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“He writes of being bludgeoned with a hammer…this will ‘not’ be turned into a musical!” Cindy Adams ~ NY Post and Good Morning America
* * * * *
Brooklyn NY: A Grim Retrospective
By Jerry Castaldo
SMASHWORDS EDITION 2012
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Jerry Castaldo on Smashwords
Brooklyn NY: A Grim Retrospective
Copyright © 2010 Jerry Castaldo
Available in print from Amazon.com
All rights reserved.
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the authors, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only or provided by the author or publisher, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Subject: Non-fiction, Autobiography, Addiction, Recovery, Inspiration
Language: English
Copy Editor: Joan Gronock
Some names and locations have been changed to respect the privacy of certain individuals. Any similarity to actual persons living or dead or to actual entities or events is purely coincidental.
* * * * *
“Writing is easy. All you have to do
is sit down at a
typewriter and bleed.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
* * * * *
CHAPTER LIST
The Mob, the Bookie & the Leisure Suits
"Saturday Night Fever" Filming Begins!
They Came to Rape? (And Scarred My Face)
Escape to US Army Basic Training
Thrust Back to the Neighborhood
NYC Politician Andrew J. Stein Adopts Me
Jerry Seinfeld Offers Me Hope!
The Giant Monster Comes for Me at Night
Emergency Rooms, Jail and Bellevue
* * * * *
Introduction
Why would anyone want to read my story? Who am I? What’s the big deal about my story? And how could I even write it? I only went to the eighth grade…. Well, maybe six disjointed months of high school, too.
Was I afraid to open up and share all of this? Yes.
I’ve been told time and again over the years that my stories are not just interesting, but are also quite shocking—especially if you know me now. Because of this, many people in my personal life—as well as several in my professional life—have advised me against revealing what I’m about to tell you here.
Am I fearful of being judged and looked upon as a bad person? Yes, especially when I’ve spent the last 19 years rebuilding, retooling, and “re-becoming” the actual person I was as a young boy, before the violence and mayhem. Back when I was an altar boy, a Cub Scout, a Little Leaguer, an uninfluenced child—innocent.
What’s this book about? It documents my involvement with horrendous crime, rampant drug abuse, gang fighting, jail, in-patient rehabs, psych wards….
Wait! I know exactly what you must be thinking now: Oh no, not another sappy “I did drugs and was really nuts and then…” story.
That’s only one small element of it. I’d much rather describe it this way…. I so desperately want people to see how a good person is always basically good, regardless of where he or she may falter and go astray; and sometimes—but not always—that person can get back to the beginning. Back to who they were originally, before the “cold cruel world” got a hold on them. Before they were influenced negatively by what they saw and what they experienced around them.
More importantly—in this age of phony, inflated stories that are billed as factual—it’s all true. No embellishments. Hard hitting, pushing the limits of human decency—and what is allowed by law to be published without me being prosecuted.
I’m not preaching. And I’m not bragging. I really don’t feel special; and I really don’t feel all that different from anybody— that I’m privileged or disadvantaged, that I’m lucky or unlucky.
What I do feel is compelled to speak about this, the following.
* * * * *
Coney Island Drug Robbery
Summer 1975—Age 16
#1 song on the radio: “Jive Talkin’”—The Bee Gees
With my heart pounding, my breathing quick and shallow—but with surprisingly methodical and efficient strokes—I repeatedly brought the large carpenter’s hammer sideways, bashing the face of the Hispanic man clawing at the passenger side window of the car we were fleeing in. The streetlight above was reflecting off some sort of shiny blade he was windmilling at me. I don’t remember how many times the blows found their mark; I did see blood.
All evening, this old jalopy of a car that we were riding in was bucking and stalling out. So to think, here at 2 am, with two other Puerto Ricans chasing this ailing car down a dark, deserted street, there was a chance we’d stall. All I can think is: I should never have gotten in this car with Uncle Tony.
“Uncle Tony”—as he was known to all in the Bensonhurst, Brooklyn neighborhood that I grew up in—was older than us; 29 and just paroled from an upstate NY prison. For what, we were never really sure. But he served many years, and we looked up to him for it. You know, the “badge of honor” bullshit.
