The Apocryphal Penguin

In response to this post, Mrsfabp mentioned that I was getting nostalgic in my blogging and asked me to write about an experience I had as a very young child. In the interest of full disclosure, this story is possibly apocryphal. Wikipedia defines the term apocrypha as a word “used with various meanings, including "hidden", "esoteric", "spurious", "of questionable authenticity", and "Christian texts that are not canonical". So in essence what I am saying is that this story is handed down in my family as history, canon, with no one to actually be able to verify its veracity. I will relate it and several other stories under the “Apocryphal Penguin” heading as such, making no claims that they are 100% accurate. If any of my siblings read this and make comments / corrections/ or have different memories, I will share them too. And so now without further ado:

The Trike and Stoop Challenge

When I was very young, we lived one block from where I spent most of my growing up years. Actually it was about 300 feet as the two different backyards connected with each other. This house, typical for the Queens neighborhood (think Archie Bunker) had both a front stoop and a back stoop. For those who might not know, stoop is New Yorkese for a set of stairs leading up to or down from a door. The one on the front of the house was brick. The one on the back into the yard was wood.

Now as story is told in my family, I was riding a tricycle around the house and for some reason decided to ride out the back door into the yard. Unfortunately at age 3-4 my grasp of physics and gravity was not good and I plunged down the stairs into the back yard. Shaken up but not deterred, I continued the ride on the back patio. Again for full disclosure purposes, I do not remember this trike or that fall. I do remember the house and the two stoops, the back yard, and have some vague memories of living there, but very vague. It was not the first time I fell flat on my ass, nor would it be the last either.

Our dog Blackie

Also around this same time, we had a dog, a mutt named I believe “Blackie”. He was small, wiry, hyper and all black. Again, I do not remember him at all and most of the things I will tell you are from verbal history passed down through the family. Is it true? Who knows? Exaggerated? Probably, but it is still family history none the less. My father and grandmother always insisted that he was a very smart dog, you know, the kind that did tricks and such. I can remember seeing some old home movies where he would roll over or sit motionless on a kitchen chair as it was lofted over my dad’s and uncle’s head. But then the dog did a not so smart thing, he bit me. Again I don’t remember this at all. You might think I would have held this trauma memory forever but no, I’ve got nothing. Anyway, I understand that my parent’s reaction was quick and decisive, Blackie was sent to “the farm’ the next day. Years later my grandmother continued to say he went to “the farm”, a euphemism for “being put down” a euphemism for the ultimate punishment, but again no memories of this except for a few frames in some old home movies.

More stories in a later blog entry...

Gangs of New York – The Lesser Known History

In Martin Scorsese’s epic film “Gangs of New York” he offers an historical perspective about the impact of gang activities in NYC. Well he may have missed one or two gangs of interested including the dangerous 215^th street gang. Yes, we were ruthless thrill seekers, hell bent on getting into trouble and causing “agita” for our parents. For the uninformed, agita is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “An Italian-American word for heartburn, acid indigestion, an upset stomach or, by extension, a general feeling of upset.” Yep, our gang was a regular source of “agita” for our parents.

We were a small gang, only 4 regular members, which was probably good as if there were more of us, the trouble would have been out of control. Four evil doers, criminals just waiting to happen. Besides myself, there was Mike, my brother, the quiet one. Tom, our friend from around the corner, the one with access to the explosives. Then there was Tino, the Cuban kid from up the block. He did a lot of the dirty work but he squealed al lot it you leaned on him just a little. The following is a list of a few of our escapades. This is not a complete summary of everything that we did, I ain’t no stool pigeon, but is just a taste of the mischief we got into.

When skateboarding was becoming the rage, we built our own from boards and taken-apart metal skates and found the nearest sidewalk hill to go down. Unfortunately for the man who lived in one of the apartments, the metal wheels made a terrible racket on the sidewalks and sidewalk cracks. This was especially disruptive when you worked all night and slept during the day and were skateboarding right outside your bed room window. He would regularly open the window to ask, plead, demand and then yell at the top of his lungs for us to leave. We only heard him when he yelled. Parental agita.

Growing up in Queens, we had a house that was built on two house lots so it had a big backyard. My dad built us a small fort, backed by storage shed. We would climb up a tree onto the top of the shed where we would hurl epitaphs, dirt bombs and eventually fire crackers. Parental agita.

Tom lived up the street and we often retreated to his house for board games on summer afternoons. His dad looked like a Mafia soldier, fallen off a charm bracelet, and his rough voice scared me. When we made too much noise he would send us outside to prowl around his yard. This included peeking into neighbor’s windows to watch them do housework in a semi clothed or rather unclothed fashion. She would yell and pull down her shade. Paretal agita.

Now Tom had great access to stuff. He had an older brother, much older and lots of “cousins”. Invariably this meant that during the summer we would get access to high quality fireworks – fire crackers, cherry bombs and M-80’s, not just the little kiddies sparklers, we had explosives. Tom also taught us the trick of the smoldering rope, whose end could be used to light said explosives. So here are the four of us, running around the neighborhood with smoking, smoldering lengths of rope. Nothing was safe in our presence. We blew up model cars and boats, garbage cans, tin cans, plastic cups and bowls. All just to watch them fly. One time we were spotted by someone while blowing stuff up and he yelled at us, the “guys with the big fuse in your hands.” We ran into basement of our home and hid out for a while but we were lucky that time. Parental agita.

Finally, we had a little wood stove in our basement. My dad would burn some wood scraps in it, to help warm up and dry out the basement as well as get rid of scrap wood. Well when he was not around we took control of the incinerator business. If it was flammable, we stuffed it inside and burned it. Later found out that aresol cans held flammable liquids and sprayed them into the stove. How we did not blow ourselves, the house or the stove apart, I do not know. Parental agita once again.

I promise there will be more installments about the exploits of the 215^th Street gang!