Merry Christmas, Everyone

So, like most kids (even perpetually sulking teenagers) Christmas was always our favorite time of the year. I mean, who doesn't love to get gift? You have time off from school, there's that whole feeling of holiday cheer - and you don't even mind seeing all your relatives trudging in to Roselle (NJ) from Brooklyn. At least you get to see some cousins you haven't seen in awhile, or you can make fun of them behind their backs, anyway. Come to think of it, that's what we mostly did. At least me and my cousin Skinny, anyway.
But really, Christmas was only a couple of days, and you didn't have to go back to school till like January 7th, or something. So you basically had all this time to do nothing - or get revenge.
After Christmas, people would throw away their dead Christmas trees by putting them out in front of the house and waiting till the DPW picked them up. There was this one guy on the corner of Gordon Street that me and Skinny didn't particularly like - I don't remember exactly why we didn't like him, but, I mean, he must have done something to us to us.
So, one frigid January night, we see his dead tree lying in the little grass part in front of his house - and  we get this simultaneous idea. We pick up the tree, wedging it between his wooden front door and the screen door in front of it... then ring the doorbell, run like hell and hide in the bushes across the street. Of course when the guy opens his front door - the Christmas tree falls right into his face, and it's so big it fills the whole doorway, So the guy literally can't move or escape - he's cursing and yelling cuz he can't move and he's got all these dry pine needles in his face.
Meanwhile, we're across the street- and we are dying, man! Skinny's laughing like a crow (like he usually does) and I'm cackling so fuckin' hard, I'm on the frozen ground and can't even get up - that's how hard I'm laughing at this guy. Somehow, the guy extricates himself from the Christmas tree and he is fuckin' furious! He come's running across the street after us like a raging bull, threatening to kill us and everything. Skinny sees this and jumps over a nearby fence, he's imploring me to hurry up and get over the fence before this guy kills me. I get up the fence but I'm still laughing so hard,  I can't get over it... the guy is just about to grab me, when in a last ditch effort, my cousin pulls me over the fence, ripping my coat sleeve, and smashing down on the cement hard winter ground. Right on my arm. Blood is oozing out of my jacket sleeve. I go from laughing to crying in a second. The guy is cursing and threatening he'll kill us if he ever sees us again, but we keep running. Hey, at least we escaped! Happy Holidays everyone!

The Joy's of the 1970's

The 1970's - particularly the early-mid 1970s - were probably the time that things were really still free-wheeling and unstructured before morphing into "Corporate World", the prevailing culture of today.
 In those days, you didn't really have to be a robot - particularly if you were a kid. Especially a kid growing up in a New Jersey suburb.You could be mischievous, have fun, cause chaos, and it wasn't such a big deal. You could still roam the streets at night and get involved in all manner of harmless nonsense..In short, you could be a KID.You didn't have to be a social media creation.You could still ride your bikes to faraway (at least to us) towns, play baseball and football on the side streets  -  break into houses, make creative prank phone calls. It was much more innocent!
 I mean, can you imagine being a kid today and trying to break into houses with all the high-tech security and devices that houses are equipped with now? Impossible! God, you would be immediately apprehended as a threat to national security and be thrown into one of those terrorist detainment camps for life! When we were kids, houses only had those chain link locks that even the Hamburgular from Mc Donald's could have broken into, they were so easy! Or those chintzy doorknob locks...in fact, many houses didn't lock their doors at all!
No - STAND BACK! VIPER! THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY VIPER! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! DANGER! DANGER!  No wonder kids are all on Ritalin and anti-depressives/anxiety today! What happened to fun during summer vacation? As you can read about in my memoir - The Edge of Whiteness - we would break into this one family's house every Saturday for like - a year. We would the eat all the raisins out of their Raisin Bran, pour the bran back in the box, seal it up with glue, and put it right back in the same exact position on their shelves.I mean, this went on for nearly a year, and STILL they kept buying Raisin Bran from the A&P!
Eventually, we (me and my cousin Skinny) had no other choice but to spy on them as they were eating dinner in their dining room, while we stood on cinder blocks and listened for their every word on the baffling situation. Then (ironically) we would pick up the family's son, who also happened to be one of our best friends up for church the next morning.... we were puzzled why they couldn't figure it out, but it wa sall the more hilarious to us! Stay tuned for the next post, where I will explore our other adventures around the neighborhood!
Ah, the good ole days...

