MEMORIAL DAY

An outstanding guest piece from Pat Fenton.  Pat’s one of the good guys who grew up in the neighborhood.  And boy is he a fantastic writer!

I pushed up my draft in 1961, 20 years old, a high school drop out working a rivet machine in a factory in Brooklyn, and the Army seemed like a way out.  I went in during the Berlin Crisis buildup, was sent thorough the military police academy in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and shipped out of the Brooklyn Army Base on the ship the U.S Rose to Mannheim Germany to the 537MP Company.

I got to stand a few feet from President John F Kennedy when he was on his way to Frankfurt to give that great Berlin speech.  He was reviewing the troops at a first stop, and I was standing as part of the security on a black top when his open limo stopped, and I saluted him. Riding the back top, his Ray Bans on, he saluted me back.  I still have the program from that day.  It was the same limo he took everywhere, the one he would be assassinated on, I found out later.

(Pat Fenton with helmet pushed up)

I was 23 by then, and just a few feet from history; and the start-up of the Vietnam War.  When I came home to Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn I spent my nights drinking in the Irish bars of 9th Avenue in places like Farrell’s on 16th Street, hearing the sad stories of all the young from our neighborhood who were being drafted and dying over there.  And I think of them even more on this Memorial Day. God bless all of them, and to hell with the politicians who don’t fly an American flag on the front of their houses on this day.

A special mention goes out to Bobby Cain:  ”one of the people I served with in the 537th was Bobby Cain.  And so typical of Brooklyn neighborhoods, I didn’t know him before I went in.  We both went through the Military Police Academy in Fort Gordon, Georgia.  When we both came home in 1963, we spent some time hanging out at the old McFadden Brothers American Legion Post when it was on 9th Ave off of 17th Street. ”  Bobby Cain is all the way to the right crouched over.  I heard that one of his sons goes into Farrell’s Bar.

Thanks Pat.

Respectfully,

Red

Hoops135@hotmail.com 

PAT, TELL US A STORY

My guy, and former 17th street resident Pat Fenton will be performing live…get out and check him out.

Tuesday night, February 19th, (THAT’S TONIGHT!) at the Cell Theatre in Chelsea, 338 West 23rd Street (between 8th and 9th avenues), New York, Pat will be one of the featured readers at the Irish American Artists and Writers salon.

Pat will be reading from a play he wrote about the writer Jack Kerouac.

Since its first appearance on stage at the Boston Playwright’s Theatre,  “Jack’s Last Call: Say Goodbye to Kerouac,” has been  recorded with a full cast on CD and aired on over 70 Public Radio Stations across the country.

Pat will be on the bill with T. J. English, who wrote the classic book of Irish American life in Hell’s Kitchen at a time when one gang ruled it all, ”The Westies,” and his latest book, “Savage City,” actor Jack O’Connell who has appeared in “Mad Men,” and “Boardwalk Empire” and many other TV shows and movies will be reading.

Also, Larry Kirwan, leader of the Irish rock band Black 47 (there will be an excerpt from a film of a bus trip across Ireland with 3 busloads of his fans in 2003), and writer and newspaper columnist Mike Farragher  author of “This is Your Brain On Shamrocks and his latest book, “50 Shades of Green.”

It all starts at 7:00 PM. Admission is free.

Donations to IAW&A appreciated.

-Steve

Hoops135@hotmail.com

A TOAST…LIKE NO OTHER

My friend Pat Fenton wants to spread cheers to everyone from the neighborhood. Here’s a great piece from an outstanding writer and a better person…

On my wall, above my books in the room I write in, I have a framed original Christmas column Pete Hamill wrote. It’s called “A Garland of Christmas Toasts.” It’s a full-page long, faded, Newsday column dated December 13, 1967. Signed across the top of it are the words, “for Pat Fenton who remembers.” And I do.

It’s perhaps one of the most beautiful, moving pieces of writing about Christmas time that I have ever read. Sad at times, political, sentimental, it rolls across the page like the lyrics of a Van Morrison song. He always started his annual Christmas column with an apology to the writer Jimmy Cannon, who originated the idea and the form as only he could. Jonathan Schwartz should invite Pete Hamill on his radio show and have him read that to us on Christmas day to remind us all of the way we were. And alert his listeners to pour a glass of champagne before he starts. It deserves it.

