In the latest installment of my father’s autobiography, which he sent to me a few years before his death, the Brooklyn boy is growing up … and war looms on the horizon.

Growing Up and Stuff: An Adventure
Part 3

Next on our hangout list was Happy’s Deli. Happy was a former professional boxer and had been a merchant seaman during World War II. He loved to sit with us and tell us stories of his fighting days as we sat eating large slices of salami.

Davey’s house was a great hangout for us. His father liked the company and enjoyed our laughter. Davey’s mother had passed away years before, and he always blamed a local doctor for it. We all avoided that doctor, through a combination of loyalty to Davey and just plain fear.

Davey had an older sister who would teach us the latest dance steps. Eddy was always hitting on her. He never got anywhere, no matter how hard he tried.

Another of our hangouts was Mendy’s house. His mother had also passed away, so that he and Davey had a sort of close understanding between themselves. Mendy’s father was a character. He was an avid gin rummy player and he could read the cards, memorizing what was out. He could almost tell you what cards you had in your hand. His local bootlegger supplied him with some great alcohol, which we sampled now and then.

Tuesday nights became almost sacred. It was Uncle Miltie night on television, and in those days the streets would be empty, because he was on. Televisions were expensive and not everyone could afford one. And so, on Tuesday nights, we’d drop into Jerry’s house and crowd in with his folks, sisters, brothers and all the neighbors and anyone else who showed up. We’d all sit in a darkened living room in front of a 12″ television set.

As we got older, things got more serious. Big-time stuff was at hand, like learning to drive a car and stuff like that. Jerry drove a laundry delivery truck for his father, so he became our designated driver and teacher. The group pitched in to buy a car. It was a big old beat-up car, and for sixty bucks, it was ours.

Insurance? What do you mean, insurance? We drove that car on a wing and a prayer and hoped that we wouldn’t hit anything.

Each of us learned to drive in that car with a few very close mishaps and a few missed telephone poles, which scared the hell out of us as we sat in the car, waiting our turn to drive.

As each of the guys in the group got their driver’s licenses, they bought their own cars. It left one small problem, the car. At that point, not having that much money to buy a new car, I bought the car from the group for sixty bucks.

The car lasted about eight months. It was built like a tank. Running boards, wheel wells on the front fenders, no grill to speak of, and by carrying extra oil and water in the trunk, I was able to get about five miles to a gallon of gas and almost that with the oil, but it was mine.

Jerry bought this great car. It had a rumble seat. If you’ve never seen a rumble seat, it sits where the trunk of a car would be, and when you opened it, you could sit three thin people in it.

Jerry was short and kept the driver’s seat up close to the steering wheel. Because of this, he was able to put a bench seat behind the driver’s seat, so that you could get as many as nine people into the car, looking sort of like the clown car in the circus when we all piled out.

House parties or gatherings as they were called were the thing at the time, and if parents weren’t at home, slow music and dimmed lights were the order of the evening. Mostly clean fun and great evenings.

As we grew into the upper teens, the original group changed. New faces were added, between some of the guys moving away, early marriages and just plain old other interests, we all seemed to drift apart.

Taking a real summer job as a lifeguard seemed to add to the feeling of parting of the ways, what with varying hours of duty for me, which included weekends. I seemed to see less and less of the guys.

War is a dirty word, and so a new word was coined: “Conflict.” A new conflict had started in a place called Korea, so instead of calling it a war, they called it a police action, or the Korean conflict, but never a war. … Hell, it was a war, and some of my buddies were over there and up to their asses in mud, or so they wrote me. And I knew I’d be joining them soon.

I was in my last few months of high school and knew that my next steps would be moving forward to take the oath at the draft board. I guess knowing friends in Korea and realizing I would soon join them gave me the feeling of suddenly growing up too fast.

I must have been thinking about it a lot, more than I wanted to admit. I knew it when in one of my classes, the teacher started to talk about Korea. Some of the tough guys in the class started to mouth off, making fun.

Not realizing how mad I’d gotten, I yelled for them to shut the hell up. I’d be going soon, and since I’d be getting bullets shot at my ass, I wanted to hear all about it. It might have been the look in my eyes or of them feeling real dumb, but the room got real quiet.

To be continued …