We all suspected that Uncle Tony was doing heroin. Heroin was a drug that none of us would mess with because that made you a “real” druggie. Barbiturates (downers) like Tuinal and Seconal (which we also called “Gorilla Biscuits” because they made us very violent at times), LSD, pot…all of these were “OK.” But doing heroin, whether you snorted it or shot it, made you a real low-life in our eyes. Even so, years later I’d come to find out that many associates of mine did eventually take the plunge into doing the Big H. The common practice of shooting between the toes to hide the track marks was what we concluded Uncle Tony was doing. We still looked up to him, though. After all, he did hard time. He was crazy. Being crazy was like being anointed a high priest, like being commissioned a high-ranking officer—a title that traveled with you to other neighborhoods and would get you respect from all. Because then you were feared.
The reason for the car ride with Uncle Tony that hot summer night was not revealed to me beforehand. He just said, “Get in, I gotta do something,” and I was more than happy to be taken into his inner circle. I was 16 years old. Had I known that while he left me in an idling, double-parked car, he was going to rob some drug dealers, I probably would never have gotten in. Then again, maybe I would have. I have to admit it: How could I have not known something bad was going to happen when he said, “Jerry, there’s a hammer under the seat.”
“Jerry the Hammer” was the moniker I earned that night. No, I wasn’t crazy; no, I didn’t want to hit that guy in the face; but yes, I enjoyed the notoriety. Besides, I was afraid of actually being killed that night, so I lashed out like a maniac. It was strictly self-preservation, survival. If I didn’t do it, I’d be prey.
The next day at the park where we hung out, it was pleasing to be recognized by the 30 or so other kids that made up the different crews, cliques, gangs, or whatever you want to call them. The older kids acknowledged me; even the girls were wider-eyed than usual with me. This was a good feeling. It meant: Don’t fuck with Jerry Castaldo. He’s crazy.
Beaten to a Bloody Pulp with My Own Hammer
Bay Ridge Section of Brooklyn
A few days later, when I went to the hardware store to buy two large hammers, I never would have imagined they’d both be used on me to bludgeon my head, face, arms, and legs. After all, I was now “Jerry the Hammer.”
My mom’s boyfriend at the time, John, whom she later married, got me a job loading freight trains in Jersey City, NJ. I lied about my age and said that I was eighteen years old. The guy that hired me didn’t even bother to check. It was a grueling, labor-intensive position. Not exactly what I’d want to be doing for the rest of my life. Getting across two rivers to NJ was pretty difficult by train, though—almost a two-hour commute each way. By car I could make it in a half-hour.
After cashing in a life-insurance policy that my grandmother had put in place for me, we found a car for me at the perfect price of $200.00. It was a silver 1965 Dodge Dart sedan and I appreciated it. I bought a small purple steering wheel, installed an eight-track tape player, and fixed it up as best I could. This was great. Even though most of the kids in the neighborhood had newer cars, this was mine.
I now had a job, a car, and was hoping to distance myself from the “bad” kids that I had been hanging around with. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me go. In retrospect, I realize I could have broken away somehow; but at the time, I didn’t know how to do it.
Sleeping soundly at about twelve one weeknight, I was awakened by yelling outside my bedroom window, which was on the second floor of the apartment building that my brother and I lived in with my mom and her boyfriend. “Castaldo, hey Castaldo,” I heard. It was them. The thieves, the liars, the so-called “friends” who I now realize were nothing more than fellow gang members. I tried to ignore them, but then they started throwing stuff at my window. “Okay, okay, I’ll be right down,” I said.
Junior was the leader of our own crew of six guys—which is kind of funny, because he was the short, small one. But he was crazy and had proved it numerous times around the neighborhood. Now at 16 years of age, he had already been arrested many times, and had been in and out of Spofford Correctional Facility for Youths in the Bronx.
“We need to go ‘bageling’,” Junior said— which was another term for popping trunks to steal the radial tires, which reminded us of giant bagels. Each tire was worth $25.00 to the neighborhood fence. Using a large screwdriver sharpened to a point, Philly, the biggest, strongest one of us, would push a hole into the trunk, right next to the keyhole of a late-model luxury car. Then, a lit match was dropped into the hole so you could see where to insert a regular flathead screwdriver sideways to “pop” the lock open. Even when there was an alarm, we would lift the trunk lid, quickly unscrew the mount that held the tire and then take off before the windows on all of the houses started lighting up. There’d be times when people—still in their underwear—were coming toward us waving bats, and we’d barely make it out of there.
