WHY HOWIE BLOOM WAS A MENSCHE

What is a mensche? In Yiddish it refers to a real man, one who does the stand-up thing for his friends and/or family. Howie Bloom could be one of the most annoying, whiney individuals you could meet. All of us had nicknames in those days, I was Bobby Tremont Ave. because I lived on Tremont Ave., and there was Billy Destefano, AKA Billy Bag-O-Pretzels because he could eat five of those big soft pretzels at a time. Patrick Fitzgibbons was known as Pat the Cat because when he was 7 a cat ran up his shorts pant leg and started clawing at his privates. Here we were, three Catholic boys from St. Helena's and then there was Howie, AKA Howie the Jew. Today you'd say he was the token Jew of the group. If you saw Howie, he looked like Jerry Mathers (The Beaver) with the map of Israel all over his face. But he was our token. He went to Yashiva school in Riverdale, the swanky part of the Bronx and the best was that he was Orthodox and was probably more Catholic than the rest of us. He tried to get in on the practice confessions prior to First Holy Communion, but Sister Redempter caught him and dragged him out by his ear. Any one of us would have screamed our way out of the church, but not Howie, he whined his way out. But he was our Howie.

A few weeks after Christmas when we were in 4th grade, we had a killer snowstorm. There must have been 2 feet or more of snow on the ground. Snow meant snowballs and snowballs meant war, but it meant war with kids our age, not with the elderly crowd of Jr. high students. There was this 13 year old kid named Hayden Ryder. Howie sort of knew him because his younger brother went to Yashiva school with him. Hayden was a schmuck.  He got his kicks out of picking on 4th graders. Anyway, here we all are having our snowball fight with 4th graders from St. Raymonds in the East quad when Hayden and his Hitler Youth decide to start throwing at us. Okay, a snowball fight is a snowball fight, no big deal. But Hayden decided to start throwing what we called "hardballs," snowballs with rocks in them. Well one of those hardballs hit Pat the Cat in the temple and dropped him like a \stone. Remember the scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie has finally had enough? Well I saw rage come over Howie's face as he walked up to Hayden and kicked him square in the crotch. Had his nuts been footballs he would have kicked them 50 yards. As Hayden dropped Howie punched him as hard as a 4th grader his size could punch (which wasn't very hard), but nevertheless, he did what we wanted to do. Hayden Ryder never picked on any of us again. Bloom always will be a mensche in my book.