Instant Friends

By Dan Ferullo

On a drizzly, blustery day in January of 1942, four young Mello brothers, from Woburn, Massachusetts, hop aboard a Boston & Maine Budd Liner and head into Boston for one last fling before shipping off to fight in the Second World War. Their first stop is a small raucous bar in Scollay Square called the Red Hat, where they encounter three others also celebrating before two of them, brothers named Jack and Joe Kennedy, go off to war. Jack Kennedy links up with one of the Mello brothers, Danny, and the two young men from opposite ends of the social and economic scales begin what would become an unforgettable bar-hopping journey. Along the way, forging a unique, instant friendship, Danny and Jack reveal their deepest secrets and end up imparting some valuable lessons about life, including possibly the starkest of all. No matter how hard you try to control the direction of your life, your journey’s end may just be inexorably foreordained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312597037

Book preview

Swift

Prologue

Friday, November 22, 1963, 3:07 p.m. EST

Danny Mello, Jr. arrived home from cataclysm class at Saint Anthony’s Church in North Woburn, a tight-knit neighborhood made up of mostly Italian immigrants, located about ten miles northwest of Boston. Taking two steps at a time, he dashed up the living-room staircase to his bedroom. He tossed a couple of schoolbooks onto his bed and then padded over to a small pinewood desk. His father had bought it for him unfinished, stained it the color of cherry wood, and slathered on a couple coats of polyurethane to give it a shiny gloss. Danny switched on his shoebox-size, plastic-encased Decca radio, then started shaking his left arm out of his jacket while fiddling with the tuning dial with his right hand. He found the AM music station he fancied most, WMEX, then finished shaking off his jacket. Before it even hit the floor, upon which his father had laid tiles rich with dark-brown-and-tan swirl-y patterns, his expression had turned curious. Normally rock-and-roll music would have been blaring out of the tiny speaker, or his favorite d. j., Arnie Woo-Woo Ginsberg, would have been raving about how delicious the hamburgers and French fries were at the Adventure Carhop Drive-in on Revere Beach Parkway. Instead, he heard an unfamiliar, husky male voice delivering news. The man’s voice resonated peculiarly between excitement and dread, instantly grabbing the ninth-grader’s attention and holding him back from immediately changing the station. Whatever the newsman was talking about, it sounded like it had just happened. He was describing incredible chaos unfolding all around him. People in shock. Screaming, crying. Some running aimlessly in every direction, others frozen in their tracks. Danny heard sirens blaring faintly in the background. He continued to listen intently, anxious to hear about what had this newsman was so wound up.

Then, Danny got his answer.

To repeat, at twelve-thirty p.m., Central Time, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot as his motorcade wound its way through Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas.

The newsman’s dulcet voice further hoarsened, then cracked with emotion, as he grimly informed listeners that the president, who had been riding in the backseat of an open limousine, with the first lady sitting beside him, had been struck in the head with at least one bullet, but most likely two. He then speculated that the shooter must have used a high-powered rifle, as a number of witnesses had reported hearing powerful gunshots coming from a book depository window located high above the plaza. The president’s condition was unknown, he said next, dolefully adding that witnesses had described the president’s head wound as catastrophic.

Catastrophic, Danny mulled, gazing idly out a nearby window. That morning, his mother had pulled the beige curtains aside and left the white shade half way up. The sun was beginning its lazy, late fall descent. Despite the bright-yellow glow that warmed his face and drenched the corner of his desk and his crumpled jacket on the floor, he could make out the side of his Uncle Lewis’s barn-red ranch house next door. He heard the sound of a car door slamming and bent toward the window. He peered between the muntins and observed the faded black roof of his father’s ’53 four-door Ford Fairlane. The big bumper, which he had painted silver for his father to conceal some unattractive rust spots that had begun to appear, shone flatly in the glare of the sun. Aching to share the news, he pivoted on his left heel and high-tailed it back downstairs.

