I hadda grab'd da' old man by da' shirt front, and duked 'em in da' noggin a couple, two, chree times, 'till he hadda, whatcha' call a, complete change a at-a-tood. Yez all set."

The town of Armonk was situated 35 miles north of New York City, in Westchester County, on the border of Greenwich, Connecticut. The name derives from a Native American word, "Cohamoog", meaning, "Wide, flat place where the water runs." The land was taken from the Indians, by Europeans, in 1644. During pre-revolutionary times, the area became a refuge for Quakers, and other people fleeing religious persecution. By 1730, it was an established settlement. During the American Revolution, it was officially a neutral territory, with patriotic leanings. Some historically significant skirmishes were fought nearby.

It became a primarily agricultural community, although the farmers supplemented their income through cottage industry. Shoe and shirt making were the better known crafts. Further along, in the 1840's, the railroad came through the region, but bypassed the town. Because of its proximity to the city, the community began to lose its agricultural focus. The economy faltered, the population fell, and much of the area was divided into large gentleman farms.

In the early 1900's, New York City purchased land and constructed the Kensico Reservoir and dam nearby, and fortunes began to improve. During prohibition, the locale was famous for its gin-mills, and became known as a party town for city folk seeking weekend diversion. In the early 1950's, with the postwar economic boom, the land around Armonk started getting parceled into housing developments and smaller lots, and the town established its identity as a suburban bedroom community.

During the 1960's, there were three different kinds of livelihoods that were most common in Armonk. The "townies" were a class of blue-collar workers, some of whom had descended from the families of hired hands, employed on the gentleman farms, during the previous century. These men and woman worked service and manual labor jobs around town, everything from driving the snow-plows, school busses and garbage trucks, to working as handymen, housepainters, and landscapers. There was the grocer, the butcher, and the 1950's style barbershop. There were the police and firemen, and so on.

In 1964, IBM located the campus of their world headquarters on a prominent hill overlooking the town center. In pre-colonial times, this tract of land had been a Siwanoy Wampus Algonquin Indian encampment, called "North Fort" by the early settlers.

Known as "Big Blue" to the rest of the world, IBM was the "Big Brother on the Hill" to Armonkians. They were the single largest employer in the community, offering well-paying jobs, and they provided a large part of the tax base. The corporation was a major player in town politics and public policy.

The other main option for employment was found among the commuters, who chose to reside in the country, but work at jobs downtown. Many of the parents of my schoolmates, as well as my own father, would get spruced up, don their business suits, and take the Pullman trains on the Harlem-Hudson Line, from North White Plains into Grand Central Station on 42nd street, five days a week, to work a myriad of different careers in NYC.

Practically all of the families in our neighborhood belonged to a seasonal recreational organization called the Windmill Club, which opened for the summer each Memorial Day, and closed for autumn around Labor Day. It was a facility like a swimming pool, except that it was in a natural setting on a small, unspoiled lake, and featured a great old boathouse that had been renovated. This clubhouse contained a large, open air snack bar, a dining room, a recreation room, and locker rooms.

I've never fully recovered from an unseasonable and ill-considered viewing of "The Blob",

There was also a tap room for the adults. Among the clientele, there existed a certain stratum, who would loyally abide in that particular room, for the duration of the entire summer. You'd never see them otherwise, unless there was some kind of an emergency, like if the ambulance had to come, because their kid had cracked his head on a diving board.

The section of the lake next to the clubhouse was roped off, with docks, to form an olympic-sized pool area with deep water diving boards, which was open to all members, but used by the intramural swimming and diving teams, which held regularly scheduled competitive meets with teams from other towns in the nearby counties.

The club was a place of relaxation and leisure, with a wonderful, circular promenade of mown grass, under the cool shade of a magnificent old maple, which opened out onto an area of shallow water and sandy beach. People sat, enjoying the bucolic setting, with their toes in the warm sand, suntanning in deck chairs. They occupied themselves reading their magazines, doing their crochet, and kibitzing, and watching over the smaller children and toddlers, who, between episodic temper tantrums, would placidly build sand castles and play contentedly in the water.

At the far end of the beach was a volleyball court, where adolescents of both genders, through their martial play, established a loose kind of pecking order, and kindled love interests that were said to be subject to further exploration, over in the tall grass of the polo fields out beyond the parking areas. Up around that bank of the lake were a number of modern, green asphalt tennis courts, with a nearby tennis shack, that was occupied by a tennis pro, who was charming, handsome, and athletic. Many of my friends mothers were learning to play tennis.

