There was a major happening in my neighborhood during the winter of 1942-1943. A huge ice skating rink was built between my street and the street behind me. I learned how to ice-skate when I was about five or six years old, but unless someone took me to either Belle Isle or Palmer Park, there weren’t any other places to skate. One of the good things about the activities of our church youth group is we did get taken to places like Belle Isle and Palmer Park for things like picnics in the summer and ice-skating in the winter.
My parents had their own rule about ice-skating. They ranked it right up there with dancing, which in their opinion, was sinful. For reasons I never would figure out, ice-skating was allowed. They never stopped me from going skating with the church youth group. They accepted it grudgingly and grumbled accordingly.
The area behind my house, across the alley, opened into a long, but narrow vacant area. It was basically just weeds, long grasses and small bushes. The street behind mine was Cardoni, and there still weren’t any houses on the side of Cardoni which backed up to our alley. The people who lived on my side of Russell, could look out from their back yards and see the front of houses on the other side of Cardoni.
One of the men that lived on Cardoni worked for a company which did excavation work, so he had access to a steam shovel. (The steam shovel was probably the precursor to the backhoe. It was a bit larger than a backhoe, but it served the same purpose. It had tracks similar to what you would see on a tank and a large cab area for the operator. It had a big arm on the front of it that bent like a human arm. Attached to the arm was a huge shovel that the operator could extend out to pick up large quantities of dirt, rocks, or whatever. They also used this machine to dig basements for houses.)
One day in the late fall of 1942, this man showed up with his steam shovel and began to dig out a long trench in the vacant area behind our alley and facing Cardoni. He dug out an area about six or seven lots long (a lot being forty or fifty feet wide). It was the width of the entire area between the alley in back of my house to Cardoni. It was huge. He dug down about six inches and piled the dirt he dug up along the sides to build a bank all around the area. Then the neighbors on Cardoni and Russell ran garden hoses from their houses to the rink to flood it each winter. The kids that used the rink did all the shoveling of snow to keep the ice cleared.
During the first part of the winter I would go and skate most Saturday mornings. I couldn’t skate after school or in the afternoons because I had to work at the bowling alley, and I couldn’t do anything on Sundays except go to church or read. After a few weeks of these limitations, and with persistent begging on my part, my parents did start letting me go out after dinner to skate with just a couple of streetlights for illumination.
It didn’t take long before some of the bigger kids around the neighborhood started to use the pond for hockey. One Saturday I went over to skate and one of the kids, who was maybe twelve or thirteen, tried to kick me off the pond. I recognized him as a kid who lived a couple of blocks from me. He was a little bit taller, and quite a bit heavier than me.
I was carrying my skates in my hand when he skated up to me and said, “Hey, you gotta go home, kid. We’re playing hockey on this pond and no little kids are allowed. So, go on home before you get hurt or something.”
I just looked at him as I sat on the bank and started to loosen the laces of my skates so I could slip them on my feet easier. I thought back to the constant advice Billy always gave me when he was teaching me how to street-fight, “Don’t let yourself get scared, because if you’re scared you can’t think straight, and you need to be thinking all the time.”
So, I thought …
He’s wearing ice skates and is standing on ice, and I’m still in my boots. He’s carrying a hockey stick, which I could use to my advantage if I could surprise him and grab it. I’m more sure-footed than he is right now so even though he’s bigger than me it should be easy to get him down. When he falls, I’ll grab the hockey stick and whap him a good one with it.
I slowly got up onto my feet and had one of my skates still in my hand. “What if I want to play hockey with you guys?” I asked.
“You’re just a kid. You’ll end up getting hurt and go crying home to mommy. We don’t play hockey with no cry-babies.”
“I don’t think I’m a cry-baby, and my hockey stick is in my garage right over there,” I said, pointing over to my garage behind me.
When he looked over towards the garage, I swung my skate and hit him hard across the chest with it. While he was off balance, I lunged at him and easily pushed him down on the ice. His feet went out from under him because he was wearing skates and he was half-sitting half-laying down when he hit the ice. I grabbed his hockey stick as he fell. I swung the hockey stick and hit him on the side of his head with it. Then I turned the hockey stick over so the handle was pointing down at his head and I yelled, “If you even try to move, I’ll jam this stick right down your fucking throat!”
Some of his buddies began to skate over to where we were but I just stood my ground and yelled, “Tell your buddies to back off or I’ll bust your face with this stick!”
He screamed at them to back away, which they did.
I don’t think he realized it but I was just as scared as he was. There were about six other guys who he was playing hockey with and they were all bigger than me. I kept remembering more of Billy’s words and not letting anyone see how scared I was.
I called out to the others, “Hey, are you guys gonna let me play hockey with you? I know how to play.”