He greeted his father as he entered the kitchen. The loose baseboard next to the doorframe rattled when his father shut the backdoor. Danny, Sr. was a foreman in the finishing department of a nearby leather factory. He snidely referred to the factory as a sweat shop. It was especially appropriate in the summer, when temperatures inside the finishing department rose to over a hundred degrees, making the mixture of unfinished hides and perspiration nearly intolerable, even for a hardened leather worker like Danny, Jr.’s father. Since the mid nineteenth century, the leather business had been the dominant industry in eastern Massachusetts. Several generations of the Mello men had worked in it, including, at one time or another, Danny, Jr.’s grandfather and two of his uncles. The first thing Danny, Sr. did after getting home from work was take a shower to cleanse himself of the smell of the hides he’d finished that day. However, the odor never left the tan-colored, waist-length suede jacket he wore to work from October to March. Too, the smell had become affixed to the walls inside the staircase leading to the cellar where he hung the jacket upon arriving home shortly after three each afternoon. Everyone in the family had grown accustomed to the smell. If for some reason the urge to complain did strike someone, Danny, Sr. quickly reminded that family member that that smell kept a roof over everybody’s head and put food on the table every night.

Danny, Sr. appeared drained, as he usually did every afternoon when he got home. Leatherwork was tough. Even so, he lit up for Danny, Jr. As he set his metal lunchbox down on the Formica counter next to the refrigerator, he sensed from his son’s twitchiness that he had something urgent to blurt out.

What’s the matter, Danny? Your head looks like it’s about to explode.

You hear, dad? Danny, Jr. burped, wide-eyed.

Hear what?

Danny, Jr. knew his father hated listening to the car radio, unless the Red Sox were playing, but he thought perchance he might have broken his steadfast rule that afternoon. Apparently, he hadn’t. President Kennedy’s been shot!

His father scrunched his face and cocked his head. You making that up, son? His voice reeked of suspicion and annoyance, for he loathed his kids fibbing. If you are, it’s not funny. You know how I feel about that stuff.

Swear to God I’m not joking, dad. Danny, Jr. made a hasty sign of the cross over his heart. I just heard it on the radio.

His father skirted around him and, without saying another word, drifted into the hallway connecting the kitchen to the master bedroom, down on the left in their post-Second World War Cape. Judging from his silence, Danny, Jr. guessed his father was taking the news hard. Even harder than it had struck him. It didn’t surprise him, for, like most everyone he knew, his father idolized the president. In the hallway, a photograph of President Kennedy hung prominently between a family portrait and an image of Jesus. His father disappeared into his bedroom. Danny, Jr. wondered why his father hadn’t gone straight into the living room to turn on their 19-inch, black-and-white, blonde-wood Sylvania console television set his mother had recently purchased at a discount because she was an employee at the Sylvania plant, located on the other side of Route 128.

I’ll turn on the TV, dad, he hollered, and he headed for the living room.

Meantime, Danny, Sr. dallied in front of his bureau, staring somberly at the top left drawer. Finally, he mustered the courage to pull it open. Inside sat a Dexter cigar box wherein he kept some important personal items. Things he hadn’t looked at in years. He couldn’t recall exactly how many. Probably a good fifteen. He finally lifted the cigar box out. He set it on the bureau and opened the top. Inside reeked of stale cigar tobacco. The stench wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It made him think fondly of his father, who still enjoyed a Dexter or two on a daily basis. His dad had given him the cigar box in which to store some of his important war mementoes. He stared at the items, primarily an array of colorful ribbons, a Good Conduct Medal, and a Purple Heart, all of which he’d earned as a member of the Fourth Armored Division in General George S. Patton’s Third Army. He’d been dutiful, a member of the cavalry, a reconnaissance soldier who, with five others, had wandered into Godforsaken frozen woods in Belgium one fateful dawn in January, 1945, the high point of the Battle of the Bulge. He snickered. It had been anything but a high point for him. He still reeled from the pain of one of the three bullets he’d taken that day. The bullet had gone through the right side of his back, just below the shoulder blade, and remained lodged in a rib. The Army gave me one lousy Purple Heart for those three kraut bullets, he bitterly recalled. He felt he had deserved three, one for each piece of lead he’d taken for his country. But he’d settled for the one. Reconnaissance soldiers went into the woods ahead of the rest of their division to make sure there weren’t any German soldiers hiding, waiting to ambush them. That morning many of the enemy had been hiding and waiting. His division had been one of the divisions that had spearheaded the Third Army’s march through Europe following D-Day. He had many memories of D-Day, as well. Mostly bad ones. He had landed on Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944, and had somehow managed to survive the bloodiest battle in which any soldier could have imagined finding himself. About 4,500 soldiers hadn’t been so lucky. Many who did survive had lost a limb, or had had an eye knocked out from shrapnel, rendering them useless for the rest of the war, and most likely beyond that. The krauts shot a member of his division in the groin as he charged up the beach, and, when Danny instinctively stopped to help him, he begged Danny to shoot him in the head to put him out of his misery. Danny screamed Medic! at the top of his lungs, then resumed his charge up the beach. He often wondered what became of that poor son of a bitch. The krauts may have shot me three times, but at least I came home useful to my wife, he told himself then, as well as countless other times over the years following the war.

