“Thank you Calò, but I have my friends waiting for me, I just wanted to stop by and say hello.”
“Well then, don’t let your friends wait any longer. It’s always a pleasure to see you, my friend.” Was I a fool to believe his offer of friendship came with no strings attached? Only time would tell, but as we shook hands and kissed, I felt an unearthly strength within him that needed nothing I could offer. Perhaps this was a genuine bond born in brotherhood.
I ordered a 7 & 7, but Bobby “Gems,” the bartender, knew to leave one of the 7’s out for me. I had a six-round fight coming up in two weeks, and the last thing I wanted to do was drink liquor now. I turned pro a year ago, and after eight fights, I was undefeated with seven knockouts and looked upon as an up-and-comer. I fought as a junior-middleweight, which meant I had to weigh-in at 154 pounds. Most of the club’s revelers knew I fought; I was one of theirs, and most enthusiastically rooted me on. That was, except for one.
*****
Monday mornings’ sun was still fast asleep as I closed my hoodie tight around my face. The streetlights, standing tall like silent sentinels, cast an artificial glow onto the sidewalks below, illuminating loose trash in garish yellow light. I took a deep breath; it was frightfully cold; a chilly wind with its harsh bite cut me to the quick. I’d be doing my roadwork by jogging around the nearby golf course. I’d need to run faster than I liked; the early morning air was wicking the heat from my body quicker than it could replace it. The golf course was a convenient place for me to run. It was only two blocks away from my home. In Brooklyn, much of your life was measured in blocks.
In the crack of dawn, the streets are a different world. This banal asphalt tundra is barren, cold, and unforgiving. On the other hand, the new morning sun, bouncing off the brownstones and apartment buildings, suggested a new day of reckoning. Brilliant rays of hope offered a chance to turn the page and start anew. An opportunity for redemption was a good thing; God knows we all needed a shot at it.
I gingerly stepped off my stoop. A frosty wind rolled loose garbage down the sidewalk (there was nothing new about that). Everywhere I looked, there were piles of litter, several weeks’ worth. These as-of-yet-unnamed mountains of waste spilled out into the street, making parking impossible. The damn garbage-men were on strike again. It seemed like everyone was always angling for more money, why should they be any different?
I dodged the rats that were scurrying about in front of Jade Waa’s, my favorite Chinese takeout. The rats were hopping happily about the restaurant’s aged refuse like they died and went to rodent heaven, finding an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet at the Pearly Gates. Hey, everyone had to live.
I had a small transistor radio glued to an elastic strap by my father. He was always fiddling around, creating something of need in his basement workshop. I slid it up my arm. Then reaching down, I grabbed my ankles, stretching my hamstrings as far as they would go. I bounced a few times, shadow boxing with an imaginary foe, my breathing leaving its wake a frigid cold. A craggy old man, donning a bacciagalupe cap, walked by me holding a copy of Il Progresso, the local Italian newspaper, under his arm. He nodded at me, flashing a denture-less grin, mutely pumping his fist in the air, egging me on. Wherever I journeyed, people were mightily encouraging, making the roughest things more palatable. Brooklyn people are like that, as tough as they come; a rock is resilient, and so are they. They’re born rooting for the underdog, but at the same time, they also cheer on the bad guy. I guess even the hoodlums are underdogs in their own right.
I then did the most vital part of my workout routine; I tuned in to KTU. The radio station’s early morning disc jockey, Paco, would start me off with one of my favorites. I started my jog slowly, more like shuffling, barely lifting my feet. (God, what would I have given to go back to sleep!) As I turned the corner towards the golf course, Donna Summer’s angelic voice echoed down an eerily quiet avenue, serenading my still-sleeping neighbors, “Ahaaw…I love to love you, baby.” Her ethereal voice energized me, transforming me from lamb to lion. Though the frigid air singed my lungs, I pushed forward. I’m a fighter-I’m a fighter-I’m a fighter. At times, even the lion must remind himself why he rises in the morning.