All of the swimming areas were marked off with ropes on floats, and together only comprised about one-sixth of the surface of the pond. The remaining majority of the peaceful lake was used for fishing and boating.

Our families used to go to the clubhouse one evening a week, for "Movie Night." They used a 16 millimeter, reel-style projector, which made a clattering racket, and one of those frayed and puckered pull-down screens with the silvery surface, that had some small patches stitched into it. The movies came in cans that were wide, round, and flat, made of corrugated gray steel. Once a reel had been loaded onto the projector, and the strand of film threaded in through the contraption, there was an art to setting the tension just right.

During each performance, the brittle film would invariably snap apart at least once or twice. The length left spinning freely on the rotating spool would make an obnoxiously loud, "slap-slap-slap" sound, while the end lodged in front of the high intensity lamp in the projector would suddenly bubble up, causing a moment of hilariously grotesque distortion of whatever image was on the screen, before the celluloid melted and burned out, all together. This would keep the fellow running the projector on his toes.

They'd pause the show, while he used a small, flat splicing board to register the two ends of the film, so he could fasten them back together with adhesive. Every subsequent showing of that particular print of the movie was marred by disconcerting jumps in the action, where sections of film had burned away, and been spliced back together. Sometimes, when it came time to load the second reel of the movie onto the projector, it'd turn out that the other film can contained an entirely different movie, and the whole event would be cancelled mid-way, due to technical difficulties.

my father contended, to his dying day, that what… "kemosabe"… actually meant was "shithead"

When everything went off well, we'd all huddle under thin blankets in beach chairs, with our sodas and popcorns, out on the giant veranda, waiting patiently for dusk, while getting devoured by mosquitos. When the show finally began, we'd end up getting emotionally traumatized by the scratched up and speckled copies of old horror classics, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher", with Vincent Price.

To this day, I've never fully recovered from an unseasonable and ill-considered viewing of "The Blob", with Steve McQueen, which scared me completely witless, for quite some time. I had to get a ride home, with another kid's family on movie night, because, out under the stars of those dark summer skies, with cinematic images flickering freshly through my young mind, the shadows in the hedgerows, and along the stone walls of the little, colonial cemetery on my way home, crawled with all kinds of indistinguishable phantoms, that were far too terrifying to encounter alone in the company of my capricious older brother, Steven.

Our bicycles were a big thing, back then. Maybe the equivalent of ponies in a different time and place. A boy was only as good as his bicycle. We weren't sissies. We'd ride 'em hard' and wipe 'em out, and skin our knees, and cry about it. But, after a pit-stop for a little bit of mercurochrome and some gauze pads and tape, we'd climb right back on them. There was no such thing as a mountain bike, and, as far as I know, helmets hadn't been invented, yet. It was Darwinism in action, you just tried to duck those massive head wounds, and dodge the spinal cord injuries. There was attrition, the weak and feeble fell by the wayside.

We had metal-flake royal blue cruisers with cantilevered frames and coaster brakes. We had yellow sting-rays with vinyl-sparkle banana seats and tassels hanging from the grips. We had two-tone roadsters, with the Sturmey-Archer thumb-switch cable to the three speed hub. Some of the kids had the new ten speeds, with the ram's horn, drop-style handlebars. Rubber, chrome, and steel, with black grease on the sprocket teeth. Freedom, the wind in our faces was all we'd ever want, in the way of boyhood freedom.

We raced down the steepest hills, and caught air over jumps, and sometimes, if we couldn't quite make a turn, we'd crash into the bushes. We popped wheelies and rode them, we'd skid-out in the fresh gravel on newly re-tarred the roads, and we'd chase the municipal tanker trucks at dusk, trying to ride into the bank of fog created as the spray nozzles released a cloud of malathion insecticide they were using to try and control the mosquito problem.

Sometimes, we'd be riding along the road, as speedily as we could manage, and some cranky dog, that had been left carelessly unchained, would take offense at our incursion along the borders of their owner's property. The bellicose cur would race out through a split rail fence, and diligently apply himself in the attempt to harvest our bodies as warning to future trespassers. To negotiate the crisis, we'd have to stand up off the bike seat and pump the pedals, with every single ounce of strength in our being, to go faster than humanly possible, for just a split second, in order to narrowly evade the hell-beast.

