Vendettas
The South Side Code included rules for vengance. It was generally "an eye for an eye" kind of thing, but a few actions went beyond those paramaters. The example I'm thinking of is when a very nice boy from a "mafia" family was found pistol-whipped nearly to death in a park. The whole neighborhood was abuzz with talk about how the L family would get their revenge on the R family. The dispute began before my time. Somebody did something to someone else, and forever afterwards the L's and R's were at war. All I knew was that fighting would occasionally flare up between the families, and we would have something to gossip about for a while. The pistol-whipping of a 15 year old boy was definately an escalation, though. He was a good kid. He didn't get involved in his family's vendetta, and he was handsome. At least he was until someone saw fit to bludgeon his face with the butt-end of a handgun.
Our downstairs neighbors were indirectly related to the R family, and they were a little worried because the boy was from the L family. For the next two weeks, the apartment below us was full of people. The whole clan was rotating shifts, protecting their home. At least once a day someone from the L family would drive down the street shouting threats. My neighbors would shout back, "There's little kids in here!" (that being the reason for the protection. Once you've crossed the invisible age barrier it's no-holds-barred) Then our neighbors would pile into their car and give chase. If it wasn't so scary, it would have been funny. Finally one night around 10 o'clock someone from the L's threw a brick at our window. They thought the cousins to the R's lived upstairs. Mom was pretty mad.
We had been watching the news when the car came roaring down the street. We heard the shouting, knew it would be over in a minute: then heard the brick break our window. Mom ran downstairs just in time to see a carload of stick-waving hoosiers dash off in pursuit of the L's. She went inside the downstairs apartment to comfort the mother and children that had been left behind. I think she did it so she wouldn't have to deal with the window yet. When the menfolk returned after their fruitless chase, she got out the duct tape and patched the window. Then mom sat down and studied the brick. She was still looking at it when I went to bed. I don't know what secrets she gleaned from the brick, but a few days later she and the brick went for a walk together. When she came back, she told us the problem was solved, and we didn't need to worry about any more problems with the L family.
Mom had a special gift for things like that. She could make people park their cars instead of sitting in the street and honking, and she could clear a bar fight with nothing but presence.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Why I hate Spaghetti
Every Sunday, we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa was born in Sicily, at the turn of the last Century. "Old Fashioned" doesn't even begin to describe him. He served in both World Wars, and was married twice. His first wife died in childbirth. Their son was stillborn. Grandma took cooking lessons from an old Sicilian woman, so she could prepare foods from his homeland. Every other day, she served Italian food, and Sunday was always spaghetti day. I ate spaghetti once a week for 13 years. I will never eat it again.
She would vary the meat to go with the spaghetti. One week we'd cut up 3-5 whole chickens, the next she'd make meatballs. When I was small, I shredded lettuce for the salad. As I grew, I progressed to cutting veggies, skinning tomatoes, and finally, butchering chickens. I'll never forget the day I cut up my first chicken. Grandpa had passed away by this time, so we were only disecting 4 birds. Aunt Petrina told Grandma I was old enough to help cut. They had a little argument, and then Petrina put a nice sharp butcher knife in my 9 year old hands.
I was delighted, but frightened at the same time. I'd seen how cleanly the knife sliced through the chicken. I'd seen how easily it went through the joint between the leg and thigh. And I'd seen numerous Aunts say, "Damn!" and rush off to bandage their hand, because the knife had slipped.
Petrina broke the shoulders of a chicken carcass and showed me where to start. I carefully cut out the wishbone, trying so hard not to crack it prematurely. I succeeded, only to break it as I tried to dislodge it from the breastbone. Petrina told me not to worry. It wasn't my fault. It was a "weak chicken". She said I'd probably need help with the legs too.
Doing the breasts and back were easy. The butcher knife slid right through the rib and back bones. It was easier than cutting cold butter. The legs, however, were a different matter. By the time I had gotten to that point, all the other chickens were done, and all 5 of my uncles were crowded in the doorway to the kitchen, silently watching. I bent the "knee" of the bird over the knife blade, gave a good tug upwards and pop!, I had separated a leg from a thigh. Filled with triumph, I sliced off the other leg and went after the thigh.
If you've never cut up a chicken, let me tell you, there's a trick to removing the thighs. A trick which I didn't know at 9 years of age. You have to break the joint first. The knife wouldn't separate the joint. It slipped to one side, or slid to the other, and would not cut where it was supposed to. So, I sat at the kitchen table stubbornly sawing through the thigh bone. This stupid bird was not going to defeat me! I was totally engrossed in my work, and I didn't hear the smothered giggles of my Uncles at first. Aunt Petrina heard them, however; and she came to my rescue.