“I can’t do that, I’ve got a job now. I gotta get up at 5:30 in the morning,” I hollered back. I was then told that if I wasn’t coming out, I’d better hand over my keys and let them use the car. The rest of the goons hovered nearby waiting for my reply. After several no’s, I finally gave in and relinquished the keys. I told them to make sure they bent the license plates up so they couldn’t be read. This was so fucked-up; my new car now was being used to commit crimes while I slept. I begged them to bring back the car and leave the keys in the ashtray when they were done.
The next morning, the car was there in its usual spot and I went to work. They told me that they had stopped at three stolen tires because they couldn’t fit any more in the car. So, they didn’t want this small vehicle of mine anymore. Thank God! Let them use stolen Lincoln Continentals like they usually did. Lots of room in the trunk.
Out of everyone in the neighborhood, Stevie Bones was my best friend. A while back, when he was 14 years old, people started calling him “Bones” because of how skinny he was. He hated it, but it stuck. We were the “good” kids who went to grammar school together. Then we started hanging out with “them.” We both had slowly morphed into unimportant little street thugs after getting involved with Junior and the others. It made us both change for the worse from then on. What happened was that even when the two of us were alone and not in the company of the crew, we started doing things on our own that were bad. Very bad. It was like a communicable virus had infected us. Fuck life; it all sucks. Take what you want— steal, fight; get all you can get now. The world blows. If we die, we die.
Many around us did indeed die.
One Saturday night while Stevie Bones and I were cruising in my car on 86th street, a popular thoroughfare—with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra blaring from the speakers—we ventured out of Bensonhurst and headed into the next neighboring area called Bay Ridge.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Stevie yelled at the carload of guys that was stopped next to us at a red light. This pipsqueak friend of mine, Stevie, who I don’t ever remember winning a fist fight, was suddenly a tough guy with a big mouth. All it took was some Tuinals and hundred proof Southern Comfort. The guys in the car started yelling back. The light turned green and we drove on. In the rear-view mirror, I could see them all waving their fists at us. They pulled up beside us again and we yelled some more; and they yelled back, both of our cars bucking and jockeying for position.
“Muthafuckas! Stevie, the hammer is under your seat,” I said. This was sort of the same line Uncle Tony had given me. After buying the hammers, I had placed my newly acquired weapons under the two front seats; now it looked like they were going to be put into action.
After turning left and right down several streets, I could see again in my rear-view mirror that they were still following us. We came to a stop sign on a deserted, middle-class, residential street. They pulled around and out in front of us and stopped their car, blocking us. Quickly, they all scrambled out. Holy shit—five guys against two!
Before we could get out, they had pulled our doors open. Now two of them were trying to pull me out. While still swinging my hammer with one hand, I tried to hold onto the steering wheel with the other, to avoid being dragged out. It felt futile. The others were trying to drag Stevie out, too. Somehow I got the car into reverse and hit the gas. We sped violently backward, tires screeching, the open driver’s-side door dragging one of the guys back with us. As we zig-zagged in reverse, the edge of the open door started hitting the parked cars lining the street—and this guy was still in between the crashing door and the parked cars. I remember thinking: He looks like he’s dancing a ballet, or being electrocuted in slow motion. Finally he disappeared under the door, and at that moment the front left tire bumped up and over something. Was that him?
Thinking I had just crushed and killed him, I continued racing in reverse all the way down the block. We went right through the two-lane intersection, still going backwards; we were lucky that no cars were coming in either direction. I made it about another 100 feet into the next block before I lost control. The trunk of my car smashed into the front of a parked car. The tremendous impact made both Stevie and me hit back against the front seat so hard that it was knocked down flat.
“Look!” Stevie said as we both tried to comprehend what had just happened. I squinted through the windshield and saw all of them running toward us. I told Stevie to get out and fight, but before we could do anything, they were upon us. This time they did manage to pull me out. I swung my hammer—missing, not connecting. While swinging wildly, at one point I actually hit myself. What the fuck!?! I thought I was a tough guy. But now I’m getting my friggin’ assed kicked in!
After they had gotten me on the ground and were kicking me, they realized that they could not get the hammer from my hands. I just wouldn’t let go. I kept thinking: “If they take this, they’ll use it on me.” My eyes were closed now—a big mistake. There was no escape. It was then that I realized I was being hit in the legs with another hammer—Stevie’s hammer! They’d taken his from him, and roughed him up a little bit, before he ran down the street and got away. Now they wanted me.
