weeknights, they hung out in Manny’s basement or at Art’s candy store a few blocks away on 129th Street.
The neighborhood stores were all located on 129th, between Cronston and Newport Avenues: Tishman’s tailor shop, the Peter Reeves market, the Shell station, Johnny’s Bar and Grill, and Willie’s butcher shop. Art’s was right next to Sam Cahmi’s deli, a few stores up the block from Neiman’s Pharmacy.
At Art’s, the five guys would sit at the soda fountain, sipping egg creams and shooting the breeze. Each month when the new magazines came in, they always pulled the same scam. Three of them would talk to Art and the two others would stand at the magazine and comic book racks pretending to leaf through Tales of the Crypt Keeper or Mad Magazine, while one of them slipped the latest girlie magazine or True Detective under his jacket.
Art was onto them. He’d simply add the price of the magazine to the bill. Everyone just played along with the game. Once I saw Art wink at Manny and say, “Look, Burtchick, anyone catches you with a girlie magazine, you didn’t get it in my store. You hear me, big shot?”
He turned to look right at me when he said it. “What’s wrong with you?” he seemed to be saying. Why are you hanging around with these Nogoodnicks?”
That’s what I’d been asking myself every day for the past three weeks. But then, whenever they talked about girls, I’d remember exactly why.
When the temperature was above freezing the guys would stand in front of Art’s smoking Lucky’s or Dunhill filter tips and boasting about copping a feel off some girl at a make out party, or a back row hand job in the balcony of the Park Theater.
I was all ears—especially when they identified the girls by name. Manny said that he and Cindy Levine had a hot session under the boardwalk on 116th Street one night last summer. I felt a sharp pang of resentment. How did he ever get to her?
I’d had dreams about Cindy since sixth grade. Tanned olive skin, dark brown eyes, and jet black curly hair, she was the most exotic looking girl in our class. At school she wore tight, straight, wool skirts, form-fitting Orion sweaters, and black penny loafers with white ribbed socks. Nobody seemed to know much about her—which only added to her mystique. I’d heard that her parents were part Gypsy and that she had a history of dating older guys.
Cindy wasn’t like any of the other girls I knew. She wasn’t the least bit interested in the clique or in what the popular girls thought of her. She never bothered to even show up at the Beth El dances or at make out parties.
In my grade school fantasies, I imagined Cindy and I were kindred spirits. Together we shunned all the popular kids. I also dreamed that we went out on coke dates, made out under the boardwalk, studied together in her room, and talked passionately about jazz and the books we were both reading. Every time someone in the clique made fun of her, I’d come to her defense—usually by squaring off in the schoolyard with one of the guys and beating the crap out of him right in front of Cindy and everyone else.
I’d always wanted to approach Cindy and tell her how I felt. But every time I was around her, I got dry mouth. If I tried to speak, nothing came out. In time, I convinced myself that she was simply out of my league. By junior high, I’d even convinced myself that she was beyond all of our reaches. That is, until I heard Manny’s story.
Weeks afterwards, I was still tormented by the image of the two of them lying on an army blanket, going at it hot and heavy under the boardwalk. I was too scared to ask him how far they went. Part of me wanted to know, and part of me wanted to avoid the anger and self-loathing I’d feel if my fears were confirmed.
It perplexed me that girls like Cindy and the smart, rich girls from the Five Towns fell for guys like Manny—guys who didn’t give a damn about them. But that’s what I was here to find out, wasn’t it? I decided it was time to join up. If they’d have me, that is.
I launched my campaign by trying to persuade my father to buy me a leather jacket.
“Why do you want to look like those hoodlums?” my mother asked.
She didn’t get it. But my father did. I know he didn’t approve, but he never nagged at me the way my mother did. He’d grown up in the streets, and he knew how important this was to me. So, he proposed a compromise. He’d get me the jacket if I agreed to work two Sundays a month at the pharmacy to help pay for it.
To my father the notion of working for your allowance was almost a given. So far I’d managed to avoid it, mostly because of my mother’s intervention. Now, I had no choice but to agree.
