The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

Three

1957, NEW YORK CITY

Summer in the city was hot and muggy and sometimes downright intolerable, but not for a seven-year-old kid with places to go. Johnny was up and out of the house every morning at nine on his way to summer school at P.S. 6 with his buddy Mikey, who lived upstairs in the same tenement building off Third Avenue. Patty, another neighbor, sometimes went with them but only when Johnny’s mother gave him strict instructions to call on her and walk with her over to school. He and Mikey didn’t like girls, period, although if he was pushed he’d have had to admit that Patty was different than most. She didn’t wear dresses and walk slow and whine to them to wait for her. She was right there with them stride for stride in blue jeans or shorts, and she had her own Spalding that she bounced and caught as she walked. Mikey liked her more than he did, always picked her on his teams and with good reason-she was a better athlete than most of the boys.

They usually started the day inside with a game of Ping-Pong, knock-hockey or checkers before the big kids came. The big kids never came early but when they arrived they took over everything, pushing the younger kids out of the way. They didn’t push Mikey, though. Paulie Cane tried it once. Mikey pushed him right back. When Paulie went to push him again, Mikey punched him in the face and jumped on him, knocking him to the ground before a counselor broke it up. Paulie was twelve at the time, Mikey just eight.

“I’m going to get you for this, Kelly,” Paulie yelled.

“Anytime,” Mikey responded, not an ounce of fear in his voice. Johnny, who was standing next to him in shock, truly believed that Mikey meant it.

“Come on. Let’s go home,” Johnny pleaded after the counselor took Paulie away. “Those guys aren’t playing around.”

“Neither am I, Johnny. Neither am I.”

He didn’t leave and Paulie never came after him. Somehow Paulie knew that Mikey was not a person to mess with no matter how old he was.

The afternoon was spent outside playing punchball or on the third floor playing dodgeball. The younger kids had their own punchball court. Mikey was always a captain and Johnny was his first pick even though he wasn’t the best athlete available. Patty was much better but Mikey could get her with his second or even third pick because she was a girl. Mikey counted on that. He made Johnny feel good and he didn’t lose anything in the process. Johnny suspected as much. It was part of the reason he wasn’t crazy about Patty always tagging along.

Sometimes Johnny skipped their own game to watch the older guys play on the big court. He loved watching Joey Maier snare a ball hit down the line with his right hand and flip it over to “Spider” at first. There was no hitting above the fielders’ heads on this court. You had to “punch” it through, and the shortest distance and the best place to try for a hit was down the third base line, which Joey patrolled and protected. Rarely did a ball get by him. He’d flip it underhand to first where Spider was a vacuum cleaner, always catching the ball with one hand, his left. Never missing.

They were his idols in those days. He spent hours emulating them, throwing the rubber ball against the concrete wall across the street from his house, picking up the return grounder with his right hand, flicking it back against the wall and snaring it on the fly with his left. In those moments, he was Joey and Spider all wrapped in one.

Saturday mornings they huddled in front of the television at Mikey’s house. It was a black and white, maybe fourteen inches, with a lot of fuzzy white lines. The Kellys were a brood, six kids in all, and they were scattered over the couch, chairs and floor, transfixed for hours on the Saturday morning lineup: “Fury,” “My Friend Flicka,” “Mighty Mouse,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Tales of the Texas Rangers,” “Roy Rogers” and “Sky King.”

Johnny always found a spot on the floor. Mrs. Kelly would walk among them silently handing out bowls of cereal. Johnny got Raisin Bran because Mrs. Kelly knew that was his favorite.

On Sunday after church, the teenagers played stickball right on his block, hitting towering shots sometimes two, three sewer covers long with that little rubber ball, the Spalding, and somebody’s mother’s broomstick. Only two guys in the neighborhood could hit it over three sewers, big Joe Coyle, who lived across the street, and Jimmy Hayes, who lived next door. People hung out of their windows just to watch those guys play. Years later, Boyle became a college football halfback and Hayes a basketball star, but to Johnny their best days were out there on the street.

Those were the only days of his life that were magical as he lived them. No worries, no cares. A life that was full. Things would change soon enough.