They all looked around at each other before a couple of them nodded their heads. I could tell they were either sort of scared of what I could do to their friend or just didn’t know what to say.
It felt good to have won my first real fight. I also had an awareness of just how lucky I was not to be getting my butt kicked.
I pointed the hockey stick down at the guy lying on the ice. “I want to play on his side, okay?”
They all nodded again.
I really liked this feeling of being in control and sensing the fear in others.
“Go on back to your game,” I said. “I’ll jump in after I get my stick and lace up my skates.”
A couple of the guys said, “Okay,” and the others just nodded and began to skate away while they looked back over their shoulders. I looked down at the guy lying on the ice and asked, “Are you ready to go back and play?”
“Yeah, let me up, okay?”
I could see he was really scared and wouldn’t be trying to do anything to me.
I backed away as he got up. I handed him his stick and watched him as he skated back to his friends.
After that incident, I was always welcome to play hockey with the older kids even though I was only nine years old. It didn’t take too much longer before I was playing with as much skill as the rest of the guys.
During that winter I had my first cigarette. One of the older kids gave me one while we were resting from a hockey game. I had smoked before, but not a regular cigarette.
Last fall, I went with some of the kids in my neighborhood to the candy store down the street from the elementary school and bought some cheap, corncob pipes. Once we had the pipes, we would go out to some of the victory gardens and take the dry corn silk off the tops of the corn stalks, stuff it into our pipes, go hide somewhere and smoke our pipes. None of us inhaled the corn silk, but it made us feel big to be smoking something. The taste of the corn silk was good. (I have heard about corn silk eventually being used by herbalists and naturopathic doctors for alleviating problems with the kidney, bladder and urinary tract. I don’t know what they would think about smoking it, though, since they make a tea out of it)
Jackie Clay, one of the older kids playing hockey gave me a cigarette. “Here ya go, Van, it’s about time you started smoking. Just suck the smoke into your mouth and then breath in,” Jackie said.
I thought I was going to pass out. I got dizzy and felt everything going black.
“Go on, Van, take another drag, it won’t hurt you,” he said.
I coughed and coughed and tried to throw up. Jackie and the other guys laughed so hard I thought they might wet their pants.
“Hey, Rollo, that’s a nice shade of green you got there,” one of them said.
Another one of the guys yelled, “Hey, Van Buren, you gonna smoke the cigarette or just play with it.”
The next night I went out to skate again, and Jackie gave me another cigarette. I didn’t really want to take it, but I was feeling like I had to learn how to do this if I wanted to be part of the group. It wasn’t as bad that time. I still coughed a lot but I didn’t feel as sick from it. Each time I tried it got easier and easier, until finally I was smoking every time I went skating because I could bum cigarettes off the other guys.
The stores in the neighborhood wouldn’t sell cigarettes to kids my age, so I soon began to steal them from my father. At first, I would just steal a couple of them from his open packs when he wasn’t looking. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do because he usually carried them in his shirt pocket. Once in a while, though, he’d leave a pack open on the table in the living room and I’d cop a couple. I eventually learned that he kept his cartons of cigarettes on a shelf in the front clothes closet. I managed to steal them a pack at a time without his ever realizing they were missing.
Hockey was the primary activity on the rink most late afternoons after my piano practice time. We did play some evenings even though it was hard to see the puck when the only light came from a couple of street lamps. We would also play on Saturdays—sometimes for hours and hours. There were times we played so long that my ankles would give out and I couldn’t stand up in my skates any longer. It was especially difficult to go to work at the bowling alley after those exhausting skating days.
One of the kids who lived right across from the rink on Cardoni, Richard Carboni, would always be coming over and asking to play hockey with us. He was around the same age as some of the older kids, but he was one of the worst skaters you could imagine. Richard had trouble staying upright even with a hockey stick to hold him up. I don’t even know why he wanted to continue skating since he was on his butt more of the time than he was on his skates. His skating ability probably went right along with his normal clumsiness. Richard was a large kid. He was definitely overweight and would probably do better as a football linesman than a hockey player.
Whenever Richard would come to the rink and ask to play, he always suffered major ridicule from all of us. Things like, “Hey, Richard, how about laying down in front of the net for our side—nobody’d ever sneak one past you!” Or, “Hey, Richard, why don’t you strap your skates on your butt? That way you could keep skating more!”
We did try using Richard as goalie a few times, but whenever someone would take a shot at his goal, he’d get all excited and his skates would go out from under him and he’d end up on his back. He did stop a few shots that way, but not enough to make us want to let him play very often.
One day one of the older kids got mean with him. Richard wanted to play goalie and the older kid pushed him down on the ice. Richard went home crying, telling us he was going to tell his mother. Some of us knew Mrs. Carboni and her wicked Italian temper, so we all took off rather than stay around and face her wrath.
