From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-Except When Everything Comes Tumbling Down

  

By Sam Lowell

[A number of readers have written asking what happened to Carter’s Variety Store corner boy leader Ronnie Mooney written about by me in a recent series of recollections. This reader response after I alluded to the not uncommon fate of corner boys, and not just from our corners, who wasted away in jails or found some unwanted solace in an early grave. As far as I can tell the fate sisters, those goddam bitches, deemed if necessary for corner boys to fall under the bus before their times and that they  would far outnumber the relatively few of us who survived to tell the tale, although that was a very close thing not only in my case but most of the corner boys I knew. (I will be doing a few pieces related to our in-house intellectual the Scribe who despite a lot of good luck and intelligent fell under the bus too, causing many tears even now when I think about the crazy bastard.)     

The fact of the matter is that I am not sure what happened to Ronnie, or better that I only know stuff about his fate second-hand. Partially because as I mention in brackets at the end of each piece I would join the Scribe in moving out of the projects by the ninth grade and only heard about Ronnie from our mutual friend Billy Bradley (who would himself fall down as well) about his later exploits.

Here is what I know, really remember, sometime after Ronnie lost the area-wide talent show sponsored by primo rock and roll radio station WMEX in the summer of eighth grade something snapped in him, or maybe a shrink or social worker would say something already inside of him snapped. That “defeat” will be outlined below since I was in the audience when that dime turned. In any case according to Billy who would take the leadership role after Ronnie moved away from small time larcenies he started hanging with a rougher crowd, older guys led by biker Red Riley who wielded whipsaw chains and were people you would not want to meet in any dark alley, anywhere (that from Billy one of the toughest guys I ever knew pound for pound even back then.) Word got around that he was involved in what we would at Tonio’s call the “midnight creep,” hitting well-to-do houses with owners out of town, or just out. Started skipping school, started to wear better clothes and have dough in his pocket, maybe dangling some saucy girl on his arm (don’t believe the lie that girls, good girls too,  didn’t have traffic with the bad boys, okay).

Let me bring in Pretty James Preston now who was something like a folk hero for corner boys in our town, although he wasn’t from the town but Carver some thirty miles away. Here is Pretty James’ M.O. (everybody called him Pretty James and to not do so was the kiss of death). For a while he robbed banks, large and small when you could just walk in and say stick them up and some terrified clerk would give you whatever the fuck you wanted just please don’t kill me. This is Pretty James’ beauty though, what made him bigger than life, he did his jobs solo (mostly, although later I heard he had some red-headed girlfriend act as look-out), did it as well on a British motorcycle, a Vincent Black Lightning very fast that the cops could not catch up with in his glory days. In the end he fell down, got caught in a crossfire when some stupid bank guard at the massive Granite National Bank, some fucking rent-a-cop thought the bank’s money was his and went bang-bang nicking Pretty James before he wasted the guy. That slowed him down enough so that the town’s coppers had him cornered right in the public square, a hellish shoot-out occurred and Pretty James fell down.

All this bad end was later though because Ronnie was caught up in the Pretty James myth and decided that was the career for him. At seventeen out of nowhere he decided to rob some dink gas station, maybe he had done others but the one that counts was a dink station, and he got caught. That started his life in the legal system, started him spending more time in stir than out. Maybe he should have stuck with the tough boys, or given the music another chance, who knows. I think maybe ten years, no, about fifteen since I was living up in Maine then after I graduated from high school Rodger the Dodger who still lived in the town told me when I went I went back to the projects to see a friend who was in trouble that Ronnie had fallen down a couple of years before robbing some 7-11, some store like that in a strip mall down in Ohio I think and that he had made the mistake of doing so while the Lima, I think, police were having their coffee and crullers outside away from the entrance. I remember one weird night’s talk back in maybe fifth grade Ronnie said to us when we were deep into the silly clip stuff that when the deal went down he would not be taken alive, and he wasn’t. RIP, Ronnie, RIP]

Here is my last story which will feature Ronnie Mooney as mentioned in the brackets fell down after losing his way and as usual I will do a summary of how and why these pieces came together:      

       

“By now it has become something of a cliché as I have 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, down in the base society where some Hobbesian all against all is at work even if the players are clueless about social dread which befalls them of the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, let’s not kid each other “the projects” which strikes fear in the timid and respectable now, as it did then. Those dredgings running rampant form the basics of yet another piece. Part of what has stirred up 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, came of age as the story below will tell much too young. That in turn got me thinking about genesis and the guys I hung with early on well before high school doing the “best we could,” legally or legally. Here is what I had to say in the prior piece, actually cobbled together from the three prior pieces still germane to fill in some background as to why I have decided to take the trip to way back when, back to “from hunger” days mercifully passed if still embedded in my psyche:      

“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 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 old 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 the denizens going to Bert’s Market on Sea Street in junior high school and Dexter’s Ice Cream Parlor in Adamsville Square 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.