I knew that, while it was okay to throw snow-balls, no matter how hard you packed them, it was always unethical to throw an ice-ball made from slush

I was just another kid in suburbia. What did I know? Let's see, I knew about reading, writing, and arithmetic, about making paper airplanes, and shooting spit-balls. I knew what it tasted like to go outside the classroom on a windy day, and clap the blackboard erasers together, to smack the clouds of chalk dust out of them. I knew about having to get up from my desk, at the end of a class, holding my books nonchalantly in front of my lap, trying to conceal the fact that I had popped a pre-pubescent boner, probably all of four and a half inches long, that was harder than STEEL, from observing the young teacher's ass jiggling hypnotically, as she had written our homework assignment out across the blackboard.

I knew that feeling of elation, on that first warm afternoon, after the seasons had finally changed, when I'd get to swap out my heavy winter boots, for the light summer sneakers. I knew about the encircling darkness, on the last day of summer vacation, after being squeezed through one of the exit doors of a department store, in stiff, new, slightly too-large school clothes, that sinking feeling of impending doom, in anticipation of being trapped in the classroom for another school year.

I knew about raking up the fallen leaves, when autumn came, and collecting them, one bed-sheet full at a time, into giant leaf piles, and then jumping into them. I knew about building igloos in the yard, when the snow was just right. I knew that, while it was okay to throw snow-balls, no matter how hard you packed them, it was always unethical to throw an ice-ball made from slush.

I knew how to play "Twister", escape from Chinese hand-cuffs, twirl a hula-hoop, "hang 10" on a primitive plywood skate board, and throw a Wham-O Frisbee. I knew about doing a "gainer" off the high-dive, and riding mini-bikes on the trails through the woods, and terrorizing small creatures by way of pellet rifle, fishing pole, and butterfly net. I knew about flying kites, and sharpening pocket knives, and making sling-shots, and building camp-fires. I knew about finding cellar-holes in the buff-red meadow grass around ancient, ruined farms, and locating old bottle dumps. I knew about digging up all kinds of antique bottles, and then smashing them on the rocks for an uncontrolled and sickly thrill.

I joined the Cub Scouts, and solemnly pledged to "Do my best, and to obey the Law of the Pack." I subscribed to the scouting magazine, "Boys Life", and learned, from the classified ads, about the 90 pound weakling who had become Charles Atlas. I also sent away for Sea Monkeys, and read about raising chinchillas, for fun and profit, in your spare time.

I was captivated by folk lore about the American Indians. I made spears and tomahawks and feathered headbands. I put on war paint. My dad took me to the Tandy leather craft store in White Plains, and bought me moccasins and a piece of buck skin. I made a loin cloth, and ran around, thusly attired, in the woods by our house. My father declared that I was the first Yiddish speaking Indian, and dubbed me, "Chief Ma-Shu-Ga-Na."

My older brother introduced me to the hobby shop, where we would spend hours making model biplanes and rockets from balsa wood, cardboard and colored tissue paper. It took a lot of dexterity to do well, and I was never as good at it as Steven was.

"Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."

After the rockets were completed, and all the glue and paints had dried, we would buy explosive charges for them, and go out into an empty parking lot, and launch them into the sky. When they reached the top of their trajectory, if we had made them well, the nose cone would pop off, still attached by a strip of rubber band, and a small parachute in the payload would deploy, carrying the craft back down to earth.

The other thing Steve introduced me to was slot car racing. We pleaded for slot car kits at Christmas time, and built a little track in our basement. It was on a piece of plywood that was up on sawhorses, and we modeled a whole realistic environment around it, with painted styrofoam hills, popsicle stick bridges, glue and sand gravel pits and miniature trees, ponds and houses with fake grass lawns.

But the real fun came when our parents took us to the big track at the Elmsford Raceway, which was the regional slot-car Mecca. The whole place smelled like an electrical fire, from the magnetic contacts on the undersides of the cars, sparking along the metallic track rails. There, we raced our vehicles against stiffer competition on larger tracks, where the cars could take bigger turns and build up more speed. There, we found an escape from the hum-drum of the ordinary, in the adrenaline rush of powerful machines, even though it was all in miniature. It was our first inkling of the Hunter S. Thompson philosophy, "Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."