I distinctly remember the first blow that I received to my temple. It reminded me of those cartoons—you know, where you hear a “boing” when one of the characters hits another on the head, and then they hear “tweet tweet”—like birds or something. Amidst all of this punching and kicking, and yelling and screaming that they were doing—“You ran over my friend, you motherfucker!”—I was thinking of cartoons. Bam! A second shot to my head! At this point I didn’t feel any pain at all; I just relaxed my head on the cool black pavement of the street and decided to stop fighting. Bam! A third shot!
“OK, OK, that’s enough,” the other guy yelled, “—you’re gonna kill him!”
I’m not sure if I was playing dead because I was afraid and wanted them to stop, or because it just felt so good to relax and lay there—but whatever the reason I did what I did, it worked. I think they ran because they thought that I was dead or dying. As I lay there, relieved that it was finally over, I could hear the sound of crashing glass—they were smashing every window on my car, along with the headlights. I then heard their car doors slam shut, and the sound of them driving away. What a beautiful silence I was experiencing! I could feel a lot of warm blood streaming down my face. I just stayed right there, not moving, fading in and out of consciousness.
When I eventually staggered to my feet, I saw that Stevie was stumbling toward me, back to the scene, out of hiding. They had beaten him only with their hands and feet because his hammer was used to get me to release my hammer. He had blood on his head and a little on his arm. People were now coming out of their houses, in their robes and slippers, and telling us that the cops were on their way. But I wouldn’t accept help. I just wanted to get out of there.
“Stevie, come on; get in the car,” I told him. He was bleeding, I was bleeding. The car’s back looked like an accordion; the left front door was bent open and wouldn’t shut; the front seat was broken and down flat. We had no lights anymore; the windows were all shattered. For a moment, I thought we should drive ourselves to Victory Memorial Hospital for treatment. But wait—No, I can’t! What if that bump I felt back then was me running over that guy? What if he dies? Where is he? Did his friends take him to a hospital?
I decided instead to first report the car stolen and abandon it. Then we could go to the hospital for help. I thought that I was so smart. Yeah, if I say someone stole the car, I couldn’t be held responsible for crashing into that parked car or possibly killing anybody. So we drove to a quiet “Lover’s Lane” type of area called Shore Parkway. (It was actually the exact spot where, two summers later— July 31st, 1977—“Son-of-Sam Killer” David Berkowitz would murder his last victim, Stacy Moskowitz.) I parked the car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” moaned Stevie. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was no way I was going to leave my new eight-track stereo in it! What a scene; it was almost comical. My face is all bloody and swelling like a football—and I’m looking for my tools so I can remove the stereo!
We lied to the emergency room staff at the hospital and scribbled phony contact information down on the forms that they handed us. After hours of waiting, we were sewn up and released. Stevie and I dragged ourselves to the bus stop as the early morning sun slowly rose. After being out all night, it was time to go home.
As I think back to those times, I realize that I was truly uncontrollable; my mother was probably at her wit’s end, dealing with me. Walking into our apartment that morning, I’m sure I scared the shit out of her—and the neighbors, too. My mother opened the door and there I was—limping, steadying myself with a cane, and with the most grotesque-looking face, stitches crossing my forehead. You know those fright films where the actress lets out those blood-curdling shrieks? That was my mom: “Oh my God, what happened, what happened, what happened?”
That evening, I endured a slow, carefully maneuvered shower. Afterwards, it was an excruciatingly painful experience just to dress myself. I then grabbed my cane and limped five city blocks over to the park. And I looked like shit. That’s right; I was going to hang out at the park now. I just couldn’t let this great opportunity pass. Everybody will see me like this. Another valiant battle fought. Score! Once again, validation.
A wide-eyed, salivating crowd circled me and stood in awe as I told the story through a deformed, swollen mouth. The cane and limping added extra drama. Many of the guys patted me on the back, shook my hand, looked at each other and laughed, saying, “Shit, man—Jerry Castaldo is fuckin’ crazy.”
Perfect, just what I wanted to hear—another notch in my belt. I’m safe here in this environment. People are afraid of me; good!
There was never anything made of my reporting my car stolen; there were no repercussions from what happened that night. Who knows what happened to that guy? I never saw my car again. And I didn’t want to own a hammer anymore.
* * * * *
Stab Me, Jerry—Harder!
#1 song on the radio: “That’s The Way I Like It”—KC and the Sunshine Band
“Jerry, get up. Jerry, your friend is here; get up.” Mustering the strength to roll my body over, and separate my crusted-over eyelids, I could see the blurry vision of my mother standing in the doorway of the bedroom that my younger brother Ken and I shared. Of course, I was hung over from the usual, always potentially fatal—or at least potentially brain-damaging—cocktail of pills and alcohol from the night before. I didn’t even remember the night before. Amnesia was a regular thing for me.