“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 after having been given the “choice”-join the Army or do a nickel in some state jail). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.”

In my first piece, important to set a certain tone for the bad karma fate of most corner boys and not just from my gang who wound up serving long jail time, or falling down to sullen and unwanted 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. (And as strange as I have mentioned previously how even today that does not seem irrational under the circumstances.)   


I have mentioned on a number of occasions and this is central to understanding Ronnie, later Billy and maybe even the Scribe in the end 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 a 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 and 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. 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.

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 then focused on that kind of future. Certainly he had the swoony girls swaying in the breezes part down. One night he won a school dance during intermission talent show doing Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven and netted a fifty- dollar savings bond as the prize. That set a course for him for a while.  

Although that might keep Ronnie’s eye on the prize for a while, he, and here he can stand in for every corner boy, every Carter’s corner boy always had a nagging sense that he was left out, had “wanting habits” that given his family’s standard of living meant that “no” was the answer when he asked either parent for anything beyond milk money for lunch (most of the times I never even got that). This where the wicked kink, the rotten DNA I guess came in whatever was happening. Ronnie won some of his leadership role by being smart, I would say now street smart, but also because he was both fearless in what he wanted to do and like the Scribe latter was always working up some plan, usually illegal or something like that.

The birth of rock and roll at least after it caught on big with Elvis and the proliferation of teenage-oriented dance shows like American Bandstand hit guys like Ronnie with a big bang. Gave them maybe a chance to break out of some lonely farm, avoid becoming a clerk in some hardware store, bagging groceries, or driving trucks, stuff like that. (We will ignore the corner boy fates of armed robbery and other felonies here). That is what drove Ronnie, for a while. From his start doing doo wop with his corner boys to a swaying girl audience in back of Snug Harbor Elementary to winning  a talent contest one night at the Saint James Catholic Church dance he plotted away his prospects (the reader always remembering that all things were financed by “the clip” to grab ready cash fast).

Rock and roll came on like gang-busters and so many radio stations, maybe television stations too, looking for new talent (looking for the next Elvis or Chuck, maybe Wanda Jackson) to feed the frenzy for new sounds, new voices were knee-deep in talent searches, were sponsoring such events in their listening areas. I would learn a lot more about the ins and outs of the record and film industries and their essentially exploitive ways much later when I because a free-lance music and film reviewer but back then I was as clueless as Ronnie about what was happening behind the scenes.  

In the spring of eighth grade before my family left the projects life for good (although it has left its mark on me to this day) the biggest radio station in Boston WMEX was staging a series of talent searches looking for that next best thing. The idea was that there were to be I think six such events in different areas held in some local facility like a high school auditorium with the winner of each section getting to go to Boston to audition for Delco Records, one of the biggest labels back then and the discoverers of Johnny Blaine and Cissy Lapin. The winner of the audition would get a contract for at least one heavily promoted record and see where that led.   

When Ronnie heard about the program on Arnie Ginsberg’s Hop Hour he went nuts, decided this was it-this was the way out although he probably didn’t put in it those words, words that the Scribe or me were more likely to use even then. (Ronnie would also go around town for days tearing down posters announcing the local event to as he would say later “cut down the competition”.) The event was to be held in a few weeks at the Adamsville High School auditorium on a Friday night. So Ronnie practiced like crazy, made us listen endlessly to Jerry Lee Lewis’ High School Confidential which he intended to cover. (I still love the song but can only stand one listen at a time.)       

On the big night Ronnie looked good, looked better even than the night he won the church talent show wearing an off-white shirt, still in style string tie, a borrowed sports coat and the inevitable holy black trousers without cuffs. I don’t know if WMEX limited the number of entrants but there were maybe twenty acts listed on the brochure. Ronnie was maybe number seven or eight so he had time. The way the scoring would go on this was that the judges carried maybe sixty percent of the vote and the audience applause the rest. Ronnie was on fire that night-Jerry Lee would have been proud of the cover. When it came audience applause time and even though you might call me prejudiced he won the biggest hand. But he did not win that night (and there would be no other such nights for him) the so-so Eva Sisters doing a cover of the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine did. They would go on to win the Boston record contract and have a fairly successful recording and concert career working Vegas and other high-end venues, get some play in rock and roll revival shows too.              

Here is the where the fate sisters, and you will see why I call them bitches now, did Ronnie dirty. The whole thing was a set-up. If Elvis had shown up that night the Eva Sisters would have beaten him. The fix was on, although I would not know the details of how it was done until years later. Too late, much too late for Ronnie who was smart enough to know a fix when he saw one. And acted another way on that premise.