Crazy Mike

The store was a favorite of the junior high school students from just across the street. However, calling these individuals students was really stretching its meaning. My dad stood about 6 foot two inches tall and plenty of these young men who hung out were at least that tall and some even taller. They had been left back, held back, and demoted so many times that quite a few of them were eligible for military service by the time they reached the eighth grade. It’s not that they were all stupid, though lots of them were total morons, but they were from broken homes with drunken families, with no goals, and no future. They belonged to street gangs like the Astoria Bishops, and were a really tough crowd. If you rubbed some of them the wrong way, they would just as soon look at you as punch you in the face. I remember this one kid, however, Chris Benevent, who was really small. He hung around with the Bishops but was really of such small stature that they considered him to be more of a mascot than a member. He always struck me, though, as a lot smarter than the average member of the Astoria gangs. While not a fighter, he added an element of strategy to the plots that were hatched in the competition amongst the street gangs.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but after they built the junior high school, our store became the designated after-school (and during-school) hangout. My father installed a juke box which played records for five cents and then the crowds descended. Fortunately, these six foot bruisers all found respect for both my father and grandfather. Probably this stemmed from our extending credit to these young customers. And although they wouldn’t think twice about stealing a car or ripping off a truck, they never failed to pay debts incurred at ‘Little Pops’. While plenty of students were normal kids from normal homes with normal hopes and dreams, there was a distinct profusion of these older kids who were all screwed up. Most of them would wind up either dead or in jail before they reached high school.

Junior High School 204, which was just across the street, was comprised of a predominantly black student population. Although it was located in an all-white area, there wasn’t another school between its location and the Queensbridge projects. This led to an abundance of racial disharmony, or, as most people would call them, race riots. If, for example a white student would call a black student a ‘nigger’ or another racial slur, the lines would be drawn and by three o’clock, the battle would be joined. It was always amazing to me how quickly the students from Long Island City High School would appear to protect their younger brothers and sisters. This protection did not take the form of defensive action however, but rather resulted in plenty of head-knocking violence. The Blacks would assemble in the playground which, in the White neighborhood, was a sort of unoccupied demilitarized zone. Then, at some signal or other, they would assault whatever white student was stupid enough to still be hanging around. Occasionally, they would run up against some of the really hard cases, like the guys who hung out at our store, and it would develop into a real rumble. It was not unusual to see 4 or 5 white kids swinging car antennas and chains, holding twenty or more blacks at bay till the cops arrived. Interestingly, the cops never showed up when the white kids were beating up the blacks but if the situation was reversed, they were johnny-on-the-spot. One time, when things really got out of hand, about five hundred black students, girls included, charged up 36^th Avenue, in a broad front which stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk, towards the corner near our store. We had been told at lunchtime that trouble was brewing and dropped the metal gate that shielded the front of the store. As luck would have it, the alleged perpetrator of the instigating deed was one of the gang who was known to hang out at our store. He and a friend of his had smacked a black kid for some real or imagined insult, leading to the dares and challenges which usually preceded these affairs. So, here comes this mob of five hundred black kids chasing these two white boys who, believe it or not, would stop every so often to take a swing at the nearest pursuer. When they reached the intersection by the store, about 400 whites poured out of the side street and a real brawl commenced. If this kind of battle were to occur today, I am sure that it would involve guns and maybe even an assault weapon or two. But in 1959, except for the occasional knife, these events were mainly fought with more primitive weapons like chains, car antennas, blackjacks, brass knuckles and the like. On this particular occasion, however, a guy named Crazy Mike lived up to his reputation by appearing with a railroad tie which had a handle carved into its body. He almost singlehandedly routed the charging black mob by wading into its midst swinging this fifty pound bludgeon. It was over in about ten minutes but those minutes passed by ever so slowly, with battles raging up and down the avenue. When the cops arrived, after the blacks had been repulsed, they picked up one white kid and about fifteen blacks and hauled them off to the stationhouse. This incident made the papers the next day and for once, we were actually in the newspapers we were selling. There rarely were any serious injuries incurred during these melees and its makes me wonder why, today, every time a bad word is spoken, some poor kid winds up either in the hospital or in the morgue.

Gramps

Anyway, my father and grandfather were partners in a candy store that was right downstairs from our apartment. I spent a good portion of my formative years making egg creams and malteds. Cokes were a nickel and Gus’s pizza place next door sold slices for fifteen cents. This seemed okay to me but my eyes rolled every time my father would tell me about one cent stamps and nickel bus and subway rides. My folks had lived through the Great Depression and I guess anybody who endures something like that can never forget it.

My grandfather was around sixty when I was ten and he was a never-ending source of advice and help. With a full head of white hair, standing a stocky five foot six or so, I can still hear him telling me not to do something because “It doesn’t look good.” Or explaining to me why Frank the Hungarian who lived right above the store smoked four packs of Camels a day. (Frank died of you-know-what before I was twenty.) Or walking me to the bus stop for Hebrew school and making sure I had a bag of french fries to eat on the way. He was as gentle a man as you could ever want to meet. His name was David, but the customers all called him ‘Pops’. In fact the store was known as “Little Pops” since there was a candy store near the church called “Big Pops”. I always called him ‘Gramps’.

My grandfather was a very wise man. He had that quiet self-assurance about his knowledge that only comes at an advanced age. When he said something, he never had to be forceful. He rarely demanded anything of me, but his words held the ring of truth. It was as if he knew that young people had to find out some things for themselves and that, whatever they were told, they would still have to learn their own lessons.

I remember many an afternoon playing chess with my father at the store while he ran the business between moves. I learned to read from the comic book rack and soon moved on to bigger things (like “By Love Possessed” which my mother caught me with when I should have been studying). Mathematics to me meant being able to make the right change or putting fifty pennies in a roll. I’ll never forget making endless stacks of ten pennies each and putting five in each roll of pennies. This may not seem like much but it was a fair achievement at the age of six.