One thing that was
creating a serious moral problem in the neighborhood was the demolition of the
city block across the street, obliterating the tenements, retail stores, the 76th
Precinct and the St. Francis College campus to make way for an intermediate
school. We spent most of the summer playing in the abandoned buildings, but
when the city moved in and began construction on the school, everything started
to change.
For one, many
homeowners were turning a blind eye to the rampant theft of building material
that was taking place. At first it was the Styrofoam that we used for karate
breaking boards. It next became bricks that were toted across the street for
use in people’s back yards. Finally the city put up a fence and hired a guard
to keep the kids out. This technically made it a misdemeanor to trespass onto
the site, and this was where Manny put his foot down on me, though I should
have learned my lesson long before that.
One night I was
with the O’Connors in the abandoned police garage before it was torn down. The
brothers found some paint buckets and decided to splash the paint all over the
walls and floors. Once they ran out of paint, Edward got the bright idea of
dropping a match in one of the puddles. Needless to say, the entire place was
in blazes within minutes, and the whole neighborhood watched us scurry out from
the pried-open front door. I ran home and found too late that I had red paint
all over my combat boots. This time it was Lea’s turn to watch as I took one of
the asskickings of my life after Manny saw the fire trucks arrive.
Anyway, it was as
if lines were being drawn in the neighborhood and I was on the wrong side of
them. Neither Lydia nor Ginny, the Yodels’ mom, had any problem with their kids
going onto the site, but I had to sneak in from the Baltic Street side and
avoid the Butler side entirely. Another big problem that arose was that the
O’Connor were now doing drugs, and they were mixing and matching new substances
with the Puerto Ricans, who were bringing anything they could find into the
site for partying. When my Mom heard of this she came down even harder than
Manny, but I still took my chances and snuck in anyway rather than become
ostracized by my friends.
As you can see, we
came a long way from playing marbles and toy soldiers, and all those bad
influences I discussed in the previous chapters were wracking the community
with a vengeance. If Nick Yodels or Vincent Reyes were still around, you can
rest assured that I might have well remained the loosest cannon on deck. Plus,
replacing the police station with this delinquent paradise was not the best
thing the city could have done for our neighborhood.
Again, my key to
survival was in being able to outwit my larger counterparts, but for a while
there I was almost out of control of my newly formed Wild Bunch. Their idea of
fun was going down to the highway and dropping rocks down on passing vehicles.
Once this got stale, they graduated to throwing rocks at buses and store
windows. Eventually the cops paid a visit to the Nieves home, and within a few
weeks, Georgie was on his way to Puerto Rico.
(To be continued...)
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