***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For
Corner Boys-Harry's Variety
A YouTube film clip of Tom
Waits performing his song Jersey Girl that formed part of the
inspiration for this post.
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Riding down the old neighborhood
streets a while back, the old North Adamsville working class streets, streets
dotted with triple-deckers housing multiple families along with close-quarter,
small cottage-sized single family houses like the one of Tim Murphy’s own
growing to manhood time in the early 1970s. He reflected as he drove on how
little the basic structure of things had changed with the changing of the
ethnic composition of those streets. Sure many of the houses had been worked
on, new roofs, new siding, maybe a deck add-on for the ritualistic family
barbecue (barbecues that his family on the infrequent occasions that they
actually had one were taken at Treasure Island a picnic area that provided pits
for the grill-less like his from hunger family on the site), maybe an add-on of
a room if that home equity loan came through (or the refinance worked out). The
lawns, manicured or landscaped like some miniature English garden, reflected
some extra cash and care that in his time was prohibited by the needs to fix up
the insides first or save money for emergencies like the furnace blowing out in
mind-winter. In all the tradition of keeping up appearances as best you could had
been successfully transferred to the new inhabitants (keeping up appearances
being a big reason work was done back then in those old judgmental Irish
streets, maybe now to for all he knew).
Whatever condition the houses were
in, and a few as to be expected when there are so many houses in such a small
area were getting that run-down feel that he saw more frequently back in the
day by those not worried by the “keeping up appearances” ethos, the houses reflected,
no, exclaimed right to their tiny rooftops, that seemingly eternal overweening
desire to have, small or not, worth the trouble or not, something of one’s own
against the otherwise endless servitude of days. Suddenly, coming to an
intersection, Tim was startled, no, more than that he was forced into a
double-take, by the sight of some guys, some teenage guys hanging, hanging
hard, one foot on the ground the other bent holding up the infernal brick wall
that spoke of practice and marking one’s territory, against the oncoming night
in front of an old time variety store, a mom and pop variety from some extinct
times before the 7/11 chain store, fast shop, no room for corner boys, police
take notice, dark night.
Memory called it Kelly’s (as almost
every local institution was called from that small dream of ownership and out
of hard manual labor variety store to the Dublin Grille bar that transfixed
many a neighborhood father, including his father Michael Murphy to the shanty
born, or else had an Italian surname reflecting the other major ethnic group,
and at times mortal enemies). Today the name is Chiang’s. From the look of
them, baggy-panted, latest fashion footwear name sneakered, baseball
cap-headed, all items marked, marked with the insignia (secretly, and with no
hope of outside decoding) signifying their "homeboy" associations (he
would say gang, meaning of course corner boy gang, but that word is charged
these days and this is not exactly what it looked like, at least to the public
eye, his public eye) they could be the grandsons, probably not biological
because these kids were almost all Asians speckled with a couple of
Irish-lookers, shanty Irish-lookers, of the ghost be-bop night guys that held Tim
in thrall in those misty early 1970s times.
Yeah, that tableau, that time-etched
scene, got Tim to thinking of some long lost comrades of the schoolboy night
like the hang-around guys in front of Harry’s Variety several blocks away (Harry
O’Toole, the most “connected” guy in the neighborhood after Jimmy Mulvey who
ran the Dublin Grille, since he ran the local “book”), although comrades might
not be the right word because he had been just some punk young kid trying to be
a wannabe, or half-wannabe, corner boy and they had no time for punk kids and
later when he came of age he had no time for corner boys being unlike his older
brothers, Red and Digger, a serious student and not a hell-raiser like them
giving Martha Murphy nothing but the miseries. (He gave Ma Murphy his own miseries
later but that was when all of society, all youth nation society, was going through
a sea-change and he just travelled in that stream to her angers and dismays, especially
his wardrobe and physical appearance.)
Yeah, that scene got Tim to thinking
of the old time corner boys who ruled the whole wide North Adamsville night
(and day for those who didn’t work or go to school, which was quite a few on
certain days, because most of these guys were between sixteen and their early
twenties with very jittery school and work histories better left unspoken then,
or else if you wanted to make something of it they would oblige you with some fists).
Yeah, got Tim thinking about where the white tee-shirted, blue-jeaned,
engineer-booted, cigarette-smoking, unfiltered of course (Luckies the “coffin
nails” of choice, sneering (learned from watching, closely watching and repeatedly
Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James
Dean in Rebel Without A Cause at the
retro- Strand Theater up on Main Street), soda-swilling, Coke, naturally,
pinball wizards held forth daily and nightly, and let him cadge a few odd games
when they had more important business, more important girl business, to attend
to. Either a date with some hot “fox” sitting in some souped up car looking
like the queen of the Nile or putting their girls to “work,” pimping them in
other words. Tim had been clueless about that whole scene until much later, that
pimping scene, he had just assumed that they were “easy” and left it at that.
Hell he had his own sex problems, or really no sex problems although if he had
known what he found out from Red and Digger he might have paid more attention
to those “loose women.”