Here’ a sample of his column: “maybe it’s the beer and the season and the weather, but I could almost swear there was a time when we had a hell of a lot more heroes, and a hell of a lot more laughs. And I’m certain there was a lot more girls.”

It was lines like that made me want to be a writer.

So, with my own apology to him for borrowing the form, here’s to Windsor Terrace tonight…

To Pete Hamill and his brother Denis and to Brian Hamill, and to Bobby Rice, and Judy, and Johnny Kennedy, and to Jacky Malone, and to Steve Finamore from Container Diaries, who records the story of our lives on his Windsor Terrace blog.

Here’s to the bartenders in Farrell’s Bar and Grill on 16th Street and 9th Avenue in Windsor Terrace in my old Brooklyn neighborhood, and especially to Jimmy Houlihan and to Eddie Mills, they all give so much to those who need it. And let’s not forget the memory of the bartender/actor, Danny Mills who also defined what Farrell’s Bar was all about since it opened its doors in the 1930’s. He understood that.

Like Pete Hamill, we all drank there when we were young so long ago, so did our fathers from Ireland, and we all passed through Holy Name Parochial School where our report cards are still on file, hopefully forever.

Glasses up to Malachy McCourt and his brother Alphie tonight. And here’s to Larry Kirwan from Black 47. And to the musician David Amram too, who I learned so much about Jack Kerouac from. Cheers! And to Chris Byrne, another Windsor Terrace boy, whose special bar Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook got tossed around by Sandy, but whose still open for business. And to Lisa McLaughlin who brings the talent there.

It’s Christmas time and we have a few toasts to make. Here’s to all the people of the Queens Supreme Court who I spent a good part of my life with, and how they never once asked me, what the hell are you doing here working as a court clerk when you have a by-line in New York Newsday and the Daily News? Thanks to Tony and Maureen and Jackie, and Ken for putting up with me.

Here’s to my friend Jimmy Breslin, tell him to call me on Christmas morning, and be grouchy again when I don‘t have the answer he’s looking for. I miss those calls. Someone tell ’Bres’ to write one more Christmas column. Let him write about how he is an usher in a Catholic Church in Manhattan, few people know that side of him. What a great Christmas story that would be.

May that women I shared a turkey sandwich on white bread with one cold evening in front of St Francis Assisi Church in Manhattan, as I was heading off to the old Rocky Sullivan’s Bar on Lexington Avenue to read, who trusted me as I handed half of it to her, be in a warm, safe place tonight. I never forgot her. She was Christmas.

Let’s all remember this holy Christmas night these words out of Newtown from a Litchfield Connecticut newspaper, “this heinous act does not define our town. What does is the love, compassion and caring that we have for one another. Love conquers all, especially evil.”

Along with “Scrooge”, let some cable station run a marathon showing of the movie “Pay it Forward” on Christmas Eve. Forget who is a Republican or a Democrat this night and let the politicians in Washington finally understand that we elected all of you to bring America together, not to divide it. It’s time for that.

Fill up my glass bartender, and let’s drink a toast to writers like T.J. English, Peter Quinn, Peter McDermott, Ellis Henican, C.J. Sullivan, who published some of the best stories about New York ever written in the New York Press, Jim Dwyer, Tom Kelly, Dan Barry, Jack Deacy, Column McCann, and the ones who I miss this year, Bill Reel, Dennis Duggan, Frank McCourt and George Kimball.

Here’s a special toast, a double Irish whisky to an editor from the Daily News that I will never forget working with, Bill Boyle, and his words, “go write a good story, Pat”, as he turned over a nine hundred word assignment to me that I just pitched to him. And , “don’t be too nostalgic.”

And let’s not forget to raise a glass to Brian McCabe, a great New York Detective and a great writer, and to my close friend the actor Jack O‘Connell, and the actor Ciaran Byrne, and to Kira and Nancy down in the Cell Theatre in Chelsea who breathe life in to all that we write with their stage.

Here’s to my friend Sandy Chapin this Christmas, and Pegge, and Jen Chapin, and Josh Chapin, and the memory of Harry Chapin who pointed us all in the right direction in America.