Gently pushing aside the ribbons and the medals, he looked for the item he really wished to see again, and to hold once more. He found it concealed under his DD214 papers. A twenty-five-cent piece. Jack Kennedy had given it to him on a raw, drizzly, blustery day back in January of ’42. The two of them were having a beer at the Lenox Arms Hotel bar after spending the afternoon drinking and screwing around the Back Bay. Before Jack had become a war hero, long before he’d become president. He took the coin out of the cigar box, held it up like a spectacular piece of one-of-a-kind jewelry. He peered at its dusty, tarnished head. Washington’s profile and the 1939 issue date appeared faded, barely discernible. He tilted the coin just right to make them out. The coin was a one-of-a-kind piece. At least to him. No one else in the world possessed a twenty-five-cent piece that held such significance. He lowered the coin. Gently rubbing the dust from its head with his thumb, his mind wandered back to that day in January ’42. He and three of his brothers, Ralphie, Jackie, and Lewie, had come across Jack Kennedy, his brother Joe, and his best friend, Lem Billings, at a bar in Scollay Square called the Red Hat Tavern. Except for Lem, who had bad eyesight which had kept him out of the service, all of them were about to be shipped off to fight in the war. That had provided all the impetus he and the others had needed to make that day memorable.

And make it memorable they did.

At least Jack and I made it memorable, Danny fondly recalled.

Ralphie, Jackie, Lewie and he had enlisted on December 9, 1941, the day after President Roosevelt gave his celebrated Day of Infamy Speech. He’d enlisted in the Army, Jackie and Lewie the Army Air Force, Ralphie the Marines. About six weeks later, the four of them hopped aboard a B&M Budd Liner at Woburn depot, across Main Street from the Armory where they had gone to enlist, and headed for North Station, from where they would begin their last day together before shipping off.

Over twenty years had gone by, but for Danny Mello it was as if the events of that day had just happened the day before….

Chapter 1

January thaw. A nippy, wind-stirred mist greeted my three brothers and me as we stepped off a Boston & Maine Budd Liner car at North Station on the morning of January 20, 1942. Without any particular destination in mind, we embarked on what was to be our last sojourn together before departing for our respective boot camps. Mine was Camp Santa Anita, in California. When I learned that that was where I was heading, nothing could have made me happier. Santa Anita also happened to be the home of Santa Anita Racetrack. All of us Mello boys, along with our dad, were keen on horseracing. As long as I could remember, we had affectionately referred to racehorses as the ponies. I considered myself the most ardent fan of the Sport of Kings in our family. The drawers in the night table next to my bed at home were crammed with issues of Turf dating back to 1936, the year I had turned sixteen and graduated from high school. It also was the year I had learned how to ride a horse and drive a sulky cart at a small racecourse in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Harness racing was in our blood, as well. The night before our trip to Boston, after packing for my cross-country trip to Camp Santa Anita, I polished my size six-and-a-half black riding boots and made sure they were meticulously stored in my corner of the closet I shared with our youngest brother, Bobby. It was important to me that I found those boots exactly as I had left them when I got back from active duty. Bobby was only eleven, far too young to join his older brothers in pursuit of revenge against the Japanese and the Germans. So he would feel included in the patriotic fervor, we gave him an assignment, to look out for our three sisters and our mother and father. After giving it some thought, I decided that might have been harder than fighting the krauts or the nips.

