***Stories From The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-Pay Back

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The old neighborhood, the old working-class neighborhood of North Adamsville about twenty miles south of Boston before the demise of the shipbuilding industry broke up a lot of the old civilities, broke up a certain sense of community although I don’t want to overemphasize that because there were plenty of incivilities as well, was a place filled with all kinds of dreams. Some, like my parents, dreamed of the little shack of a house they were able to purchase by both working jobs in the mother-stays-at-home 1950s and that was good enough for them as a token that they had made it out of the “projects” which was our fate early on and appeared to be all that they could do for a long time. Others like the Dolans from across the street bought a small rug repair and cleaning company and left the dust of the old town behind even though they stayed put on the same street and house that they lived on when Mr. Dolan worked for the shipbuilders before those firms started heading off-shore in the early 1950s. Other families had their shares of dreams, better jobs, kids to college or a trade, stuff like that.

The family that interests me today, the one I want to talk about a little was the family of my best growing-up friend, Josh Breslin, from over on Maple Street. Josh turned out pretty well, made himself a small reputation as a writer of short stories and essays in a lot of less well known but respected journals and reviews (he may not agree with that characterization about the size of that reputation but a guy who lived for small press publication and regularly submitted pieces to the likes of the Evergreen Review rather than the Post or Times which were interested seems to me to be hell-bent on a small reputation). Some of his four other brothers though, and the one I wanted to do this piece on, Prescott (named after his uncle as the second oldest son), in particular did not fare so well. Prescott fell under the cracks, fell hard to the romance of the “life” in the early 1950s when there were plenty of guys, corner boys really, ready to soak up that life. Just as Josh and I fell hard to the 1960s hitchhike road in search of the blue-pink great American West night running down that yellow brick road out on the coast. Since Prescott was significantly older that Josh and I he was kind of like a legend, a presence more than a person to us. However Josh later visited him a few times in prison when he was doing a stretch for armed robbery or some such high crime and Josh learned a lot about what made him tick. Josh passed on that information to me to see what I could do with it so here goes:         

Prescott Breslin did his first robbery right after he had made his first communion (a Roman Catholic Church ritual to bring the very young, usually at five or six years old, into the bowels of the faith, to give them their first taste symbolically of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, other religions may have similar strategies but that is the one Prescott, and most of the kids in the neighborhood, including me and my brothers, had to deal with). See first communion was one of those occasions like Christmas or your birthday where you  expected to get some loot (and maybe other gifts too but loot is what we are talking about here, money to go to the corner variety store, maybe a department store or a hobby shop and get what you wanted to satisfy whatever wanting habit hunger was gnawing at you at the moment) and he had gotten a pile like his older brother, Kenny, had from his mother and father, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins (cousins, some pretty far removed, giving on the theory that if they gave then when it was their turn to get something for some event they were primed for then you would be duty-bound to fork over something to put in their pile).

He probably got about the same amount as Kenny, maybe a little less since Kenny being the oldest and the favorite of a number of relatives, including both sets of grandparents who believed he would make his mark and move the family up the social scale a little, might have dug a little deeper. That was not Prescott’s gripe though, not by a long shot, not by a long shot was that the reason that he committed his first robbery. Nor was it the fact that Kenny had, showing the good judgment that his parents expected of him, decided that he would use that money to buy a new suit at Raymond’s Department Store in downtown North Adamsville (the first communion suit, all virginal white signifying some assumed purity as the candidates embraced the faith, was, frankly, made of shoddy to Mother Breslin’s great dismay since she had expected like with all their precious hard-earned and father-sweated purchases to be able to dye the thing and let it pass as a regular everyday suit to be passed down to the other three boys, starting with Prescott, once Kenny out-grew it).