Hey bartender, send a drink down to the end of the bar to my friend, Mort Persky there, one of the editors of one of the greatest efforts to create a new newspaper in this town, New York Newsday, who watched over my words there.

Let’s drink to the memory of President John F Kennedy tonight who made my dad from Galway, Ireland so proud. This one is on me. Raise a glass and remember some of the lessons he tried to teach us when he said: “let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divides us.” So simple.

Let his words be a Christmas card for the world this night. We need it more than ever. None of these things may never happen, but if they did it would be a fine Christmas.

Thanks for the use of the hall tonight, Pete. Merry Christmas.

-Pat Fenton

FIGHTER ON THE STORM

My guy Pat Fenton from 17th street with an outstanding essay on Hurricane Sandy.

I live right next to a wide canal in Massapequa, Long Island. Just a few feet from it.

On maps it’s called the Massapequa River. It makes a short turn around a wide bend and flows into the Great South Bay, which is just around the corner from me. It’s south of Merrick road along with a string of beach towns that run for miles down the Old Montauk Highway.

 

The storm grabbed me by the neck and totally destroyed the first floor of the high ranch I own. Massive destruction everywhere. My daughter and my grand son live there. Five feet of water in the streets, cars floating everywhere with lights flashing, boats thrown around on lawns like kid’s toys. Everything is gone, and now the first floor has been stripped down to the bare studs by a contractor. Every stove, washer refrigerator, beds, boiler, furniture gone.

 

Over three feet of water came rushing in from both sides of the house, front and back and turned over the refrigerator and every piece of furniture. If we hadn’t evacuated hastily the night before we could have died there. After a midnight check of the bulk head outside my door I saw the water starting to slowly pour over it. It gave me an awful feeling and I knew right away that we were in trouble. I walked up the block to the corner and I watched the water coming up from the sewers and starting to come more and more down our block, Neptune Place. It was like an eerie scene from a movie. I got my wife and daughter, who were in their pajamas moving, and told them we have to leave tonight.

 

Right now.

 

Don’t hesitate.

 

I called the Best Western. They had two rooms left for the night and they would hold them for us.

 

The neighborhood looks like a war zone at night now, convoys of Army helicopters flying low over the canal, darkness everywhere, a Military Police truck moving through the street. For 18 nights we were without gas, electricity, heat. We tried staying on the second floor for three nights, reading by candle light, but it got so cold even with four blankets, we had to leave again.

 

And in the day time, FEMA workers would come to our doors offering blankets, water, and boxes of some sort of instant hot meal as we try to figure out the next move. And I’m moved by them, but of course I don’t except any of the offerings. I tell them that I am very lucky that I can reach in my pocket and cash and credit cards are there for food and needs, and to give it to someone really hurting.

One of the neighbors who rode it out, and regretted it, says he saw a 40 foot boat come out of the Great South Bay and float down our street, and then when the tide finally started to release Sandy’s grip on us, it simply spun around and sailed back out to God knows where. As the water rose higher and higher in the street and started to flow in through his front door, he retreated to the highest floor in the house and watched as he saw a scene he had to hope he would never ever witness again in his life time. He watched from his window as two huge trees on the side of my house got felled like tooth picks and took up huge slabs of my concrete, leaving behind two 16 foot root balls and craters and crushed boats. .

 

At the same time boats were being tipped over and dumped off of the bulk head in front of my house, whole entire docks, two of them with tied up ski jets were ripped away and pulled across the canal, boats and all.

 

For days after the hurricane huge docks would come floating down our canal.

 

I have been living in three different places since it hit. We made it out the first night to a Best Western on Sunrise highway at about midnight the night before it struck. I had booked it a week in advance for two nights, Monday and Tuesday. First night a huge utility pole fell on the hotel and we were without lights, heat, hot water again. They didn’t have a generator. There was an odd collection of people staying there, all of us living in the dark by candle light. Some of them looked like trouble to me. After two nights of this, we moved again.

 

I’m living in a basement in North Massapequa right now,and have been spending my days calling insurance adjusters, contractors, FEMA. I have flood insurance so after a long while I should be okay. I told my daughter that I will rebuild better than ever, and we will. But it’s going to take time.

