From The Archives Of The Carter’s Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-Except Swim The Damn Ocean  

  

By Sam Lowell

I know, I know I have been teasing the reader of this series with a promise to speak of one Billy Bradley who along with the now well-reported Ronnie Mooney led the Carter’s Variety Store corner boys for good or evil but I have to tell a few stories about the Scribe, about Peter Paul Markin, whom I met on the first day of class at Snug Harbor Elementary School in Miss Sullivan’s fourth grade class after we had moved to Adamsville from Riverdale. That school served the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, the projects for those who are not faint-hearted or timid as well as the new development of ranch-style houses up the road build in the 1950s. The Markin stories will help set up the link to Billy Bradley, in fact I would argue that you cannot understand Billy without knowing more about the Scribe (and the tangled three- way relationship between us not always good). They have interest of their own since those few of us veterans of the various stages of corner boy life from Carter’s to Doc’s Drugstore to Tonio’s Pizza Parlor still standing shed many a lost youth tear for a our fallen brother.         

That first day of school was something else once I made the cardinal sin, no, two cardinal sins on the very first day- talking without permission in the old biddy Sullivan’s class brought on by my observing the Scribe the next row over reading a book on Samuel Adams which I said looked interesting. That set the frame rolling as we talked until battered down by Sullivan’s wrath. That cost us a first day, first day of school can you believe it, after school detention, the first of many. Once we escaped with our lives the Scribe mentioned that he hung out with a bunch of guys, projects guys all, fourth and fifth grade guys, at Carter’s Variety Store which then (and if you can believe this now as well) was the only place in the whole area to shop for those without cars or who needed a quick item or two. Otherwise you had to go two, maybe three miles to Bert’s Market (the hangout for junior high guys later including me and the Scribe before his family moved cross-town to his grandmother’s house in the Acre section of North Adamsville). From all I could see Mr. Carter, a good guy who we didn’t rob or hassle, didn’t mind us hanging out as long as we behaved which we did, there.  

[My family had moved in a few weeks before school opened in September so I knew what Carter’s was, had been there getting milk and stuff my mother but I think I only saw the corner boys hanging out maybe once as I scurried home. They looked about my age but I knew from a roughed up experience with the 12^th Street corner boys in Riverdale when I tried to engage a couple of them that you do not talk to corner boys, do not join up on your own but need to be “sponsored” and so I kept my distance.]   


That first day of school was the day I met Ronnie Mooney who I have spilled ink about in five previous installments of this series and who was at the time becoming the recognized leader of the Carter corner boys. In some funny ways, the Scribe, and me a little less so, didn’t seem to fit the mold of these guys, thugs like Rodger the Dodger, Lenny who would later lay down his head in Vietnam, George, Tiny John and a revolving cast of guys for he was way too “intellectual” for what these guys were about or so I thought. The other side of the Scribe, the screwy gene side, the missing link side, was a truly larcenous heart. Using plenty of his “intellectual” energy to plan and plot, along with Ronnie, various capers, mostly small time but all illegal.

Even that first day the reason the Scribe was so hopped up to meet his corner boys was because he needed a look-out for a clip he was planning at Kaye’s Jewelry near Bert’s Market to grab some stuff and get it converted to cash (fencing it I guess we would call it today). Like I say small time stuff, small down at the base of society where there is never enough of anything and family-sized “no, we can’t afford it” coexist with some furious wanting habits.    

There will be plenty of time to develop Scribe stories but here is one to fill in the meaning of the headline of this piece. The Scribe loved the ocean (and I do as well), loved to sit down at a stone-etched dock along the channel to the seas and watch the ships go by, walk along Adamsville Beach when he was not corner boying it. Loved the ocean but like a lot of non-book stuff, or larcenous stuff when it came time to carry out operations he never learned to swim, could no swim a lick even though he took classes. Couldn’t keep afloat even with doggy paddling his ass around King Neptune’s estate.

In the hot, dry summer between fourth and fifth grade he decided he needed to get in the ocean, bay really, but salt-water in any case at all costs. I advised, having seen him practically go under a few feet from shore, him not to do it, to forget it. Somehow though when I went to get us some sodas at the ice cream truck which would be out there every afternoon he decided to go in, go in not under his own power but using a log that had been sighted by him floating a few feet from shore to get him out to sea. The tide was coming so he thought everything was fine, that the log would carry him along. That damn log was where he made his almost fatal error. Then he decided, this found out later, to forsake the log at a point when he was well over his head which was carrying him out to what he called the China seas and try to swim back to shore as best he could, doggy paddle I assume.

I could see him going under, see him yelling for help since he was in way over his head. I yelled to the life- guard, an older woman who had her daughter in tow but who leaped up, swan out and saved the silly bastard’s life. (As a different stroke of fate would have it I would meet that daughter fairly recently in connection with a 50^th anniversary reunion of our North Adamsville High class of 1964. She had lived across town although her mother had been assigned to Adamsville Beach. I did not know her in high school although I do remember thinking she was pretty when I saw her in the corridors. During that recent talk when we came to speak of our mutual love of the ocean I mentioned for some reason the episode with the Scribe when she mentioned her mother had been a lifeguard, the lifeguard who saved the Scribe’s ragged ass, at that beach during that period. Strange, indeed.)         

The Scribe thanked her although he generally was not the kind to thank anybody for anything even the kindness of saving his life as did I but here is where corner boy life rules. At this point we had known each other for almost a year, had become what I thought was best buddies and same pack corner boys which meant something then. He swore me to never tell anybody that he essentially panicked out there and was going down for the third time and not coming back. You have to understand that any outward sign of weakness was pounced upon by a guy like Ronnie, some of the others, a little less so Billy and being fearful for your life at twelve meant no quarter was given on being able to take it. And I never did until now.   

A recent view of the now desolate section of Adamsville described above.