My job at Neiman’s was to deliver prescriptions on my bicycle. I hated it. To avoid having to pedal for blocks against the cutting ocean wind, I did everything I could to make myself useful around the store. I soda jerked, worked in the stockroom, even sold cosmetics to the women. But when I did have to deliver a prescription, I’d go out of my way to make sure I didn’t ride past Art’s. What would those guys think if they saw me riding a bicycle? Especially now that Manny was driving them around town in his father’s DeSoto coupe.
Once I got the leather jacket, I started wearing tight Levi’s and boots, and styling my hair in a DA and pompadour. In the schoolyard, in classes, and at lunch I was always stealing glances at the popular girls—hoping they’d notice my new look. So far though, nothing had changed. As usual, it only made me try harder.
I tried to imitate the things the guys did. But none of it felt right. I was lousy at pool because I couldn’t get the hang of how to hold the cue stick. And I couldn’t bluff convincingly at poker because my eyes and grimaces always gave me away.
If you expect to fail, that’s usually what happens. I’d learned at least that much as an athlete. In jock lingo, you “choked” or “took the big apple” if you didn’t come through under pressure.
When I was younger, I had a tendency to tighten up whenever I knew people were watching me. I remember blowing two potentially game-winning foul shots in a Jewish Community League game. I was so rattled by the crowd that I lost my concentration. That’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen in Manny’s basement. Just by razzing me, the guys could goad me into scratching a pool shot or misplaying a poker hand.
But it was all just child’s play compared to the hazing I’d endure when I finally committed myself to joining the group.
First, I had to swipe a True Detective from Art’s without getting caught. That wasn’t the hard part, though. Art had been in business for so long that he knew my cousins, grandfather, mother, and aunt by their first names. To him, I was the nice kid in the group—the one who he once said was “too decent to cheat and steal.”
I suspected he knew what I’d done, but he never called me on it, which made me feel even worse. In fact, the minute I was out the door I wanted to go right back in and hand the magazine to him. But it was too late.
Stealing the magazine was just the beginning. It wasn’t long before all five of them were egging me on. Manny offered me a few reefers. All it did was make me dizzy. Shapiro challenged me to steal a pretzel from Gino’s candy store under the El. Goldman bet me a buck I couldn’t swipe a dozen Trojans and Ramses from the pharmacy stockroom. I did it all. But when Larry Rabin told me to pinch my father’s French deck, I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what a French deck was.
“Everyone’s father has a French deck,” Manny said. “Look in his dresser drawer. It’ll be under the socks or underwear.”
That night, Peter Desimone told me what a French deck was.
“No way,” I said. “Not my father.”
Turns out that Manny was right. I found it in the bedroom dresser. How in the world did he know?
When I first saw the blurred black-and-white images on those playing cards, I felt lightheaded, almost punchy. Waves of pleasure surged through me. I was giddy. My stomach felt all fluttery. I was amazed that my father actually possessed stuff like this. I wondered if my mother knew about it. For days afterward, I snuck back into their bedroom to peek at those pictures. I couldn’t get the images out of my head. I had wet dreams every night.
When I brought the deck to the rec room, Manny used it as an occasion to choreograph a circle jerk. He ordered everyone to strip down to his socks while he held up the cards. I hated this ritual. It was so public. I dreaded every second. I wondered what this had to do with learning how to impress girls.
Still, it was all new territory for me. The more approval I got from the group, the more reckless I became. I even felt a secret thrill whenever I got away with those little transgressions.
Acting on my own, I brought a palm sized roulette wheel to school, and I began to take bets at lunch and recess. It wasn’t long before knots of seventh and eight grade boys would be huddled around me as I knelt down next to the handball court wall and spun the wheel. To my surprise, the guys from the clique even participated. Winning the pot didn’t mean a thing to me. What I loved was being the center of attention.
It was mid February and I was spending almost every night hanging around with the group. As a result, my midterm grades were conspicuously lower than they had been in the fall. I was also starting to get into trouble. In early March, a teacher on recess duty caught me running the roulette game. I was sure that Mr. Sanders would give me after school detention or else suspend me from classes. But I had a clean record, so I got a month’s probation and a warning to keep my nose clean.