Revenge is Sweet

As I said in my last blog post - "The Joys of the 1970's" - that was probably the last time period before everyone became a tight-ass and things got so serious and corporate. To read more about the freewheeling, yet gritty and funky 1970's (particularly the early-mid 70's) check out my memoir on the subject - The Edge of Whiteness.
So there was this guy who lived around the corner from my cousins, Skinny and Ricky.Gentile, his name was We called him. Mr. Gentile, cuz we we're kind of polite kids. At first. He seemed to be cool. I mean, like, we would always say hello to him when we all played baseball or touch football on the street. But we were kids - what the hell did we know
Anyway, when I was about 16 years old, I had gotten become pretty muscular from weightlifting, boxing and exercising, and I guess he saw a chance to exploit that. I don't know if he was kind of a contractor or he worked for Fabco Shoes or what, but he enticed me to demolish and then help (alot of help, if you ask me) to rebuild the building in order to get it ready for a grand opening of another Fabco Shoes store in Hoboken, NJ. He used to drive me over there from Roselle every morning as we went to work. That's when I realized he was one of those Italian fathers who wore a pinkie ring, and slapped way too much Aqua Velva and Old Spice on his face as he looked in the mirror Sported that stiff kind of wave hairstyle, that resulted from using the ubiquitous "hair tonic" guys used in the 70's, you know? It was actually hard and crunchy...oh, and he only chewed Trident, also He sweetened the deal by promising me a part-time job in the store after school when it did open. So I did a tremendous amount of work tearing up and throwing out and rebuilding this place in the heat of a particularly insanely humid summer - with not even a fan to help cool me off! I'm sure he saved a bundle paying me basically nothing while not having to pay union construction guys - but when the store actually opened - Gentile fired me!Totally lied! Canned me on the first day! Bastard!
Of course, I felt like a total asshole having been played like that.... and he was so smug and cavalier about it, too. Didn't even talk to me, after having been like my "best friend" for a couple of months. So that was it. Revenge was coming. For like a week or so before Halloween, this guy had these two Jack o' Lanterns he had put on the steps leading up to his front door, he had candles inside them, that he lit up at night. Ah, a perfect opportunity.
One night, me and Skinny go over there with a few packs of firecrackers we had left over from 4th of July. Skinny ingeniously knew how to delay the fuses, so we sneak over there, he delays the fuses on like 5 packs of firecrackers, we throw 'em in the lit Jack o' Lanterns, ring his doorbell, and run across the street to hide in the bushes, laughing all the way.
"Who is it? Who's there?"
Gentile himself comes out the door to see who rang his bell, and is pissed because nobody is there. He starts yelling out something like "If i ever catch who's doing this, I'll -"
BAM! BOOM! BAM, BAM!
The firecrackers all go off in sucesssion, and Gentile is jumping around like he's been shot - I swear, he probably thinks it's a mob hit - and then the f***in' pumpkins explode! He's got like pumpkin seeds and insides all over his face, and head and glasses... the thing is it keeps going - and he keeps jumping and contorting his body in like a hundred different ways! Meanwhile, my cousin is laughing like a crow, like Hekyll and Jekyll. I mean, that's how he normally laughed - and really loud too! Gentile knows now that he's been punked and he's shaking his fist, saying he's gonna kill us if he ever finds out who it is... but it's f***in' pitch dark, he can't see a thing, and besides that, he's got pumpkin shit all over his glasses! Hahahahaha.... he has to go back inside really embarassed, with pumpkin all over his face! But, hey, he deserved it, ya know? Revenge is sweet.