Sixteen Snippets
Dennis John Ferado
During the 1950’s I purchased
albums to store my 45-rpm records in. On the sleeves of the albums the records
slid into, I’d jot down what was going on in my life at the time. Not a
diary but a collection of notes. Much of what I scribbled down is in
Sumerian but I managed to decipher some and translated it. The notes are
in ITALICS and I call them “Snippets.”
Snippet One: Mon.
December 30th, 1955--Bought Rock Around the Clock today.
Great films that year:
The Bad Seed, Bus Stop, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Moby Dick, Somebody Up
There Likes Me (Paul Newman’s performance cannot be overpraised) Lust for Life
and most importantly for us kids at the time was Blackboard Jungle. A
book and film that burst on the scene and rocked the nation. The first film to
use an R&R song for its soundtrack, ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK by Bill Haley and
The Comets. Newspapers ran photos and TV stations showed kids dancing in
the aisles in movie houses across the country. The movie was so authentic
I thought they had filmed it in my school, Haaren High. It was actually filmed
at El Segundo High in California and it redefined the Education Process in
Postwar America; in London it caused riots in theaters wherever it showed.
Snippet Two: January
2nd, 1956--Got a letter from Paddy today. Been away a few months now.
Checked himself into Lexington, Kentucky hoping to get his soul back from the
devil--he’s trying. We’ve been winning almost all of our basketball games
with the other schools. Last week we beat LaSalle, next week we play
Saint Mary’s, I think their school is somewhere in Brooklyn--that in itself is
a shaky situation.
Snippet Three--January 10th,
another letter from Paddy. Said don’t write anymore he’ll be home around
the end of January. Says he can’t wait to come home and he’s doing
great. No problems and that’s good to hear, if he’s telling me the
truth.
Snippet Four--January 18th,
St. JOE’S SENIORS WIN THE 1956 BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP. I can’t believe
it WE WON medals and Father Heidi got a trophy. This is great; my brother
says the last time St Joe’s won a basketball championship was in 1947--when he
was on the team. Ain’t that something????
Our team consisted of:
Jackie Dunleavy, Ronnie and Jay O’Neill, Freddie Bernardi, Jim Jim, Tommy Dowd,
and sometimes Paddy. We had such a good team (we won a lot of games) that,
usually, everyone got to play.
Snippet Five: Jan.
20--Paddy came home today. I bought the Valentines’, LILLY MAE BELLE.
Ronnie and I are on the relay track team at Haaren High. Ronnie is a step
or two faster than I am, the colored kid’s a bit faster than Ron and a small
Puerto Rican guy (whose legs move so quick they go out in front of him and he
keeps taking tumbles) is the fastest. We got a pretty fast team.
For the following two months
Paddy and I tried to sing LILY MAE BELLE like the Everly Brothers. We
finally realized we were not the Everly Brothers and gave it up.
Snippet Six: February--Alan
Freed, The Apollo, The Brooklyn Paramount GO MAN GO. What a show last
night. Really, cool man. You’re the best, Alan Freed. Wild and
Crazy, GO-MAN-GO.
ROOOOOOCK ANNNNND ROOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL
Jim Jim, Paddy, Billy and I
(the original Melodies) had gone to Alan Freed’s R&R Shows at the Apollo
Theater and The Brooklyn Paramount. Once inside the Apollo we shuffled along
with the crushing crowd until we got four seats together. Directly behind us
were two pretty girls with a short heavy man, in his 40’s, who sat between them
and had his arms around them both. He wore a grubby Graham Cracker-brown suit
with gray pencil stripes and a white shirt, the neck area wet from sweat. His
shirt had a long pointed collar with turned-up ends that looked like two
elephant tusks. The top button of his shirt was opened and his silk,
hand-painted yellow, green and orange tie with the hula dancer, had several old
food stains scattered about. He pulled the girls closer and they were rubbing
their cheeks to his. What is the meaning of this, I wondered. The
four of us had our heads turned gaping at them. The man’s lips began to work
around the short, unlit, cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth, and he
inquired:
“What are you kids gawking
at? These girls are too old for you little punks they’re 18 and 19. You
wouldn’t know where to begin. Now turn around boys the side show’s over and the
main event is about to begin.” Then the Cleftones’ song YOU, BABY YOU came
pouring from the speakers. The place went insane, everybody up clapping and
dancing in the aisles. The gigantic red velvet curtain began to open as the
song ended. The music came up and Jo Ann “The Blonde Bombshell” Campbell was
the first act. The next thing I remember was Screamin’ Jay Hawkins swinging out
across the stage on a long rope shouting: “I PUT A SPELL ON YOU” I
thought I’d die. While everyone sang along with Hawkins, Paddy and I
danced with hula tie’s girls.