It was a Saturday morning at about ten and the friend—now replacing my mom and standing next to my bed, in my degraded field of vision—was Johnny. Known in the neighborhood of Bath Beach as Johnny Reb—the term “Reb” being short for “rebel”—he was three years older than me and well-liked by everyone. Personally, I didn’t know why he was such a “rebel.” He never really demonstrated—at least, not to me anyway—anything that would designate him as such; no fights, no serious crimes. To me, he was just a really nice guy with a barely noticeable stutter. It was such a relief to see that it was Johnny in my room and not the detective from the local police precinct who recently had been stopping by and trying to catch me at home to “talk.” Since he never found anyone at home, he’d always leave his card taped to the door and I’d make sure to take it away before my mother would find it. I guess he did this because we didn’t have a telephone for him to call us on. He eventually gave up.
Bay 22nd Street, between Bath Avenue and Cropsey Avenue in Brooklyn, was where Johnny Reb’s crew hung out. There was a TV series in the ‘70s called “Welcome Back Kotter,” starring John Travolta as Vinny Barbarino. If you watch the first few scenes of the introduction that is shown while a wimpy-sounding guy sings the title song, “Welcome Back,” you can see the exact group of dilapidated apartment buildings that we would congregate in and around.
I’m not really sure why or how this happened to be, but I was different from most of the other kids who belonged to the various cliques that were around back then. Most of the others would hang out only with their own crew, which was usually close to home, in the area where they lived. But I would travel to different neighborhoods and find a way to “get in” with different groups. Bay 22nd Street was a half-hour city bus-ride away for me, but whether I was hanging out in my local park, or in any of the about five different sections of Brooklyn that I frequented, my rep was always intact. I experienced minor local-celebrity status in all of those locations. For even if you didn’t admire me, chances are you were a just a little bit afraid of me; the insane, violent stories were out there.
Back then—and still, to this day—I considered myself a chameleon. Later in life, I have found this to be a valuable commodity, especially in business. There were some guys in the other crews who also yearned to be known as “crazy”; they were the only ones who would put me down. It was always a competition. They’d always try to find some way to downplay or slightly skew the stories being told about me to pump themselves up.
“Johnny, what the fuck you doin’ here? I’m sleepin’, man,” I told him.
He started, “Yo, Jerry, I really need your help. You know that girl from the block that I’m seeing? Well, I have to work today. I really want to take off so I can stay with her, but I’m afraid they’ll fire me.”
“They” being the local supermarket—formerly an A&P, and now owned and run by the Aiello family. Antoinette Aiello—who was a man despite the female-sounding name—was the owner. I was a stock boy there for a short while who prided himself on having every label in my tuna-fish aisle perfectly aligned. Johnny was in the produce section. The owner had a nephew, Ron Aiello, who worked there, too. He was about 15 years older than us. The actor Danny Aiello was reportedly a cousin, so Ron was able to weasel his way into small acting roles here and there. Years later I saw him playing a barber in director Sidney Lumet’s 1981 film “Prince of The City” with Treat Williams.
“So whatta ya want from me?” I asked. I slowly sat up into a sitting position with my blanket still covering my lower body. “Just call in sick,” I told him.
“Nah,” Johnny said. “Fuckin’ Irving says that if I call in sick again, or am late again, I’m gone.”
Irving was the store manager, which we found kinda odd, because he was a Jewish guy in his late fifties who didn’t quite blend in with the general Italian atmosphere of the store, the customers; the neighborhood.
“I was thinkin’,” Johnny said. “If you could stab me, maybe in my leg, then I can take off a few days and not get fired.”
After a bit of a pause—as I sat there, still half asleep—I processed what Johnny Reb was asking me to do, and then broke into loud laughter. “Ha, ha, you crazy fuck. Whatta you gotta do that for? Just call in sick, man!”
I’m not sure why I always laughed at horrific-sounding things, but it obviously started at a young age. Even now, I sometimes laugh when I’m presented with a scary or disturbing story. Maybe it’s some sort of an emotional defense mechanism. I do know that as an adult, it can be politically incorrect to exhibit this, and so—depending on the company I’m with—I sometimes must mask this weird reaction that I have.
