The Power of Vi

By John A. Guercio

The Power of VI is a story of loyalty, trust, and respect between six boyhood friends in an era where the thin line between good and evil was repeatedly blurred. Often, good and evil appeared as one. In the Bronx Italian neighborhoods of the 1950s Fordham, Allerton Avenue, Burke Avenue, Tremont Avenue, White Plains, and Gunhill, six friends struggled to right the wrong done to one of them by a renegade Mafioso. Together- through the collected power of six friends- they planned to take down their common enemy by coming together and fighting as one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365516481

Book preview

THREE

PREFACE

THIS IS A STORY OF loyalty, trust, and respect between six boyhood friends in an era where the thin line between good and evil was repeatedly blurred. Often, good and evil appeared as one.

In the Bronx Italian neighborhoods of the 1950s Fordham, Allerton Avenue, Burke Avenue, Tremont Avenue, White Plains, and Gunhill, six friends struggled to right the wrong done to one of them by a renegade Mafioso. Together – through the collected power of the six friends – they planned to take down their common enemy by coming together and fighting as one.

CHAPTER ONE

MY NAME IS JOHN, AND I AM A 1950S BRONXITE. Our neighborhood was typical of the Italian neighborhoods in every major city: Boston, Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Baltimore—all connected by a common bond. The old lady dressed completely in black with her hair tied in a bun; the stickball games; the Italian sandwich weddings; the shopping area with privately owned businesses like a bakery; a meat market; the Italian funerals and the Sunday morning street-corner dice games; the bocce alleys; social clubs, bars, and churches. The people made the neighborhood and they all blended together as one fabric woven with a delicate balance of good and evil. The physical appearance of each neighborhood was also similar: always brick two- or three-story buildings with a few multistory homes.

Gun Hill and White Plains Road was our neighborhood. Our street, 213, was lined with two- or three-family houses and one multifamily house with empty lots scattered between them. It was in these empty lots that the first-generation Italians made gardens and built tool sheds and bocce alleys. Sons and daughters with their families lived in apartments in the same houses their parents owned. Everyone knew each other and was willing to help if a neighbor needed it. It is funny the things you remember—most seem so unimportant later in life, but in your memory, they are etched forever, like the peddler who every day would drive his fruit and vegetable truck down each street. The truck had a cabin for the driver and an open rear upon which the crates of fruits and vegetables were mounted. When the peddler entered a block, he would park the truck and begin yelling the specials for that day in Italian. The women of the houses would come down to the street, bargain with the peddler and argue about the price, pay the peddler, and go back to their apartments.

Italian weddings were always happy times. The family would be baking and preparing days before the affair, which was held in a large hall, usually a rented church hall, which had to hold three hundred people. So the night before, the family would make sandwiches and place them on the tables with the cookies they had baked, along with a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey. When it was time to eat, the search began to find the sandwich they wanted—either the ham and cheese or the salami. The wedding gift was always money given to the bride in an envelope and placed into a white cloth bag that the mother-in-law guarded with her life.

Those times were good, and respect and family were the two most important parts of our lives. We lived together, the good and the not-so-good, the hardworking family man alongside the wise guy—you know, gangster, mobster, or whatever else we Italians were called—but whatever we were called didn’t matter in the end. The good ones proved them wrong and the bad ones made sure they did not repeat their insults. Our neighborhood was safe, and everyone knew each other’s business. The good families minded their business and the others respected them and were given respect in return. Each went about their own way of life with little conflict between them.

We kids had the opportunity to choose what life we would live, and sometimes the glamour and money of the easy life became attractive. The temptations were very real. One time, Billy Paats (crazy), the neighborhood bookie, asked me to work for him. Billy was as wide as he was tall. The typical 5 by 5 seated behind the wheel of his car with a cigar in his mouth. He was called Paats because he was a bit wacky. I was about sixteen-years-old and he took numbers from his car that he always parked on Barnes Avenue. I would pick up the number slips and run them to the corner store and call them in to a telephone number he would give me, and for doing that each day I would be paid fifty dollars a week. Big, easy money. When I told my father I had this easy money job, he said, Do you know why he wants you to call in the numbers? He answered his own question and said, Because you would be the one to get caught with policy slips in your pocket, and you would be the one to get arrested and sent away. Do you think you would like jail? The next day, I told Billy Paats I couldn’t do it. This, then, is a Bronx story of choices and a story of fate where choice is seldom an option.

It was a sunny June day and I was driving to have dinner with five friends who had been hanging with each other since we were six-years-old. Every Friday, once a month without fail, we all met at Bonamice, a restaurant on Arthur Avenue. On my way I had to drive past Bronx Park near the Bronx Zoo. I stopped and parked the car and thought of the things we did in and around the park. I thought of the time J.T. and I were walking down Holland Avenue to a bus stop to meet Ray, who had joined the Navy at seventeen and was now on leave. We were waiting for the bus that Ray was on, when all of a sudden we saw a cop cars’ lights flashing, pulling onto the sidewalk next to the bus stop.

The car door flew open and a cop we knew from the neighborhood jumped out and began shining his flashlight into the