Snippet Seven: Late
February--I may never speak to Bobby F. again.
We hung out in Chico’s, a
Puerto Rican Luncheonette, on 3rd. Avenue between 94th and 95th Streets during
the mornings. The afternoons found us up Richie P’s house listening to
Carl Perkins singing BLUE SUEDE SHOES and Elvis doing HEARTBREAK HOTEL. Taking
turns dancing all day with Richie’s older sister until school was out. At
nights we’d go to Max’s on 94th and Lexington Avenue for sodas. A few of the
guys carried some kind of a weapon because we were so close to 96th St. where
the Puerto Rican gang the Comanche Dragons were sometimes seen in groups.
Bobby F., Jim Jim, Johnny
Gasper, and I were standing outside of Chico’s one night when Gasper decided he
had to relieve himself, in the shadows, against the side of the building.
Just then, Flip and Riley (two of the toughest cops in Yorkville) pulled up in
their patrol car. Flip shouted: “Move it, Assholes!” For some
unknown reason to all of us, Bobby pulled out a German Lugar and pointed it at
their car. For a moment the cops stared at Bobby, with mouths wide open.
Time and movement stopped, it felt like we had all--including the cops--just
entered the Twilight Zone. We were standing in a black and white crime photo
with Bobby pointing a gun at the cops--a Weegee (Arthur Fellig) photograph.
Suddenly he tossed the gun down and it landed on top of the iron cellar door
leading to Chico’s basement, then he reached for the sky. The gun bounced
and skidded making a clamorous tossed-gun-on-iron-cellar-noise. None of
us knew that gun existed; Bobby had never mentioned it to any one. Luckily, I
never carried a weapon. Well, the cops flew out of the car and charged us. They
began to go to work with their billy clubs on the backs of our arms and
legs--and that was just the beginning. There was no firing pin in the
Lugar and Bobby told us afterwards that he carried it in case he was attacked
or if the “Dragons” ever had him backed into a corner. Of course that
didn’t matter and the police cannot be condemned for acting accordingly; they
had a German Lugar pointed in their faces. The gun was a souvenir of Bobby’s
father’s from WW II. Bobby was never able to tell us why he pulled the gun out
but I know, we were all very lucky we didn’t die that night.
Five more cop cars appeared
with blaring sirens and flashing lights toting two cops per car. They stood us
up from our now fetal positions, threw us against the wall, searched us and
found a long, thin paratrooper knife inside the lining of Jim Jim’s coat sleeve
and a Bowie knife on Gasper tucked down his spine column inside his belt. We
were cuffed, tossed into four separate cars and taken up to the station house
on 104th Street in Spanish-Harlem. We were, literally, kicked up the
steps and into the 23rd Precinct that night. They lined us up and each one of
us had our own cop, and the smacking began. Then we were put into a holding
cage while they called our parents. I was fourteen and while sitting in that
cell worrying about what would happen after my parents arrived I began to read
the names carved into the wall and several of them rang a bell. There was one
large very familiar name above all the others: “Ace K,” (Tommy Kilcullen)
my classmate from St. Joe’s.
Snippet Eight: March
16th--Mom says she expects brother George and his buddies to stop by tomorrow
for some food after the parade. Tells me that my friends should come by earlier
so it doesn’t get too crowded. We always come early anyway.
March 17--The year’s biggest
and wildest celebration in Yorkville was, and still is, St. Patrick’s Day, and
for us it always started at my house. The day started early in the morning,
my mother making tons of ham and cabbage and Irish potatoes. By noon there’d be
Ronnie, Billy, Mike, Paddy, Jim Jim, Jay Jay, Tommy and myself sitting down to
a meal. Every year we all spent Paddy’s Day together, it was an important
holiday for all of us. After we ate Mom would pin her cousin Joan’s real
shamrocks on us, sent every year from Limerick, Ireland in the outer cellophane
casings from cigarette packs and taped closed, to help keep fresh, then placed
in a small box for the long trip to America. Then we would head over to 5th
Avenue. We were there for one purpose only, to meet the girls that march in the
parade. Since it ended at 5th Avenue and 86th Street we got to talk to them
first. As they came marching down 86th looking for boys there we
were. Forget New Year’s Eve, Paddy’s Day in Yorkville is too insane for
words.