When my parents found out, my mother of course wanted to ground me. But my father intervened.
“Let him make his own mistakes, Stell,” he said. “He’ll learn the hard way—just like I did.”
It didn’t take long for that prediction to come true. In early March, the softball coach, Mr. Barrows, caught me smoking in the boys’ john. My punishment was to take ten laps around the school building—at recess, with everybody watching.
Barrows was determined to make an example out of me. I was in good shape, I figured. I’d been running on the beach all summer. Maybe I could do this. The junior high was a city block long, and several blocks deep. It was freezing cold, and after a single lap the pain in my lungs was so sharp I couldn’t catch my breath. With everybody watching and Barrows riding behind me on a bicycle, I made it through a lap and a half before I almost collapsed from fatigue.
It was another warning signal. But this one got my attention.
Getting caught was a good excuse for me to quit smoking. I was relieved, in fact, that someone had finally stopped me. Still, I wish it would have been anyone except Coach Barrows. Softball tryouts were less than two weeks away. I was worried that he’d hold this against me. But even if he didn’t, I knew I had to start setting some boundaries. The one thing that was more important than the group’s approval was playing ball.
Over the past few months, I’d gradually become aware that I’d lost sight of my original intent. Nothing we’d done lately had anything to do with girls. So what was I sticking around for?
The other thing that brought me to my senses was a plan Manny and Stuie had hatched a week after I got caught smoking. They planned to hot wire a car and take us all on a joy ride in the Riis Park parking lot right before Memorial Day weekend. It was something I wanted absolutely no part in. Stealing a car was a hell of a lot different from swiping dirty magazines and pretzel sticks.
Manny sensed that not everyone was enthusiastic about this caper. So to make certain that none of us had an excuse, one night he fished a penknife out of his shirt pocket.
“Blood brothers,” he said. He held the gleaming blade up.
You had to hand it to him. He knew just how to control us.
We passed the knife around the circle, and one-by-one we jabbed our thumbs with the blade until droplets of blood bubbled up to the skin’s surface. We pressed our thumbs together and the pact was sealed.
I pretended to go along with it—at least for the moment. Why risk it now? Memorial Day was almost a month away. When the time came, I’d find a way out.
In early April, Mike Rubin and I had already started playing catch outdoors. We hadn’t seen much of one another that year, but I knew Mike had to be struggling in school as much as I was. Playing softball would be a safe haven for us both. It seemed urgent that we make the team.
All of the home games would be played in the schoolyard—on a concrete surface. To simulate those conditions we spent hours after school and on weekends hitting fungos and ground balls to one another on the still-frozen turf at Riis Park. We worked out no matter how cold the weather was.
As tryouts got closer, I kept wondering if Barrows would still have it in for me. But I needn’t have worried. Mike and I were the only two from the sixth grade team who came out for seventh grade softball.
I knew going in that the team didn’t have the budget to travel. We had to settle instead for playing a home “exhibition” schedule against every team in the Peninsula League. Evidently, this was small potatoes to the guys in the clique. That’s why they didn’t bother coming out for the team. They were gearing up, Pearlman told me, for the big prize—PAL (Police Athletic League) tryouts in June.
What was the deal with those guys anyway? I wondered if they were even going to invite me to their workouts and practices. Last year, I was team captain. Now, I was back to being a nonentity. Their attitude infuriated me. I’d told myself that I’d do everything in my power to make them regret this.
Under normal conditions, Rubin and I would have had to sweat it out just to make the seventh grade team. But all the best players from the surrounding neighborhoods were guys that Barrows couldn’t count on. Some had after school jobs; others just wanted to hang out with their gangs. The two of us had experience; and we wanted to play. Besides, we never missed a practice.
I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. Most of the guys who Barrows was forced to recruit were inexperienced and relatively unskilled. He couldn’t afford to lose Mike or me—not if he wanted to field a decent team. So, in spite of my obvious limitations, he let me play shortstop.
In time, Barrows did manage to convince some of the better neighborhood players to join up. To get back at the clique, I implored Zeidner and Brownstein to help us out. I was ecstatic when they said yes.
