Looking back, Jack, at the time didn't give too much thought to being poor. He hadn't even considered until recently just how slighted he had been. Jack's dad had married "Duxie" who had a daughter, Rose, who was three years Jack's senior. All his youth had been spent living with his grandmother, Mrs. Hattie Lee, a Christian lady whom he loved dearly. Some misunderstanding had caused Jack's mother to leave him as an infant, with his father. Jack never really knew but did not believe his parents were ever married.
He just went along with the program. Again, he had as much as anyone else that he hung out with and the word destitution was unknown. But Hattie, as his dad called her, never allowed any of the things other guys got away with. Curfew was a little after six o'clock, no movies, no card playing. Nights were spent listening to radio shows such as Fibber Mc Gee & Molly, The Shadow, The Lone Ranger & Superman. Sundays were spent in church. As much as 14 or 15 hours a day. Jack joined the church, was baptized and became secretary of the Sunday School. He and several church buddies spent a good deal of time wondering where were the pastor's kids. They numbered about twelve and only the youngest few ever attended.
David and Jack spent much time peeping through the toilet keyhole seeing nothing but letting their vivid inventiveness cause some erections that Jack one day personally and privately discovered how to orchestrate into an ejaculation. It started so innocently, as he took his throbbing hardness and merely rubbed it as he had always done. Standing at the sink in the toilet he had just been peeping, he wet his member. Ecstasy flooded his brain as the youngster squeezed and manipulated his meat. Larger and larger it grew, as the blood filled each vein and capillary in this gorgeous, growing pistol. As euphoria built to an unbearable height, Jack’s hand movements suddenly stopped. His body shook violently and slightly scared Jack as his penis pulsed and spit a whitish,watery fluid.
So this was " dogwater", the stuff the older fellows talked about. It was the very first time for Jack's self-gratification. At the time he felt he had truly found something atypical, surely it was for him, how was he to know that every other boy his age had already started. Jack also promised that this feeling was so good he swore to soon repeat this act. He did, in fact so often that when he heard the old tale about hair growing on the palms of your hands, Jack checked his hands everyday. He was not very perturbed and practiced his new-found game daily.
Because of all the church going, cap pistols and guns in general were sacrosanct. A huge statue down at De Witt Clinton Park, the local ball field where Jack honed his baseball skills, depicted two WWI soldiers, one with a rifle. This rifle, he was resolute to one night make his prized dominion. Being bronze it probably weighted a ton. Who knew? Who cared? This lack of access to guns has, Jack believes caused his intrigue for guns today.
At an early age Jack had developed this thing for hanging with the bigger boys who called him by his nickname "Boo."
P.S. 58 had this strange type of class that until then he'd never heard of before or since. Mack "Peaches " Rodgers, "Bumpy" Peace and others had "Boo" as their guy to equalize a particular situation. These CRMD, ( Class for the Retarded and Mental Development ) classmates would slap Robert Brown’s bald pate and he would grow vexed. The loud slapping sound they would make was almost repulsive, but with them being much older and supposedly slightly retarded there wasn’t anything for Brown to do. In his futility he would swing at them but they would hold him off with one hand and tell Jack to "[sic]" em At this point in time he was proper size for his age and didn’t especially like Robert anyhow so Jack had a built in excuse to kick his ass. Jack became sort of a mascot for these older boys.
Donald Watson, attended Sacred Heart, a parochial school. Not many blacks could afford to send their kids to Catholic school so Donald had many white friends. He began to play hockey with them, go to many New York Rangers games and played hockey pretty well. So many games in fact that guards started letting him go into the dressing room. Donald became an unofficial mascot and would bring home slightly used hockey sticks and sooner or later Jack would inherit them. Since toys were nil and non, he somehow obtained one skate and played this way. Eventually Donald gave him one more but he never learned to skate well. Since they lived in close propinquity to Radio City and Rockefeller Center, they would skate over nightly to skate on the smooth slate installed there.
One night on the way over there, Donald and Jack hitched a ride on the back of a crosstown bus. Some type of digging had left this slight excavation and Jack's skates had the misfortune to meet this gravel filled hole. He fell and Watson saw this and started cracking up, until a policeman, on traffic duty in front of Madison Square Garden whacked him across the butt with his night-stick. It was Jack's turn to laugh. Donald and Jack spent winter evenings downstairs in the subway entrance where Jack would dress in goalie equipment and Donald would shoot the puck at him from close range. Jack's hands developed lightning speed as he had to catch the puck to avoid being hit. One night they observed Sonny’s brother, a drunk himself, mug and roll another drunk. This happened across the platform from them and they feared Charley may have seen them seeing him.
Donald Watson changed for the worst and Jack heard he was shot and killed entering an apartment from a fire escape, the apartment nor the fire escape belonged to Watson. Jack thinks if Mr.Watson had kept playing hockey with the white boys he might otherwise be alive. But derision from his black counterparts and like Jack, a lack of true social contact, forced him to start hanging with Bumpy, Mack and the boys. A gang called the Scimitars (Jack looked this word up and wondered who, with an average gang IQ of 75 could have come up with this) was formed and became both Donald's and Jack's cousin Harold’s problems.
Sonny Thompson’s place could be seen from Jack's bedroom. He sometimes would try to catch a glimpse of Julia, Sonny’s sister, whom they called Jew Girl. Julia would not even have won a family good looks contest but she was a live girl, something rare in Jack's young life. Sonny’s father Charley, rented horse and wagon rigs to sell fruits and vegetables and occasionally to whitewash someone’s basement. This procedure consisted of, mixing lime and water and using it much as you would paint.
Sonny, Robert Brown, Bobby Watson, Donald’s younger brother, and Jack would sometimes climb from the top of their building, at least 65 ft. above the concrete pavement, around a barbed-wire fence to enter the school, P. S. 58 that they attended. Their booty? Maybe 20 cents from the collected milk money. Maybe a turtle someone had left as a class pet. The risk of falling never then entered their minds. Might they risk it now? Probably not, Just as the grabbing of rides on backs of trolleys, buses or taxis would now be considered far too risky. Who knew then?
Food at Hattie's house consisted of a one course meal. If she had collard greens, then greens, it was. A piece of fatback mainly for the adults unless one was lucky enough to sneak a little from under the pile. Same fare with neck-bones, black-eyed peas, lima beans and nothing but lima beans. Nevertheless, who knew? When Jack mentions this now, his lovely wife says that, she , rarely had only a pot of this or a pot of that. They mostly enjoyed balanced, full course meals.
At this time Jack is maybe nine or ten, hustling nickels and dimes. Outside of the Capitol Theater, which hosted live acts, he shined the shoes of many celebrities. Some other methods were quite clever and some were degrading. Opening taxi doors and helping people with packages at the post office across the street sometimes netted thirty or forty cents. He would then head to Broadway to the hotdog stand. It staved off the hunger enough so he wouldn't have to dig too deeply into the gourmet pot of potpourri.
Shoe shining was another depressing way but it too, fought off hunger and helped delay diving into that dreaded pot.
This page was last updated on 01/23/03.
Elementary School Days * No More Gizzards * No, You Didn't * For The First Time
Life In The Garment Center * Jack's Black Queen * Those Were The Days
New York, New York * Dad * Post Office Blues? * DS or BS?
The Hookers of Hunt's Point * SanMan * Amazing