I spent a lot of time in front of the television. Hours and hours. It was one of my favorite things to do. I knew about Superman, and Batman, and the Green Hornet. I knew more than most kids about the Lone Ranger, because my father contended, to his dying day, that he was privy to incontrovertible evidence that what "kemosabe", (Tonto's unvarying moniker for his white boss-man), actually meant was "shithead", in some obscure native American dialect.

I knew about Lucille Ball, and Jackie Gleason, and "The Ed Sullivan Show". "Leave It To Beaver", "The Andy Griffith Show", and "Gilligan's Island". I knew about "Star Trek", "Outer Limits", and "The Twilight Zone."

The 1960's were like the renaissance for artificial, processed foods. I knew about Swanson TV dinners, and Fluffernutter, Tang, Pop-Tarts, Shake 'n Bake, Hamburger Helper, Jiffy-Pop, Cool-Whip, and fried Oscar-Mayer baloney sandwiches on Wonder Bread. I was personally acquainted with Chef Boy-ar-dee, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Baby Ruth, and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Because I was from a family with some off-center ethnicity, I also knew about matzos, bagles and lox, kasha varnishkes, gefilte fish, hamantashen, kreplach, and halvah. Of equal importance were mangoes, avocados, platanos maduros, bacalao, cuchifritos, mofongo, and arroz con pollo. This was in the era before multi-culturalism became chic and marketable. The social imperative during the time of my youth was to fit in, to blend. Assimilation was key. These foods were not sold in the supermarkets, nor served in the restaurants of tri-state suburbia in the 1960's. They were novelties, seen as freak curiosities by the WASP mainstream.

One Saturday evening, my dad loaded the whole family into the station wagon, and drove us about five miles into Mount Kisco. He was excited. He had heard about an unusual concept in take-out hamburgers, something called "fast-food", that was making headlines in the news. Originally from southern California, but franchised out of Illinois. The prediction was that it was going to bring a new freedom from kitchen detail to stove-bound parents across the nation.

We pulled up to a chrome and glass diner featuring a sign supported by two golden arches. It was called "McDonalds", service was available at the counter, or through a drive-up window. We went inside and got these gristly, slime-coated hamburgers called "Big-Macs". One of the grossest things about them was that all the condiments, that we served separately when we made hamburgers at home, were carelessly mushed together. The mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard, the lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onions, all mixed into a single, nauseating concoction.

What it meant to me was that my parents were disillusioned and afraid, and the world was a scary place that was out of control

In one of a life-long series of ongoing prognostications regarding future social trends, based on the first-hand data that our field-tested meal resulted in my families' experiencing six simultaneous cases of indigestion and heartburn, I announced my belief that the chain was destined to failure. At the time of this writing, some forty years later, the McDonalds Corporation serves 47 million hamburgers a day, worldwide. So much for vision.

My father had a Fisher hi-fi in the living room, with an array of glass electronics tubes sticking up behind the faceplate. They all lit up, when you turned the thing on. My favorite musical groups at the time were Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the Monkees. I listened to Allen Sherman comedy records. I listened to Burl Ives singing family favorites. Given the mixed ethnicity, "West Side Story" was really big in our house. I listened to my father's Glenn Campbell and Johnny Cash records. I listened to my mother's Harry Bellafonte and Nat King Cole records.I listened to my older brother's early Beatles albums.

I remember one hot summer day, at Windmill Club, in mid-August of 1969, when I was 10 years old. While the heavy sky threatened rain, all of the lifeguards, who were mostly high school seniors, left their posts in the middle of the morning, without asking for permission. In a single wave, they ran to their cars and fled the premises, heedless of the good-natured pleadings and angry entreaties of the club management. I asked one of the older kids what was going on. "They're going up to Woodstock!", he said, excitement in his voice. "Oh, yeah", I said, "What's Woodstock?"