Prescott’s gripe, no, his obsession with the justice of the thing, was that the money gifts for him were to be wisely put away by Mother Breslin for him to use when he went to college. Prescott was beside himself, all six years old of him, that he would not see that loot for, as he calculated the numbers, about twelve years from then. A lifetime to a kid, no question. Here is where his obsession came in, his sense that there had been a grave injustice committed against his person. Talking to his parents did no good, although he only half-heartedly tried to make his case knowing that it was hopeless once the hard-bitten money decisions were made by mother. An appeal to his father on a money question was out of the question because he would just throw the thing back in mother’s court, a real united front. (It was only later when Josh found out how really poor they were, found out that his hard-working but ill-educated father was as likely to be out of work as in work and that every mother-counted penny had to be husbanded against those white envelopes she parceled out to the pressing bill-collectors on pay day like clockwork that the “united front” of Prescott’s  anger, his anger against his father for not sticking up for him in such matters was not a united front at all but a finally tuned strategic they had worked out unknown to him or his brothers probably in the privacy of their bedroom.)

No, this required action on his part. And that was where Prescott, like Josh and me later, probably having read too many comic books or regular books about crimes, and criminals, or seen too many gangster movies that played at the second-run Strand Theater on the outskirts of Adamsville on Washington Street where his parents took him and his brothers on the cheap went off the rails (everything on the cheap, including sneaking in the candy necessary to get through the double features rather than purchase items, items like that to die for buttered and salted fresh popcorn made right there that all the boys craved, even Kenny). He knew, did he ever, that his mother kept a lot of change in her pocketbook that she would leave out in the open on a counter next to the kitchen table. That change, nickels and dimes, but a generous helping of quarters as well for the public bus line that was the family’s life-line to the outside world when there was no money for a car (or it had hopelessly broken down requiring repair and thus back to no money and public transportation) whose driver never seemed to have change for a dollar, was in a little plastic bag.

Prescott’s idea was to grab some change every now and again from the pocketbook until he had reached the total amount given to him by his thoughtful relatives. He did not figure that his mother had the change counted (and she didn’t as it turned out) and so would not miss it like she would with dollar bills or more (which she certainly did count as noted before when I mentioned the poverty level they existed under). Still his first gambit was fraught with danger as he made sure his mother was outside doing something in the yard when he made his move. He carefully opened the purse, saw where the plastic bag containing the coins was located toward the bottom beneath her wallet, and gently opened the bag to make sure that he did not spill any coins out and took what turned out to be about a dollar’s worth of coins. He resealed the bag, shut the purse, and then stealthily left the house to run quickly to Carter’s Variety Store and bought a few candy bars, some Twinkles and a Robb’s root beer (a locally bottled soft drink that I was also crazy for when I used to hang around with the corner boys at Harry’s Variety Store and he would  order some just for me and Frankie Riley, another corner boy) to wash it all down when he went over to eat his new found goods  behind the school ballpark in private watching out for any stray brother, especially Kenny, who would know something was wrong with Prescott having such luxuries. Prescott later told Josh I am not sure when, and told his lawyer when that was necessary, that those days were probably when he developed his life-long sweet tooth.

In any case Prescott did that household robbery business for a while, although he said he figured that he never got all the dough that was due him.  All through that time he never got caught, got so he could cadge money even when his mother was in the next room. Of course he never got the money later for college since he never went to college (unlike Kenny who worked his way through) and the money had long before been taken out of his bank account when some family financial crisis loomed and all the available cash was necessary to bail the situation out. (Josh said he thought it was about pressing mortgage payments but since his parents were extremely closed-mouthed about financial matters to the boys he was not quite sure.) And that was how Prescott Breslin got his start, for those who were wondering. 

Funny about that wondering part, some know the name from the police blotter or from reading about his occasional forages with the law before they put Prescott, or had been trying to, away for good. No, he was never a Jesse James (hell, no his wanting habits had no revenge factor to them, all he wanted was to get that forever wanting habits hungry satisfied just once), never a Pretty Boy Floyd who got all prettified in song a some kind of  Robin Hood until Larry McMurtry put everybody straight on the real kick of that 1930s desperado who might have given to the poor, given them a couple of slugs in the back rather than a thousand dollar bill) or even a local boy, a Boston boy, Trigger Burke, who was the trigger man on the great Brink’s armored car holdup that captivated the minds of the kids, including Josh, in that 1950s Cold War night when heroes were hard to come by and you took what you got.