*****
New Utrecht was our local high school. People in my neighborhood were born prideful of it. Their reasons differed; some because they or someone in their family were graduates, others because the basketball team was always good, and all because Ol’ Blue Eyes created a movie there. Yet, more than likely, it was simply because it was a block or two away.
With its chilly brick exterior and barred windows, some might mistake New Utrecht for a penal colony. Inside, the halls were always crowded with different classes of clacking and chattering kids. Yet the chaos was still familiar and ever so perfect. These clans of pimple-faced adolescents with their pecking orders have changed little over the decades. Just take a gander over there, there’s the couple who, since they were sophomores, was always making out before the third period, looking as though they were swallowing each other’s faces.
A few feet further down, those were the cliquey “in girls” everyone hated. They perfected rudeness and mean-spiritedness to a high art form. Opposite them, the pompous jocks parading around in their lettered jackets and bragging how great it was to be football players even though the team perpetually sucked. Look out, here comes the pageant of band geeks with their enormous instrument cases marching the halls. Why they picked the skinniest kids to play the tuba is beyond me. Over yonder were the kids who worked on the school newspaper, The New Comet, who in reality made paper airplanes all day while pondering the esoteric fate of the world (and also the theme of this years’ prom). (Oh, brother!) In another corner, we find the fashion kids, those malnutrition youths who wheel mannequins and clothing racks up and down the halls. This group of misguided students was often overheard speaking with a Gallic accent. Finally, there was me who did not fit into any of those above-mentioned groups.
Students at New Utrecht defined themselves by the area in Southern Italy their families hailed from. Now, because of new city busing laws which none of us understood, black kids from Flatbush, Brownsville, and Bedford–Stuyvesant had invaded our school. Looking at them, they were as confused as we all were. As far as I was concerned, I just looked the other way, but for the guy in the cellar, well, that was another story.
Chapter 2
I’m a Fighter
When I first set eyes on her, she rocked my world. I wanted to walk right up to her, but I was intimidated. Scared to death would be more accurate. She lived around the corner from Romeo and Juliet’s, right off 20th Avenue on 85th Street. Every time she was in the vicinity, it felt like liquid adrenaline being injected into my bloodstream, causing my body to tingle all over. My heart would beat so hard; I thought it might burst. These were not butterflies’–oh no! They were more like lions, tigers, and bears, but oh my, did it feel good. Oh, that teenage crush, so painful, it ranked right up there with getting my wisdom teeth pulled.
At times, she was all I thought about. At night, I would lie in bed, imagining she was my girlfriend. I would go through fanciful dreams of dancing together at Romeo and Juliet’s and how we fell in love. The vision of those hypnotic eyes, deep brown pools to get lost in, was my last coherent thought each night. All I knew was I was falling for her. Hard!
*****
My mother brought out a platter full of pork chops with vinegare'd peppers, along with a deep-dish brimming with escarole and beans laced with lots of garlic! Vampires in my house? Not a chance!
The cry of abbondanza was a call to arms for Italians. My mother’s meals were simple; cooking that allowed the food to speak for itself. Seated next to me and my brother were my Uncle Tony, my Aunt Mary, their daughter Angela, and my other cousin Tony. I don’t know who began the ridiculous trad
ition to name kids after their grandparents, but in my family, there were eleven Anthony’s.
My Uncle Tony (who resembled the famous clown, Emmett Kelly, without the makeup) worked for the New York City Transit Authority. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that we all broke his balls over unmercifully. Uncle Tony always had a comeback, “Hey, whaddya want me to do? I was on my way over here today when my prescription ran out!”
Uncle Tony operated the token booth on McDonald Avenue during rush hour for over fifteen years. For blocks around, everyone knew him. His genuine enjoyment and love for the people of the neighborhood warmed them as they aimlessly entered the subway on their robotic journey to work. “Hey Ant, I had a nut next to my booth all morning wearing robes and screaming scripture at the top of his lungs!”
