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Peekskills
Leny thought everything was about him and only our older sister Tina of the Troy was able to trump him since
she had been considered the knockout of The Bronx when she was a young teenager - even winning a beauty contest
on a ship heading from the West Side pier on The Hudson River to the Peekskills which she would parlay into
charging the old timers an extra five cents for a peek at her "thing" and the young guys like Julie Garfinkle,
Tami the fighter who would fight the great Joe Louis, The Belli Brothers known for their tough boxing abilities,
and the seven linemen of the Rams who would not allow football college teams to score on them - one of whom
would become a great coach in the NFL - a few seconds in her comfort zone for a half a dollar.
For the first five years of my life, having come among my four sibling of whom three hated me from the first
moment of my entrance on that day before Christ was born and was the only gift they would get those last days
of the Great Depression, I thought Tina's first name was "Putanesseca" and her middle name was Zoccala.
How did I suppose to know the words were twin sisters meaning whore? That's what our mother constantly
called her as she stood between her smiling coquettish face and our father who was constantly falling
into the smiles of many women who thought he resembled the great Rudolph Valentino.
We also had requested to see his young cell mate and good friend Talfie, known as the East Bronx Kid,
the star baseball player for The Lewisburg Con Wizards whom little league kids would rush up to for his autograph.
Talfie came from our old neighborhood and was introduced to Leny by his aunt Lollie who was working for Leny when
he was earning a very temporary honest living making Neapolitan style pizzas. His prices were high; going to
the trotters to feed the horses as our father said when he was betting big amounts of money that once belonged
to others and like Leny would say when doing his time he was no different than politicians, corporations and
investment brokers who were doing all kinds of end runs with suckers' money. Our father often said, also
behind Leny's back, that he was like a whore whose name was on everyone's lips so popular he was with
his throwing money around and it could be said that Leny showed Talfie new ways of making money after
they burned the pizzeria down for the insurance money. So like big money - buying one politician
and getting another free - we got Talfie to join us swearing on the constitution he was a very close
relative; exercising our freedom of speech rights.
Talfie had a great sense of humor, being one of the few prisoners who was on most of the guards'
"pay him no mind list" since he was the best player the institution had seen for many years. Talfie
worshipped Leny who was ten years older than he; thinking Leny was the best thing to come along since
all those New York City guys, and Talfie actually thought they were for real gangsters, like Raft,
Eddie G. Robinson, Bogey, Garfield and Cagney. I liked the guy a lot since we were still living
in our home that my family begged me to put up for Talfie's bail and I was grateful to him for
not running off and leaving a teacher hovering just above the poverty level by society that
entrusted their children to them a wife who never complained carrying our third child and
two children having entered an educational system that was always under-funded with its
many excuses why it was failing to help children think - homeless as he would do to someone
else several years after graduating Lewisburg and die of an overdose at the age of thirty-six
just three years after his younger brother-cousin who was being heralded as the next Willie
Pep did on an Arthur Avenue stoop.
"Leny you was an original Baldy Mob guy right?" Talfie said.
"Let's not talk about that Tal-" Leny tried to say putting on his modest act but was interrupted when
Tom said pointing at me:"And our kid brother Johnny was their mascot!". Tom had not been allowed in the
gang due to his polio leg.
"You seven guys were so tough you could take on and beat every and all gangs in the whole city - right Leny?
And you Johnny, Alice told me, that you made a lot of money for Leny because he pitted you against all those
bigger guy from aroun the cawna who were the guys who kicked asses of those motorcyclists who tried to fuck
around in one of our bars" Talfie said.
"Yeah we was tough guys but we could sure harmonize like before the Belmonts," Leny said waving at Jimmy,
an x-union president who might have been buried in a New Jersey football stadium around the three yard
line and a guy who was to become the boss of bosses of all the New York families in the future born
just four blocks from where I was born filling the soda machine.
"You weren't even born then, Johnny!" Gus said having the same resentment as all my siblings shared.
"Yes he was! yes he was ! Yes he was!" Tom said having forgotten to take his lithium pill before leaving the motel.
We all fidgeted fearing when Tom talked in threes he was about to take another trip to go find Christ
in Northshredder, New York as he did twice before he became a psychologist.
Leny took over the conversation at the Lewisburg Reservation with his God fearing hat on; pretending
he was a very bright guy making sense of the Bible and related topics written by neurotic writers who thought
they had God's mouth and tongue stuck deep inside their ears.
"I make it that the Blessed Holy Mother either was fucked by a Roman soldier without her saying yes by the
name of Perria or had an affair with him so the phony French are bull shitting when they say our God had
French blood in him but I say the Savior is half of our nationality!. Get my drift? Get my meaning?"
Just then in the background a song began to play. It was coming from Allenwood where some of Nixon's guys
were vacationing for their part in the Watergate thing using the Constitution as toilet paper and Leny One N
who thought he knew everything there was to know informed us the title was "Get a Dress" but I said and everyone
looking at me - but my father( I was his favorite) my wife Linda Ann whom I married when I was nineteen and she
eighteen and our two children seven year old Jon and five year old daughter Lorena - were dishing out the
expression of "what's know it all going to say now"?
"No asshole the title is 'Try a Little Tenderness' and only for my other older brother Tommy Tom Tom, who had
tried to talk me out of getting married saying we were too young for such a thing since he had gone through one
marriage all ready and suspected he would go through two more marriages the second a sister-cousin of a former
Miss America who had a penchant for taking merchandise from stores without paying and the third a Boston blue
blood girl who belonged to a "race" the Boston English hated say they needn't apply for any working position
in their fine town nestled by the King Charles River before settling down with Rhoda his fourth wife a
New York City girl who was my age, said I was right. I was only taking the three hundred mile ride
to drive my parents to see one of their children whose way of life we were paying for in our own sundry ways.
"Well that should have been its fucking title!."
Our mother nodded her head at her favorite son's suggestion, my sister Alice in Wonderland and her husband
Gus the "Kamikaze-shooter downer" who told everyone modestly that he shot don a million of those guys while
serving in the Pacific and always when he told people that "fact" and if I were around would say that that
couldn't have been so or else we all would have been talking Japanese with a Yankee accent and the true
number figure was more like the low thousands.
Tina who after going for a tryst while married to her second husband in "Your Vote Won't Count, Florida,
with a long ago boyfriend who actually became a world fight champion a few years ago after he graduated
from Cocsakie Reformatory near the town of America's Mayor, New York and due to her car accident on that
trip which injured her head affecting her speech that I think was exaggerated somewhat said with one eye
looking twisted like that English actor said; "You ah fuchen idiitch!"
That's when we began doing all our hugs and kisses as if we were a total family.
Jerry Vilhotti graduated from the only college that won the NIT and NCCA basketball tournament in the same year but more importantly than that -
a Jonas Salk who helped rid some of the world of polio with his vaccine and who also was given the opportunity to contribute graduated from the same school.
Jerry Vilhotti has been fortunate to have had stories published in The Dream International, Hob-Nob, Puck&Pluck, The Literary Review and many other
literary magazines. He lives in the Litchfield Hills, in a simpler place in time, with a beautiful wife who treats him well (often he wonders why)
and they both helped in bringing three sort of nice kids into this world who have gone off with three partners, as good, he hopes as the one he
found long ago and far away - just like the song!
Email: Jerry Vilhotti
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