RED ZOMBIES FROM HELL

Ok, before proceeding to read my other blogs (that was awfully presumptuous of me), I feel it necessary to introduce you to some characters that will be referenced often in my musings about the Bronx. No one went by their first and last when someone was referring to them. We all had nicknames. Patrick Fitzgibbons was named "Pat the Cat" because on a dare he stuffed a kitten in his shorts; Billy Destefano was nicknamed "Billy Bag-O-Pretzels" because he was obsessive/compulsive over those large, soft, salty wet pretzels you'd get at any candy store. There was Jimmy White who was given the title of "Jimmy Black N' White" because you rarely saw him not stuffing his face with one of those large cookies that were half black and half white called a Black and White. I lived on Tremont Ave. so I bore the moniker "Bobby Tremont Ave or Bobby T." for short. Pat, Billy, Jimmy and myself…2 Italians Catholics, one Irish Catholic and God knows what Jimmy was except Catholic. We all attended St. Helena's Catholic Elementary School. Then we had Howie Bloom who attended Yashiva school in the Bronx. His nickname was simply "Howie the Jew." We were young kids, 7 and 8 year olds, but remembers, this was the mid-1950's and kids were allowed out without parental guidance until dark; plus we were "hanging out" on the streets and getting into mischief, so we grew up a lot quicker than kids today. The five of us were inseparable; four of us were in the same class, sat next to one another, walked to and from school together, stopped at one of the many candy stores, pizzerias and record stores together. Howie, would always meet up with us after school and he sort of became an honorary Catholic since he probably attended mass with us more than he did temple. So here we are, five blood brothers out to make a mark and leave a legacy on Parkchester, the place where we all lived.

Bronx, New York. If you live in Manhatttan, which I didn't, it's uptown and to the right. At one time, the Bronx was actually a fairly swanky borough of the City of New York. That must have been when the dinosaurs roamed the earth because I never remember anything about the Bronx being swanky. Skanky maybe, but definitely not swanky. Naw, that's not true, I just said it was skanky as a play on words. You know, a literary device. The Bronx might not have been upscale when I lived there, but two of the world's greatest parents lived there; some of the best friends a guy could ever have lived there; I lived there and it was home. 

As I just stated, we lived in Parkchester, a sprawling housing development which opened just after World War II. When I say sprawling, there are 51 buildings ranging from 6 to 7 to 12 stories, 66,000 windows and 12,000 families in this place. Restaurants, banks, grocery stores, delis, pizzerias, Macy's, bakeries, (did I say pizzerias), churches, temples, schools (Catholic and the other guys), anything you wanted or needed, right there in Parkchester. A few people were reputed to have lived their entire lives without ever venturing out of the boundaries (as we used to call them) of Parkchester. I loved Parkchester too, but come on. The entire development was divided into quadrants or quads as we called them and they were the equivalent of "turfs." The quads converged on a central point called the Metropolitan Oval. It got its name from the fact that the convergence point was an oval pool, and Parkchester was then owned by the Metropolitan Insurance Company. The five of us lived in the north quad, in fact Howie, Billy and I all lived in the same building. The "NORTH," that was our turf. The year before I was born the north and south quads formed an alliance, which up until this particular summer  seemed to be fairly stable. But then came the Red Zombies from Hell. 

The Winter and Spring came and went with peace still prevailing between the once warring North and South quads. No one is exactly sure why the two quads originally fought. Some say it started over a dispute as to who had the best pizza in Parkchester, Starling Avenue Pizzeria in the South (which was on the south side of Starling and technically just outside of Parkchester) or Carl's in the North, which also was technically outside of Parkchester. Come to think of it, there were no pizzerias IN Parkchester. So scratch what I said about pizzerias in paragraph two. Regardless, by the time I started roaming the turf, the peace had long been made. By the way, I've had pizza in both places and confidentially, Starling Avenue was the better pie. It had a thicker patina of grease on the top. Hmmm-Hmmm good! If I had admitted that back in the day, I would have been sent to live in the West quad and a more unspeakable horror one cannot imagine.

Now in the South quad, close to St. Helena Church and School where I proudly attended, lived Allie O’Brien, who also attended St. Helena and who also was a classmate of mine and who also sat right in front of me. Oh yeah, I was also head over heels in love with her. Allie was fairly tall for her 8 years and had long, flaming red hair, freckles and green eyes you could swim in. She had a crooked smile which revealed a missing tooth just to the left of center and wore enormous, coke bottle glasses. On this particular Labor Day, the day before school began, Allie, her family and three of Allie's friends had been to Jones Beach where they all got particularly wicked sunburns, especially Allie. Her face puffed up stretching those beautiful tiny freckles to look like liver spots and her eyes swelled to slits. Her once crooked smile was now a swollen mass of cracked, Vaseline covered pulp. And her three friends didn't fare much better. Now you have to remember that 8 year old suitors didn't show their love in the traditional manner with cards, candies and compliments. When an 8 year-old's fancies turned to romance, he displayed his affections by haranguing his lady love with a barrage of insults ranging from "four eyes" to "dot face" to "Red Zombie from Hell." Let me say now that Hell hath no fury like a red zombie and her three little minions scorned. What ensued quickly shattered the once stable peace between the North and South and it would take the emergence of a great peacemaker to heal the great divide. 