“What happened?”
“Cops grabbed him and went to lock him up.”
“So?”
“That dududu, you know, Georgie Robusto, the kid who hangs out at the barbershop.”
“Of course.”
“Well, that mamaluke made a big deal; he wanted to know why they were arresting the rabbi? What a schmuck!”
It was a terrific gig for Tony; he had job security, rode the buses and trains for free, and best of all, he could walk home for lunch. The only negative that came along with being a token booth attendant was that young hoodlums began to look at them as easy marks. On most days, my Uncle’s booth had four or five hundred dollars, in coins and small bills. The city tried to reinforce the booths to protect the clerks, but the glass between the workers and the rest of the world was not bulletproof. A clerk up on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx had just been gunned down. The kids who did it couldn’t carry all the heavy change, so instead of millions, the poor clerk lost his life for $212. It was a crying shame.
While my father was always stern and humorless, my Uncle Tony was the life of the party. He forever came armed with a ridiculous joke or a funny story. As they passed around the bread (we ate everything with bread), “Hey Rosa, where’d we get the bread? The museum?”
Today, Tony mused about a homeless guy who drove him crazy in the middle of the morning rush hour. The man was positioned right next to his booth, along with his scruffy companion, a mutt that had a sign around its neck that read, “I’m a bum too.” He had a cardboard box in front of him and was doing a sort of jig to a catchy verse of; Ha Tu! Ha Tu! Ziggity Bing Bam Boom. He bopped and twisted as he continued to chant aloud, Ha Tu! Ha Tu! Ziggity Bing Bam Boom… Ha Tu! Ha Tu! Ziggity Bing Bam Boom.
Brooklyn is one place where the morning straphangers will deliberately run you down. Yet on the dawn of that day, this offbeat tandem stopped the commuter’s dead in their tracks. Most found this screwball entertaining. So much so, that many threw loose change into his box. Discovering any of the coins to be pennies, he tossed them back. In a huff, he exclaimed, “Mere pennies? How dare you! I’ve played Carnegie Hall and the Paramount!” With his chin lifted high in the air, his voice took on an English twang, “Peasants! Be gone with you all!” He then repeated his Ha Tu! Ha Tu! Ziggity Bing Bam Boom.
It all ended when he went in the corner of the token booth and urinated in front of two cops. In his best King’s English, he exclaimed, “For my public!” He gave the police no choice. Handcuffed, they struggled with him and his pooch, while he continued in earnest to do his jig and chant Ha Tu! Ha Tu! Ziggity Bing Bam Boom.
Tony rubbed an ever-growing patch of sparse hair at the back of his balding head and chuckled, “You know, not for nothing, Brooklyn has always been going to hell, but somehow it never seems to get there.”
*****
The tidy, two-family homes on most blocks in my neighborhood were built identical to each other, brick on top of brick, side by side, each adorned with colorful statues of La Madonna in the front yard and American flags snapping over the doors. They resembled chicken coops, so close together; neighbors could coo and cluck to each other from over their fences.
Pippi Passero was the neighborhood watchdog, although most preferred the title of “irritating nosey body.” She was my parent’s bain of existence. A middle-aged widow who forever hung her humongous bosoms out the second-floor window while a barely lit cigarette drooped from her pudgy, pursed lips. She cursed like a drunken sailor; everyone was a “fucken Mary” to her. She swore to all who would listen that her fire engine red hairdo was utterly natural. She lived out of her upstairs window, our contemporary playwright, Plautus, while her pack of manicured pugs yipped and yapped in the background. Nothing came or went without comment; her vigilance was comforting. In the evening, when the winds shifted to the west, the pungent odor of the herd of pugs would waft out along with the sound of Pippi shrieking at the top of her lungs to her yipping canines to “shut up!” ... The word squalor often came to mind.