I had a vague sense that some momentous social upheaval was taking place, as though the magnetic poles of the earth were shifting, ever so slightly. I went into the rec-room, with some of the other little kids, as a light drizzle began to fall from the sky. We put quarters into the jukebox, and played the "Derek and the Dominoes" song, "Layla", over, and over again. My nose stung from the smell of the pucks of disinfectant, hung on wires in the urinals of the changing rooms across the hall. I got my ass kicked at the ping-pong table, again, by an aggressive and ill-mannered, freckle-faced little prick in a blue nylon football jersey, who held his paddle upside down, "Chinese style."

first thing, you'll lose your wallet. Guaranteed. Then, your schmeckle will turn purple, and after that, it'll fall right off of you

I remember watching the guys who were playing three card monty, or the shell game, on the top of an upturned cardboard carton. There was a small crowd of people, standing in front of them. The main guy had a very artful way of shuffling around the three overturned halves of walnut shells, one of which concealed a small, round pea. He'd alternate between rapidly zig-zagging them back and forth, and halting abruptly, so customers could make their choices. Then, he'd reveal the correct answer, and money would change hands.

Some of the onlookers were betting, and took turns guessing which shell contained the pea. Some were winning, and some were losing. I found that I could continually pick the shell with the pea under it. I asked my father if we could bet a nickle, because, for whatever reason, I was able to keep up with the movement of the shells, to see where the pea was, every single time.

My father explained to me that the customer who was winning was called a shill, and was the partner-in-crime of the guy handling the shells. Although they acted like they had never seen each other before, they were in cahoots, and were actually working together.

He said," Alley-boo, this game is older than time. It's rigged. They'll only let you get ahead until you bet some real money, and then they'll force you to lose through sleight of hand. It's a game that's impossible to win. These guys are street hustlers, and the way they steal your money is by turning your hunger to their advantage. That's the lesson of the con-artist. The only way they can get over on you, is by using your own greed against you."

I remember seeing men in business suits, who looked just like my neighbor's fathers, back in Armonk. They looked completely normal, like anybody's father, but they were coming out of dinghy, dark, triple-X porno theaters, right in the middle of the week-day. I was shocked, I couldn't believe it.

I remember zaftig black women, with long legs, big lips painted red, garish blue and gold mascara, and giant, curly false eyelashes, wearing outfits that combined shocking pink hot pants with day-glo green, wide-mesh halter tops, and 6" platform boots. They had absolutely eye-popping breasts and behinds spilling out of their clothes in all directions. There was a middle aged, skinny black guy, with a waxed mustache, all duded up in a custom-tailored three piece suit, made of blue denim with rows of silver rings sewn into it. He had a matching hat, platform boots, and Lincoln Continental. That's right, a big, old boat of a car with a blue denim paint job, right up to the chrome-spoked fifth wheel on the trunk cover.

My dad told me that the women were "whoo-ahs", and that the guy was their pimp, and that the car was his pimp-mobile. The women would sashay, with the maximum amount of swiveling possible, over from the pimp-mobile, on out to the corner of the block, and then back again.

My dad saw my jaw drop, and he told me, "Son, you go with one of them broads, first thing, you'll lose your wallet. Guaranteed. Then, your schmeckle will turn purple, and after that, it'll fall right off of you.

I'm gonna guarantee you, as your father. There's not a shred of truth to it. It's complete bullshit. You can just let it go."

I remember seeing a sallow, manic street preacher, with unkempt hair, crazy eyes, and a long, greasy beard, who looked like Rasputin. He was standing up on a small raised platform, shouting without interruption into a microphone that was hooked up to a distorted little amplifier. He was quoting chapter and verse from the bible, constantly returning to the refrain, "The end is near! Ye sinners, repent, for the world is going to end!" He had specific dates for this prediction, written out on some sheets of large paper, in a dense and incoherent jumble of biblical quotations and numbers, next to him there on an easel.

My father saw that I was unaccountably disturbed with this news about the eminent demise of the world. He took me aside, and spoke definitively on the subject of doomsday predictions. "Alan", he said, "Trust me. It's nonsense. Those guys have been spouting that same crap since I was a little boy myself. The only thing that changes are the dates, they keep setting new dates. Some justify it with the bible, others say it'll be the atomic bomb. One thing I'm gonna tell you for sure is, they're both wrong. It's not gonna happen."

"You may have a lot of worries over the course of your lifetime, but this never has to be one of them.

"The thing is, it's a free country. So, any maniac can get up on a soapbox with a microphone and say anything he wants to. But, you don't have to listen to him. It's lunacy. He's out of his mind. They've been saying that forever, and there's always going to be someone who will keep saying it, forever. But, they're wrong."

because by getting him moving, they were trying to keep him from going into respiratory failure

I remember a few disheveled black kids in their late teens on the sidewalk by a closed shop front. Oblivious to the workaday world passing by, right before them. They were picking up a fallen comrade, laying unconscious in the doorway. He was a stocky kid with a short, nappy afro, in a striped tee shirt and black slacks, who had white foam drooling out of his mouth and onto his chin. They had thrown his arms over the shoulders of the friends on either side of him, to try to stand him up and make him walk, because by getting him moving, they were trying to keep him from going into respiratory failure. My father told me that those kids were nothing but hop-heads. He said they were worthless junkies.

