Class Clippings

Timeline 15:47h 17 February 2011

I was thinking of Eddie Cancelleri recently, a kid who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. He was about four years older than me, and kinda took me under his wing for awhile. He moved into the neighborhood when I was about 10 or 11.
There used to be a large swath of woods behind the houses on my street. One spring, surveyors and bulldozers and backhoes and men in hardhats showed up, and suddenly we had a weird new landscape to play in: giant holes (eventually to be someone’s basement) that filled up with muddy water on rainy days, with thousands of boulders all around. We would heave and cantilever the stones into the ditches, try and see who could make the biggest splash. Towering mounds of dirt which became daredevil slopes for our bikes, and draconian backdrops for our very best games of “war”. Unlimited lumber which we would “borrow” to build our forts further back in the woods. It’s amazing we didn’t all get killed playing in and around that multi-acre construction site.
I don’t remember the actual framing out and construction of the houses. It seemed like they just appeared one day, and “bingo!”, we had fifteen new kids to play with. Eddie and Neil Cancelleri; John, Mike and Frankie Vallorosi; Joey Gerace; Mike and Neil DeStefano; Jack Behan; Robbie Lundt; and Mike Roush, among others. They were all part of the “New Development” gang, as we called it.
These kids were largely from the Bronx, and many seemed to know one another already. They came replete with their own war stories and pre-claimed field positions (suddenly center field was no longer mine…). They used to rave about a burger place that nobody up here had ever heard of: “White Castle”. Whatever.
They could fight. They were slightly tougher than us, truth be told, and had a street mettle that many of us kids who grew up in the ‘burbs were lacking. They weren’t interested in backing down, and squared up in a heartbeat. They introduced me to my favorite neighborhood game, street-hockey.
Anyway, one day a group of kids from up the street, kids from the topside of MacArthur Boulevard, were floating around. Taunts were flung, so were a couple of rocks, and one hit, or seemed to hit, my little sister, who was about six at the time. She started crying.
So I did what I thought I was supposed to do and waded into them, picked one about my size and began swinging. The kid I picked was Richie Hatcher.
Well, he began windmilling me, hit me about five times right in the skull, to my one feeble girlie-punch which caught nothing but air. He not only knew how to use his hands, but his feet. I was getting hit everywhere simultaneously. I began giving ground immediately. He kept coming on with machine-like precision, and I kept going back, flailing now for dear life. I was a boy sinking in a pit of my own making; I didn’t stand a chance. He beat me like a rented mule.
So I did what I always do when I get beat up: started crying and ran away.
This surprised me, and everybody watching, which I’m positive was every single one of the 6,000 kids who lived in the ‘hood at that time, because I was supposed to be tough. I hung with the White Castle boys. Right.
So, I ran up the street and into my house, red-faced and blubbering, and I wasn’t coming back out. Ever again.
I was holed up in my room, crying and cursing into my pillow, so incredibly ashamed that I needed to be dead immediately. At the very least we needed to pack up and move far, far away under cover of darkness.
My mom came in to comfort me but I shooed her away. My little sister peeked in, but I lay inert, trying with all my might to turn invisible. I wouldn’t even let my dog in; she didn’t deserve a coward like me for a master.
Then my mom stuck her head in and said my friends were on the front stoop, waiting for me to come out. I told her to tell them to go home, to just please leave me be.
She stuck her head in again, later, and said they’re waiting. I was firm: go away.
She stuck her head in again, saying they’re still here. And again. And again. And again. She said they told her they weren’t leaving until I came out. Dinner time came. They were still outside.
And I came out, much, much later, head hanging way low. And there was Eddie and Neil Cancelleri, and Mike “Beef” DeStefano, and Joey Gerace, and John Vallorosi, and Jack Behan.
And they taught me how to box, right then and there, in my driveway.

Richie Hatcher