Prescott Breslin was what you would call a “soldier” a guy who did his dirty work for somebody else, somebody smarter, somebody more reckless, somebody who needed something done and needed a guy who knew the score, knew the code, and knew what breaking the code meant. Yeah, a soldier was all he was even if he did make more trouble than whatever it was that he wanted was worth going in for. But a soldier, a “stand up” guy, a guy who knows the score just doesn’t walk into a saloon, a bar, or some back alley restaurant and ask for work like some stinking bracero, hat in hand, or some rummy day labor pearl-diver looking for his next bottle. One needed a history.

Although one criminal act did not have to follow the other after Prescott had had his fill of sneaking small change from his mother’s pocketbook (he would laugh later that old habits die hard and admitted that, just to keep in shape, he would cadge some change from that purse over the years into his adulthood whenever he was not on the lam and living at home when he needed money for coffee and crullers).  At least to keep himself in dough, he moved up in the world, the hard world of the “projects” where if you didn’t hang with corner boys you were in for a very long teenage-hood. So naturally he had his rite of passage just like every other corner boy by learning the “clip,” you know the five-finger discount, the no pay , no way for various items from jewelry stores (the preferred venue, especially as guys got older, got interested in girls and in girl wanting habits, and had no other way to satisfy them except the clip, or later in effect to exchange the trinkets for sex, lots of it if you had diamonds for them), department stores (good for guys who needed to upgrade their wardrobe although Prescott was rather indifferent to that aspect of his image), record stores (when every teenager was crazy for rock ‘n’ roll and just needed a fistful of the latest 45s to spread around at a discount, no questions asked) and, a few times, a grocery store when things were tough at home and the younger brothers needed feeding.  (He had a deal worked out with one of the cashiers for the food-he would load up a cart, head to that cashier’s counter, the cashier would ring up every third or fourth item, and present the bill, Josh would pay whatever it was, give say twenty dollars, and get fifty or sixty dollars back which the cashier pocketed when they met later.

The clip was the life blood of Prescott’s early teenage-hood, and he never got caught. Part of the reason for that was his partner, Billy Riley, was a pro at the  business (you really needed a partner for this one because the guys who got caught were usually the guys who went solo. You needed the look-out to watch for owners, brown-nosed employees, or the cops, private and public). Okay, say you wanted a bracelet for some girl, you and Billy went to Sam Sloan’s up the Square, and watched to see what the customer action was (always have other customers as cover or forget it because they provided the distraction for you to do your work), once the owner/employee was busy you moved fast (Billy moved fast and Prescott learned the value of speed after almost getting caught the very first time when he could not decide which ring he wanted, onyx or emerald, Jesus). Easy, although Prescott later told Josh that too easy led him to think he was invincible until that first stretch that he wound up doing at Norfolk County. But that was later, much later when the stakes were higher and he got careless which back in the Billy days he never was.(Billy would have taken his head off if he had although in the end Billy wound up face down in a White Hen parking lot down south after a botched armed robbery for about sixty bucks. But by then the dope had Billy’s head on wrong.)

Once you decide of a life on the edge, once your wanting habits only get satisfied on easy street, kept angling the quick grift, the midnight shifting then there has to be some progression or you fall off of the cliff (or somebody pushes you). Prescott never called it the criminal life, never thought that was where he was heading, just thought all that he did was part the game, part of not being a sucker like his father who worked hard, when he was able to find work, and keep at it and still wound up down in the ditch somewhere when rewards time came. That was not the life for him, not for Billy or Ronnie or Georgie Boy either and at some point it stuck. He remembered one time in the summer after sixth grade when he was hot and restless he went into the Timothy Clark Public Library branch that was attached to the Adamsville South Elementary School with one of his corner boys at the time, Pete Markin, to sit and maybe nod off for a while before going back out into the heat. Pete went and grabbed a book, maybe two, and sat down to read. Prescott sat opposite him and nodded off for maybe an hour. When Prescott awoke and called across to Pete who was engrossed in some book Pete told Prescott to go by himself because he wanted to finish the book he was reading. Prescott said “okay” and that they would meet with the other corner boys behind the school after supper. Pete never showed. Never came around again all summer.