Did I mention Allie had three brothers? Three large 14, 15 and 16 year old tree trunks with heads was more like it. Thinking back, they didn’t look any different than your run-of-the-mill teenager, but you have to remember, I was 8. Well once I let the Red Zombie from Hell insult fly from my lips, my crew of Howie, Pat the Cat, Billy Bag-O-Bagels and I circled her and began taunting her with inane rhymes for “red zombie” like “Fred Bombie” or “Lead Rombie.” Hey, what can you expect from 8 year olds? I was in love and this was like a love sick suitor’s serenade. Allie called me something like a “do do head” (1958speak for ‘Shit Head’) and said she was going to tell her brothers, then ran off in tears. SUCCESS, we made her cry…SHE LOVES ME. And off we went to play and insult again another day. Now it’s time for a little cultural diversity lesson. Parkchester was a melting pot, but the quads were definitely ethnically pure to a large degree. The North, where I lived was Italian and Jewish; the South and East were largely Polish and Irish and the West was, well I’m not quite sure. The various ethnic groups got along fine 99% of the time, until a person or persons of one or more ethnicities, let’s say Italian and Jewish, injured the honor of another, let’s say Irish. I know, you’re asking “What about Pat the Cat? He was in on it too.” Pat’s last name was Fitzgibbons; he got a pass. But not the two little “WOPS” and the “Heeb” from the North. No, we were marked kids; a bounty hung over our heads. We had to go on the lam.

School started, and the much dreaded first day was dreaded even more by the prospect of having to walk through the South quad to get to St. Helena. During the winter, when it was snowing heavily, we received bus passes from the school to ride the city bus, but during the nice months, we were relegated to the “shoe leather express.” Howie the Jew was lucky; he went to Yashiva school on Castle Hill Road out of harms way. But Billy and I were faced with having to cross the DMZ and transgress into enemy territory. No, that would be too brave; instead we left for school early and made our way through the west to the lower end of Parkchester and across Olmstead Ave. to the back of the school yard. We couldn’t stop at Mr. Katz’s candy store for a sweaty pretzel, but that was okay; at least we got to live. Allie’s brothers went to St. Helena High School and that was way out by the Whitestone Bridge. At least for now, we were safe.

Third grade began that year with Allie O’Brien absent. ABSENT? My God, did we hurt her THAT bad that she couldn’t come to school? Was she that distraught that she would miss the first day rather than face her insulters?  Did it for a second occur to Billy and I that maybe, just maybe, her sunburn was so bad that she was too sick or too embarrassed to come to class? Yeah, it did. Now we KNEW we were dead.

Allie began school that year on day 3. Because we were both tall (I stopped growing around 12) we always sat in the back, she in front of me. That was the way it had been in 1^st and 2^nd grades and it was no different in 3^rd. What was I going to do? What was I going to say? “I’m sorry for insulting you, Allie,” never crossed my 8 year old mind. When we got in line in the school yard, she made a point of ignoring me. Okay, nothing out of the ordinary. We walked in silence which was standard operating procedure in Catholic elementary school and filed into the classroom for the start of day 3…only 177 to go. At the end of the day we filed out of the class as usual, with Sister Mary Agnes leading the fold. As we were dismissed on Olmstead Ave., Billy-Bag-O-Bagels and I beat feet to the West quad, up behind Macy’s across Unionport Rd. and home. SAFE. This little dance continued through most of September and into October and it really began to wear thin on us. The trek through the South up Unionport into the North was the way we had traveled through first and second grades. Pizzarias, Katz’s candy store, all in the South, and we knew everyone. Yes, there were some pizzarias and candy stores in the West quad, but it was the West. I know what you’re thinking. “How could parents allow their first and second graders to walk home alone from school?” First of all, this was a different era…safer. We always “buddied up” for the walk home and then of course, there was the “mother network.” If you did something wrong in any of the four quads, even the West, you could bet your mother would know about it before you made it through the door. We were always being watched. Living, breathing guardian angels. So Billy and I were like ex-patriots. Exiled to another land, separated from our comfort zones. Forced to wander the frontier of the West.