I took off with Charlie Saunders, the kid who lived next door to me. It wasn’t exactly next door. There was a large vacant lot between our houses where both families had their victory gardens. Charlie’s parents weren’t home, so we were just hanging around in his back yard smoking a cigarette behind his garage while we giggled and joked about “chubby old Richard running home to mommy”.
The Carboni house was right across from Charlie’s backyard. We watched as Mrs. Carboni, dressed in a short, heavy coat, heavy winter gloves, what looked like mens’ galoshes, and a babushka on her head, came clumping down her front stairs carrying a large, heavy metal bucket. She was a short, stout woman who walked with a forceful stride wherever she went, and this was no exception.
She clumped across the street carrying the bucket in front of her with an obvious sense of purpose. She headed straight for the ice rink. We continued to watch as she stepped carefully onto the ice to keep from slipping. She grabbed the bucket by its handle in one hand and began to spread something over the ice with her other hand that looked like dark sand. It was as if she was scattering feed for some chickens.
Charlie gasped and threw his hands up to his face, “Holy shit, Van! She’s spreading coal ashes all over the ice!”
“What the hell’s she doing that for? We gotta stop her!” I said in a very loud whisper.
“Hang on, I’m gonna go get my gun” Charlie said as he ran off toward his house.
Mrs. Carboni kept moving back and forth spreading the ashes on the ice.
Charlie came back a few seconds later carrying his Red Ryder BB gun at the ready. He was loaded and ready to fire. Charlie was one of the best BB gun shooters in the neighborhood. His dad had even set up a target for him in the alley during the summer. They would move the target around at different distances so Charlie even knew how to gauge his aim for distance. It was rare that he didn’t hit his target.
Charlie put the rifle up to his shoulder and took careful aim.
Click. Then the sound of the BB pellet on its way—thoop—a short time delay and we watched as Mrs. Carboni suddenly stood up a lot straighter than she was while she was scattering ashes. She sort of looked around trying to figure out what it was that she felt. Maybe the BB hit her coat, or she might have had some extra skirts on or something, because she just shrugged and went right back to scattering ashes.
Charlie took aim again—Click—thoop—another shot on its way.
This time he must have aimed below the area of extra padding because Mrs. Carboni let out a loud, piercing yelp, dropped the bucket of ashes, grabbed her behind, spun around and saw Charlie standing behind his garage lining up another shot.
Her face was beet red and her finger was wagging frantically in the air as she let loose a stream of invectives in Italian. Neither of us understood Italian, but we did hear something that sounded like Polizziotto! That sounded enough like police to send us scurrying for cover as fast as our legs could carry us. Charlie stashed the BB gun in his garage and headed north toward Eight Mile road and I went lickety-split to the south toward State Fair.
The next day I heard that some of the other parents had tried to get the ashes off the pond, but to no avail. The ashes Mrs. Carboni spread must have been hot so they melted the ice and ended up frozen right in. Thanks to Charlie, she didn’t get too far along with her little project. Only one small corner of the pond had to be blocked off so the skaters wouldn’t fall.
The pond was still usable, however, Charlie didn’t fare quite as well. Mrs. Carboni did call the police and sent them over to Charlie’s after his parents came home. He wasn’t going to be able to leave his house except for school for a week, his BB gun was taken away and he couldn’t play hockey or skate any more that winter.
The incident must have backfired for Richard as well, because we never saw him at the rink any more while we were playing hockey.
During the spring I found out some things about girls I didn’t know before. Up until now they were just these other kids that played hopscotch and jump rope around the neighborhood or who stood in little gossipy clusters in the halls at school. They were these creatures boys my age didn’t pay attention to, other than to think of them as some sort of a bother.
Joanne Gross lived a few houses further north from Charlie Saunders on the same side of the street as both Charlie and me. The Gross’ lived in one of the older brick houses that had been there for many years.
Joanne had a brother, Jack, who was two or three years older than her, and she was at least a year older than I was, if not more. Joanne was a pretty girl, with long brown hair that she often wore in braids, fascinating greenish-blue eyes and a sweet smile. She was about the same height as I was.
Whenever I rode my bike or walked past her house when she was outside, she would always smile and say “Hi”. Her mother and father owned a small five-and-dime store over on Seven Mile Road and were always gone during the day. Her brother Jack would have to go work in the store after school or during school vacations and Joanne would stay around her house.
One morning during a spring vacation from school I was riding my bike on my way to the horse track to see if I could get some work when Joanne called to me from her front porch as I rode by.
“Hi Rollie, where’re you going?” she called.
I stopped and stood straddling my bike. Rollie? No one had ever called me Rollie before!
