The Canonical Penguin: Exploits of the 215th Street Gang – Football and the Stool Pigeon

What is a story about gangs without some blood being spilled or a stool pigeon being fingered? Well, our 215th Street Gang had its share of both.

We lived on a relatively quiet block in Queens. With the Police Station just down the block from us, parking was always at a premium but the multiple driveways saw to it that there was space in the streets for football and stickball and stoopball. Although not hemmed in by professional sports timetables, essentially we played baseball all summer and football in the spring and fall. This first story is about the football games we played.

Essentially we played a lot of 2 on 2 and 3 on 3 touch football games on the street. If not playing games, we were practicing our plays for future games. If there were more people, we would head to the park, but the street was fine for us generally. We were usually careful about the parked cars and the cars speeding down the street (we would call “Heads Up! when one approached). One late morning sticks out in my mind. Our friend Tom was the thin, quick, wide receiver type. He fancied himself a wide receiver for the NY Jets and came out to prove it on every play. One time he streaked down the sideline and a pass was thrown to him, a bit too far. He used a burst of speed to get in position to dive, full out to catch it. What a play!

(not an instant replay of Tommy's dive, but an incredible simulation for the reader!)

Unfortunately we were in the street, not in a park and Tom slammed on to the concrete and blacktop and slid maybe ten feet or so. When he got up, he had scraped enough skin off to build us another kid to play football with. He went home and wore the bandages of honor for weeks after that.

As a gang we were always looking for retribution. A neighbor across the street was a bit mean, yelling at us when we chased a ball onto the sidewalk in front of his house. I mean was he afraid we would hurt his sidewalk? So we devised a plan to get back at him. We each would walk passed his little plot of grass in front of his house and throw pebbles and scraps of paper on his lawn. My sister joined in the fun and threw some plastic beads or something on his grass and got CAUGHT! Our parents were so disappointed in us but we quickly positioned all the blame on my sister, letting her take the fall for the crime. That is how crime families roll.

One other nice thing about living in a neighborhood like we did was that there were a number of garden apartments in the area and there were alleys that went between backyards and the next block. This led to the door bell game. Go into a garden apartment alcove with 4 or 5 apartments, ring the doorbells and dash out through to the next block. We never waited around to see if anyone answered the door, preferring to just think we were being a pain in the ass, but enjoyed the escape even more that way. Old people, young couples, upstairs, downstairs, it did not matter. We just did the ring and run. Looking back at this now, it seems so childish. But then again, we were children. Just innocent childhood pranks.

(These are stories about things that actually happened with plenty of witnesses. It has passed from the apocryphal to canonical in nature. Wiki says of canon – “material that is considered to be "genuine", "something that actually happened", or can be directly referenced as material produced by the original author or creator.”)