... continued from Neighborhood Bully - The Rise
As I said, Glenn getting hit by the car and Jimmy's reaction was a turning point for me. I've spent many years asking myself, "Why didn't I stand up to Jimmy more when he was; beating up little kids, berating other people, cursing out people's mothers, [insert your own rotten deed here], etc...?" It would have saved Glenn alot of heart ache - not to mention multiple major surgeries, therapy, etc... But better late then never... I started to now.
In the summer of '68 or '69 most of us kids on the block were at the point where sports - particularly baseball, stickball & hockey - were big in our lives. There is a variation of stickball that you need a wall for. You drew a rectangle on the wall with chalk (representing the strike zone) and the batter took his place in front of it. The faithful Spaldeen got pitched in and... In the box - strike. Outside the box - ball. Ground ball caught - out. Caught fly - out, etc... With the previously mentioned specs, it's obvious that the only place you could play this version of stickball was in a school yard. So more rules; Over the fence - home run. Top fence section on a fly - triple. Middle fence section on a fly - double. Bottom fence section on a fly - or a ground ball not caught before it hits the fence - single. The school yard behind PS 207 on Fillmore Avenue was perfect for this game.
The small - to some - obstacle was that the school yard was not always open. The gates were chained up and locked from the end of the regular school year until summer school started up in July, when the kids going to summer school had exclusive rights during the day. At the end of their school day the gates were chained up and locked again until the following school day. Sometimes people would use a bolt cutter to make a small hole in the fence, so you could squeeze through, but that would only work for a day or two. They really took care of the school yard fences in our neighborhood. So the only alternative was - over the 12 foot high fence.
One summer afternoon, someone suggested going up to the school yard to play some stickball. "YEAH!" the chorus replied, except for Jimmy. His reply was "Stickball is for faggots." We looked at him like he had three heads, then grabbed our Spaldeens, broomsticks and bikes and headed up the street.
After arriving at the fence, we all chained up our bikes and began scaling. Big Chris - of course - was the first one over. Then Billy and Eddie, then me and Little Chris - not necessarily in that order. We all landed on the other side of the fence and looked out to see Jimmy still there struggling to get his foot into one of the square-shaped holes of the chain link fence. "These stupid shoes my mother bought me... I can't get my toes in the fence," he said, "the toes are too wide."
"Go get some sneakers, then..." someone replied.
"Who wants to play stickball, anyway," Jimmy said. "Like I said, it's for faggots," and he got back on his bike and rode away.
Looking at each other, we shrugged and forgot all about Jimmy the minute the game began. It was the next day when the whole scene was repeated - this time with Jimmy wearing sneakers - that we started smelling something rotten in Jimmy-land. We didn't discuss it between us until the same thing happened yet again. There was a chink in Jimmy's bully armor. He was afraid or unable to climb over the fence because of his weight.
When the autumn came we started playing street hockey. The Rangers were hot that year (Eddie Giacomin, Rod Gilbert, Brad Park, etc...) and so were we. Naturally Jimmy had all the hockey equipment - goals, goalie stick, pads, etc... Based on our summertime experience with Jimmy not being able to climb over the fence, we realized that Jimmy wanted to play goalie so he wouldn't have to move around. One day we were playing when Jimmy refused to admit that someone had scored a goal on him. He said, "I'm taking in all my stuff if you say that the goal was scored." Almost in unison, we all said, "Go ahead." And he did. We got a couple of garbage cans and - side by side - that became the goal. We set up in front of Jimmy's house and saw occasional movement behind his curtains. He was watching us play.
At some point over the next few weeks, must have been World Series time, Jimmy called for me and asked if I wanted to throw the ball around. I said, "Sure," and met him in the street with my ball and glove. My baseball mitt was something left over from the 1930s/1940s that my dad had used when he was a kid. I wish I still I had it today, but at the time we didn't have the money to get me a new one, and I was always embarrassed by it. It wasn't long before I missed one of the crappy throws Jimmy had thrown to me and instead of taking the blame for throwing a stinker, Jimmy said something like, "If you had a real baseball mitt, instead of that piece of shit, you would have caught that."
A year or two earlier I would have gotten embarrassed and taken it, but since my experience with Glenn combined with the fact that Jimmy was losing credibility with everything in the neighborhood, I told him to shove it where the sun don't shine and went back into my house. He stood there with his mouth open and I felt great. Jimmy had lost his perverted edge.
Then it started getting nasty, and for once, we weren't the victims.
To be continued...
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