When I turned 17, I followed in my brother’s footsteps and obtained a driver’s license. What my parents didn’t know is that I had been preparing myself for the occasion for months, “borrowing” my mom’s car and using it to make beer runs for myself and my friends. The drinking age in New Jersey at the time was 21, but it was easy enough to get over that hurdle. We would simply drive to nearby Red Bank, about five miles away, find a drunk on the street and negotiate with him to make a buy for us—he’d be rewarded with a cheap bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 or Ripple.
Middletown High School was so overcrowded those days that the administration ran two shifts, one in the early morning and another that began at 12:10. I attended the second session, and it wasn’t unusual for me to imbibe just before showing up for class.
Around the same time, I had my first real girlfriend, Gina, a semi-hot Italian girl who went to the same high school. Gina taught me the night moves as I gallantly laid her down on my black leather jacket in a secluded area called Dutch Neck.
My pursuit of scholarly perfection aside, I needed money. In those formative years, I learned that money doesn’t talk, it screams. Gina, bless her heart, could not be asked to walk to our den of assignation. I needed wheels. I needed a job. I sought and found one as a dishwasher at a local pizzeria, Luigi’s in Red Bank, saved up some cash and bought a used Ford Maverick.
At least I was mobile, and outside of a bad case of dishpan hands, life was good. But my days of working in Luigi’s kitchen soon came to an abrupt halt. There was other work for me.
Maria, the very tough widowed owner of Luigi’s, called me into a meeting one night; her boyfriend, the bartender, was also there. Maria explained that the neighborhood around the pizza place had become something of a jungle, a high-crime area where her delivery boys were often beaten up and robbed because of the cash they carried. But the area was also lucrative, and she wanted to continue making deliveries there.
“Chuck, what’s your height and weight?” Maria asked.
“Six foot one, 225 pounds,” I said.
“You boxed Golden Gloves.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t bring home the crown, but I learned to mix it up.”
“I heard you want to buy a motorcycle, be some kinda Hells Angel or something,” Maria continued.
“I’ll start with getting a bike first, but yeah, I do like that kinda shit.”
“I know. So stay away from my niece, she’s a nice, proper Italian girl.”
“You mean me, try to deflower the little princess? I wouldn’t think of it.”
“You are ‘promoted’ to pizza delivery as of now. Bring me some of those hoods, I mean friends, of yours, and they are hired, too,” Maria continued. “If some toes get stepped on or heads bloodied, I won’t be crying about it. But I will not stand for another delivery guy getting slapped around and giving up my money. Do what you got to do; I can watch your back. I know some people in town hall.”
My boss viewed me as some kind of biker thug—and, oddly, an asset to her business.
I promptly called two guys—one a friend named Mike who’d managed to grow a full beard by the time he was 16, and the other an acquaintance, Billy. Like me, Mike was into motorcycles, beer and girls of lesser morals. He loved to fight. I mean, this cat reveled in it. Lean and not too tall, he made up for what he lacked in size with sheer violence. He had major balls and was loyal to a fault. Maria hired him on the spot.
Billy was another story. He was bigger than me, older by a couple of years and his past suggested a familiarity with gray prison bars. There was no question that he was a thug, and there was no need to worry about whether he’d be beaten or robbed while doing his deliveries. It was more of a question of how much he’d come back with and how much he’d keep for himself. I made my misgivings about Billy clear to Maria.
“I think I know who this Billy guy is,” she told me. “There is no doubt in my mind he is gonna steal from me. But you and Mike won’t, and it will take some time before he starts taking enough that I have to sack him. He won’t mind being fired. He never did a job he wasn’t fired from. By the time Billy’s reign of terror ends, it will be years before anyone even dreams of robbing one of my guys. It will make the job that much easier for you and Mike.”
When Luigi ran the pizza place, no one in their right mind would have ever dared steal from him. He had a fiery temper and a colorful background, from what I could learn. No one dared touch or say a bad word about Maria while he was alive, either.
