An Election Night bonfire, built over Carroll Street’s cobblestones was a tradition predating the black-clad Italian women simmering tomato sauce on Sunday mornings or i pazzi, the crazies wandering our streets. It had very American feel to it, Bull Moose Party…Boss Tweed…Salem’s witches. We teenagers raided Chitty’s fruit store for orange crates and wooden bushel baskets, then Cambie’s Trucking, pulling splintery wooden pallets from the bays of tractor trailers. We went door-to-door begging fragrant wine barrels from homemade wine presses,..cracked linoleum and unwanted furniture. As the frenzy built, we’d literally pull wooden cellar doors off their hinges
At 13, I'm not sure I knew the name of the President. Not until Kennedy. I knew the mayor—a pie factory on Fourth Avenue, bore his name—Wagner. Buy damaged pies for a nickel and smash them, sticky lemon and pineapple, in each other’s faces. The name Rockefeller, was so alien it might have been a petroglyph. Across the East River, Manhattan glimmered, unreachable, insubstantial.
Wise guys Jerry Lang, Honey Christiano and Jackie Carr, abetted us, winking as we dragged busted folding chairs and card tables from the Glory Social and Capri Clubs on Third Avenue. They were, in all things, irresponsible. Perfect negative role model for lost boys bucking societal restraints.
No one cared about voting. My father would announce as if he’d unearthed a kernel of infinite wisdom—“No matter who wins, I gotta go to work in the morning.”
We competed against kids from President and Union Streets, and the alien territories across the Gowanus, for the biggest, most out-of-control blaze. Preempting us, the Fire Department, sent raiding parties to haul away our hidden stores of planks and beams. They were met with barrages of eggs and rotten fruit
If they caught you, these, burly Irishmen from Bay Ridge and Flatbush, They' d beat the shit of you. At dusk on Election Night, we emerged like crazed rats from hallways, cellars and alleys, lugging wood, stacks of newspapers and plastic gallons of gas, turpentine, paint. Darting, whirling, like Max from Where the Wild Things Are.Americo Guzzi, hammered the outsized brass nut on the fire hydrant, deforming and disabling it. The pile, grew three stories high and 40 feet across No one seemed to register that almost all the houses on Carroll Street were made of wood,sheathed in tarpaper and flammable shingles.
By 9:00 P.M., alarms were sounding everywhere. Sirens blared, fire trucks careened around corners. On the fire escapes younger kids readied volleys of eggs. Honey, 46-years-old, tossed a wooden torch—wrapped with rags soaked in gasoline—onto the pile. It exploded, turning night into day. I felt the combustion’s blast. A wave of intense heat sucked the air out of my lungs.
Holy shit!”
Half-blinded by smoke, gasping, grinning, I watched Jeannie Wilcox, Amy Gallo, my cousin Clementine, cute girls in pink lipstick, leather jackets, tight jeans, as they stood transfixed. The heat washed over them, sensual. They ignored me.
All the telephone wires on the street were melting and burning. Embers were floating delicately over tar paper roofs.
“Where the hell is the Fire Department?” Someone roared, the spell broken.
When they arrived, there was no water pressure in the pipes. I stood up, let fly with my last egg.
“Grab that little bastid!”
I ducked and ran into the alley next to Honey’s house, a big guy in a yellow rubber suit closing fast. I cut, slipped, and rammed my head into the edge cinderblock wall. I've still got the "V" cut into my head
At 13, I'm not sure I knew the name of the President. Not until Kennedy. I knew the mayor—a pie factory on Fourth Avenue, bore his name—Wagner. Buy damaged pies for a nickel and smash them, sticky lemon and pineapple, in each other’s faces. The name Rockefeller, was so alien it might have been a petroglyph. Across the East River, Manhattan glimmered, unreachable, insubstantial.
Wise guys Jerry Lang, Honey Christiano and Jackie Carr, abetted us, winking as we dragged busted folding chairs and card tables from the Glory Social and Capri Clubs on Third Avenue. They were, in all things, irresponsible. Perfect negative role model for lost boys bucking societal restraints.
No one cared about voting. My father would announce as if he’d unearthed a kernel of infinite wisdom—“No matter who wins, I gotta go to work in the morning.”
We competed against kids from President and Union Streets, and the alien territories across the Gowanus, for the biggest, most out-of-control blaze. Preempting us, the Fire Department, sent raiding parties to haul away our hidden stores of planks and beams. They were met with barrages of eggs and rotten fruit
If they caught you, these, burly Irishmen from Bay Ridge and Flatbush, They' d beat the shit of you. At dusk on Election Night, we emerged like crazed rats from hallways, cellars and alleys, lugging wood, stacks of newspapers and plastic gallons of gas, turpentine, paint. Darting, whirling, like Max from Where the Wild Things Are.Americo Guzzi, hammered the outsized brass nut on the fire hydrant, deforming and disabling it. The pile, grew three stories high and 40 feet across No one seemed to register that almost all the houses on Carroll Street were made of wood,sheathed in tarpaper and flammable shingles.
By 9:00 P.M., alarms were sounding everywhere. Sirens blared, fire trucks careened around corners. On the fire escapes younger kids readied volleys of eggs. Honey, 46-years-old, tossed a wooden torch—wrapped with rags soaked in gasoline—onto the pile. It exploded, turning night into day. I felt the combustion’s blast. A wave of intense heat sucked the air out of my lungs.
Holy shit!”
Half-blinded by smoke, gasping, grinning, I watched Jeannie Wilcox, Amy Gallo, my cousin Clementine, cute girls in pink lipstick, leather jackets, tight jeans, as they stood transfixed. The heat washed over them, sensual. They ignored me.
All the telephone wires on the street were melting and burning. Embers were floating delicately over tar paper roofs.
“Where the hell is the Fire Department?” Someone roared, the spell broken.
When they arrived, there was no water pressure in the pipes. I stood up, let fly with my last egg.
“Grab that little bastid!”
I ducked and ran into the alley next to Honey’s house, a big guy in a yellow rubber suit closing fast. I cut, slipped, and rammed my head into the edge cinderblock wall. I've still got the "V" cut into my head
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