My first goal after arriving at Santa Anita was to win as much dough as possible at Santa Anita. My second as a gung-ho twenty-one year old was to finish basic training and then kill as many of the German Nazi regime as possible as soon as I arrived in Europe (Germany had declared war on the United States four days after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. I’d opted to join the Army, the branch designated to fight the Germans. Being half Irish and fair-skinned, I found the thought of weekend furloughs in Paris or London far more appealing than lounging around in the baking-hot sun of a Pacific island, which Ralphie was shipping off to as a newly minted member of the Marines. Good luck with that). Before concentrating on those goals, however, I had my eyes focussed on one additional objective, seeing how much havoc Jackie, Lewie, Ralphie and I could whip up in Boston that day.

With this in mind, we marched up a broad concrete platform specked with pigeon shit, flattened globs of pink and gray chewing gum, and cigarette butts. We walked in lockstep with a solid, impassable stream of neatly attired commuters on their way in town for business, as this was a workday. We finally reached the monstrous, hissing, steaming black locomotive that had pulled the gleaming Budd Liner car in which we’d ridden, along with several other similar cars, into North Station. I felt a thrill as we swaggered, side by side, toward the station concourse. The air was thick with the smell of oil and coal. I found it oddly pleasing. It reminded me of all those Saturday mornings my mother had taken my brothers and me into Boston by train to see a movie at the Paramount Theater on Washington Street. She hadn’t really enjoyed taking us to the movies, and we knew it. Spanky and Our Gang, Buck Rogers, and Tom Mix weren’t exactly her cup of tea. Her real motive had been to pacify us so she could then drag us along to Filene’s or Jordan Marsh’s, down the street from the movie house, to shop for clothes for herself afterwards. She had made a deal with the devil. In this case, four. My brothers and I hadn’t minded, for we’d eat so much popcorn and cotton candy during the movie that the walk up Washington Street, to the retail stores, later on gave us a chance to work off the stuffiness in our bellies. And, once inside a store, a chance to play hide and seek. We were able to get away with this because our mother wasn’t particularly vigilant while trying on clothes. I never understood why my brothers hadn’t figured out that the best places to hide were in the women’s department, with all those long dresses and coats hanging on big metal racks. My brothers would immediately dispatch themselves to some ridiculous place like the women’s cosmetics section. If I hadn’t eventually let out a loud Indian war cry, which my brothers instantly recognized as belonging to me, they never would have found me. They believed they were masters of the game, but I knew better.

We entered the cavernous concourse and came upon a series of long, deeply shellacked oak-wood benches spotted with commuters killing time, waiting for their trains, reading newspapers they had purchased at one of the kiosks dotting the floor and the perimeter. The kiosks sold newspapers from around the country, and a few from overseas, as well as magazines, candy, snacks, sandwiches, coffee, quinine and soda, and cigarettes, just the kind of stuff that made waiting tolerable. A thick fog hovered around the heads of those waiting. Loud speakers affixed to the soaring ceiling crackled with a throaty male voice announcing the time and track number of a soon-to-be-departing train heading for Lowell (probably the train we’d just got off of – Woburn was a stop on the Lowell line). To the right, anchored against the wall between two kiosks was a shoeshine stand with half a dozen wooden and metal chairs in a row. They were elevated precisely high enough off the concrete floor to allow two shoeshine boys, sitting on tiny stools, to comfortably and proficiently polish and buff their customers’ Bostonians and Florsheims. Their customers, meantime, had their faces buried in the pages of