I’m going to wait a year, two years, and then I am going to see about selling, and move to higher ground. The house has a wonderful view, breath-taking sunsets, and a valuable first floor rental place with a wall to wall fire-place. I never rented it, but it’s valuable. We’ll see. If I had my way, I just might come home to Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn,  which has always been my real home in my heart.

 

I used to walk out my front door and fish off of the bulk head with my eight year old grandson, check our blue claw trap. We are all okay, Kelly my daughter doing such great work getting us signed up for assistance, my wife the same, but we have seen a lot of things, disaster scenes, nobody should have to see or live through. But my creative strength is coming back, and that’s a good thing. So is my sense of humor. Every now and then when Kelly accomplishes something new for us and we are settled down for the night with a glass of wine, I turn to her and say, “you’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.” I say the same thing to my wife Patricia as we all smile.

 I walked down the block the other day in late evening, and I took a few pictures. Maybe for a story when I get my feet back on the ground, I thought. And then I thought, it’s coming back, the need and urge to write, to be creative. And it made me feel good inside. In the beginning, Kelly said to me, “I know you will write about this, dad. I know it.” Not now I won’t, I told her. I just can’t think about writing now. It hurts too much. Maybe it’s because of my years in the Military Police in Europe in the early 60′s when I was 20, working the G. I. bars of a large city, Mannheim Germany, my survival mode kicked in for me. Later, my writer’s mode, my journalist’s mode would. I knew that.

 

At first strange, scary stories of destruction were coming in, rumors then. But most of them turned out to be true or very close to it. One night I walked out in the darkness to stand on the balcony of the hotel and drink a can of Budweiser, and a tall, blond woman in her 50′s was standing there smoking a cigarette and staring out at the pitch black night. She lived in the next shore town over from mine she said, Seaford, a mostly working-class hamlet where Irish families have lived in the same small capes next to the canals for generations.

What do you here? I asked her. She had a cell phone that was actually working. Ours wasn’t, and the hotel phones were all dead. “I heard that the height of the water in the streets is now over five feet, and it’s rising. It’s going to go over six feet. It is. There are no more boats in Seaford,” she said. “They’re all gone now and nobody knows where they went, probably out to the Great South Bay”. True or partly true, her last statement sounding so sure, put a cold chill in me, a profound sadness .

 

I can’t ever bare to listen to the stories or see the pictures of what happened to the Rockaways, to Long Beach, to Staten Island.  And the total destruction of Breezy Point, left to look like Dresden now after the war. And all that beauty gone now, the beauty of the two-mile boardwalk of Jones Beach, or Long Beach, ripped up and looking like a roller coaster now. And memories come rushing back of drinking summer beers on the Rockaway Boardwalk when I was young and slow dancing with Irish nurses in Fitzgerald’s bar on 108th Street to Tommy Edward’s “It’s All in the Game”, so safe then in their arms. And the White House bar drinking with Jacky Malone from Windsor Terrace, and the Irish Circle.

Rockaway in the 50′s was a beach town that had so many Irish bars that they all used the same pint glasses so when the crowds of the young wandered from bar to bar with the glasses, it really didn’t matter. The glasses always came back home. It seemed like we were always laughing then, so young, so hopeful of our futures. And why wouldn’t we be? We were educated in Windsor Terrace’s Holy Name parochial school, and we were educated on the streets of 17th Street and 9th Avenue.

 

And we were first generation Irish stock whose roots started in places like the city of Galway where my father was born in an attached house on the Long Walk, a fishing village, and my grandmother was a fisher woman. Tough Irish who lived off the sea. Some, like my grandfather,died from it. They even had their own “Fisher King” who watched the markets each morning where the woman sold fish. Some even went door to door selling them. And my mother lived in a thatched cottage with a house full of kids in nearby Williamstown, a small farming village that didn’t get electricity until the mid 1950′s.

 

Stories coming in from as far away as Spring Lake, New Jersey now, another “Irish Riviera.” They’re from my first cousin Jo Ann, the board walk is all gone now she says. It’s a huge pile, a mountain of summer memories and loss, pushed together next to the Jersey Shore by pay loaders. Yesterday as I was driving alone down Merrick Road the Billy Joel song came on with the lyrics, “Seen the lights go out on Broadway, I saw the Empire State laid low..”, and I had to bite hard on my lip not to cry. I still do.