She said, "There's a faster way, honey." and picked up the chicken by the thighs. She held it up and gave a quick jerk with both hands, cleanly dislocating the joints. Well, dislocating the joint I hadn't been sawing away at, anyway. What was left of the other one wouldn't pop. I had mutiliated it too badly. She taught me how to wedge the knife between the joints properly, and press down to cut through it. About this time, Mom and J finished the salad and came to see what everyone was looking at. She screamed when she saw her "baby" had a butcher knife, and totally missed seeing me cut the last of the chicken. I triumphantly added the thigh to the pile on the table, just as Mom laid into Petrina for letting me grow up a bit.
That night, someone made sure I got the sorry, mutilated thigh for dinner.
Every Sunday, we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa was born in Sicily, at the turn of the last Century. "Old Fashioned" doesn't even begin to describe him. He served in both World Wars, and was married twice. His first wife died in childbirth. Their son was stillborn. Grandma took cooking lessons from an old Sicilian woman, so she could prepare foods from his homeland. Every other day, she served Italian food, and Sunday was always spaghetti day. I ate spaghetti once a week for 13 years. I will never eat it again.
She would vary the meat to go with the spaghetti. One week we'd cut up 3-5 whole chickens, the next she'd make meatballs. When I was small, I shredded lettuce for the salad. As I grew, I progressed to cutting veggies, skinning tomatoes, and finally, butchering chickens. I'll never forget the day I cut up my first chicken. Grandpa had passed away by this time, so we were only disecting 4 birds. Aunt Petrina told Grandma I was old enough to help cut. They had a little argument, and then Petrina put a nice sharp butcher knife in my 9 year old hands.
I was delighted, but frightened at the same time. I'd seen how cleanly the knife sliced through the chicken. I'd seen how easily it went through the joint between the leg and thigh. And I'd seen numerous Aunts say, "Damn!" and rush off to bandage their hand, because the knife had slipped.
Petrina broke the shoulders of a chicken carcass and showed me where to start. I carefully cut out the wishbone, trying so hard not to crack it prematurely. I succeeded, only to break it as I tried to dislodge it from the breastbone. Petrina told me not to worry. It wasn't my fault. It was a "weak chicken". She said I'd probably need help with the legs too.
Doing the breasts and back were easy. The butcher knife slid right through the rib and back bones. It was easier than cutting cold butter. The legs, however, were a different matter. By the time I had gotten to that point, all the other chickens were done, and all 5 of my uncles were crowded in the doorway to the kitchen, silently watching. I bent the "knee" of the bird over the knife blade, gave a good tug upwards and pop!, I had separated a leg from a thigh. Filled with triumph, I sliced off the other leg and went after the thigh.
If you've never cut up a chicken, let me tell you, there's a trick to removing the thighs. A trick which I didn't know at 9 years of age. You have to break the joint first. The knife wouldn't separate the joint. It slipped to one side, or slid to the other, and would not cut where it was supposed to. So, I sat at the kitchen table stubbornly sawing through the thigh bone. This stupid bird was not going to defeat me! I was totally engrossed in my work, and I didn't hear the smothered giggles of my Uncles at first. Aunt Petrina heard them, however; and she came to my rescue.
She said, "There's a faster way, honey." and picked up the chicken by the thighs. She held it up and gave a quick jerk with both hands, cleanly dislocating the joints. Well, dislocating the joint I hadn't been sawing away at, anyway. What was left of the other one wouldn't pop. I had mutiliated it too badly. She taught me how to wedge the knife between the joints properly, and press down to cut through it. About this time, Mom and J finished the salad and came to see what everyone was looking at. She screamed when she saw her "baby" had a butcher knife, and totally missed seeing me cut the last of the chicken. I triumphantly added the thigh to the pile on the table, just as Mom laid into Petrina for letting me grow up a bit.
That night, someone made sure I got the sorry, mutilated thigh for dinner.
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Prison Tag
My 5th grade gym teacher taught us a game called "prison tag". The base form of the game is simple. Take a group of kids and split them into 2 teams. Team 1 are jailers, team 2 are prisoners. Everyone starts out standing in the designated jail space, then the prisoners "escape" while the jailers cover their eyes and count. When the count reaches 100, the jailers move out in pairs or groups to catch the escaped prisoners, leaving one person behind to guard the jail. If there's no guard, the prisoners are allowed to go free again. When a jailer touches a prisoner, they're caught, and must submit to being escorted back to jail. Once a prisoner is jailed, the only way out is to have a free prisoner pull him or her out of the designated jail space. When all escaped prisoners are caught, the teams switch sides and begin again. Simple!
