Giants as a starting safety, which was a great position for me because I could really tee off on someone trying to catch a pass against me or my team. Our team only lost one game all year, so we won that year, which was a great thing for me as well as my family.
After that, I joined the Little League baseball team, where I was on third base, which I was very good at due to me spending so much time, playing Off the Wall at my home for hours every day and Wiffle ball with the Murtags every day. My mom really believed I was going to make it somewhere in the sports field if I could stay out of trouble, which was my goal; however, being locked out of the home every day was a major issue to try to deal with. So my baseball career was moving in the right direction at this point in my life, with all the Wiffle-ball playing as well as my own practices and team practices. I was really showing great promise in regard to baseball now. I believe it was just due to my constant playing on Bergan Avenue with the Murtags and everyone else on the block who wanted to play ball.
Another thing that I used to do when it snowed, which it did quite often, was I would skitch off every car that came by. Anyway, right next to the Murtags’ house was the dentist Dr. Dopkin’s place on the right-hand side on the corner of the block whenever it snowed; and when it stuck to the ground around three to six inches, that was when I would go to Dopkin’s corner due to it having a stop sign on the corner.
I would wait for any car to come to the stop sign, then I would sneak behind the car and lean up against the bumper and hold onto the bumper and go for a ride skitch for sometimes a mile or so; it depended where the car was going, and whenever I needed to, I would let go and roll for a foot or to, which was a great feeling for me. Then one day we had two gigantic snowstorm. It snowed one day, seventeen inches; then two days later it snowed again, twenty-one inches, so it was the perfect time to skitch the day. Everyone from the hood was watching me skitch, so everyone got into it, and it was a great deal of fun for everyone who tried to do it. It is pretty easy once you can get a handle on it and great fun.
One time I skitched with Scotty Brinster, who was on the car with me, and we were really moving at I guess around thirty-five miles per hour, which really felt like we were moving so fast. So, anyway, Scotty hit a manhole cover and fell off, and all I could hear was a scream like never before; so that was one thing you must look out for when you skitch.
Another thing that we all did on the block at the end of the street was the Jewish Temple, which had the best green grass all over their property. So what we would do was, play kill the guy with the football. The way the game was played was, whoever had the ball we would all go after and give him a hard tackle with a little piling on as well. We really wanted the person who picked up the ball to get hammered by all of us. So, anyway, at one point, Joey Coulard picked up the football, and his back was turned toward me, and I gave him such a shot it would have had LT blush. He did not get up right away. It was one of many that all of us threw out to all of us. Just such a great game—we all had a blast playing Kill the Guy.
We were having a very good day on the block with Liam and Paul. We started playing Wiffle ball in the front of our homes, which was a long game, with me winning 7–5 or something like that. After that we had a game of touch football. It was me and Dave versus Paul and Wooba. Me and Dave started to kick their asses when up the street our neighbor came up with a pizza, and Wooba yelled out, “Pizza Man” which became his name according to Wooba.
The pizza man every single day would go down to Tony’s pizzeria every day at around four thirty. He would walk down to Tony’s to pick up his pizza for him and his wife every day! He was just one of Wooba’s people. He would yell about another guy he called Tarto, who I believe was a war hero who did not speak at all, and another person, a woman he called Miss America who would come cruising with her mom, riding around; and they would cruise around on their bikes now and then. Wooba was wacked out of his mind. He died a few years back. I had seen it in the obituary on Michael. It was sad for me to see that he died. I was probably the only person who really liked Mike. I believe he was a very good, honest person.
When I was approximately ten years old, I was going up to Cliffside Park, where my father worked at Scotty’s Taxi. He was a regular driver there and knew the owners well. He would drop me off at the taxi stand, then I would walk with my shine box around two and a half miles down Anderson Avenue until I hit the White Castle hamburger place then go to the other side of the street and walk back down to Scotty’s Taxi. I always had two extra black polishes, as well as two brown ones, and two brand-new shine cloths in my shine box at all times.
What I would do was stop at every bar on the street and give all the men who wanted a shine a shine for fifty cents, which I would normally get a dollar for each and every shine. I would make about twenty-five dollars going down to the White Castle and make about the same on the other side of the street coming back to Scotty’s Taxi. However, on the way back I would stop at my father’s mother’s house for a meatball sandwich, which was the best ever!
My grandmother put raisins in her meatballs which made them so good. Anyway, years later, after Grandmom had gotten put into an asylum, I met up with her sister, who was my aunt Camilla, whose home I went to in Whiting, New Jersey. It was an old folks’ retirement village. Aunt Camilla was always good to me and my mom. she was married to Uncle Louie, who was a cop in the town of North Bergan, New Jersey. Anyway, they would come over about every two months or so and always bring gifts for us.
Anyway, I was with her that day at her home. Uncle Louie had passed on many years earlier, and she began to tell me about her sister. She had asked me not to ever tell anyone what she was about to tell me. She had told me that my grandma killed her second son in her home in Cliffside Park unbeknownst to anyone; and her and my father buried the young boy in her backyard. I am not 100 percent on this story; however, I must believe Camilla! If that is not completely fucked up for my father to live with, that is mind-boggling. How can you live with burying your little brother in your backyard and keep that a secret?
My mom never told anyone about this tragedy, and I could not ask her because she had recently passed away, which all makes perfect sense why she had never liked her or ever got along with Grandma. She never liked her or ever trusted her for any reason. Now it does make sense why Mom did not like her! This is horrible; however, it is completely true and a fucking shame that my grandmother put her son up to digging a fucking hole for his younger brother. I cannot imagine how he could have lived with himself with that on his mind. Who knows? That whack job somehow must have put it out of his tiny mind!
Back in the day—I was about thirteen years old—my father had two pairs of boxing gloves. So I would take the two pairs into the backyard and spar with kids in the hood right in the backyard. I would win most of my fights, would very seldom lose. Anyway, one day I was in the backyard with a few kids when a local cop car pulled up because he could see we were fighting in the backyard.
He came up to me and the other kid and said, “Let me have a shot at this guy,” pointing to me.
So I asked him to take off his sunglasses, which he started to laugh, saying I would never ever hit him up there; so we started off, and immediately I dropped a looping right hand right on his left eye. His glasses went flying off his fucking face, and everyone started laughing at this jerk off. Then once he recovered from the shot, he started to beat the shit out of me, hitting me with really hard shots due to his embarrassment anyway.
So I was sparring one of the toughest guys in school in my backyard, and it started off with me getting an ass-whopping from this guy then I hit him with a picture-perfect left hook that nearly dropped him, and the first round ended. Then on the second round I was feeling very confident now after dropping my left hook on him. So now the second round started, and I caught him with a lead right, then he caught me with a wicked right hand again; and now I was dancing around a little bit, then I nailed him with a perfect right hand then left hook, and he went down and not back up. I won this fight, which really felt good after it was over due to him being one of the strongest