Mike, Billy and I went to work with a different attitude that night. Billy supplied us with his “combat” weapon of choice, a thin, semi-flexible piece of BX armored electrical cable wrapped in black electrical tape.
“Be careful you don’t kill someone with this, huh?” Billy said. “My conscience will bother me for about three seconds.”
When making deliveries to the shakier parts of town, we carried our weapons in plain sight. Not one of us got robbed.
Drunk customers were sometimes inclined to make disparaging remarks about our mothers or ethnicity. The three of us looked forward to those moments, and their aftermath. We’d normally use some of our hard-earned cash to have a few drinks after work. Then we’d drive over to the offending party’s house and throw a brick through their picture window or break their car windshield. The picture window was a favorite target during the bitter cold winter months. We would drive by the next day to see cardboard or plywood where the glass window had been, providing the inhabitants with minimal protection from Jack Frost.
Billy was bored and was dying to smack someone, anyone, with his wire cord while on the job. On at least five different occasions, I walked into what felt like ambush scenarios. But each time it happened, my potential attackers thought twice and opted to leave me alone. Suddenly it wasn’t Caspar Milquetoast delivering pizza anymore; I was something much more powerful. I had respect on the street, and it felt good. I wanted more.
Just as Maria had predicted, Billy started stealing increasing amounts of money from her. Eventually, she grew tired of the losses and sacked him as promised. Mike, handsome, witty and fearless, began a new career as a bricklayer. That lasted until he became a heroin junkie and was ultimately done in by a one-inch-long needle housing essence of opium.
CHAPTER SIX
LIFE DURING WARTIME
I captained the freshman football team for the Middletown Lions when I was 15 and still in junior high school. Because of overcrowding in the growing bedroom community, junior high was spread out among the Middletown School District’s seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade schools. Mirroring the 48-square-mile community, the school district was a vast melting pot, with students who were rich and poor, African-American and white. Characterwise, I was still a very straight and seemingly well-adjusted teenager who was interested in girls, football and my grades, in that order. But my ability to play football, which I loved and which defined my life, was in the process of being derailed.
I injured my cervical spine in the Pop Warner league, and as early as freshman year, in 1968, it was causing me pain. I was also aware that at the high school, butt blocking and butt tackling was how it was done. This meant sticking your face mask into your opponent’s chest on every block or tackle—a practice that was banned just a few years later due to the vast number of spinal injuries. I wondered how long I’d last.
The Vietnam War was raging at the time, but it was distant to me, both in miles and in relevance. I knew I’d have to register for the draft soon, but registering was the furthest thing from my mind. Southeast Asia came into increasing focus for me one evening in a banquet hall in Middletown, where an awards assembly was being held for the high school football team. The Middletown Lions had won the state championship, and everyone in town wanted to celebrate. As a member of the freshman team, I had never had any real contact with the varsity team. They were the stuff of legends, larger than life. I
was trying to pump up my mojo, because over the next three years, I would have to attempt to live up to their legacy. Elected officials from Middletown, who had a real sense of community and genuinely cared about the town, were at the event in force.
One award recipient, who was going to West Point Military Academy, was roundly applauded by the audience. Then a town councilman took the podium, holding a wrinkled paper in his hand. He said it was a letter from a former football player who had recently been killed in action in Vietnam; he wanted to read it to the crowd.
In the letter, the soldier described the men he fought against as cowards who often used women and children as shields. He wrote that the enemy didn’t have the courage to fight and that the war was winnable—if U.S. forces would be allowed to take it to the enemy. He spoke of how much he loved his country and how proud he was to be fighting alongside such good and decent men.
Suddenly we heard the sound of a woman openly weeping. It was the mother of the slain soldier, sitting in the audience with her husband and younger children. Her husband was attempting to comfort her and had one arm around her shoulder as he held her hand.
