From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The Children Of Rock And Roll Come Home To Roost-For Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Happen       

By Sam Lowell

I my last piece I noted that out of the deep recesses of my mind I have dredged up some memories of my earliest corner boy experiences from down in the mud of the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, let’s not kid each other “the projects” which strikes fear in the now, as it did then. Those dredgings so run rampant and form the basics of yet another piece. Part of what has stirred up those memory jogs those memory jogs revolved around getting together with the still standing members of my high school corner boy gang from Tonio’s Pizza Parlor for drinks and a little food at Jimmy Jack’s Lounge a few towns over from where we grew up, came of age. That in turn got me thinking about genesis and the guys I hung with early on doing the “best we could,” legally or legally. Here is what I had to say in the prior piece still germane to fill in some background as to why I have decided to take the trip to way back when:      

“Of all the corner boys (read: juvenile delinquents in some quarters a big term, a big concern in 1950s sociologist, criminologist, school administration, court and cop circles; sullen schoolboys serious in feeding their “wanting” habits in an age when all around them was plenty so maybe not so much sullen as angry in some other quarters; and,  misunderstood youth in yet others the bailiwick of concerned teachers, social workers, and library personnel- all three probably true in some senses) who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor while we were going to North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I am the only one still standing who started his corner boy career at Carter’s Variety Store across town in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (read: “the projects” and although I have already made the point a million times the unwanted fate of plenty down at the base of society, down in the mud where things and people are not pretty). That experience started when I was a student at the Snug Harbor Elementary School located just outside the projects.

“I mentioned that I am the only Carter’s boy still standing but I was not the only one. There was one other one Peter Paul Markin who at Tonio’s was always known as the Scribe and I will use that name here rather than that pretension-filled moniker his mother laid on him. Now much ink (and many tears, many tears still) has been spilled in this publication about his latter exploits and the craziness of the Scribe when he was in high dudgeon at Tonio’s and a little later but little has been noted about the early days, the early corner boy days in elementary school when most of the Tonio’s boys we knew were clueless about the value of desperately poor kids joining together, hanging out to do, well “to do the best they could.”             

“I am not quite sure how the Carter corner boys started since it was already formed when I started hanging out along with the Scribe. Let’s leave it that this store was the only one in the whole projects area (and sadly still is) where residents without cars, including my family many times, or in need of some quick item could shop. The urban legend folk lore if you will was that from about day one of the project’s opening some group of young men, boys really, somewhere about ten or eleven years started hanging around there, to hang around which was alright with Mister Carter as long as we were respectful (which we always were-there). (I would not find out until later through my own progressions that Carter’s was step one in the corner boy stages in that part of town going to Bert’s Market in junior high school and Dexter’s Ice Cream Parlor in high school like in the Acre in North Adamsville the stages were Larry’s Variety, Doc’s Drugstore and Tonio’s.)   

I met the Scribe the first day of school in fourth grade after my family had moved to the projects from another project in Riverdale west of Boston when my father’s company moved to the area and he needed the work. That was in Miss Sullivan’s class, an old biddy who trucked no nonsense and who made it her profession to keep us after school for detention-even that first day which was supposed to be easy stuff. The Scribe was looking at some book, forgotten now, and I commented that it looked interesting to start a conversation. That was all the Scribe needed as he wowed me with the contents. And didn’t wow Miss Sullivan who kept us after for the continuous talking. After that after school detention business we went to Carter’s to see what was up once he told me fourth and fifth grade guys hung out there and it was okay.

“Later and elsewhere the Scribe, and to some extent me, would be the leaders of various corner boy combinations, would plan whatever needed to be planned, legal or illegal but then we were frankly naïve and really just foot soldiers. The deal was already set for leadership with Ronnie, George, Rodger, Lenny and a little later also the legendary Billy Bradley running the operations (all would later do various stretches of time in county and state prisons I think except Lenny who laid his head down in Vietnam during that war). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.”

In the first piece, important to set a certain tone for the bad karma fate of most corner boys who wound up serving long jail time, or met with early deaths usually after some cop shoot-out, I mentioned how one pissed off Ronnie, Ronnie Mooney to give a last name since he is long dead from some failed armed robbery, gathered us together to seek revenge for some slight some teacher had given him, and he was going to burn down the school. Although the attempt, a very real attempt failed we went along with his rage, with his plans since he was a fellow corner boy half-strange as that reason sounds today.  


I have mentioned on a number of occasions that they say, maybe they said is better, that juvenile delinquents are born not made. Have some genetic kink missing which throws everything off. That was true of Ronnie I believe for he had a really devious and sadistic bent but as a I noted in subsequent piece about his musical abilities that was not all of what Ronnie was about then, if the bad side, the dark side came out more later. He, and we did too especially the Scribe and Billy Bradley, loved the emerging rock and roll that would define our generation’s main musical thrusts. Ronnie had a natural feel, a natural beat for the music and a very good voice. The same was true of Billy but more on him some other time when I want to develop the bond between the seemingly unbreakable bond between Scribe and Billy (which caused me a serious amount of anguish as the Scribe started describing Bill as his best friend). Ronnie lived to play the latest tunes for us by Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and what is important here the rise of doo-wop be-bop music.

I have already told the story of how Ronnie (and later with Billy) would in the summer after Carter’s closed and we were looking for something to do  would gather us behind the school (that almost burned down school) and we would sing whatever he knew from rock and roll which was extensive and at one point when doo-wop surfaced that genre. At a critical point and maybe by the sheer force of his voice girls would come around, a couple at first then a whole bevy. In the distance at first but before long right up with us clapping and tapping to the new age beat. (That “critical point” reference above being nothing but our hormonal changes making last year’s bothersome stick girls now interesting, go figure and not some modal thing).

Of course the doo-wop sessions led to boy-girl stuff but also led then ambitious Ronnie (and later Billy but the reader will have to wait for that) to realize that maybe he had enough talent to go big, become a rock and roll star. That certainly drove him for a while. Ronnie seemed to think that doo-wop would be his way out of the mud, the way out of the rotten projects. And he, rightly I think, and probably said so to us then focused on that kind of future. Certainly he had the swoony girls swaying in the breezes part down.

The 1950s were the great age of school and church dances usually combined with some kind of talent show during intermissions. A big reason both by school and church authorities for sponsoring these events every week was to keep a lid on the sexually budding kids, keep them away from the ubiquitous petting parties where who knows what went on. Talent shows were open to all and so one night Ronnie signed up as much for the fifty-dollar U.S. Savings Bond prize as anything else. And maybe to check the girl reaction.

I will say Ronnie looked great that night with a white starched shirt, an in fashion then skinny tie, loose sports coat and black trousers without cuffs also then in fashion, the fashion of the rockers back then from Bill Halley to Chuck Berry. I think he was number five on the list after some no talent has-beens or no wases, dweebs really would could not sing for nothing and got nothing but the old raspberry from a sullen put upon crowd, many. Ronnie though got up slowly walking to the center of the stage, grabbed the mike and started doing a version of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven complete with duck walk and other moves. The usually half sullen crowd anxious to get back to dancing went wild, started going crazy. Yeah, I would not be telling any tales out of school to let you know who won the bond that night. Hail Ronnie, even if later things went south on him I wonder if in that last dying breath on some benighted strip mall, alone, he thought about that night. Yeah, I still wonder.