Back in the Day

by Robert Lowinger

I was in the seventh grade, in 1969, living in a little town outside of Buffalo, New York when me and Danny Nissen, who was almost 15, threatened to beat the crap out of Larry McKoon for telling Danny that he wasn’t good at basketball, and he should get booted off the team. Well, Danny said, “Jimmy, you got to be a man and not let anyone diss your friends, certainly not a little prick like Larry,” and ever since Danny killed that cat with a knife behind the sticker bushes when he was 12, nobody ever said no to him. Next day, we saw the twerp on the school bus, and when he got off, we told him, “We’re going to kill you, Larry, you piece of crap.”

Dumbass Larry reported us to the principal who told us we can’t go beating up people on school property. Danny didn’t know what to say, so I said to the principal, “If we’re going to do anything, and I ain’t saying we are, we ain’t stupid enough to do it on school property.” Well, he told us that school property went all the way from New Springs and Marcus up to Hillcrest and Willis, 10 football fields big, and we being just 13 and almost 15 years old, had no way of knowing he was fibbing. He called our parents, and when I got home that day at 3PM, Mom was screaming at me, and the whupping I got left black and blue bruises all over my ass and legs that didn’t heal for two weeks. Dad was out the whole night hauling gas, and when he got back the next morning, Mom told him what I’d done, and said he had to call McKoon’s dad and apologize. I know mom thought she was teaching me to be a good Christian but McKoon deserved a good licking.

Two weeks later, my uncle Marvin, Mom’s brother, visited us, which he did about twice a year. He worked for the P.O., his whole life was making good money, had no family of his own, and lived in a broken-down duplex he bought for peanuts after the war, so he had plenty of dough. He was a cheap S.O.B. who walked clear across the city to buy 53 bottles of Katsup when the A&P put it on sale for 99 cents, and he got stuff free waiting on lines to open accounts at new banks in the city. He brought us the bank presents, like bikes and sleds, and one year he got a TV, which he gave to us, so we didn’t have to wait till the cab driver from upstairs put his TV on the porch to watch the ballgames.

Whenever he came, Marvin brought Gramps along for company and to make Mom happy. Marvin asked what I was learning in school and gave me hard math problems like twenty-five times fifteen to see if I was smart. He cursed out the Jews, blacks, and liberals. Seeing Dad shake his head at what he called my uncle’s stuck-in-the-mud thinking, made me feel he knew more than Marvin, even though Marvin got his diploma, and dad dropped out in the third grade. But as much as I would’ve liked to see Dad shout Marvin down, he didn’t fight with Marvin, cause as he told me many times before, “that won’t get nobody nowhere.” Gramps, who also worked for the P.O. for 50 years, and got a gold watch when he retired, only talked to Mom and Marvin, cause he hadn’t a clue what to say to me.  

That was the last time I saw Gramps that year. The next year he turned 80, and Mom said he got “sick brain,” and also found himself a girlfriend. His first wife, my grandma, who was put away for life in the looney bin, died many years before. Anyway, Marvin called Mom one day, and told her that the girlfriend was stealing money from Gramp’s bank. So, Mom asked him to take care of it. When someone disses my friends, and I stick up for them, Mom beats the crap out of me, but when someone messes with her dad, she sends Marvin to handle it.  I guess she saw it as doing the right thing helping Gramps keep his money, but it was just plain ass stupid. Anyway, I didn’t want to miss math class where I sit right next to Annie, so I hightailed it out of there.  

In school that day, I picked up Annie’s book, and she gave me a nice sweet smile with her pink-painted lips and big brown eyes. The next day, I was walking down the glass corridor to the cafeteria to eat lunch, and Lennie Aiello ran toward me like a bull rushing at a red cape. Lennie was Annie’s boyfriend and built like the linebacker on the football team that he was. He lunged at me, pushed me back hard, and asked who the hell I thought I was, messing with his girl. I told him, “I wasn’t messing with nobody,” but he didn’t listen, and he got me in a bear hug, and we both went flying through the glass doors stuck together like ice cubes. Mom’s sandwich crumbled all over the freaking floor, but food was the last thing on my mind when the sheriff came, and brought me to the nurse, who bandaged up my busted thumb. When I got home that day, Mom asked what happened to the sandwich. I tried to tell her but she wasn’t in no mood to hear it, and said, “I ain’t going to waste money fixing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, if you’re going to get into scrapes and not eat what I make.” I was just in the biggest fight in the school’s history, and Mom’s worrying about her dumb sandwich. That night I went down to the trucker’s garage to pick up a couple of quarters cleaning trucks, and dad’s bud, Brian, tells me he heard I sent Aiello’s kid flying through a glass window. For dad’s sake, I prayed to Jesus that mom never found out dad was bragging on me.

Anyway, I never again had the nerve to look at Annie, much less ask her out, even though kids was saying Lennie got sent off to Juvie, which I figured was some kind of kid’s jail. The rest of the year, I minded my own business, and didn’t pal around with nobody, not even Danny. I did practically nothing, except waiting for the summer to start so I could go swimming in Blue Moon Lake and fishing over at Tyler’s crick.

When summer came, Mom went to the hospital every day to visit Gramps, who had some kind of cancer. I figured she took me along cause he was dying, and she felt guilty not taking me to Aunt Sally’s funeral who died when I was five. When the funeral came, mom’s big heart had her crying like a baby.

But when they was leaving the chapel, I heard her and Marvin whispering about how the bitch wiped out Gramp’s bank account, Marvin saying he couldn’t get no money out of her, Mom saying there wasn’t even money left to pay the funeral, and Marvin saying he finished her off like Mom wanted him to. Jesus H. Christ, I couldn’t believe it but I knew I better keep my mouth shut. Anyway, Marvin died three months later in an auto accident, and Mom died of a heart attack the year after. I cried at her funeral, but never thought of Mom the same way again.

Danny came to the funeral. I hadn’t seen him in two years, and he was now about 6’3”, looking all grown up. “Sorry, about your mom,” he said. I told Danny most everything that happened, keeping secret the part about Gramps’ girl, cause I already felt bad enough, and figured there was no sense bringing more shame on me and dad for something mom did that we had nothin’ to do with. I got my diploma last year and smiled on grad day when dad stood up and clapped, with everyone staring at him, before I even got on stage to get my diploma.  Dad got me a job at the factory hauling oil and I’m loving it. I’m hoping for a nice girl to marry, becoming a dad, and getting me one of them houses with a white picket fence.