Like my dad, my four Bertone uncles were amazing athletes, but they were all still living at home, still going to school, still racking up the trophies Pop displayed like a shrine. Nanny and Pop’s house always felt full, full of men, food, accomplishment, fun, mostly love. But I always felt a little bit empty there after dinner, after my dad took off to party with his friends. Nanny and Pop must have recognized the hole my dad left in me each time he disappeared, because they loved me like loving me would take them back in time to before the tragic day they lost one son to the traintracks and another to the streets.
It felt like six months passed between each visit with my dad. And sometimes six months did pass. The waiting made me crazy, especially the time I had something amazing to show him.
My mom had given me the coolest present ever: a San Diego Chargers jersey with my name printed on the back. My dad took one look at it and his eyes flashed with rage.
“I don’t ever wanna see youse wearing that piece of shit again.”
“I know it ain’t the Eagles, but . . . ”
“Take it off!”
Tears filled my eyes as I pleaded, “But, Daddy, Mommy gave it to me.”
“Yeah, she gave it to youse all right. She gave youse a shirt with somebody else’s name on it.”
“No, Daddy, it’s got my name on it.” I spun around so my back was to him, so he could read the printing again. “See? It says ‘Meeink.’”
“I can read, Frankie. I know what it says.”
To my dad, that jersey said
fuck you
. It was my mom’s special message to him, and I was the unknowing messenger.
Years later, my dad’s sister told me what had happened. Apparently, the papers authorizing my mom to change my name from Bertone to Meeink had been buried in the middle of stacks of divorce, custody, and child support documents. My dad signed everything in the stack as fast as he could, without really reading any of it. By that point in their nasty breakup, he would’ve signed anything to get rid of my mom, and he did. Without realizing it, he signed away my name and his namesake.
My mom swore she only changed my name to protect me from the anti-Italian prejudice in her old-school Irish neighborhood; a name like Bertone was like a bull’s eye in that part of South Philly back then. Hell, it wasn’t the first time that name had been changed. When Pop was a kid, dumped in an orphanage, the nuns had changed the spelling from Bertoni to Bertone for the same reason my mom gave for changing it all the way to Meeink. I’m sure being a Meeink instead of a Bertone probably did spare me a few black eyes. But as I got older, I realized there was probably at least some truth to my dad’s theory – my mom changed my name to punish him.
MY MOM ALMOST always had a Virginia Slim in one hand and a beer in the other while she watched TV in the evenings. After I’d go up to bed, I’d hear her switch off the set; moments later, the familiar sounds of her favorite Jethro Tull album would drift up the stairs, and I’d smell the funny-smelling smoke. I’m sure there was a time when I didn’t know the distinctive odor of marijuana, but I can’t remember that far back. Our row house on Tree Street always smelled faintly of pot. And pot smelled like Jethro Tull sounded. Unless my mom was really depressed about being alone; then pot smelled like Air Supply.
I tried not to let my mom see how much I missed my dad. I felt like a traitor whenever I fantasized about running away to live with the man my mom said didn’t give a rat’s ass about either of us. But one night she heard me crying in my bed. In a voice so gentle it startled me, she asked if I missed him. It was the only time my mom ever asked me how I felt about my dad and the only night I can remember her ever holding me. She cradled me in her arms until I finally cried myself to sleep. Something about seeing me that way inspired her to change the rules. After that, I got to spend one weekend a month at Nanny and Pop’s, whether my dad showed or not.
The weekends my dad ditched me broke my heart, but they made the weekends he did show even more special to me. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, he took me to his favorite bar for a couple hours. Every time he threw open the door for me, the sudden flash of midday light temporarily blinded the regulars. The smoky darkness inside stole my vision. I had to half-feel my way to the bar before my eyes adjusted enough to make out the faces of the men saying, “There’s our Little Frankie!” and “Where youse been hiding out, kid?”
When I wasn’t playing the bar’s bubble hockey game, I got the best seat in the house: the stool between Crazy Cha-Cha Chacinzi and Fat Mike DeRenzio. I always thought Cha-Cha was what a mad scientist would end up with if he mated a human with a cuckoo bird. With his crazy hair and crazier smile, Cha-Cha
looked every bit as insane as his name promised he’d be, and he was, mostly in a good way. The giant known as Fat Mike looked gentle, but he wasn’t, not to his enemies. I was his little buddy, though, and he couldn’t have been sweeter whenever I squeezed in next to him.