“Okay, I think we’ve heard enough,” the husband said.
“No, I don’t think we have heard enough,” the councilman said as he lifted the letter up and continued to read to the astonished crowd. Finally, he seemed to catch the collective atmosphere in the room and stopped. With a puzzled and confused demeanor, he surrendered the microphone and walked away from the podium.
When I entered Middletown High School in 1969, marijuana, LSD, long hair, loud music and defiance of authority were the order of the day. Bruce Springsteen, who was born just a few miles away in Long Branch, was a key player in a riot involving the Middletown Police as well as a bunch of students from my hometown. Springsteen and his newly formed band, Steel Mill, flew into a rage when the Middletown Police ordered them to stop playing at 10 p.m. Springsteen started throwing things on the stage, and the crowd started rioting. From what I’ve heard, Springsteen is still pissed about that night at the Clearwater Swim Club and won’t let any members of the Middletown Police Department moonlight as security for him.
Meanwhile, my football career as offensive tackle was about as well coordinated as Dick Nixon’s last administration, and between the neck smashing, the butt blocking and the abusive, loud and foulmouthed coach, I soon found myself thinking about leaving the team. By that point, each butt block sent tingling electrical shocks from my neck through my arms and down to my wrists. I was worried, but the coach wasn’t.
“You’re just not tough enough,” he shouted at me.
Well, the coach was right. I wasn’t tough enough. I had this sickening love of my cervical spine, and I wanted to reach the age of 21 able to walk and use all four limbs. Fuck it. I quit. The coach was furious that I would leave the team. A 225-pound high school lineman was rare in those days. I was out, and there was no going back.
I was heartbroken, and my father—who was well known in town and proud of his son’s position on the Middletown Lions football team—was crushed. For reasons that I may never fully understand, he took my decision to leave the team personally; our already brittle relationship was now on a razor’s edge. I got the feeling that he thought I was, well, a pussy for quitting.
My dad seemed unapproachable on any subject not sports-related. He was universally quiet, and I sensed he was angry and somehow unhappy. His mood impacted my brother and my mom as well. I knew that people in town considered my mom a noted beauty. But somehow he was never able to show any sort of appreciation to her, despite her round-the-clock housework. I can’t remember a single moment growing up when he thanked her for making dinner or cleaning the house or making sure that his two sons had clean clothes to wear. And he was mostly a hostile critic of his sons. Despite his gruff exterior, I knew that he loved us—he just would never take the simple step of saying so. Like so many men of his generation, Bud Bradshaw was completely unable to demonstrate love to either his wife or children. I can’t even remember him talking during our family dinners; he would only express displeasure when something wasn’t to his liking. I suppose a lot of men his age acted the same way; I didn’t think much of it at the time.
The Bradshaw family home in Middletown has been vacant and abandoned in recent years. Bud Bradshaw ran his milk delivery business from a building behind the house.
With football gone and my dad uninterested and remote, I became acquainted with a crowd from another part of the large town I grew up in—the blue-collar, hard-drinking brawlers. In my eyes, the older guys in this crowd were almost legendary tough guys. Some rode chopped Harleys, some drove pickup trucks and they all loved to drink keg beer, eat thick steaks and brawl. The opposite of bullies, they sought out only tough opponents.
In the summer, parties began in the afternoon. Eight-ounce boxing gloves were handed out, and—amid flowing beer, marijuana smoke and the latest from the Allman Brothers—we beat the crap out of each other. When we weren’t fighting, the girls kept the food flowing as the guys talked about their landscaping and construction jobs, how much somebody could bench press and, of course, the new Model 74 Harley.
Halfway through my senior year, in January 1973, I turned 18 and was able to legally start drinking (the state had lowered the drinking age from 21). School suddenly became more fun, as I could now enjoy a few beers before heading off to the afternoon session. I became a creature without controls. Large and muscular from weightlifting, I had a battered motorcycle to ride and some money in my pocket. Life was a drunken blur.