“I’m just heading over to Hazel Park for awhile. Why?” I answered.
“I just wondered if you wanted to play jacks with me,” she said as she walked down her porch steps toward me.
“You want to play jacks with me?” I asked.
I don’t think Joanne had ever said more than “Hi” to me before this. I was surprised she would want to play with me, and the idea of playing games with a girl wasn’t something I found appealing.
She had the sun in her eyes and was holding her hand up to shield them as she smiled. “My brother and my parents are at the store for the whole day and I was just looking for someone to play with. Do you like to play jacks?”
“Yeah, but I’m not very good at it, I’ve only played a couple of times,” I lied. I knew what the game was but had never played.
This was quite a strange thing for me because I had never talked with a girl before. I found I was feeling shy and awkward around her. Plus, I would never be able to live it down if any of the guys I played hockey with ever found out I was playing games with girls. Maybe that’s why I felt it was necessary to lie to her.
“I – I should probably get going,” I said, and followed up with, “Do your parents care if you have kids over when they’re not home?”
“Nah. I usually have some of my girlfriends over but none of them are home today. They’re either visiting some people in their family or they’ve gone away somewhere with their parents. If you don’t want to play jacks, we have a ping-pong table too,” she said as she leaned on the handlebars of my bike. “Do you like ping-pong?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t played that much either.”
“I haven’t either but I’ll bet you can beat me! Come on, Rollie, park your bike and come in and play, just for a little while, okay?”
I reluctantly walked my bike up her side drive and leaned it against the side of her house as she led me around to her side door. She opened the door, pointed down the stairs to the basement and flicked on a light.
I went down the stairs and saw how much their basement looked like a regular room in a house. It certainly wasn’t anything like my dark, gloomy basement with its plain old cement floor and walls.
The Gross’ basement was brightly lit, the floor was covered in nice linoleum with some rugs scattered about, and the walls had knotty pine wood on them. There were two easy chairs, a davenport, and an area over to one side that had a counter with tall stools in front of it. The ping-pong table was near the counter. I walked over to the counter and could see it had a sink on the other side of it, along with some shelves on the wall behind it which held some bottles. I had seen some of the people who worked at the track with bottles like these when they were hiding out and getting drunk.
The ping-pong paddles were on the table and there was a ping-pong ball under one of them. Joanne followed me over and picked up the other paddle and said, “Go ahead, serve!”
I hit the ball, she hit it back and I missed it completely. I laughed as I picked up the ball and tried again. I played poorly at first but began to get the hang of it after a few minutes. Joanne was much better at this than she had let on. She never missed a ball as we laughed and played. We didn’t keep score—we just kept volleying and laughing at my mistakes while I kept joking around and complaining about how I was the only one who had to go chasing after the ball.
After about a half hour, we decided to play jacks. She got out a box which had a ball and the jacks in it. We sat down across from each other on the floor. Since I had lied to her about having played this game before, I told her to go first so I could see how to play.
She said, “Onesies first”, then took all the jacks in one hand and scattered them in front of her. She then took the little rubber ball, tossed it up with her right hand, picked up a jack with the same hand and after the ball had bounced once, caught it again with her right hand. She transferred the jack to her left hand and continued until she had all the jacks in her left hand. Next, Joanne scattered the jacks again and called out “Twosies”. She proceeded to do the same thing she had already done, except this time she picked up two jacks at a time.
As I was watching her do this, I noticed since she was sitting cross-legged, I could see all the way up between her legs because the skirt she was wearing had ridden up quite high on her thighs. I was suddenly finding it very hard to watch how she played jacks—I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off this view of underpants I had never seen this close up before. I guess there were a couple of times where I had seen girl’s underpants at school, but that was only for a split-second. Here, I was getting a good, long look and it was making me feel strange—sort of like I had to pee.
“I think I have to pee,” I said, “Where’s your bathroom?”
“It’s right over there on the other side of the basement,” she answered.
After I finished, I came back into the room where Joanne was still playing with the jacks. I had every intention of telling her I had to go when she said, “I got all the way up to foursies when I missed, so it’s your turn.”
She was handing me the jacks and the ball as I sat down again when she giggled and said, “I saw my brother’s pee-thing once when he didn’t know it. Can I see yours?”
I let out a huge gasp! There I was, sitting on the floor with a girl who is older than me, looking at her underpants, and she wants to see my thing! I was in a total state of shock. I was speechless. I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. All I could seem to manage was to sit there staring up her skirt with my mouth hanging open.
I wanted to stop looking where I was looking. I wanted to play jacks. I wanted to play some more ping-pong. I wanted to get on my bike and ride out of there. I wanted to stop feeling the way I was feeling.
