It was the third of June, another sleepy dusty Delta day.
Nah, not really. But it was hot. Real hot, as in high-summer-swampweather-in-the-Bronx-with-no-a/c-and-nothing-much-to-do.
My crappy apartment back in the early sixties, when I was just a kid, had 15-amp glass fuses that blew as soon as the toaster went on, so a/c was out of the question. Plus they were too expensive. Plus, box fans were “good enough” according to the parental units. So we’d take the 12 to Orchard Beach, or walk down Fordham Road to Miramar pool, or go to Hom & Hom’s and sit in the arctic a/c at lunch, order the cheapest thing on the menu (chicken chop suey) and drink endless pots of tea, or go to Bohack and stroll down each aisle, in air-conditioned comfort, and load carts, until we came to the end of the road, the produce section, and then — finally cooled off — we’d simply leave the carts, loaded, and walk out into the steam bath of Fordham Road.
Or…we’d head to Pizza Haven, order a large pepperoni pizza, shake a blizzard of garlic powder on it, and sit — yeah, in air-conditioned comfort — and watch provocative Walton High School girls in their heavy mascara and beehive hairdos slither to Louie Louie and other tunes booming from the jukebox.
On this particular day, when the temperature was 95 77-W-A-B-C-dee-grees, we headed to Pizza Haven, carrying our $2.99, 2-transistor radios purchased at an Alexanders door-buster sale.
https://musicradio77.com/images/pmogopcm.wav
Pizza Haven was full, that Wednesday, and inside the shop it was frigid and redolent of pizza and molten calzones. It was also full of Walton girls, dancing to The Locomotion.
“You gotta swing your hips” Little Eva urged, and we were not disappointed, we few, we happy few (11 year olds), as the Walton girls shimmied and shook in their cutoffs, ruffled tops, chipped nail polish, and teased up hair, the fragrance of pizza now elevated by top notes of their Juicy Fruit breath.
Every group had a runt of the litter, and for us, admittedly a group of goobers, that was Alan Marcus. But he was a runt who never quite understood his place in the pack and opened his fresh mouth with disturbing regularity and, on this day, when a Walton girl bumped into him as he balanced two flopping slices and a small Coke, and she shook to “Jump up, jump back”, he blurted, “Hey, watch it!”
Our hearts sank, for we knew chaos would ensue. Alan was surrounded by these Valkyries, pushed, prodded, slapped and, finally, punched against the jukebox. He sank, slowly, to his knees, a little kid version of Billy Fish’s horrific demise in “The Man Who Would Be King”
One of us grabbed his arm as he sunk to the floor, as Walton girls flailed, as Little Eva pleaded “so come on, come on….do the locomotion with me!” We yanked him up, Walton girls following us out the door and into the steamy street, our uneaten (and, worse, already-paid-for) pizza still on the counter as Lou, the owner, reminded us to shut the door tight on the way out: “Hey, close-a the door!”
“WHY did you open your mouth?” we asked. Alan sobbed miserably, humiliated and dripping with Coke one of the girls poured over his greasy hair.
“They were gonna spill EVERYTHING!” he moaned. I looked up. The Bronx sky had that white-ash, washed out, hot town, summer in the city look. Inside was food, cold soda, gum-snapping females and, importantly, air-conditioning. Out on the street, sidewalk gum melted into the treads of our Keds. I wiped my brow.
“What now?” my friend Larry asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “Let’s play stickball, I guess.” Alan walked home, head down, and we turned the other way and walked back to 190th Street where, with any luck, one of us would have a Spaldeen with some bounce left in it, and a bat, and the cops wouldn’t come to break our broomstick in two, just because. We were 11, school was out, it was awful hot, and there was nothing else to do. Alan had already gotten beat up. This day was shot, but I looked ahead to the evening, when it would cool down a bit, and we’d walk to the candy store to get 2-cent pretzel sticks, the Bulldog edition of the Daily News, and packs of smokes for our dads, who sat across the street from our sweltering apartment on aluminum folding chairs and drank Schaefer, the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.