Yeah, Tim got to thinking too about
Harry’s, old Harry’s Variety over there near his grandmother’s house (on his
mother’s side, nee Riley) over there in that block on Sagamore Street where the
Irish workingman’s whiskey-drinking (with a beer chaser), fist-fighting,
sports-betting after a hard day’s work Dublin Grille was located.
Harry’s was on the corner of that block. Now if you have some image, some
quirky, sentimental image, of Harry’s as being run by an up-and-coming just
arrived immigrant guy, maybe with a big family, trying to make this
neighborhood store thing work so he can take in, take in vicariously anyway,
the American dream like you see running such places now forget it. Harry’s was
nothing, like he had said before, but a “front.” Old Harry, Harry O’Toole, now
long gone, was nothing but the neighborhood “bookie” known far and wide to one
and all as such. Even the cops would pull up in their squad cars to place their
bets, laughingly, with Harry in the days before state became the
bookie-of-choice for most bettors. And he had his “book”, his precious
penciled-notation book right out on the counter. But see punk kid Tim, even
then just a little too book-unworldly didn’t pick up on that fact until, old
grandmother, Jesus, Grandmother Riley who knew nothing of the world and was called
a saint by almost everybody, everybody but husband Daniel Riley when he was in
his cups “hipped” him to the fact.
Until then Tim didn’t think anything
of the fact that Harry had about three dust-laden cans of soup, two dust-laden
cans of beans, a couple of loaves of bread (Wonder Bread, if you want to
know) on his dust-laden shelves, a few old quarts of milk and an ice chest full
of tonic (now called soda, even by New Englanders) and a few other odds and
ends that did not, under any theory of economics, capitalist or Marxist, add up
to a thriving business ethos. Unless, of course, something else was going on.
But what drew Tim to Harry’s was not that stuff anyway. What drew him to
Harry’s was, one, his pin ball machine complete with corner boy players and
their corner boy ways, and, two, his huge Coca Cola ice chest (now sold
as antique curiosities for much money at big-time flea markets and other
venues) filled with ice cold, cold tonics (see above), especially the local Robb’s
Root Beer that Tim was practically addicted to in those days (and that
Harry, kind-hearted Harry, stocked for him).
Many an afternoon, a summer’s
afternoon for sure, or an occasional early night, Tim would sip, sip hard on his
Robb’s and watch the corner boys play, no sway, sway just right, with
that sweet pinball machine, that pin ball machine with the bosomy,
lusty-looking, cleavage-showing women pictured on the top glass frame of the
machine practically inviting you, and only you the player, on to some secret
place if you just put in enough coins. Of course, like many dream-things what
those lusty dames really gave you, only you the player, was maybe a few free
games. Teasers, right. But Tim had to just watch at first because he was too
young (you had to be sixteen to play), however, every once in a while, one of
the corner boys who didn’t want to just gouge out his eyes for not being a corner
boy, or for no reason at all, would let him cadge a game while Harry was not
looking. When he thought about it though, now anyway, Harry was so “connected”
(and you know what he meant by that) what the hell did he care if some underage
kid, punk kid, cadged a few games and looked at those bosomy babes in the
frame.
Yeah, and thinking about Harry’s
automatically got Tim thinking about Daniel (nobody ever called him that, ever)
“Red” Hickey, the boss king of his schoolboy night at Harry’s. Red, the guy who
set the rules, set the style, hell, set the breathing, allowed or not and when,
of the place. He didn’t know if Red went to some corner boy school to learn his
trade but he was the be-bop daddy (at least all the girls, all the hanging all
over him girls, called him that) because he, except for one incident that Tim will
mention below, ruled unchallenged with an iron fist. At least Tim never saw his
regular corner boys Spike, Lenny, Shawn, Ward, Goof (yes, that was his name the
only name Tim knew him by, and he liked it, that is Goof like his moniker), Bop
(real name William) or the Clipper (real name Kenny, the arch-petty Woolworth’s
thief of the group hence the name) challenge him, or want to.
Yeah, Red, old red-headed Red was
tough alright, and has a pretty good-sized built but that was not what kept the
others in line. It was a certain look he had, a certain look that if Tim went
to the trouble of describing it now would go way overboard describing it as some stone-cold killer look, some
psycho-killer look but that would be wrong because it didn’t show that way. But
that was what it was. Tim thought he had better put it this way. Tommy Thunder,
older brother of his junior high and high school best friend and a corner boy
king in his own right, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, a big bruiser of a
legendary North Adamsville football player and human wrecking machine who lived
a few doors up from Harry’s went out of his way not to go near the place. See,
Red was that tough.
Red was like some general, or
colonel or something, an officer at least, and besides being tough, he would
“inspect” his troops to see that all and sundry had their “uniform” right.
