Music From Big Pink:

One of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood was the day my parents told me we were moving from the “Horse Shoe”, Downtown Jersey City to “Up the Heights”. I remember pleading with my mom not to move because I wouldn’t be able to play with my childhood friends, “Big Joe”, “Little Joe”, “Nuut”, Enrico and Enzo anymore. I was almost ten years old when we moved to our brand new pink house in the Western Slope Heights section of Jersey City. When I look at what I called "Big Pink" today it doesn’t seem very big but back then, coming from a tiny four-room apartment, it was like moving into a huge mansion. “Big Pink” had three bedrooms, a full basement, back and front yards and a driveway. It was a short distance from downtown but it seemed as though we had moved out to the country in Pennsylvania. We now lived on a dirt road with an ever-present smell of pigs in the air. The house was located at the bottom of a very steep hill right above Route 1 & 9, Tonnele Avenue near the “White Manna”. We had a direct view of “Snake Hill” and the smell came from a 5-acre 4000-pig farm, “Krajewski’s” in Secaucus. Krajewski ran for President of the United States every four years and also ran for Governor in the 50’s and 60’s. My dad always took me along for the ride when he visited his good friend Mr. Krajewski at his bar. The farmhouse and bar of Krajewski’s was sold years ago and is now AJ’s Topless Go-Go Bar.

This Old House:

A few years after we moved to “Big Pink”, my Dad figured out how to waterproof the foundation of the house. The basement always flooded every time it rained so we could never really use it. After the leaking stopped, my dad and I tiled the floor with linoleum, wood-paneled the walls, installed a drop ceiling and built a full kitchen, a tiled full bathroom and wet bar . Years later, we topped the basement off with a hand made 4-1/2’ by 9’ slate billiard table purchased from Coreala & Son pool hall on West Side Avenue. After reading in the Jersey Journal that Coreala’s was closing down and selling the pool tables for $200 bucks, we jumped into Duke’s pickup truck, picked up the table, took it apart, drove it home and put it back together in the basement. I remember that day very well because I pulled my back out carrying the heavy slate down the stairs to the basement and it ruined any chance I had of playing College ball. My back never fully recovered and still hurts at times to this day. When the basement was complete, we built an enclosed patio with “louver” windows and an above ground pool in the back yard. I still have some of Duke’s tools from when we did all this work. I treasure them as precious memories. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out how important “permits” are. We learned this “Life Lesson” when we sold “Big Pink” and didn’t have the proper documents for the additional kitchen, bathroom and wet bar in the basement.

“Squeaky”:

I remember when I asked my parents where they got the money to buy this “huge” house. My mom answered: “I hit the numbers”. I found out later she hit something much bigger than the “numbers”. I mentioned in Chapter 1 my uncle “Tony Kane” was a “bookie”. He was also a compulsive gambler and owed a large amount of money to a local mid-level Underboss. Without my dad’s knowledge, Tony Kane had arranged a deal to clear his debt by convincing my mom to buy “Big Pink” with the money she “won” and allow the Underboss to use it as a “safe-house” to hold his “number” and “horse bet” money. This explained the big black Caddy with the two guys in suits and Fedoras that parked across from our house every day, all day. A short time after my father found out, he and my mom split up and divorced. My mom became the "Gomare" of an Underboss in the Gambino family. I will call “Squeaky” out of respect for his family. My mom is very much alive today and is just as tough now as she was back then. "Squeaky" would take my mom to “Jilly’s Restaurant” in New York and she became friends with some of the bigger “Family” members and Jilly’s best friend, Frank Sinatra. I knew “Squeaky” as the guy with the shark skin suit and fedora who stood in front of the shoe shine shop all day on the corner of Monmouth Street and Newark Avenue. Today, the shoe shine shop is a trendy Café’. When I walked by him, he would grind his teeth together on the right side of his mouth and make this clicking sound and say in a deep voice; “How ya doin kid”. When “Squeaky” died suddenly of a heart attack years later, my mom moved to a house in Miami Shores. I followed her down to Miami and one day a man showed up offering to protect my mom because “Squeaky’s” family believed “Squeaky” had hid most of his “number” money in a tool box buried in one of the plots of land my mom had purchased in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He claimed “Squeaky’s” family was “out to get her” for the money. His name was “Geech” and he was one of “Squeaky’s” henchmen who turned out to be a con artist. He swindled $50,000 from my mom, stole her car and drove it back to Jersey City. A month later we read in the Jersey Journal that “Geech’s” sister had died. I flew up to Jersey City with my mom’s spare key. I waited by her car while he was in the funeral parlor mourning his sister. When he came out to the car, I whacked him in the knees with a baseball bat. When he hit the ground, I kicked him in the stomach and spit in his face and then drove the car back down to Miami. A few months later we read in the Jersey Journal that ”Geech” was in a head-on collision with a truck and was decapitated. We celebrated that night by going to “Tony Roma’s” for dinner on the 79th Street Causeway.

“Nuut’s Bike” ; Another “Life Lesson”:

A few months after I moved to the Heights, my friend Nuut from downtown rode up on his bike to visit me. I owned a standard "Huffy" but Nuut’s bike was cool and I always wanted to ride it. It looked “home-made” and was filled with gadgets. After spending the day in “Mosquito Park” at the top of the hill on Hudson Blvd., Nuut wanted to get something to eat at “Tippy’s Charcoal Heaven” before he rode back home. As usual, he didn’t have any money so he offered to let me take his bike if I would drive home a get some. He knew my weakness, I jumped at the opportunity. I felt like I was flying as I streamed down the very steep hill, Zabriskie Street, heading towards home. As I approached the bottom of the hill, I was getting dangerously close to the garage directly in front of me at the end of the street. I started to brake but nothing happened. It felt like I was going 100 miles an hour as I back-pedaled furiously. I searched the handle bars - no brakes!. I panicked in the split seconds before I hit the garage door as my whole life flashed before my eyes. I hit one of the garage doors - made of solid wood- and proceeded to go right through it headfirst. I ended up unconscious inside the garage. Nuut’s bike was destroyed. When I came to, Nuut was standing next to me looking at his bike. I jumped up and started screaming at him. “Where are your brakes? Why didn’t you tell me where the brakes were?” At first, Nuut just looked at me. Then, slowly, he picked up his right foot and showed me the bottom of his shoe. There was a thick groove running down the middle of the sole. He said; “I didn’t tell you where the brakes were, because I don’t have any. Besides, if you knew, you would have never taken the bike to get the money.” I explained to him that if he had told me he didn’t have any brakes but showed me how to stop with my shoe, I would have taken the bike. We'd have both been at Tippy's eating burgers. His bike wouldn't have been destroyed. And I wouldn’t be sporting a black eye and a broken finger. It was a bizarre experience. Almost as bizarre as someone asking the Association Attorney to read this story and then expecting the Association members to pay for it! I learned from this “Life Lesson” that if somebody refuses to tell you where something is, it’s probably because they don’t have it!

Coming Next: My letters to the General Manager asking were the permits are and her responses - refusing to show them , My Mission, and more Life Lessons