One of my first thoughts after it all happened was, I want to be in a safe place again, I thought how great it would be to stand in Farrell’s Bar on 16th Street in the old neighborhood, beer in hand, talking to Jacky Malone, a retired cop that I grew up with on 17th Street. He never left.  And as soon as I get my feet back on the ground, I’m going to rush right back there and do that. It’s always home there for me, always home.

 

This is the first thing I have written since it all happened, and it’s good to write again. I think of the words to a Willie Nelson song I always liked, “Me & Paul.” ”It’s been rough and rocky traveling, but I’m finally standing upright on the ground. And after taking several readings, I’m surprised to find my minds still fairly sound…”

 

When I am asked by friends what I need most right now. What can we do Pat.? I tell them, send over a blond, six feet tall, preferably Irish. A friend of mine, Anthony, told me, I will, Pat, and she will have a beer in both pockets.

UNCOVERING THE PAST

Our own Pat Fenton with an amazing recollection of the neighborhood and the teens who lived here.

In their heart of hearts, most of the guys and the girls who appear in the Windsor Terrace “Brooklyn Gang” pictures, were really good people. Even the photographer, Bruce Davidson has said that the book is not really about a gang, it’s more about a bunch of young people and their lives together. They certainly were not the toughest guys in our neighborhood.

(Courtesy of Bruce Davidson, ‘Brooklyn Gang’)

I was very close to Junior Rice, and Bengie, and Lefty Jensen who appear in much of the pictures, and on the cover of Bruce Davidson’s book. When I was young, I stayed over at Junior’s house on 20th Street almost as much as my own. His older brother Bob Rice and I are still as close as brothers. Unfortunately for them, they got lost somewhere between the violent culture that existed in the 50′s in parts of our Windsor Terrace neighborhood, and the sweet innocence which I think really represented it. Junior passed away recently, and so did Lefty Jensen; Bengie has managed to turn his life around.

This I remember about Lefty Jensen, who I once went out to a shoe store in Bay Ridge with in the 50′s, a place that sold second-hand motorcycle boots, he had this sort of James Dean sensitivity to him. Sadly, it probably helped to destroy him. He died way too young. The only good thing I walk away with is, the three of them, Junior, Lefty, and Bengie will live on, forever young together, on the cover of Bruce’s book, “Brooklyn Gang.”

Truth is, we were all lucky to grow up in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that to me was like a working-class opera taking place every day of our lives. Yeah, it had its share of violence and drugs, but I think overall it had a certain pride, patriotism, and a strong belief in doing the right thing in life. The choice was ours. And most of us learned well from those lessons we were taught here.

It had the original McFadden Brothers American Legion Post on 9th Avenue when it was located near 17th Street in the vast former, wedding hall of Sorrentos Italian Restaurant. And all through the 50’s and into the 60’s, when neighborhood soldiers came home from the wars, they would be welcomed here.

Simple “football weddings” were made up of cold cut sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and passed across the table like footballs, barrels and barrels of tap beer and plates of cheese and crackers, some set ups of Seagram Seven and ginger ale, and a live three-piece band playing, and people dancing. And they were the best weddings ever.

On nights when Holy Name Church would have a Novena the church would get so packed with kids and adults that they had to open up the gates to the altar to let people sit there. And we all had Holy Name School yard where other lessons of life were being taught to us, lessons we would take with us forever.

Every Irish bar in the neighborhood had a baseball team, and 17th Street on a Saturday afternoon had stick ball tournaments that went on all day. Come the summer and 17th Street would be closed down from 9th to 8th Avenue for a P.A.L. play street. We had the Sanders Theatre and Prospect Park to fish in, and a wonderful zoo that we could walk to. And in the cold winter when the streets were empty and covered with new snow it was still safe enough to go down your block alone and trade comic books at friends’ houses. It was good to be young then.

HOOPS135@HOTMAIL.COM

TALES OF WINDSOR TERRACE

People, places and things…in our neighborhood, they all change at one time or another.