I remember seeing an ugly, old fat man, who was filthy, dressed in the torn and stained rags of what had once been an overcoat and parts of different business suits. He was sitting flat, right on the sidewalk, on a partially unfolded newspaper, in an acrid puddle of his own urine. I couldn't tell if he were black or white, he had big knots of matted hair, resembling squirrel tails, on his head and in his thick, wide beard, He looked dazed and incoherent. Scattered around him were a few shopping bags filled with assorted flotsam and balled up rags. There was an empty liquor bottle beside him.

My father told me that the guy was a boozehound, a lush, who wasn't able to stop drinking. He told me that the guy would probably never stop drinking, right up until the day when he'd finally die, alone and unloved, like a dog in the street.

He drank full tumblers of milk in the belief that they'd salve his whisky ulcers

If the boys got out of hand, he'd give 'em a couple of belts. If he got too drunk, he might say something inappropriate about his teenaged daughter's figure. If he was in the doghouse with Vangie, he'd clean up his act for a little while, and woo her back with remorseful apologies, and wishful promises, and flowers, and chocolates, and his usual comic charm. He spoke in a classic old New York vernacular, and pronounced the words, "toilet", and "oil", as "terlet", and "erl."

He drank full tumblers of milk in the belief that they'd salve his whisky ulcers. He used them to coat his stomach, in preparation for the next, inevitable, incoming volley. He carried every cent he owned in a money roll, with the big denominations up top, so it bulged in his front pants pocket. He'd blow the whole wad at the track once in a while, but Vangie managed to keep the family together by bringing in a steady paycheck as a waitress.

He held lit cigarettes between his teeth while he made funny faces, cracked jokes, and showed us card tricks. When we were real young, he used to flex an enormous biceps,"Muscle Beach" style, and lean down. He'd have us come over and sit on it like we were on a swing set, and he'd lift us up 'till his upper arm was parallel to the floor, and we were a good five feet off the ground, dangling our little shoes.

He had an unbelievable appetite. He could eat six pork chops with two baked potatoes, a whole box of frozen peas, and a quarter of a chocolate cake, along with a quart of milk, and then he'd stink up the bathroom so it made our eyes burn. He was a beast.

The neighborhood that my cousins lived in was bounded on one side by Westchester Avenue, on another by White Plains Road, and Bruckner Boulevard ran right through the middle. It was a scary place, that gave meaning to the term, "urban blight." It was surrounded by low-income housing projects. Row after row of medium-rise apartment buildings, framed out in extruded aluminum, decorated with drab geometric blocks in 1970's colors, like burnt orange, harvest gold, and avocado green. The windows were filmed with grime, from the air pollution.

In the summertime, those buildings were stifling hot. We'd see open window after anonymous, open window, as though the inhabitants were looking to somehow escape from those inhospitable interiors, but there was nowhere to go. In the windows, flower pot after flower pot, and drying washrags, and Virgin Mary statuettes, and one depressive, featureless countenance after another.

During the years when my cousins lived there, the whole area deteriorated. It had once been an integrated, majority white, working class neighborhood. It went into a long period of decline, and suffered from a break down in the social structure, with continually worsening conditions in the projects. It became a primarily black and Hispanic community, plagued by the many social ills that come along with extreme poverty and neglect. Buildings became abandoned, and there was an epidemic of drug trafficking and addiction, violent crime, prostitution, and vandalism. Substandard medical care, education, nutrition, and high rates of out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy, along with an upsurge of Welfare fraud, all compounded the problems.

It was a serious, full-contact sport. You never saw that in the suburbs. Their game bore no resemblance to the polite basketball we played back home

There were no trees or lawns as I knew them, just anemic little plots of grass with weak little saplings, torn chain link fences, and a new kind of vandalism, called "graffiti." A street artist would spray paint his signature "tag" on the sides of subway cars, or on traffic signs, abandoned autos, the concrete partitions in the playgrounds, and elevator walls. Down the side streets you could see cars that had been stolen, stripped, and left up on cement blocks, with the wheels gone. Sometimes, arsonists torched them to cinders, which added a whole other element of post-apocalyptic despair. The street gutters were littered with hundreds of little, glassine envelopes, small rubber bands, and discarded syringes, and sparkled with thousands of tiny, cube-shaped fragments of broken glass, from shattered car windows.