When we became teenagers, my sister and I revived the game. The jail was our front porch. The play area was half a block, from the yellow line down the middle of California Ave. to the alley, and anywhere between Sidney street and the yellow brick Victorian house. There was no covering of the eyes, instead we marked 5 minutes on a watch. You were not allowed to climb trees, or go up on anyone's roof. Hiding in your house was also considered cheating.
The game was only played at night; when the white sodium streetlights cast nice, dark shadows. It was fun to hide, but it was even more fun to creep through the darkness, tingling with adrenaline, going quiet as a mouse as a seeker ran past you, or jumping out of your skin when you got caught. We became the masters of invisibility and stealth. I learned that with the proper shadows, you could hide in a 6 inch deep doorway. I learned to hide right out in the open, with jailers passing mere feet in front of me. Any patch of darkness would do, really. The trick was to quiet your presence.
As a jailer, I loved to startle the heck out of some kid in a near-trance of "I'm not here, you don't see me." I knew the best hiding spots, and I never failed to check them. We became so good at the game, that more often than not, we'd have to call a start-over after about 45 minutes. Kids would come creeping out of the strangest places to begin the next game. I remember when Joey had actually jammed himself up in the wheel well of a large car. He wasn't a big kid, but that was still impressive! Another favored hiding spot was the 10 inch space between my house and the bar next door. Kids would work their way almost to the roof, then start wriggling sideways toward the alley. We couldn't reach them to tag them, but they couldn't get out, either. Sometimes I'd hide in that same space, but I was smart. Everyone knew the climbing thing, so I'd get down on the ground instead. Nobody thought to look down, until I came out of there after "were starting over" was called. The gap between the buildings held decades of trash and several inches of compost. I guess it was disgusting. It never bothered me at the time.
Nobody wanted to be the kid left behind, so everyone joined in on shouting the all-clear. We were amazingly civil to each other. We all played by the rules, and there were no arguments. Prison Tag was so much fun, we played it 3 summers in a row.
My 5th grade gym teacher taught us a game called "prison tag". The base form of the game is simple. Take a group of kids and split them into 2 teams. Team 1 are jailers, team 2 are prisoners. Everyone starts out standing in the designated jail space, then the prisoners "escape" while the jailers cover their eyes and count. When the count reaches 100, the jailers move out in pairs or groups to catch the escaped prisoners, leaving one person behind to guard the jail. If there's no guard, the prisoners are allowed to go free again. When a jailer touches a prisoner, they're caught, and must submit to being escorted back to jail. Once a prisoner is jailed, the only way out is to have a free prisoner pull him or her out of the designated jail space. When all escaped prisoners are caught, the teams switch sides and begin again. Simple!
When we became teenagers, my sister and I revived the game. The jail was our front porch. The play area was half a block, from the yellow line down the middle of California Ave. to the alley, and anywhere between Sidney street and the yellow brick Victorian house. There was no covering of the eyes, instead we marked 5 minutes on a watch. You were not allowed to climb trees, or go up on anyone's roof. Hiding in your house was also considered cheating.
The game was only played at night; when the white sodium streetlights cast nice, dark shadows. It was fun to hide, but it was even more fun to creep through the darkness, tingling with adrenaline, going quiet as a mouse as a seeker ran past you, or jumping out of your skin when you got caught. We became the masters of invisibility and stealth. I learned that with the proper shadows, you could hide in a 6 inch deep doorway. I learned to hide right out in the open, with jailers passing mere feet in front of me. Any patch of darkness would do, really. The trick was to quiet your presence.
As a jailer, I loved to startle the heck out of some kid in a near-trance of "I'm not here, you don't see me." I knew the best hiding spots, and I never failed to check them. We became so good at the game, that more often than not, we'd have to call a start-over after about 45 minutes. Kids would come creeping out of the strangest places to begin the next game. I remember when Joey had actually jammed himself up in the wheel well of a large car. He wasn't a big kid, but that was still impressive! Another favored hiding spot was the 10 inch space between my house and the bar next door. Kids would work their way almost to the roof, then start wriggling sideways toward the alley. We couldn't reach them to tag them, but they couldn't get out, either. Sometimes I'd hide in that same space, but I was smart. Everyone knew the climbing thing, so I'd get down on the ground instead. Nobody thought to look down, until I came out of there after "were starting over" was called. The gap between the buildings held decades of trash and several inches of compost. I guess it was disgusting. It never bothered me at the time.
Nobody wanted to be the kid left behind, so everyone joined in on shouting the all-clear. We were amazingly civil to each other. We all played by the rules, and there were no arguments. Prison Tag was so much fun, we played it 3 summers in a row.