*****
Izzy Moischel was the last of a soon-to-be-extinct species; the Jewish fighter. Izzy hailed from the Lower Eastside of Manhattan and fought during the Great Depression. Back then, there was a soup kitchen on every street corner, and the fight game was populated by God’s chosen. He proclaimed to all that only tough times created great fighters. “When times are good and making a dime comes easy, young kids have a choice, which puts boxing on da back of da bus. When I was a youngster, if I had the choice between playing baseball or getting my brains bashed in… I’d been the next Dizzy Dean.”
During the 20s and 30s, when Izzy fought, times were beyond hard. As a teenager, Izzy boxed nearly every week just to put food on the table for his seven brothers and sisters. His record meant little to him, and at the end of his career, he was startled to find he fought over three hundred and thirty bouts. Looking at Izzy’s face, it left little doubt.
Izzy’s Youth Center was under the “el,” smack-dab on the corner of McDonald Avenue.
The Youth Center was a broken-down old Transit Authority warehouse that Izzy got for a song an eon ago with the help of a local congressman named Ed Koch. With money from his pocket, Izzy created a magnet for not only my neighborhood but for all the surrounding areas. At first, big-time promoters and trainers scoffed when you told them you trained at a youth center. They had no idea; Izzy built a factory of young men, a draw for pugilists far and wide to make that pilgrimage to the grungy gym on the second floor.
Izzy wasn’t content to create just a boxing gym. Growing up dirt poor, he felt it was his duty to give back to the community. On the first floor, he ran a children’s day-care center where the kids of the neighborhood could hang out and generally stay out of trouble. It was fine enough, but it was here that Izzy planted the seed. Many of those young children under his care would eventually take the climb to the second floor.
Troublemakers and drug dealers around Brooklyn knew better than to try to come in. More often than not, a few of them had their holes busted open and left in the alley outback. A clear message to all!
Upstairs, in all its original wonder and filth, was the boxing gym. There was no carpeting, little lighting, and on hot days if you were looking for cooling waters, fugetaboutit! They always left the fire hydrant in front of the gym open.
I don’t think the place ever saw a broom. Walking in the showers barefoot was a life-threatening experience. It was a delightful cliché; dirty, dingy, and chock full of character, and as a fighter, character was the difference between life and getting your ass kicked.
After running five miles, those damn stairs seemed endless. On the first landing, I passed by a hand-painted sign that read NO TRAINERS ALLOWED WITHOUT IZZY’S OK. Competition amongst trainers was never-ending, but in here, Izzy was the Lord High Trainer, and he wasn’t about to welcome another into his dwellings.
Upon entering the gym, the first thing you noticed was the dull electronic bell. Its methodical drone was our sentinel;
it defined, measured, and organized our daily routines. Everything was done around that damn bell. It rang first after a minute, and then after three, twenty-four-hours a day. Its cadence simulated the three-minute round and the minute rest during a fight. We lived, ate, and sometimes made love by that damn bell.
A visitor next noticed the utter silence. No one spoke. There was a screaming silence capped within each of us. There was nothing unnatural about or demanded of our reticence. The sounds that filled the gym were instead the machine gun-like cadence of the speed bags and the grunting and hissing of the fighters as they went about their lives. They trained us to push ourselves alone in this bestial ambiance. We challenged our limits as we endlessly ground out thousands of sit-ups, hit the speed bag, jumped rope, and chased after a heavy bag that was forever swinging back and forth all day long. Along the wall, in front of a battery of cracked mirrors, were the fighters shadowboxing, masturbating their egos and nurturing their violent dreams. Boxing is a lonely sport; one must endure everything it has to offer, both glorious and horrific, by yourself. As children of the ring, we were ingrained with the knowledge that at the end of the day, when you must face another man intent on harming you, it’s only you, all alone out there. There are no time-outs, no substitutions. You conquer or die alone in the ring, exposing all life’s strengths and frailties for peoples’ utter enjoyment.
Say Goodbye and Goodnight Page 2