It was common knowledge that drug dealers and addicts were holed up in some of the abandoned buildings. These hideouts were called, "Shooting Galleries", the Bronx version of an opium den. They were said to consist of filthy, disintegrating apartment rooms where the walls were crumbling, the windows were broken, and there were no lights, water, or heat. Junkies could go and swap out stolen property for dope, lay up on rotten mattresses, and get high for a few days, until their money ran out. If they overdosed, their blue bodies were put out on the streets before dawn.

On the playgrounds in the projects, we would watch the black youths playing basketball. The courts were rolled asphalt with faintly painted boundary lines. The backboards were burnished, rusty steel, and the hoops had chain-mesh nets, or none at all. The kids wore wristbands and necklaces and stocking caps or Afro-picks in their hair. They had all kinds of light-colored scars visible on their dark brown skin. They were muscular, and agile, and fierce, intensely competitive, with a leaping, war-like aggression that was completely foreign to me. Those kids could fly, they would grab the rim and rebound, they would dunk, and sometimes they'd swish the ball from all the way out at the three point line. It was a serious, full-contact sport.

You never saw that in the suburbs. Their game bore no resemblance to the polite basketball we played back home, with our glossy, maple-plank gymnasium floors, and folding bleachers, plexi-glass back-boards, cotton hoop-nets, and the buzzing, blinking-lightbulb time clocks.

I remember one afternoon, when just my mother and I went down to the Bronx, to visit Vangie and Danny. It was about a 45 minute drive from the suburbs. After getting off the parkway, the neighborhoods changed quickly. We drove by the residential towers in "Co-op City", on the Hutchinson River, in Baychester, and then passed Flushing Meadow Park, where we could see that 12 story, stainless steel relic, the spherical Globitron, standing on the old site of the 1964 World's Fair. There were great views of the Throgs Neck, and Whitestone Bridges, out over the East River.

When we pulled up to Randall Avenue and parked, my mom suggested that I go on down the street to Danny's school, which was just about to let out, so I could meet him, and walk him home, and she could have a few minutes alone with Vangie. I walked the couple of blocks, and as I got to the foot of the long, wide stairs at the school building, I could hear the bell ringing loudly.

The double doors suddenly burst open, and out tumbled a noisy stampede of children. There were a couple of kids in front of the pack, leading the wave. They were engaged in a wrestling, rolling brawl, a fist-fight. As they approached me, I saw that the smaller of the two kids was Fotzen. I backed off, out of panic, afraid of getting hurt. I was soft and sheltered, from an all-white community, and this was a tough, mixed race neighborhood with heavy ghetto attitude. I felt like a coward.

Danny spotted me, and broke away from the tumult. He had a bloody nose and a fat lip, and was crying and angry, but I noticed that he wasn't afraid. I asked him if he was scared of the black kid he'd been fighting with. He told me no, but that the black kid was a bully, and stronger than him. He said you had to be on the mark when you tried to punch a black kid in the face, because, if you missed, their heads were hard as rocks, and rougher than a brillo pad. He told me you could really hurt your hand, if you weren't careful.

We got back to the apartment, and though he was holding on to the grievance, he calmed down. That night, Vangie asked us to stay for dinner. She always worked in little, high-class Italian joints, and she was good at cooking Italian food. When Gaggy got home from work, and heard what had happened to Danny, he flamed up. He knew the father of the kid who'd smacked Danny around, they happened to live in the same building. He sent his next biggest son, Stephen, who was built like a fire-plug, downstairs to straighten the kid out.

Gaggy had a system for keeping his children safe in the neighborhood. The older ones were all taught to look out for the younger ones. If anyone beat up on one of the siblings, it was the job of the next older brother to go out and find the perpetrator. This wasn't about having a conversation, and it wasn't a debate. The older brother would grab and physically overwhelm the kid. After subduing him, instead of letting up, he'd get on the kids neck, and ratchet down to choke him out. When the kid was good and scared, and nearly unconscious, he'd let up, and dictate a truce.