Folks come and go in Windsor Terrace.  Some move away and unfortunately some pass away.  Stores open, stores close.  New business opens, old ones go under.  Out-of-towners purchase the brownstones for sale. Wine shops open, espresso is now sipped on sidewalk cafes. Brick oven pizza, top-notch restaurants, five hundred-dollar baby strollers glide across ninth avenue and stay at home dads are out in full force. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the old-timers that hang out on the corners reminiscing.

My friends, these are the tales from the streets of Windsor Terrace.

The streets where I once roamed. Eighth, ninth and tenth avenues where I played stickball, whiffle ball, drank booze and listened to music on the street corners. Windsor Place, 16th street, Howard Place and Fuller. Blocks where I knew everyone. When the residents saw me coming I could just hear them, “Oh no, here comes the dysfunctional, red-headed kid from up on the avenue…”

Some people in the neighborhood liked me, some didn’t…I didn’t care. I was a lost kid trying to find his way. Searching for guidance. Trying to read the map; the map for a young child to find his way and become a productive teenager. (Does such a map exist?)

When I write, I begin to cry. But to be fair, I also smile at some of the shit I went through. The bottom line, I had no fuckin’ clue.

Funny thing is I thought I was the only kid in the neighborhood going through tough times. As a teenager I had no idea my best friends and many kids before me were going through the same shit; some had it worse. Life at home was awful. We all have a story to tell. We all stood in front of a disgruntled parent at one time or another wondering if we were going to get smacked in the face. As kids, we were defenseless.

I often think about all the people I grew up with and more and more I think of the people who came before me. I think of the junkies sleeping in the streets; the drunks staggering along ninth avenue at four a.m. and the tough guys who scared the shit out of me. I think of the older guys who I looked up to but never told them. I think of the parents of my friends that were always there for them and I think of the parents that were absent in their kids lives.

My memory goes back to the mid-70′s.

We have readers that go as far back as the 50′s.

And of course we have the readers that hung out on Hippie Hill from the 60′s.

There were teens from the neighborhood way before me that went through the same shit as we did. A period of time where I was unaware of; The days of such street gangs like “The Jokers“, “The Tigers” and the “South Brooklyn Boys.” One person in particular is Bengie Powers. With the help of the Internet, I researched and found some material. Our very own, Pat Fenton, an amazing writer has also been a huge help; Pat has written some powerful material on the neighborhood from back in the day.

Here’s an article from Blaine Harden of the New York Times from back in 1999.

Patrick Fenton, then a gangly Irish kid with a pompadour and now a part-time writer and full-time court clerk at the State Supreme Court in Queens, remembered a drunken fight not so much for the punches as for its ending. ”We both threw up,” Mr. Fenton said.

Robert (Bengie) Powers, a former drug dealer and a former heroin addict and now an addiction counselor, said he never once won a fight unless three or four of ”you guys held somebody down and I could beat them.”

There is also a book coming out real soon on Bengie’s life. I am looking forward to reading it. By the way, today is Bengie’s birthday.  (I stand corrected, Bengie’s birthday is September 30) A book on Bengie’s life will be out at the end of this month. It’s called “Bobby’s Book.”  Pat is writing a piece about it for the Irish Echo, which I’m sure will be top-notch. Fenton’s a great story-teller and certified neighborhood historian.

Bruce Davidson published a photography book, “Brooklyn Gang” a book with many photos including Junior Rice.

The saddest story behind Mr. Davidson’s photographs is that of Howard (Junior) Rice and Cathy O’Neal, the gang couple whose cool and beauty were without compare. No one had the heart to tell their story on Saturday.

Junior was the Romeo of the street gang. He wore sunglasses everywhere and carried a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s ”Howl” in his back pocket. He had the pick of girls on Eighth Avenue and his pick was Cathy, a 13-year-old blond he thought looked like Brigitte Bardot.

Cathy, in the most famous of Mr. Davidson’s gang photographs, fusses with her long golden hair in the mirror of a Coney Island cigarette machine. She loved Junior and he loved her. Mr. Davidson photographed them embracing while lying on the sand underneath the Boardwalk. She became pregnant with his child before she was 15.