Snippet Nine: March
28 --Paddy, Billy, Jim and I joined the Vanguards football team from 3rd Ave.
in the 90‘s. Jim Jim and I bought blue suede shoes. I met a girl, Gloria,
who lives on Lexington Avenue between 100th and 101st Streets. 96th Street is
fine but its another world around 101st St. Jim walks 20 yards behind us when I
take Gloria home at nights. I keep telling him not to but he does.
There were still Irish families
sprinkled around 100th & 101st Streets and many throughout the upper 90’s
where it was still safe to walk but by 101st St. things could get dangerous.
The “Dragons” would never bother anyone who lived in the area. Our crowd all
lived below 96th St. which we referred to as the 96th Parallel and it had to be
protected at any cost. How stupid were we? But it was serious in those
days.
Unbeknownst to us the
“Dragons” got to know the three of us and one night seven of them stopped Jim
and I on Third Avenue and 96th Street returning from taking Gloria home.
They had clubs and knives and we thought it was all over as we backed up to the
wall of the nearest building and were encircled by the seven. They thought Jim
Jim was very cool and a good friend for walking me to my girlfriends every
night, told us that we were both crazy for going up there. They said that
they wouldn’t bother us as long as we were in and out of there quietly and
minded our own business.
“If not ...you will both get
cut up. Very bad. Comprende, Paddy boys?” We were known to them
collectively as “The Paddy Boys,” as in Saint Patrick. We understood that
this was a generous gesture on their part and we were so thrilled that all we
could mumble was “Thanks a lot, man.” They weren’t that bad after all.
Snippet Ten--July
25th. Took a trip up 86th St. to Helfer’s Records today and picked up
CHURCH BELLS MAY RING by the Willows, LOVE IS STRANGE by Mickey & Sylvia
and I’LL BE FOREVER LOVIN’ YOU by the El Dorados.
Helfer’s records had their
own private booths where you could go in with several records and listen to
them over a headset before you bought one. They had a speaker outside
their door and the latest tunes blared out and filled 86th St. between 3rd and
Lexington Avenue with music. Some nights we’d hang outside for hours
talking and grabbing something to eat at Horn and Hardart’s just a few doors
away. Christmas time music was sweet with all the shoppers rushing to and
fro. There was the Linden Bar where we could go in anytime get a cone of French
fries and fill up a plate with cole slaw, pickled tomatoes and beets--a
meal!
Snippet Eleven--July
27th--Gang fight last night. I hope I never live through another night like
that. Hundreds of kids from Yorkville met on corners from 60th Street and 1st.
Avenue up to 96th Street and Lexington Avenue. We met two guys who lived on
60th Street off 1st. Ave. also heading over to Central Park to fight the West
Side Saxons. Jim Jim told me today he thinks he’s going crazy. Ace
was killed last night.
We were all heading to the
park to fight even though no one knew why. If you were a teenager living
in Yorkville and hanging out on the streets at nights, you had to be
there. We started out from my house on 87th Street, myself, Paddy, Billy
and Jim Jim. On nearly every corner more kids joined us as we walked
along. At the park’s entrance by 85th St and 5th Avenue there had to be
over 100 of us. Inside the park we met other groups of Yorkville kids and
we grew to hundreds, all of whom had no idea what we were doing. Where were the
cops when needed? Soon we split into smaller groups and roamed. Ten of us wound
up on Bow Bridge looking at the city around us. We could hear fighting
off in the distance and didn’t know what to do. I remember Kenny Cope said,
sing something first, then we’ll go and fight.
In soft unison, while looking
over our shoulders, we began, “Love is a Many Splendid Thing” by the Four
Aces. We sang, “Da, da, da, da, da, da, LOVE...” when bullets began
pinging off the balustrade of the bridge. Someone shouted: “AMBUSH!” Before we
could move someone fell to the ground with a scream, two guys jumped off the
bridge into Rowboat Lake and swam off and three others scattered. We picked up
our casualty (he was from the 60’s or 70‘s, and I can’t remember his name if I
ever knew it) and we ran off. We ran with him until we exited the park at
East 79th Street.