From that time forward, not only was the offending party never to molest the younger brother again, but in the event that anyone else did, he was going to be held accountable. The Callaghan's were going to come out looking for him. Only, the next time it would get ugly.

In that way, a former assailant would become a future body guard. In exchange for his allegiance, the Callaghan boys would take care of him, as well. If he found himself in trouble, he could come to them for help. Gaggy was cunning. He used jungle diplomacy, along with brute strength, to barter loyalties, and succeeded in creating a circle of protection for his little tribe, when they were out in the streets.

On this particular night, Stephen came back a few minutes later with a bloody lip. It hadn't gone so well, the kid's older brother had gotten involved. Gaggy listened from the dinner table, with his stockinged feet up on a chair. He started to get pissed off. He shouted down the back hall for Franky, who looked like he was chiseled out of granite. He told Franky to go get the thing straightened out. Franky was gone for ten minutes. When he got back, his shirt was torn, same story.

Apparently the kid had another older brother. Gaggy hit the roof. He sent Joey, who was a monster, built like a brick shit-house, downstairs. Ten more minutes, Joey came back, messed up, same story. Gaggy listened to him calmly. He took the box of cigarettes out of the sleeve of his white tee shirt, and put it down on the table. Then he rolled both sleeves up to his shoulders, and stood up. He slipped on his loafers, broke a smile, interlaced his fingers, and, stretching his arms, cracked his knuckles out in front of his waist. He said, "Aw right, I get da pic-cha. Youse guys finish yer sup-pa, and I"ll go get dis ding figya'd out. I'll be back in about two shakes." He went on out, swinging the door shut behind him.

Ten minutes later, he let himself back into the apartment. Without bothering to lock the front door, he sat down at the table. He was a little wound up. He took a few deep breaths, and abruptly hollered, "Dat mutha-fuckuh!"

Then, he calmed down for a little while. We were all wondering what happened. Holding his rectangular, silver Zippo cigarette lighter in the web of his thumb, he effortlessly popped the cap off of a clear glass bottle of beer. " Awrighdy, Fotzen", he said, "yez all set. Dey ain't gonna give youse no maw problems no maw. I hadda grab'd da' old man by da' shirt front, and duked 'em in da' noggin a couple, two, chree times, 'till he hadda, whatcha' call a, complete change a at-a-tood. Yez all set." He cracked his bright eyed smile, winked, and poured his beer in a glass.

This incident always reminded me of that spoof of the 23rd Psalm, that was in circulation at the time. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, because I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley!" I knew enough to know that my uncle Gaggy couldn't possibly be THE meanest son of a bitch, but I had no doubt that he was one of them.

Danny used to spend a couple of weeks with my family in Armonk each summer, a sort of informal, "Fresh Air Child." He introduced me to a different set of skills than they'd covered in the Cub Scouts. He taught me how to climb a chain link fence with my fingers and toes, and how to sprint down long flights of steel and concrete steps, in the apartment building stairwells, by using a fixed stride and bouncing gait. He taught me how to throw rocks with more destructive force than I had previously thought possible, how to make a pendant with the fangs from a dog, and how to mark and palm playing cards.

He showed me how to make my face go completely blank, and how to stare without expression at another kid, until they looked away first. He taught me how to slide a candy bar up my sleeve at the five and dime, how to pick a cable-style combination bicycle lock, and how to hang and jump, from a second story window, without getting hurt.

He showed me how to slip a door hasp with a credit card, and how to get into a locked car with just a coat hanger. He explained to me what bolt cutters were, and what they were good for. He also provided some early enlightenment on the subject of sex education, and acquainted me with another meaning for the word, "pig", which was what they called the policemen in his neighborhood.

He wasn't appropriately socialized for Armonk. If he saw a bunch of kids playing, he would go get right in the middle of them, even if they were bigger than him, and grab away their football. "Come on", he'd say, "Let's start our own game." I'd have to hint to him that it was bad form, and suggest he give it back. A couple of times, I had to return bicycles to the bike rack at Windmill Club, under cover of darkness, where Danny had liberated them, earlier in the day.

Curiously, he wasn't used to being in a place without street lamps, and he was scared to go out for walks along the wooded streets with us, at night. He didn't recognize stars in the night sky, he'd never seen them before. We lived only thirty five miles apart, but in two different universes.

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