The Games We Played
We were really no different from children in better neighborhoods, in that we played games just like any other kid. The war games were a bit more intense, perhaps... and games played as teenagers were all about showing your strength and toughness... but we played like children around the world play. We rode our bikes and hung out at the park and did normal child like things. Then we got a little older, and started playing toughness games. I played jungle gym tag until I saw a boy take an 8 foot tumble and bust his head open. The park had 5 concrete sewer pipes in pretty pastel colors, laid out like a horseshoe with about 4 feet between each one. We would play tag on them. If your feet touched the ground you lost, and had to wait for the next game to begin. I got a lot of bruises that way. The city decided the tunnels were too dangerous, and had all but one of them removed. That would have been a big bummer, except they tore out a lot of other dangerous equipment at the same time and replaced it with brand new ways to kill ourselves. They built a structure out of what looked like giant railroad ties and steel bars. There were 3 layers of horizontal ladders connected by platforms. I think we were supposed to hang from the bars, but nobody did. We simply moved our tag game to the new site. The lowest rack was 6 feet off the ground, and they got progressively higher. We'd run along the 12 inch wide wooden tie, chasing the other kids and laughing like crazy. Some of the older children would run across the bars themselves. That was how I saw a kid crack his head open. He was running over the bars and his foot slipped. He fell backwards and smacked his back on the bars behind him. He kind of went limp and slipped through the bars. He tumbled a bit as he fell, and wound up hitting his head on the concrete below. We all stopped playing and stared at him. It took a bit before we saw that he was bleeding. Bright red blood was beginning to pool around his hair, and he wasn't moving. He must have knocked himself out. Nobody got down and helped him. We were all too afraid he was dead. We were speechless. He stirred, groaned, and in a flash his friends were around him helping him up. They half carried him home, and I never played tag on the monkey bars again.
We played street football, street frisbee and street soccer. We also played alleyball. To play alleyball you needed at least 2 people, something resembling a bat, something reasonably round and hard, and bases. Every Christmas, some kid would get a wiffle ball set. That would last for a month or so, and then we'd revert to using broomsticks, 2x4's or cast off pipes. Bases were easy, any rock or piece of trash would work. The number of bases varied depending on how much crap we could find in the alley. Likewise "balls" ranged from rocks to beach balls, depending upon what was available that day.
We were really no different from children in better neighborhoods, in that we played games just like any other kid. The war games were a bit more intense, perhaps... and games played as teenagers were all about showing your strength and toughness... but we played like children around the world play. We rode our bikes and hung out at the park and did normal child like things. Then we got a little older, and started playing toughness games. I played jungle gym tag until I saw a boy take an 8 foot tumble and bust his head open. The park had 5 concrete sewer pipes in pretty pastel colors, laid out like a horseshoe with about 4 feet between each one. We would play tag on them. If your feet touched the ground you lost, and had to wait for the next game to begin. I got a lot of bruises that way. The city decided the tunnels were too dangerous, and had all but one of them removed. That would have been a big bummer, except they tore out a lot of other dangerous equipment at the same time and replaced it with brand new ways to kill ourselves. They built a structure out of what looked like giant railroad ties and steel bars. There were 3 layers of horizontal ladders connected by platforms. I think we were supposed to hang from the bars, but nobody did. We simply moved our tag game to the new site. The lowest rack was 6 feet off the ground, and they got progressively higher. We'd run along the 12 inch wide wooden tie, chasing the other kids and laughing like crazy. Some of the older children would run across the bars themselves. That was how I saw a kid crack his head open. He was running over the bars and his foot slipped. He fell backwards and smacked his back on the bars behind him. He kind of went limp and slipped through the bars. He tumbled a bit as he fell, and wound up hitting his head on the concrete below. We all stopped playing and stared at him. It took a bit before we saw that he was bleeding. Bright red blood was beginning to pool around his hair, and he wasn't moving. He must have knocked himself out. Nobody got down and helped him. We were all too afraid he was dead. We were speechless. He stirred, groaned, and in a flash his friends were around him helping him up. They half carried him home, and I never played tag on the monkey bars again.
We played street football, street frisbee and street soccer. We also played alleyball. To play alleyball you needed at least 2 people, something resembling a bat, something reasonably round and hard, and bases. Every Christmas, some kid would get a wiffle ball set. That would last for a month or so, and then we'd revert to using broomsticks, 2x4's or cast off pipes. Bases were easy, any rock or piece of trash would work. The number of bases varied depending on how much crap we could find in the alley. Likewise "balls" ranged from rocks to beach balls, depending upon what was available that day.
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