Mr. Rice, who is now 57 but whose Brooklyn friends still call him Junior, remembers that everything went wrong after Cathy became pregnant. ”We went to a judge and got permission to get married, which my parents weren’t happy about,” Mr. Rice said in an earlier interview. ”Our daughter passed away after 15 months, and I went into a self-destructive mode and so did she. We got divorced. There was a lot of shame.”

Mr. Rice said he took street fighting to ”the extreme,” using bats, chains and knives. ”I used to go out there and fight and I didn’t know what I was fighting about,” Mr. Rice said. He said he became a drug dealer, selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of heroin, and the ”profits went up my arm.” He had several failed marriages and is now divorced and unemployed.

Ms. O’Neal committed suicide years later with a shotgun.

-Steve

Hoops135@hotmail.com

GOOD LUCK PAT FENTON

Wishing all the best for our guy Pat Fenton who is center-stage tonight!

Details on his show are below…

STOOPDREAMER

Our very own, Pat Fenton, an outstanding Journalist and Playwright is taking his show on the road.

This coming Thursday night, April 19th Pat will be reading from ‘Stoopdreamer and Other Brooklyn Stories‘.

The show gets under way at 7:30 PM at the Cell Theater in the heart of the Chelsea section of Manhattan. (338 West 23rd Street between 8th and 9th avenues)

Pat intimates the dreams, trials and travails of just ordinary people trying to find the American dream in post WWII Windsor Terrace.

Among them a cop who really wanted to be a writer.

A movie projectionist whose life is defined by the continuance of movie reels as he waits for the changeover mark.

The 9th avenue pool hustler whose small piece of the American dream, two weeks summer vacation over a Rockaway Saloon, Fitzgerald’s, is dangerously gambled one night, and a beautiful dreamer named Janie Joyce who tried to go home again and almost made it.

Irish-American stories about an area that was once the hub of one of the greatest, Irish-working class neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

If you are looking for something to do Thursday night, head out and support one of our very own from the old neighborhood!

You can’t beat the price…It’s FREE!

Good luck Pat!

Respectfully,

Red

Hoops135@hotmail.com

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

Thanks to Pat Fenton for this fine piece of writing. 

I just got back from a wake, Steve. An old friend from Windsor Terrace, Denny Scully passed away. It happened fast, and I heard about it from a message his brother John left on my phone.

The one night wake (Sept 22) was out in Bellmore on Long Island.

I grew up in the late 40’s and 50’s, and into the 60’s in Windsor Terrace. And I still go home again, sometimes writing about it for newspapers, and in a play, Stoopdreamer”, about what that amazingly, special neighborhood was all about to me.

Denny Scully was an important part of my memories of growing up on “The Hill. “ The Scully family lived down on 16th Street near the armory, and during the late 50’s and early 60’s he and his brother John were part of a group that hung out on the corner of 17th Street and 9th Avenue.

Every summer afternoon would turn into a carnival of street sounds, stickball games, dice games against the wall, card games on the metal, cellar doors, the King Kong ride swinging its huge carriage through the summer air, and all the while the large speakers on the front of it blasting out the Everly Brothers singing “Cathy’s Clown.” All of us with slicked back hair, and upturned collars, just happy to be young. It was our time in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, and it seemed like it would last forever. I often wondered what ever happened to all the pretty girls who were part of that world.

Holy Name, the church, the school, Farrell’s Bar, the other Irish bars that were once on 9th Avenue and down on the corners of 10th Avenue, Prospect Park, Jack the Wonder Dairy’s store on the corner of 17th Street, Izzey’s Soda shop a few doors away, the church bazaar’s in the school yard of Holy Name where you could win a new Chrysler on a quarter chance, the movie houses, the Sanders, the Globe, the 16th Street, the Avon, the Prospect, the Minerva, the Venus down on Prospect Avenue, reading comic books in a booth in Al’s luncheonette on Prospect Avenue in a time that seemed so innocent to me.

Gus’s Diner on the corner of 19th Street and 9th Avenue, Frank‘s Pizza across the street, the “Lucky Penny” variety store on the corner of 18th Street, the barber shop next to it with its striped pole out front, the red brick of the buildings, Scarpa’s on the other side, where we brought jelly apples in the fall; all of it once existing undisturbed, like a scene from an Edward Hopper painting, all before Robert Moses ran the Prospect Expressway through there, all bits and pieces of my life, all bits and pieces of who I turned out to be.