He was shot in the fleshy
part of the outside of his right thigh below his hip. He didn’t bleed much but
Jim ripped off his own shirt and made a tourniquet around the kid’s upper leg.
We took him to the Emergency Room at Lenox Hill hospital, sat him on a bench,
told a nurse he had been shot and ran out. We did not go back to the park
but walked towards 87th Street. Sirens were now blaring all over; it was a
crazy night with groups of kids’ running back and forth through the streets. No
one knew what to do, the entire neighborhood was electrified. Something else
was going on besides the fight. A group of kids ran past us as it they
were being chased. When we got to 1st Avenue and 87th Street two girls from the
90’s approached us in tears and told us that Ace had been killed. An
accident along the East River Drive that had nothing to do with the gang fight,
except that weapons were about because of it. He had pressured a friend into
tossing him a loaded shotgun and it went off as he caught it. Shameful,
pathetic and sad. Those were the times and it was happening in many big
cities across America.
Snippet Twelve--Sept. 2nd:
Gasper committed a crime and was sent to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on
Ward’s Island for the criminally unbalanced. Jim Jim checked himself into
Bellevue because he thinks he’s a having a breakdown?
Snippet Thirteen--Sept.
6th: Found out that once you check into Bellevue they’ve got you.
They sent Jim to Rockland State Mental Hospital for six months.
Every Sunday Jim’s mom and I
would take a bus upstate and visit him. We’d spend a couple of hours then take
the bus back to NYC. Time seemed to drag when suddenly winter was in the
air and snow outside the bus window.
Snippet Fourteen--December
24--Midnight. I have to write this down. We are all here (mom, dad,
Margie and myself) celebrating Christmas and opening presents when the doorbell
rings and it’s Jim Jim. He busted out of the hospital and came by for
Christmas. He paid off one of the male nurses who gave him a key for one of the
linen rooms and he used sheets to climb down two stories and make his way the
fifteen miles back to Yorkville to our house. I got a job with ‘Jan-Syl’ on
89th and York delivering meat for their butcher, Nick. Store’s named after the
two owner’s wives, Janice & Sylvia. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, Mom & Dad
celebrate their 24th Anniversary. That’s cool.
Snippet Fifteen--HEADLINES!
December 30, 1956--”GIANTS DOMINATE BEARS on frozen New York turf and win the
National Football Championship, 47 to 7 in second sneaker game.” WHAT A
DEFENSE! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. Pop is going crazy, Giants are champs! HAPPY
NEW YEAR!!!.
Rockland Center and Ward’s
Island were dungeons of horror and control. They kept patients drugged and
incoherent. I wonder if things have changed by now.
Snippet Sixteen--January
6th,1957--Jim Jim is still at our house. I think his mom is getting things
cleared up for him and he’ll probably go back home soon.
During that summer when Jim
Jim, Gloria and I would arrive at Gloria’s house she and I would sit on the
steps at the end of the long hallway and talk. Jim Jim, who sang lead in
our singing group, could imitate Tony Williams of the Platters to perfection,
would sit on the two steps up front in the vestibule and serenade us.
He’d sing: ONLY YOU by The Platters, SINCERELY by The Moonglows, WHY
DON’T YOU WRITE ME by The Jacks and he especially charmed us with the Penguins
EARTH ANGEL.”
Sometimes we look back and
realize we are the bitter and the sweet finality of how we’ve responded to
everything that has happened to us. Eventually we come to understand that
it’s not always the things we’ve done that are an embarrassment or downright
shameful but the things that we failed to do or to say to someone at the
time. How could I have known that certain specific moments in time would
be put to canvas, as if by the hand of a master, and placed in memory for
keepsake. Paintings exhibited on one’s gallery wall of a lifetime.
Images to be cherished with growing fondness as each year passes by.
Copyright 2012 ~ Dennis John
Ferado
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| Denny (top left) in Robert Frank's photo inside Exile on Main Street album |
Book Event & Pizza Party
Friday, October 5th
6:30pm to 8:30pm
1607 York Avenue (on s/w corner of 85th St.}
Open Bar: Well Drinks, Beer and Wine
All fans of "Yorkville: Stoops
to Nuts" are welcome!
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