White tee-shirt, full-necked, no vee-neck sissy stuff, no muscle shirt
half-naked stuff, straight 100% cotton, American-cottoned, American-textiled,
American-produced, ironed, mother-ironed Tim was sure, crisp. One time Goof
(sorry that’s all he knew him by, really) had a wrinkled shirt on and Red
marched him up the street to his triple-decker cold-water walk-up flat and
berated, berated out loud for all to hear, Goof’s mother for letting him out of
the house like that. And Red, old Red like all Irish guys sanctified mothers,
at least in public, so you can see he meant business on the keeping the uniform
right question.
And like some James Dean or Marlon
Brando tough guy photo, some motorcycle disdainful, sneering guy photo, each
white tee-shirt, or the right sleeve of each white tee-shirt anyway, was rolled
up to provide a place, a safe haven, for the ubiquitous package of cigarettes,
matches inserted inside its cellophane outer wrapping, Luckies,
Chesterfields, Camels, Pall Malls, all unfiltered in defiance of the then
beginning incessant cancer drumbeat warnings, for the day’s show of manliness
smoking pleasures.
And blue jeans, tight fit, no this
scrub-washed, fake-worn stuff, but worn and then discarded worn. No chinos, no
punk kid, maybe faux "beatnik," black chinos, un-cuffed, or cuffed
like Tim wore, and Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king of the faux beatnik junior
high school night, including among his devotees Tim, a little too bookish Tim, who
was as tough a general, colonel, or some officer anyway, as corner boy Red was
with his guys. Frankie example: no cuffs on those black chinos, stay home, or
go elsewhere, if you are cuffed. Same kingly manner, right? Corner boys
blue-jeaned and wide black-belted, black always, black-belt used as a handy
weapon for that off-hand street fight that might erupt out of nowhere, for no
reason, or many. Maybe a heavy-duty watch chain, also war-worthy, dangly down
from those jeans. Boots, engineer boots, black and buckled, worn summer or
winter, heavy, heavy-heeled, spit-shined, another piece of the modern armor for
street fight nights. Inspection completed the night’s work lies ahead.
And most nights work, seemingly
glamorous to Tim’s little too bookish eyes at the time, was holding up some
corner of the brick wall in front or on the side of Harry’s Variety with those
engineer boots, one firmly on the ground the other bent against the wall, small
talk, small low-tone talk between comrades waiting, waiting for… Or just
waiting for their turn at that Harry luscious ladies pictured pinball machine.
Protocol, strictly observed, required “General Red” to have first coin in the
machine. But see old Red was the master swayer with that damn machine and would
rack up free games galore so, usually, he was on that thing for a while.
Hey, Red was so good, although this
is not strictly part of the story, that he could have one of his several honeys
right in front of him on the machine pressing some buttons and he behind
pressing some other buttons Red swaying and his Capri-panted honey, usually
some blond, real or imagined, blonde that is depending on the bottle, swaying,
and eyes glazing, but he thought he had better let off with that description
right now, as he was getting a little glassy-eyed himself at the thought, and because
like he said it was strictly speaking not part of the story.
What is part of the story is that
Red, when he was in the mood or just bored, or had some business, some girl
business, maybe that blond, real or imagined, just mentioned business would
after Tim had been hanging around a while, and Red thought he was okay, give him his leftover
free games.
Now that was the “innocent” part of
Red, the swaying pinball wizard, girl-swaying, inspector general part. But see
if you want to be king of the corner boy night you have to show your metal once
in a while, if for no other reason than the corner boys, the old time North
Adamsville corner boys might be just a little forgetful of who the king hell
corner boy was, or as Tim will describe, some other corner boy king of some
other variety store night might show up to see what was what.
Tim must have watched the Harry’s
corner boy scene for a couple of years, maybe three, the last part just off and
on, but he only remembered once when he
saw Red show “his colors.” Some guy from Adamsville, some tough-looking guy
who, no question, was a corner boy just stopped at Harry’s after tipping a
couple, or twenty, at the Dublin Grille. He must have said something to
Red, or maybe Red just knew instinctively that he had to show his colors, but
all of a sudden these two were chain-whipping each other. No, that’s not quite
right, Red was wailing, flailing, nailing, chain-whipping this other guy
mercilessly, worst, if that is possible. The guy, after a few minutes, was left
in a pool of blood on the street, ambulance ready. And Red just walked way,
just kind of sauntering away.
Of course that is not the end of the
Red story. Needless to say, no work, no wanna work Red had to have coin, dough,
not just for the pinball machine, cigarettes, and soda, hell, that was nothing.
But for the up-keep on his Chevy (Chevy then being the “boss” car, and not just
among corner boys either), and that stream of ever-loving blond honeys, real or
imagined blonde depending on the bottle, he escorted into the seashore night.
So said corner boys did their midnight creep around the area grabbing this and
that to bring in a little dough. Eventually Red “graduated” to armed robberies
when the overhead grew too much for little midnight creeps, and graduated to
one of the branches of the state pen, more than once. Strangely, his end came,
although Tim only heard about this second hand, after a shoot-out with the cops
down South after he tried to rob some White Hen convenience store. There
is some kind of moral there, although Tim thought he would be damned if he could
figure it out. Red, thanks for those free games though.
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