This too was Denny Scully’s Windsor Terrace. Later, when we were older, he hung out in Kerrigan’s Bar on 17th Street with us. This was the Windsor Terrace of Alice Murray, Tommy Purdy, Jacky Malone, Bobby Rice, John Scully, Tommy McLaughlin, Richie and Mickey Lang, and so many others like the Craig‘s, the McCarthy’s, the McGill’s, the Burke’s, all of it making up the hub of one of the greatest Irish working-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

In memory, where it still lives on, this was the Windsor Terrace of Holy Name Church before Vatican Two, before they tore out all the beautiful marble from the altar and the black, metal railings where you kneeled down for holy communion, before they painted over the murals that depicted the crucifixion in the dark green and red hues of a Renaissance painting, before they tore out all the dark stained, imported wood, it was a time when the crowds that filled the church during seasonal novenas were so big, they had to seat people on the altar.

Yesterday afternoon, I said goodbye to someone who was an important part of my memory of that Windsor Terrace. I was glad to have Bob Rice standing next to me.

TWO QUIET, TOUGH, S.O.B.’S

One of the greatest center’s in the history of the Holy Name summer league, Danny Mahoney, mentioned Noona Taylor in the comments section a few days ago. Mahoney swatted away more shots than any player ever! Only problem is they didn’t keep blocked shots as an official stat in the summer league.

The wonderful story-telling Pat Fenton has written about Taylor in his short-stories/essays on Windsor Terrace.

The ever friendly Denis Hamill discussing in a NY Daily News article how his older brother, the great Pete Hamill describing to him Noona’s legendary toughness along with his two-hour fist fight with Ray Grillo.

According to my older brother Pete, two classic fistfights between Noona Taylor of the Tigers and Ray Grillo of South Brooklyn, lasted at least 20 brutal minutes each, with no timeouts, just pure bare-knuckle brawls. Both fights ended when cops arrived.

I used to see Noona every weekend down at Timboo’s bar on the corner of 11th street and 5th avenue. It seemed like every bar had their own crews; Timboo’s, Tug Boat, Gerard’s, Farrell’s, Windsor Pub, McBears, Lauterbach’s and Smith’s.

Noona was the uncle of the late Joe ‘Fonz’ Farrell. Fonz was my 6th grade baseball and basketball coach at Holy Name. I can remember Fonz talking about Noona when I would tell him I was going down to Timboo’s.

“My uncle hangs out down there,” he would say to me.

Pete Hamill’s description of a fist fight in May of 1950 between Noona and Ray Grillo in Prospect Park brought back memories of when I was a kid hanging out with the Gooch in Timboo’s.

“Two of the neighborhood’s toughest,” my friend Phil McNiff told me. “Those two legends have passed on.”

That must have been some fight between the two brawlers.

Noona, who worked as a Steamfitter was a member of the gang “The Tigers” and Grillo, a Local 40 Ironworker was down with the “South Brooklyn Boys.”

Hamill said the fight lasted 20 minutes, before the cops showed up and stopped it.

In my early 20′s while I was trying to find my niche as an Ironworker, I worked with Ray’s son. He was a great guy, he gave me a ride home a couple of times after work in a sweet Nova.  Often times I would see Ray on the corner of 11th street and 5th avenue hanging out with his dark khaki’s, short sleeve dress shirt and a sweet looking pork-pie hat.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention his folded up newspaper sticking out of his back pocket.

What many people don’t realize is Ray was an undefeated light-heavyweight boxer back in 1954 and 1955 with a record of 10-0!

My guy Phil McNiff passed this story along to me back when he was a nine year-old boy.

My mother was taking me and my sister for Chinese food on 9th Street, Sun Joy! Ray was walking down the block and we were walking up the block when two sailors started giving my mother a hard time.  Ray walked over to my mother and said,  ”Peggy take the two kids and walk up the block”.  I remember looking back, being curious; Ray had knocked the two sailors out cold! We talked about that for years! Ray was a man of very few words but plenty of action.As tough as Ray was he was a gentleman as was Noona!

Noona Taylor and Ray Grillo were two guys you didn’t want to mess with…

-Steve

SteveFinamore@yahoo.com