MY FATHER WAS barely literate
and my mother didn’t speak English. Nor did I until I started grade
school. And there were no books in the railroad apartment we shared in
Hell’s Kitchen other than my collection of Classics Illustrated comics
that I kept in a neat pile in a hall bureau. My dad worked as a butcher
at the old 14th Street meat market, now known more for its high-end
clothing stores and restaurants than for trucks packed with hind
quarters bound for uptown destinations.
My dad’s workday began at three in the morning and ended just about the
time school let out. I would wait for him on the stoop of our building,
catching him coming off 10th Avenue, his white butcher’s smock smattered
with blood, a packet of fresh cut beef under one arm, the other holding
a thick stack of the day’s newspapers and one, sometimes two boxing
magazines. Soon as he was close enough, he tossed the packet of beef to
me and we made our way up to our second floor apartment. My dad would
shower, have his dinner and then come into our sparsely furnished living
room, the stack of papers and magazines resting by my side. He was tired
from a long day lugging two hundred pound hindquarters off of trucks and
would lie down and wait for me to reach for one of the papers and read
aloud to him.
This was our time together and we had a routine. In those days, the
mid-to-late-1960’s, there many newspapers in New York City and my father
brought them all home, except for the New York Times. I never asked him
why, but I assumed he preferred tabloids to broadsheets. We started with
sports which meant reading from back to front (a habit I have kept up to
this day) and from there we moved to crime. He loved boxing stories the
most, which explains why I know more about Henry Armstrong and Beau Jack
than I do about Proust.
My dad was a boxer when he was young and a pretty good one from what the
old-timers who saw him fight told me. He would go out of state to fight
in winner-take-all “whiskey bouts.” You go into one fight as Mario Jones
and win, come back for another as Mario Smith and win again. Some nights
my dad fought and won as many as five fights.
Now, reading five or six sport and crime sections covering the same
stories can get a bit tedious, so I started exploring other parts of the
papers. I began reading columnists to my dad and no one struck home with
the two of us more than did the work of Pete Hamill. I was struck by his
passion, his anger, his way with words, and the rhythm with which he
would begin and end each column. In no time at all, I fell in love with
newspapers and maybe even with writing just by hearing his written
words.
My father liked Jimmy Breslin’s columns too, especially when he wrote
about wise guys and Dick Young’s take on baseball and the wonderful Bill
Gallo illustrations. We would take an occasional break, talk about his
favorite players (Harmon Killebrew and Jim “Mudcat” Grant of the
Minnesota Twins) and gangsters (Owney Madden topped that list) and
movies (anything with James Cagney but none better than “Angels With
Dirty Faces” where he played Rocky Sullivan, a character modeled after
“Two-Gun” Crawley who was in a massive police shootout on the Upper West
Side in the 1930’s).
I was in the middle of a story about a robbery gone wrong in the Village
when my father interrupted. “You think about it yet?” he asked.
“Think about what?”
“What you’re going to do,” he said. “With your life, I’m talkin’ about.”
I hesitated before I answered. I had given a lot of thought to it, but
didn’t see how I could make it happen. I wanted to write stories, work
on a newspaper, but knew it was nothing more than a pipe dream. We
didn’t know anyone who even knew someone who worked close to a
newspaper. “I want to write stories,” I finally blurted out.
My father stared at me for a few seconds. “What kind of stories?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, anxious to get back to the reading.
He shrugged. “Well you better figure that out,” he said.
After the ritual of the papers, my mother would join us in the living
room and turn on the small black and white television that rested in one
corner. Now, I could understand why my parents liked certain shows—my
dad loved “The Untouchables” and “M Squad” for the obvious reasons. My
mother sat glued to “Combat” because she had lost so much in Italy
during World War II and watched anything that featured Perry Como (as
did every other Italian woman in the neighborhood). But for reasons that
escape me to this day, both my parents loved watching “The Merv Griffin
Show,” a nightly talk show that aired on what was then called “Channel
5.” I found it odd since my mother spoke no English and my father was
clueless as to who any of the celebrity guests were. Occasionally, I
would sit and watch with them, looking from one to the other and
wondering what enjoyment they could possibly be getting from the show.
Then one night a guest came on who caught the attention of both my dad
and me. It was Truman Capote. I had never seen him before and found him
to be entertaining and a great storyteller. I glanced over at my father.
“He’s a writer this guy,” my father said. “Tells stories. Just like you
want to do.”
I nodded. “Books, I think,” I said. “Maybe I’ll check him out at the
library tomorrow.”
“Do that,” my father said. “Curious to see what kind of stories he likes
to tell.”
The next afternoon, I checked out Truman Capote at the library on 10th
Avenue. There were two books under his name: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”
and “In Cold Blood.” I took a shot with the second one.
My father held the book and glanced at the title. “Sure it’s the same
guy that was on Merv?”
“Yeah,” I said. “His name’s right there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”
For the next three weeks, in between sports sections and crime stories,
I read a few pages aloud each day of “In Cold Blood” to my dad. He never
said a word either one way or the other whether he liked it or not and I
never asked. Then, one night, the apartment stifling hot from a late
spring heat wave, my dad stopped me in mid-sentence.
“This writing thing, telling stories,” he said, “you still got your mind
set on that?”
“I think so,” I said. “Not sure how, but I’d like to give it a try.”
“All right, then,” he said. “You’ll get no argument from me. Give it
your best shot. Like this guy, what’s his name, Capone?”
“Capote,” I said.
My dad nodded. “Go for it,” he said. “And don’t let anybody tell you
otherwise. I’m with you all the way.”
“Thanks, dad,” I said.
And thanks Mr. Capote.
|