I drank when delivering pizza and drank after boxing at parties. My brother was off to college, and my parents (well-meaning as they were) could not stem the tide of wild rage that coursed through my veins. My father was forever taciturn, obsessed with golf and watching the Yankees. My mother desperately sought to keep me on some kind of path toward happiness and a white-collar job. Somehow, both were reduced to being bystanders in my race toward … something. I knew only that the race had to be wild, dangerous and unpredictable.
Then I was sick with the flu. Lying around my parents’ house, I found a copy of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. It all but burned my brain. The central character was Sam Croft, a cold-blooded killer who looked death and hardship straight in the eye and overcame them. Croft was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Infantry. I all but memorized the parts of the book that involved Croft. It fired my imagination, and nothing could stop me from entering the Army Infantry. The administration at Middletown High was only too happy to provide me with a diploma; it only required the teachers to sign off on my passing their courses. My parents seemed pleased, too. Maybe they knew I was an accident waiting to happen, and hoped the army would help straighten me out.
By the end of March, I was beginning basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, home of the Seventh Calvary and perhaps best known as the location of the United States Bullion Depository. The 109-thousand-acre base covers parts of Bullitt, Hardin and Meade Counties and for decades was the home of the U.S. Army Armor Center, where the army and marine corps trained on tanks.
There was no backslapping or high-fives as I enlisted. The Vietnam War was still on, though winding down. The overwhelming mood of the country was either weary of our lack of success or completely opposed to the war. When I opted for infantry, in the face of aptitude scores that were very highly regarded, I cannot recall a single person—including my recruiter—who thought I was making a sound decision. My grand plan was to complete the required infantry school, apply for airborne, then try out for Special Forces. At the time, you needed to be at least a buck sergeant (the lowest grade) to even apply.
Though full of bravado, I was aware that I had a real learning curve ahead of me. I had read Robin Moore’s The Green Berets and was well aware that more than a little seasoning was needed to make the grade—one of only a handful of accurate personal assessments I made in those days. I
n my limited understanding, Special Forces seemed the best route to being a Sam Croft sort of soldier. But much more than that, Green Berets seemed free. I know that may appear to be odd, but in their elite unconventionality, they were outside the paradigm and, in my mind, able to express themselves quite differently than conventional soldiers. But these proved to be nothing more than intellectual ramblings when confronted with the harsh realities that defined the American army as the Vietnam conflict ground to its brutal conclusion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WELCOME TO THE MACHINE
The army recruiter picked me up at my house early on the morning of my induction ceremony. I gave my mom a small hug and said “See you later” to Dad. The recruiter watched from a few feet away.
“What’s up with your father?” he asked a while later.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You didn’t see it, but your dad put his hand out for you to shake, then pulled it back.”
The recruiter and I headed to Newark for the swearing-in. Next stop was Newark Airport to catch a plane to some city in Kentucky, followed by a bus ride to the base. It was the first time I’d ever even been on a plane.
I had entered a completely alien world, and I was utterly alone. Things were exactly the way I wanted them, or so I thought at the time. Most of the men in my training company were from Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, anxious to get away from a city that had a grand history but seemed headed for higher unemployment rates. Suddenly I was being referred to as “the big white boy” from New Jersey.
At Fort Knox, I didn’t stand out or fall short. I was simply another green recruit, and I started to realize just how inconsequential a human being I was; in the army, I was truly just a number, and nobody much cared what happened to me. I didn’t suffer the fate of Cordell O’Keefe, who was ridiculed for being obese and nicknamed “Hog Head” by a drill sergeant. The drill instructor’s Southern twang made it sound more like “Hoeg Head.” Nor did I stand out as one of those macho guys who would constantly pester certain trainees into buying or using grass. By and large, basic training was a positive experience. I was starting to get comfortable with the idea of soldiering.
Jersey Tough Page 7