I always drank Coke at my dad’s bar. He and his friends sometimes ducked into a dirt lot they called The Boneyard to snort coke or smoke weed, but inside they just drank beer. The more the 68th and Buist boys drank, the more I learned. My dad taught me everything he knew on those afternoons. Mostly, he taught me how to fight. He taught me what kinds of hits to use because they do the most damage to the other guy, and what kinds not to use so I wouldn’t bust my hands. He taught me the importance of scanning a room when I enter it, to know where my escape routes are, where someone might be hiding, what they might use as a weapon against me and what I could use as a weapon against them. He schooled me in the martial arts of beer bottles, pool cues, and lead pipes. In time, he introduced me to the finer points of knives and also guns.
I NEVER GOT into any serious fights when I was little, at least no more than any other kid in South Philly. Mostly, I hung out with my cousin Jimmy and I knew better than to start trouble with him. We were a good team: we both loved to skateboard and we both lived for Philadelphia sports.
Jimmy loved the Flyers as much as any kid who grew up thinking cheese-steak is a food group, but I was the die-hard hockey fan. The one thing I wanted more than anything was to get inside the Spectrum, the Flyers’ home arena. I was born loving hockey. I would’ve given anything I had to go to a Flyers game, but I never had money for a ticket. The closest I ever got to the Spectrum was a fort Jimmy helped me build by Walt Whitman Bridge. I spent one whole summer laying on the roof of that fort, staring out at the Spectrum, dreaming about what it would be like to go there someday.
I played hockey every chance I got, even though the rink in our neighborhood sucked. The City didn’t always maintain the ice on the indoor rink, so about half the time kids had to settle for roller hockey on the concrete rink outside. It took balls to play on that outdoor rink, and not just the wadded balls of electrical tape we used for pucks. Some sections of the boards didn’t even exist, meaning a good check could send a dude flying out into the parking lot, and a great check could send him into traffic. The boards still hanging were so rotten that nails stabbed at us whenever we slammed into them. The Flyers were better hockey players than we were, but I doubt they were tougher. I’ve never heard of anybody in the National Hockey League taking a nail to the face during a game, but that shit happened all the time in our league.
The P.O.W.
THE BOYS ON CORNERS LIKE THIRD AND JACKSON SMACK-TALKED everybody who passed by, except the older women in the neighborhood. In South Philly, talking shit to somebody’s grandma can get you killed. Mostly, the Third and Jackson boys aimed their mouths at hot girls, rival corners, and total strangers. They were the kind of crowd that scared lost tourists. They fascinated the hell out of me.
And no Third and Jackson boy fascinated me more than Nick, my oldest cousin on my mom’s side. Nobody near Third and Jackson wanted to get on Nick’s bad side. He was a good-looking guy with bad acne, but not once did I hear a single person tease him about it. Every teenager in our neighborhood knew Nick wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to pick a fight with. I don’t ever remember Nick fighting, but Nick seemed like he’d be a hell of a fighter, so no one ever pushed him too far, not even Jerry, my asshole of a cousin-by-marriage. Battling for the honor of Third and Jackson was Jerry’s job, but picking on little kids like me was his favorite hobby. He loved to pin me down under his hulking weight and drool all over my face. Nick would only let Jerry mess with me just so much, though, before he’d bark, “Enough!” But one time Nick issued his command too late: my wrist snapped under the pressure of Jerry’s knee.
I never forgave Jerry for breaking my wrist, but I forgave Nick for not saving me fast enough. I would have forgiven Nick anything because he was everything to me. I felt like a celebrity
just being related to the guy. But it went deeper than that. I felt safer out on the streets knowing Nick was around, the same way I felt with my dad, like I had my own private bodyguard.
Of course, I wasn’t with my dad very often. I got to see him once a month, if he remembered to visit during my stays with Nanny and Pop. When he did, when he whisked me off for an afternoon at the bar, I felt invincible. I was second-generation 68th and Buist. I was Big Frankie Bertone’s son. Even ten years removed from his days on the corner, my dad could still bust skulls if the need arose. I loved sitting at the bar between Cha- Cha and Fat Mike, watching the women flirt with my dad while he mixed their drinks and the men watch their backs around him. My dad was a badass dude. He was Rocky Balboa reality. But, he wasn’t around much.