However, despite all this exciting shock, I knew that somewhere in the recesses of my nine-year old brain I wanted to see hers too.
“Can I see it?” she asked again.
She looked at me and saw where I was looking.
“C’mon, let me see yours. If you do I’ll let you see mine,” she coaxed.
I felt like I had to pee again, my stomach was doing flip-flops, and I could feel my face getting hot. I quickly mumbled, “If you show me yours first, I’ll show you mine.”
I figured such a challenge would probably stop her and I could get out of there and back on my bike. Even though I liked hanging around the racetrack, the thought of being there rather than where I was at this moment was more than extremely enticing.
Then she threw me a curve—she stood up and showed me hers!
At first, all I could do was sit there cross-legged on the floor with my mouth hanging open. My mind was racing along at a hundred miles an hour as I gaped wide-eyed at her. I had no idea what a girl looked like there. I was amazed, excited and very nervous. I didn’t want to show her mine, but I also didn’t want to stop looking at hers, so I stood up and showed her mine.
Just as I was getting ready to pull up my pants and get out of there, she said, “Can I touch it?”
Now I really wanted to run. I wanted to be so far away from there, while at the same time I didn’t want to leave. I really didn’t want her to touch it, but I did. I also wanted to touch hers but was much too afraid to ask.
Then I saw her hand reaching toward me. I watched and at the same time saw my hand reaching toward her. We touched—we giggled—we both turned beet red—our eyes lowered in embarrassment as we quickly pulled our pants back up and covered ourselves.
“I should probably go now,” I said looking at the floor, “but maybe we can play jacks again sometime, okay?”
Joanne kept her eyes down and wouldn’t look at me but I could see that she was smiling as she responded, “Yeah, okay. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Sure, tomorrow’s fine. When do your parent’s and brother leave for the store?”
“About eight o’clock.”
“Okay, I’ll come over and call you,” I said as I climbed the stairs, went out the door, got on my bike and rode unsteadily up the street. I felt more grown up as I rode away. I wished I had someone I could tell about this experience, but all the guys I knew were older and would probably just laugh.
I knew I wanted to go back the next day, but even as I thought about it, I wondered if I would.
My father continued with his periodic temper flare-ups throughout the year. Each time would result in his taking me to the attic for another beating. Each time was the same, with the Bible in his hand, along with the yelling and screaming about my inevitable sinfulness. Each time I was showing more courage and toughness by yelling back at him and not allowing myself to cry or show any pain.
Since Billy was spending so much time teaching me how to fight, and the fact I was getting a lot of confidence in myself, the temptation to strike back was extremely strong. The only thing which kept me from doing it was the lesson from Billy to avoid getting into a fight with anyone bigger than me. He always said, “If the guy is bigger than you, it’s almost impossible to get him down—they either have long arms to keep you from getting close to them—or they’re so much heavier that their weight alone will stop you.”
My father was a lot taller and heavier than me even though I was big for a nine-year old kid.
Billy and I continued our street-fighting lessons as often as we could. One day at the bowling alley right after my father had given me another beating, Billy asked, “When your old-man hits you, is he using his fists?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “he uses his fists most of the time, but sometimes he just hits me with the heel of his hand. Why?”
“Well, what do you do when he hits you? Are you just standing there, or do you move away from him when his fist is coming at you? Are your eyes open or closed?”
I didn’t have any idea what Billy was getting at. He was just leaning on the post by his lane and squinting at me through the smoke of his cigarette.
“I guess I’m just standing there,” I said. “I don’t really know exactly what I’m doing, but I do know my eyes are closed when he hits. I’m learning not to cry any more, though.”
Billy looked at me with a smirk on his face as he ground out the butt of his cigarette on the post.
“After work today we’ll go over to my house so I can show you how to move your body so he doesn’t hurt you as much. It’s not hard to do, but you do have to watch him when he swings at you. You can’t be flinching with your eyes closed. I’ll show you later,” he said as he climbed back up to set pins for a new bowler on his lane.
Later Billy spent about two hours showing me how to roll with the punches so they wouldn’t strike with the same force as they would if my body or face was rigid. It took quite awhile for me to get over the natural reflex to flinch and close my eyes when the blow was close to me. Billy had on boxing gloves and he just kept swinging at me over and over again until I got used to moving away from the force of the blow.
It worked. On my next trip to the attic I was able to do exactly what Billy had taught me. My father didn’t seem to notice the fact that I was doing something different. Plus, it was so much easier not to cry or show pain, because it just didn’t hurt like it did before. I still didn’t dare to strike back at him, but I could now move myself in the same direction as his striking fist so that he landed a more glancing blow rather than a solid hit.
