VIRGINIA 008

I was never much of a football player in my youth, but lacking strength and stature, I tried to balance the deficiencies with what was in the day called “pluck.” I remember one Pop Warner coach demanding that I try to block a punt, and as I still recall the terror (not to mention pain) of having a high-velocity pigskin slammed into my unprotected face. My helmet was just that, a head covering and nothing more. Today there are multiple bars and Plexiglas windows that render the face impenetrable from the outside world. Such defensive shield would have been a great help against the kid who tried to gouge out my eye at the bottom of a scrum where I was attempting to recover a fumble.

Nor was I was ever much of an Elvis fan, perhaps because he nearly got my nose busted one dark night back then. Ronnie was a recent transplant from Tennessee to our suburban Philadelphia neighborhood, and his entire family was very partial to “the King,” who had not yet been crowned but was well on his way.

Returning from a Friday night dance at Holy Cross (mass on Sunday and financial juggernaut on all other days), Ronnie had words with a throng of miscreants who slandered Elvis in the process. Upon reaching home, he committed the error of mentioning the scene to his father, who then demanded details of the revenge extracted. Upon learning that no blood had been let, he summarily hustled us, a misbegotten gaggle of 3 weenies plus Ronnie, into his car and we spent the next half hour driving the dark streets of Clifton Heights looking for the offenders. I came closer to my creator that night praying in fervent silence that we would not find the thugs, who in my mind had already gained half a foot and 20 pounds apiece. Alas, my prayers went unanswered, thus beginning a long stretch of ecumenical failure to communicate.

Find them we did, and father ordered us out of the car with explicit instructions as to how we should rearrange the body parts of these damned Yankees, ignoring the fact that all of us save Ronnie were just that. My short life flashed before my eyes as Ronnie went for the purveyor of most explicit slander, who just happened to be the smallest, while one of his chums, larger by half, sidled up to me and inquired “how bout we go a round or two.” Hoping to lighten the atmosphere I answered, teeth chattering, “around where?” But he took my attempt at levity as further provocation, and advanced apace.

“I’ll fight’cha in those woods outta the light,” and I took off on a tear, never stopping until I reached home well over a mile away, then shrinking for a considerable time in the shrubbery lest he see me enter and mark my doorway for a later return and unspeakable retribution. I tried mightily the following Monday to convince my cohorts that I had indeed done battle in those woods, but I was not to be believed, and became thus forever marked as one not to be quickly chosen when gathering resources for a rumble. It was a slight that I have never regretted.

Clifton Heights, PA was a well established Italian enclave, the residents of which were none too happy with the emergence of a post WW-II community of row houses into which moved all manner of undesirables, including Protestants and Jews, though no African Americans, as integration thereabouts in the early 1950s was as foreign in the Philadelphia of Pennsylvania as to its namesake city in Mississippi. I got a taste there of what it must be like to be a minority, as the horn rimmed glasses Mother chose for me coupled with my slight build won me the nickname Jewboy, a moniker not even perfect attendance at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church could shed.

Entertainment was stickball in the street, Saturday cowboy movie matinees (20 cents admission and 5 cents for Good & Plenty), and running behind the truck spewing a fog of DDT that passed through the neighborhood on humid summer evenings. Sport was boxing at the Police Athletic League on Saturday mornings, plus football and baseball, the advantage being that they were played outdoors on hardscrabble sandlots and didn’t require the extensive buildings and paraphernalia so necessary to modern day youth activity.

My off-and-on best friend was Joey, known far and wide as Pig Eye, so tagged by his admiration for swine, the origins of which were never discussed or long forgotten. For months on end, every Tuesday after school, he would offer “Hey Ritchie, my Mom’s makin tomato pie. Come for dinner.” Pie, I thought, with tomatoes, hmmmm. “Naw, I can’t Joey, I gotta get home.” It was long after he stopped offering that I first encountered pizza at the Holy Cross carnival, made as only Philadelphia Italian mamas could. Adults (and we kids when we could get away with it) washed down the tomato pie with Dago Red wine – in those days the word was a label of pride and not a slur.

Philadelphia and its environs never held much attraction for me and I rarely returned after college, but you ate well there with the best hoagies in the world – with mortadella, capicola, provelone, and projute, as the locals called ham, not a SUBstitute. And while Phillie cheese steaks are served around the world, the only one I ever found beyond the 190 to 192 zip codes that measured up was prepared by a an expat. Ed. Note: The only way you can be sure you’re in a genuine Phillie restaurant is if the waitress asks “Whattle yuz have”?

...the adventure has stalled in naive anticipation of meaningful employ, but will soon move westward, or otherward if opportunity knocks...