When Prescott caught up to Pete on the first day of junior high at Brook Meadows he asked Pete where he had been. Pete answered that he had been in the library all summer, said he was not cut out to be a corner boy, too much monkey business, too many moving parts for him. Prescott, after giving Pete a shove to show him he had to wake up to the world that they lived in, that reading books was for squares (a word via the “beat” scene that had worked its way down to the sullen corner boy streets and was gaining popularity as a way for the “wild boys” to separate themselves from all the normal television stuff they saw that was weird, very weird), and that he would wise up some day and see that. As for Prescott he went on to have a very productive career in junior high grabbing milk and lunch money from kids, jack-rolling an occasional drunk on his way for the night to the Sally’s (Salvation Army) up the Square and grabbing loose change by having the weak ones (and in junior high there are always weak ones) pay him protection in order to avoid being beaten up by the school bullies (or if the kid was not too weak to avoid being beaten up by Prescott or one of his boys). Girls, well, in those days they got a pass, except if they didn’t “come across” (“coming across” being anything from an innocent kiss to a blow job behind the gym lockers and what it would be on any given was totally whimsical and not dependent on the reputation of the girl. Many girls, prissy girls too and not just junior whores on the training program, who would deny it later found themselves, willingly or not, behind those gym lockers on their knees). So Prescott had the soft life, for maybe the last time in his troubled young life.                                        

Of course if you are living the easy life then school at some point is for “squares” but you still have to make some kind of calculation about what you are going to do for dough. And school was a no dough situation so when Prescott came of age he left school, left because there was nobody at home to stop him at that point and nobody in school who wanted to keep him there, when in a rare fit, he almost killed the headmaster when he questioned him about leaving and Prescott hung him by his feet outside his second story office window. And the headmaster never said peep one to the cops or anybody else. So from there Prescott was ready for graduate school-his first, well, not his first if you count that mother’s pocketbook stuff, but first out in the streets, robbery. A gas station late at night when Jim Sweeney, a fellow classmate in junior high was on duty, and Prescott strong-armed him into giving up the one hundred and eleven dollars in the cash drawer. And Jim, when the copper questioned him said he could not identify the robber. Jack’s luck was holding out.

But like all luck it is fickle, goes south on you sometimes and it did with Prescott. Jack was a born soldier but he was also crazy for cars, learned how to drive when he was about fourteen from Lenny Lawrence the ace driver for the Winter Street gang the other side of Boston who took a shine to Prescott when he “hot-wired” a ‘61 Chevy that Lenny had his eye on and led the coppers on a merry chase through the back streets of Boston down by Storrow Drive where they thought they had him and he just jumped over the divide and said “adios, suckers.” So yes his luck ran for a while, quite a while until he got caught in front of the Boston Five Cent Savings Bank waiting for his comrades to come out with some loot and got caught in freaking traffic with only one way out down Tremont Street since an MTA bus had broken by the old Orpheum Theater(this was in the days when it was possible to pull an honest armed robbery without all hell breaking loose and also before the advent of ATMs and other technological gadgetry which made it crazy to pull such stunts, and unnecessary as well). But see a guy like Prescott, a soldier, had that driving skill and that was about it, didn’t have the smarts or the serious “connections” to get pulled out fast and  he drew to a five and dime when the judge came down on his head.

Prescott did three but when he came out things had changed somewhat. The old connected crowd was learning ways to get their money in easier ways and Prescott was stuck, stuck good since nobody around needed a good stickman any longer. So he hired on as a guy moving stolen liquor from Canada for a while, had it going pretty good, for a while, and then the other shoe dropped when the “Feds” got nervous about that lost tax revenue just like they did with the good old boys down south, and he rapped to a ten (he could have gotten out from under all the charges since he was way down the list of who they wanted, Sonny and Soupy Barger who had run that liquor for years, if he had talked to “Uncle” but his old corner boy instincts came into play and he dummied up, dummied up good (besides if he had squawked he was a dead man with those guys he was mixed up with in that operation as they made plain (and as he learned about two guys who squawked and who were never heard from again. Prescott needed no other picture drawn for him). So Prescott drew his time but as he later told Josh when he was leaving the courthouse all manacled up he thought for a minute about what might have happened if his damn mother had given him his first communion money like she should have.