During the summer of 1943, I did make two more attempts at running away, but still wasn’t smart enough to elude the cops. I did have a little more success the second time since I managed to stay away for over two weeks. Those were two weeks of warm summer days and nights so I didn’t feel I needed to sleep in the bowling alley every night. I still spent a good percentage of my mornings and early afternoons working at the track to pick up some extra money, but I did something different than usual later in the day.
Rather than riding my bike in the evenings, I’d leave it either in the storage area behind the bowling alley, or at another place behind one of the stores on Seven Mile Road where I could hide it safely. Then, I’d get on a bus and ride to another part of town in the late afternoon. I went in a variety of different directions. Once I got off the bus, I’d walk into the neighborhood areas, staying away from the main streets. I was beginning to learn that the cops rarely cruised the neighborhood side streets, but stayed more along the main drags. I also felt the cops in my own neighborhood would be more likely to spot me than those in neighborhoods some distance away.
I went mostly into the Hamtramck and Highland Park areas because they were more built up with older, established neighborhoods. And, since both Hamtramck and Highland Park were separate cities from Detroit, they had their own police forces, which made it less likely that they would have the same information as the police from the Detroit force.
Most of the homes in these neighborhoods had garages behind the houses, and alleys behind those garages. Late at night, those alleys would provide safe pathways to those garages where there were cars which would provide clean, comfortable and dry places to get a decent night’s sleep.
The one thing I hadn’t counted on was the fact a lot of the people in Highland Park and Hamtramck worked in the factories. The factories were usually running twenty-four hours a day. Since they were making tanks and other vehicles for the war, many people worked on the night shifts.
One time in Hamtramck, I was sound asleep in the backseat of a car when I heard the garage doors start to scrape open. I shot straight up in the seat and, even though it was very dark, I found myself staring into the face of a man who looked as frightened as I was at that moment.
He let out a “Hey” and started to back away from the car, stumbling over his own feet as he scrambled to move away from the garage.
I let out an equally surprised “Hey” and started to slowly open the back door of the car.
It only took a split second for my sleepy mind to figure out the only way out of the garage was going to be through the open garage doors where he was standing because that’s how I got in. There was no other door.
“Hey, I’m sorry, mister. Let me go okay?” I pleaded as I slowly stuck one foot, followed just as slowly by the other foot, out of the back door of the car.
“You get outta here,” he yelled in a very pronounced accent, which I assumed was Polish since Hamtramck’s population was almost one hundred percent Polish in those days.
As I stood up and took a couple of tentative steps toward him, he took a couple of equally tentative steps back. His eyes looked like huge saucers and his hands were held in front of him as a way of letting me know he wanted me to stay away from him.
“Just let me go—I won’t cause any trouble—I was just sleeping, that’s all.”
“Okay, go—go on—get outta here now!” he said as he backed even further away, waving his hands around and pointing towards the alley.
I side-stepped past the car, then sidled around the garage door opening to get past him and took off running past the garage, out his back gate, and down the alley as fast as my feet could carry me.
Sleeping in people’s cars in their garage was ideal for staying warm and being reasonably comfortable. There were some nights when I’d choose to sleep under someone’s front porch, but I only did it if I was desperate. Most of the houses in these older neighborhoods had porches that ran across the entire width of the front of the house. The area under the porch was often used as storage or as a place to collect miscellaneous junk.
Some of the under-porch places were closed in with wood with little doorways on the sides, others were left open and others had a lattice enclosure. When I did choose to sleep under a porch, I always picked a house where the area under the porch was closed in. I felt more secure that way.
The main drawback was the creatures of the night didn’t care for me intruding on their space, especially the rats. I would wake up feeling something brushing against my bare arm or my leg, only to see a huge, hairy rat with its bright, beady eyes sniffing at me. It got to the point where if I couldn’t find a place to sleep in the backseat of someone’s car, I’d just walk the neighborhood until morning.
On the last night of my two-weeks of success as a runaway, I rode my bike out to Seven Mile Road to hide it. As I was waiting for the bus, it started to rain. I decided I’d be better off in the bowling alley instead of either walking the streets or sleeping under porches. So, I got my bike and headed over to the bowling alley hoping to make it before the rain picked up.
My luck ran out when the cops spotted me and picked me up. I spent that rainy night in my bed at home.
It would also be my last attempt to run away that year.
I never had a great deal of understanding about the Second World War even though it was in full swing during this time of my life.
I was only seven-years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but I do have a distinct memory of when it happened. I was in the car with my parents. We were either coming home from church or on our way to church for a service or some other meeting. The car radio was playing music when the broadcast was interrupted by the news about the bombing. The announcement didn’t register much with me, but my mother’s remark of “Oh, Henry. What will happen now?” did get my attention. Her voice was filled with a concern and worry which was uncommon for her.