Since our games didn’t count in the league standings, there would be very little pressure on us to win. But that’s not how Barrows saw it. He was lobbying for more money and support, and he wanted to convince the head honchos that the softball team deserved to compete in the Peninsula League. So all spring, he never let up on us. To him, every game mattered.
Every team is a reflection of its coach’s attitude. Because Barrows had something to prove, we all did. That season then, we evolved into a scrappy, determined bunch. We ambushed a lot of good teams. In fact, by the end, we won more games than even Barrows had expected.
The whole situation worked to my advantage. I liked being on a team of underdogs. Plus, I knew I didn’t have to keep proving myself every game. For the first time I could relax and concentrate on playing.
There were games that spring when I volunteered to move over to second base just so Ronnie Zeidner could play short. But for the most part I continued to work hard at becoming better at the position. I practiced in between games and carefully studied Pee Wee Reese, Alvin Dark, and Phil Rizzuto, the three great New York shortstops. By the end of the season, I’d become a pretty decent middle infielder.
Softball had taken up so much time that I spent fewer and fewer evenings with Manny’s group. With ball games and practices to occupy me, I began to see them in a different light. They seemed aimless and irresponsible. No goals or commitments. Clearly, I was ready to cut my ties with them.
I was contemplating just how to break the news to the group when, just before Memorial Day weekend, Manny informed us that the car heist was a go. It would happen on Friday evening. I was cornered. I’d forgotten about it, and now there was no time to think up an excuse. Ok, maybe I owed them this one last commitment. I didn’t want it to look like I was chickening out or being disloyal. After all, they did take me in when no one else would have me.
By the time I found out that Stuie had stolen Myron Kerns’s Cadillac, I was in the back seat sandwiched between Rabin and Shapiro, with Goldman practically sitting on my lap. They’d all been drinking and getting high all afternoon. You could smell it on their breath.
As soon as we got to the Riis Park parking lot Manny floored the gas pedal, and within seconds we were going almost a hundred miles an hour. I was terrified. I was sure we were going to die. That’s when we heard the sirens. The cops were right on our tail.
Big surprise, right? What were those guys thinking when they hotwired Kerns’s Caddy? He was on the town board, for Christ sake. What’s more, he knew my father from the Temple Men’s Club. How could I have ever been so stupid? I deserved whatever I was going to get.
Squad cars came at us from all directions. You’d have thought we’d kidnapped someone, or robbed a bank. Manny hit the brakes hard, and we all pitched forward. The cops jumped out of their cars, pointed their guns at the sky, and began shooting straight up. It was a scare tactic. I don’t know if I was more frightened or relieved to see them.
The desk sergeant booked and finger printed us at the precinct station. Then two cops put us all in a cell while the sergeant called our parents. Over the next hour, someone from each family showed up to make bail. But no one came to get me. After they’d all left, I was alone. When I yelled for help, the sergeant came down and informed me that my father had indeed paid the bail bond. But he’d requested that I be held overnight. It was just like him to do something like that.
All night my stomach didn’t stop churning. My mind couldn’t stop racing. It wasn’t fair. I got suckered into this, and those guys were home, sleeping in their own beds. I imagined all the worst scenarios. What if this goes on my record? How about college? Will it be in the Wave? Suppose Barrows finds out? Will he let me play again?
The next morning, my father came to get me. Once we were in the car I braced myself for the lecture. He certainly wasn’t happy about this, but all he said was that since I was only an accessory to a misdemeanor, the charges would probably be waved. Myron Kerns wouldn’t press charges, he said, so long as the six families agreed to make sure that we never met together again as a group. I wondered just how much of this deal had been brokered by my father?
For the rest of the ride home, neither of us said anything. But I was doing a lot of thinking. It was probably just as hard for my father to let me sit in jail overnight as it was for me to endure the punishment.
I never saw any of those guys again. But I did find out later that Manny’s parents had sent him away—to an upstate military academy. Stuie Issacs transferred to Andover, a rich kid’s prep school in Massachusetts. Larry Ramis was sent to a junior high for delinquent students. And Goldman was killed the next fall in a motorcycle accident. I never found out what became of Shapiro, and I didn’t try.
I had already begun to move on.