Nick was around, though. When I was still really young, not more than eight, Nick’s parents decided to move out of the city. Uncle Nick and Aunt Catherine bought a little farm in Lancaster County. When they got it, the “farm” was a trailer parked on a hilly lot next to an Amish guy’s actual farm. My aunt and uncle set to work on it, though. They used the trailer as their base and built a new house around it. From the front it looked like a one-story ranch. But that view lied. Around back, the house climbed down the hill until the rooms on the lowest level opened onto a patio through sliding glass doors.
Uncle Nick and Aunt Catherine’s kids couldn’t see their parents’vision of what that trailer could become. None of them wanted to move to the farm, but only Nick was old enough to put up a real fight. I wasn’t there for the big showdown, but I think maybe his parents finally caught a glimpse of the “don’t fuck with me” stare that had made him a legend on the corner. When he said, “Youse can’t make me leave South Philly,” they knew he was dead serious. So they struck a room-and-board deal with my mom to let Nick move in with us.
The only thing better than having Nick move in with me was getting to go along with him for weekend visits to the farm.
Seeing as I grew up thinking the concrete slab underneath I-95 was a park, going to that farm was like going on safari to Africa. Nick’s little brother, Shawn, was my field guide. Shawn was a few years older than me, but still more kid than teenager. I was totally cool with following his lead because I was lost out in Amish country. Street smarts don’t count for shit once you turn off the paved road.
Shawn and I spent most of our days outside exploring and playing. We had run of the farm. If there were other kids around, we’d play football or softball. If it was just the two of us, we’d make up our own games. Some involved chasing balls, others involved chasing the Amish neighbor’s cows. By mid-afternoon, sweat would mat my scraggly hair, sticking it to the back of my neck like a scarf, but I kept running, always trying to keep up with Shawn as he led me toward our next adventure. We would play right up to the point of dying from exhaustion, then we’d lie quietly by the creek until the salamanders would decide we were rocks and come out of hiding. We captured some once and stuck them in peanut butter jars, hoping to start our own zoo. It ended up more a salamander cemetery.
Back in Philly, Nick’s steady snore was my night music. Before Nick moved in, I’d felt really alone at home, even sitting across the kitchen table from my mom. She didn’t have a lot to talk about with a little kid. Nick was old enough to hold her interest, though. When he moved in with us, he was fourteen going on fifteen and hardened beyond his years. And while my mom seemed ancient to me just for being my mother, she really wasn’t. She was only twenty-five, and she regretted giving up her youth to have me. I knew she felt like that not because of what she said or did to me, but because of what she didn’t. I’d see my friends showing their moms pictures they drew or homework with a star on it, and their moms would hug them and say stuff like, “You’re such a good artist,” or “You’re so smart,” or “I’m so proud of you.” My mom never said shit like that. Her eyes never lit up
when she saw me. She treated me like laundry, another chore she had to check off her list before she could get on with her life.
It was different with Nick. My mom talked with Nick in ways she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk with me. And he talked with her, too, like she was one of his friends, not just his aunt. Nick opened his heart to my mom the night one of his buddies got murdered. When I walked in on her holding him, stroking his back as he cried, I felt like a peeping Tom, like I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see and yet I couldn’t look away. I’d never seen Nick cry and it scared me. And I’d only ever seen my mom so tender once, on the night I’d confessed how much I missed my dad. But her tenderness toward Nick was still there when we all woke up the next morning.
When Nick first moved in, I was too young to understand the whole truth about why my dad was shaving a few more hours off my visits to Nanny and Pop’s with each passing month. No matter how badly I wanted him to stay there with me, he always had to leave, always had to hook up with the 68th and Buist boys. It wasn’t just his friends my dad was so loyal to; it was the drugs he did with them out in The Boneyard. Like any child of an addict, I felt the effects of addiction long before I knew the word. From one visit to the next, I could feel my dad slipping even further away from me into something far darker and more dangerous than the shadows of 68th and Buist. I didn’t know what was pulling my dad away, only that it was stronger than me.