My father responded, “I really don’t know, Rettie.” He called her ‘Rettie’ as a nickname for her full name, Henrietta.
Although it was rare for him to expound on anything, he went on to say, “We’ve known for some time the world was in a lot of turmoil, but I never thought anything like this would ever happen. I don’t know what will happen now.”
That was all they said about it, but I did get the feeling they were upset about the news, even though it didn’t have much of an effect on me. My parents rarely ever had lengthy conversations about anything, so it wasn’t surprising nothing further was discussed.
Many of the homes around our neighborhood had little flags hanging in their windows to show they had someone in their family who was serving in the war. Most of the flags were red, with a white square in the middle and one or two black stars in the white square, depending on how many members of the household were in the service. Every once in a while I would see a window with a gold star flag in it. The gold star signified that someone who belonged to the household had been killed in the war. What was really sad was when you saw a flag in the window with two gold stars.
There was, however, one particular occurrence which brought the consequences of war home to me personally.
On a Wednesday afternoon late in the summer of 1943, I was at home waiting for Mrs. Wolpert to show up for my regular weekly piano lesson. She was due to arrive at four o’clock, but still wasn’t there by fifteen minutes after four. This was extremely disconcerting because Mrs. Wolpert was never late. She might be a couple of minutes early, but never fifteen minutes late.
My mother called over to Charlie Saunder’s house because Mrs. Wolpert always gave him his lesson just before mine.
After she got off the phone my mother came into my room and told me that Mrs. Wolpert had never arrived at the Saunder’s house.
“Mrs. Saunders doesn’t know what could be wrong,” my mother explained. “The only other time she didn’t make it to a lesson was over a year ago and she called to let them know.”
“Does that mean I won’t have a lesson today?” I asked.
“Well, I’d like you to stay around for a little longer just to be sure she doesn’t show up. Do you have to work at the bowling alley later?”
Since I’d much rather work at the alley than be around the house, especially if I didn’t have any practicing to do after a lesson, I said, “No, I don’t normally go there on Wednesdays because of my lesson, but if I don’t have a lesson, I could go in for awhile.”
“Let’s wait a few more minutes. If she doesn’t show up, you can go.”
It was just a few minutes later that Mrs. Saunders called and told my mother that Mrs. Wolpert had been “detained” by the government because of the fact she was a German and not a citizen of the United States.
We never saw or heard from Mrs. Wolpert again.
A few weeks later I began taking lessons from Miss Thomas—Julianna Thomas.
I finally learned Billy’s last name. Everybody who worked at the bowling alley always just called him “Billy” so I had no idea what his last name was. It was in the winter of 1943 when I heard it for the first time.
There was a guy waiting outside as we were leaving work one day. I didn’t know who the guy was, but the minute we walked out the back door, this guy calls out, “Hey, Bradford. I hear you beat the shit out of my cousin last week.”
Billy put his hand on my shoulder, pushed me back by the door and hissed, “Stay back here, Van. Don’t try to help me—you ain’t ready yet—just stay back!”
This guy was a little bigger than Billy, and looked like he might be fifteen or sixteen years old. He was wearing a jacket with the same colors as a gang that hung out over by McNichols and Woodward. He had on peg pants and there was a bandanna tied around his forehead. His face almost made me laugh because it was the longest face I had ever seen. Not only was it long, but also very narrow. He looked as though he ought to be some sort of comic book character named “Long-Face” or something. However, the look on his long face was anything but funny. This guy was mad and it showed.
Billy called out to him, “Oh yeah! What’s your cousin’s name?”
“You know who it was. It’s Johnny—he lives over on Riopelle—he told me you jumped him last week for no reason. I don’t like it when people beat up on my family and you’re gonna find out what happens to people who piss me off,” he threatened.
This guy must have known when Billy was at the bowling alley there wouldn’t be any of the State Fair Dukes around because he was alone. It was unusual, and dangerous, for someone to come looking for a fight without several of his own gang members around.
Billy looked at the other guy and I could see him looking around to see if anyone else was there who shouldn’t be.
“Hey, your cousin was messing around with my girl over by the movie house on Seven Mile Road. I don’t like it when people mess around with my girl, so I gave him a little something so he’d know not to do that anymore.”
Some of the other guys who had just got off work started to walk back to see what was going on.
Billy unzipped his jacket, pushed the sleeves up higher on his arms and went on, “It wasn’t for no reason—I don’t jump people for no reason. And I don’t like people coming around here making like they’re so tough, either,” Billy said as he began to stride over closer to the other guy. “So, what’s your name, tough guy? You just wearing that McNichols gang jacket or are you one of the boys from over there?”
Just then the other guy took a swing at Billy and missed. I didn’t see what happened next but the other guy was on the ground and Billy was standing over him with a switchblade in his hand.