Billy and I had been making the same journey 5 days a week since the day after Labor Day. Maybe we were safe. Maybe Allie’s brothers forgot about it or maybe, just maybe Allie never said anything to them, and all of this was blown up in our minds. But when Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather, he must of taken a chapter from Allie’s playbook because she was “keeping her friends close but her enemies closer.” Since day three of class, Allie acted like nothing had happened; she called me immature when I acted up in class and when I answered questions wrong in class, which was quite often, she called me “lunkhead” or “doe doe brain.” But I was Italian, I wasn’t about to be lulled into a false sense of security by some Irish girl. But six weeks had passed and nothing. What was going to happen, if anything? The answer came on a cold October afternoon, IN THE WEST. As we made our way up behind  Macy’s and through the double rows of old people on benches, we were about to make our way up the stone steps to Unionport Road, into the North quad and home when blocking our path was Michael, Ryan and Sean….O’Brien. I would like to think the dialogue went something like this:

Michael: You have to answer for Allie

Bob & Howie: You got it wrong Mike; we’re innocent

Ryan: Awww, that little charade you played with my sister, did you think it would fool an O’Brien?

Bob & Howie: Please Ryan, I….

Sean: Relax, do you think we’d leave our sister friendless.

But that only happens in movies. What really took place was more like:

Michael: Hey assholes!

Sean: You think its funny making our kid sister cry? Huh douchebags?

Bob and Howie: uh uh uh uh uh…..please don’t hurt us!

Ryan: Shut the fuck up.

I distinctly remember Ryan and Sean with ice cream cones and Michael with a bottle of Pepsi Cola. I remember this because the ice cream cones were shoved in our faces and the Pepsi Cola dumped on our heads. Did I mention it was cold outside? To add insult to injury or grime to the crime, they took dirty and poured it all over us. Then they walked away…as cold as could be…just walked away. They had exacted their revenge. But that was far from the end of it.

I don’t think I mentioned that I had an older brother, ten years old to be exact. And he was 6’8” and a badass. And he hung around with a crowd of equally badasses…all being Italian. When I walked through the door my mother was horrified, my dad was still at work, but my brother was in the living room watching television. I would like to say I walked in with a cavalier attitude, but that would be a lie. I was balling. My mother asked me what had happened and I told both her and my brother bout Michael O’Brien and the Hitler Youth.

I knew the O’Brien brothers hung out at Starling Ave. Pizzaria at the southernmost point of the South quad. The following Saturday afternoon, Billy-Bag-O-Bagels, my brother and his badass friends, and I made our way through the South quad to Starling Ave Pizzaria. Before we crossed Unionport, however, my brother and his badass friends stopped at Katz’s candy store and purchased two chocolate cones and a bottle of Pepsi. Oh boy, this was going to get good. On that particular Saturday afternoon, Katz’s was full of kids from both St. Helen High and Elementary schools. Word had already gotten out about mine and Billy’s public humiliation, so when my brother and his badass friends entered Katz’s to purchase identical weapons of mass destruction, the place cleared out and everyone made their way to Starling Ave. Pizzaria for Armageddon.

As we entered the pizzeria we immediately saw Michael, Sean, Ryan and Allie. ALLIE? What was she doing here? Were they gonna use her as a shield? Did they think she’d be able to stop my brother and his Luca Brazi-like pals? Starling Ave. Pizzaria isn’t that big, so many of the onlookers were forced to place their grimey faces against the glass to get a look at the action, much to the dismay of Mr. Migliaccio, the owner. But I figured he was about to have more problems than a dirty window. The only thing stronger than the “mother network” in Parkchester was the “kid network.” In the space of minutes word spread of the rumble that was about to go down at Starling Pizzaria. My brother looked at me and said, “which one’s were they?” I confidently walked up to Mikey, Ryan and Sean and said, “dees guise” (translation: these guys). “C’mere douchebags,” my brother said calmly. And they hesitantly approached my mammoth brother and his badass friends. “Apologize to my brother and his friend,” said my brother in a relatively ominous voice. “Tell them you’re sorry and you will NEVER do something like that again.” Michael, Sean and Ryan, with humility in their voices and on their faces looked at Billy and me and said, “sorry guys, it won’t ever happen again,” and they extended their hands and we shook. Then my brother and his friends ate their ice cream cones and drank the Pepsi Cola. As we were walking out of Starling Ave. Pizzaria, my brother said to Billy and me, “apologize to their sister.” WHAT? APOLOGIZE? IN FRONT OF ALL THESE PEOPLE? TO A GIRL? I think that was the day I had MY first dose of humility. We went up to Allie and said, “Sorry Allie,” to which she replied, “Do Do Head.” and she smiled that crooked smile.

Peace was restored. Often we would see Michael, Ryan and Sean and they would wave and say, “Hi Men, how goes it?” But we knew what they were really thinking. Patrick Fitzgerald, who was just as guilty as Billy and me shrugged his shoulders and said “hey, you should have been born Irish.” Howie simply said, “Oy,” and we were finally free to walk the streets of the South quad, feast at Starling Ave. Pizzaria and steer clear of the West.