“You want me to invite my friend over there to come over here and use your head for football practice,” yelled Billy, “or maybe I’ll do that myself while I’m just standing here?”
The guy just lay there with complete anger and hatred on his face. He spit on Billy, so Billy kicked him hard in his side. When the guy tried to roll away, Billy kicked him again in his back. “Get the fuck outta here before I decide to really hurt you, asshole,” yelled Billy, “and be sure to tell your cousin to get his own girl!”
Billy backed away and the guy got up and said, “Yeah, I’ll go, but you better keep eyes in the back of your head because I’m gonna get your ass some day!”
When Billy walked back to where I was waiting I said, “So, your last name’s Bradford, huh?”
“Yeah, but don’t spread it around,” Billy laughed.
My street-fighting training sessions with Billy continued all through the winter. I knew I was getting stronger and more confident all the time, plus I was growing to the point where I was nearly as big as Billy. We spent many hours talking about running away from home and how to do it without getting caught every time. Those conversations usually started whenever I would show up at the bowling alley with bruises or swelling on my face and arms.
“One of the reasons I keep getting caught,” I was explaining to Billy, “is because I have to get from wherever I’m hanging out during the day to wherever I’m going to sleep at night. Every time I got caught it was because the cops knew about me and they spotted me riding my bike after dark. I was also riding on main streets. So, I think I need to stay on the side streets where they won’t be driving around so much.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, “There’s a couple of guys with the Dukes who are runaways and they stay as invisible as they can all the time.”
I thought about that for a minute and said, “When the weather’s warmer I ride the bus to Highland Park or Hamtramck and sneak into garages and sleep in people’s cars. But the cops still manage to find me sooner or later and make me go home again.”
Billy nodded and said, “I think the main reason you’re getting caught is because you’re still pretty young and the cops can spot younger kids easier than someone who’s older. If people see a kid your age wandering around and they don’t know who it is, they’re gonna call the cops on you.”
Billy stopped to light a cigarette and went on, “Another thing to think about is if the cops get tired of you running away all the time, they might put you into reform school instead of just making you go home. I know a couple of guys who’ve been in there and they didn’t like it at all!”
I had never thought about the possibility of having to go to reform school. I didn’t know much about it but I didn’t think I would care to be in there.
Billy was quiet for a little longer, took another drag off his smoke, ground it out and then added, “And you know, you don’t think about what you have to do to stay out of sight. When you don’t show up for dinner, your old man and old lady are gonna call the cops right away, especially now that you already did this a few times. So you gotta make yourself invisible right away.”
I knew Billy was right but I was still struggling with how I could make it happen.
“So, how do I make myself invisible?” I asked. “I still have to get from one place to the next. I don’t have any one place where I can stay.”
Billy got the same look on his face he got when he was going to teach me something. I don’t think he knew it, but he reminded me of what a teacher in school looked like when they were really into whatever they were talking about. His face sort of changed from his tough, street-fighter look, into, what I would imagine was what an older brother would look like.
He said, “Before you ever step out in any street, you gotta check to make sure there ain’t no cops around. If you see a cop car, you gotta get outta sight right away. It’s sort of like you have to pretend you just robbed a store or something, and you don’t want to get caught.”
I nodded as I thought about what it would feel like to rob a store.
Billy went on to say, “You gotta learn to stay in the alleys and behind the stores. Use the vacant lots to get from one street to another and find guys who’ll hide you in their basements or garages.”
We stayed quiet for several minutes and Billy lit another cigarette.
I said, “Yeah, and I gotta figure out how I’m gonna make it when the weather gets cold. So far, all I’ve done is take off in the summer.”
Billy was nodding his head and scratching his neck. He looked at me through the smoke coming from his cigarette and said, “Don’t forget, when the weather gets cold you’re gonna have to learn how to steal food and clothes, too. Those guys living on the streets have to be smart not to get caught. But, you ain’t like most little kids anymore. You’re learning how to fight good and you’re smart enough.”
I knew Billy was right about everything he said. I also knew I wasn’t ready to try to run away during the winter. I still had a lot to learn. I had to keep learning how to be a good fighter so I could defend myself on the streets if I needed to. I had to learn how to keep from starving. If I was going to run away for good, I had to learn how to keep from freezing in the colder months. I realized I would have to learn how to steal food and money, especially in the winter. Running away in the summer worked for me because I could work at the track to have enough money for food, and find places to sleep. The Victory Gardens were also there for the picking. But the track closed down during the winter. If I was on the streets, I couldn’t work at the bowling alley. I needed to find other ways to get money. I needed to get some friends I could count on to help me when I needed it.
It was this kind of thinking that started me on the path to becoming a member of the State Fair Dukes street gang.