After a few minutes of trying to talk him out of it—and with him begging me to do it—I gave in. We decided that we’d go to the local playground and I’d stab him there. I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and reached all the way to the back, where—hidden under some old clothes that I never wore, where my unsuspecting mother would never look—I kept my 007 knife. I got the knife, got dressed, and we left.
On the way to the playground, I suggested that we should buy a quart of Budweiser Beer for him to slug down beforehand. I quickly added that we should buy two quarts—one for me, as well. We pooled the change in our pockets and made sure we had cigarettes, too. We walked, we drank, we smoked. And we decided that the side of his thigh, right below the buttocks, would be the best spot for the stabbing. We tried to psyche each other out.
Johnny, picking up his pace excitedly, was breathing hard now. He was sucking down smoke, and blowing it out, yelling, “Come on muthafucka, let’s do this!”
I, on the other hand, was a bit worried. Should I push it straight in or on an angle, shallow or deep, quickly or slowly? I mentioned that we should get a rag, a tee-shirt, or something like that in case we have to tie off any unexpected surge of blood. We both thought that this was a good idea, so we stopped back at my apartment building to get something.
Mothers with their kids were playing in different areas of the park when we got there. I told Johnny that we probably should choose the monkey bars so he could hold onto them while I stab him. We had to wait a few minutes until the few kids in the monkey-bar area moved away. The parents actually started ushering them away sooner than we had thought they would. I guess Johnny and I were conspicuous—repeatedly looking over in their direction, while drinking large beers out of brown paper bags. It was only 11 in the morning.
Walking onto the soft black padding surrounding the monkey bars, which was put down by the NYC Parks Department to dampen any falls by children, we looked around suspiciously. We had some privacy, but not a lot. It was a sunny day and the playground was starting to fill up. “Take both hands and hold onto the bars right about here, shoulder height,” I instructed him. I looked around, took my 007 knife out of my back pocket, and unfolded it. This was the biggest folding pocket-knife you could get. I had once been caught by my teacher selling these knives in grammar school. The blade alone was six inches long, so when the knife was opened up, the entire length of the handle and blade came to about a foot. I remember wishing I had a smaller knife.
Johnny held the bars tightly, closed his eyes, and shouted, “Come on, do it, do it!” My grip on the handle of the knife was so tight, I was worried that the blade would penetrate too deeply into his thigh. So I loosened my grip a little, looked around, and then half-heartedly pushed the shiny silver tip of the blade into his jeans.
“Ah, ah, ah, fuck, shit, ah—” Johnny cried out. He was hopping around like a pogo stick, grimacing with pain.
I started yelling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; Johnny, I’m sorry.” I looked around nervously. “Let me see, let me see; stop moving, so I can see,” I told him. Looking down, I could only see a very faint, almost non-existent, tiny blotch of blood on his jeans. The knife had barely broken the surface of his skin.
“You didn’t push it in hard enough, Jerry,” Johnny moaned. I told him again that I was sorry, and promised to try again.
The few parents and kids that were still in the park were now far away. I’m sure they could see that something weird was going on. “All right, hold on, I’m gonna do it,” I warned Johnny. This time I gripped the knife tighter, hoping that now I could get it in further, even though I didn’t want the entire blade to go in. I brought my arm back behind me to get a little momentum, and then brought the blade forward into his thigh in the same area.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow!” Johnny called out. He started hopping around again, in pain. And I’m yelling, “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.” We looked to see how much blood there was. To our horror, there was not much more than before.
“What the fuck are you doin’, Jerry? You still didn’t get it in good enough.” I explained that I was afraid of pushing too hard and sending it to too far in. He was in pain, but we were failing; he was not injured “enough.” I then had a brainstorm.
“How about I punch you right in the face and blacken your eye? You can say you got jumped,” I blurted out.
Johnny said, “OK, good idea, let’s try that.”
I added, “We should go to the grocery store and get a roll of quarters. I’ll put them inside of my fist before I punch you. I’ll be able to really fuck your face up good.”
We left the playground with Johnny slightly limping, his face all scrunched up from the pain and his right leg bleeding just a bit. The red bloodstain on his blue pants leg was only about two inches in diameter. I was trying to figure out who we could ask to lend us the money so we could buy the roll of quarters when Johnny pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. I shouted, “Fuckin’ hold-out, you are!” Here we were scrounging for pocket-change for the beer, and he had a twenty on him all the time.
Back at the playground about a half-hour later, I had Johnny brace himself, holding onto a sprinkler pipe. I placed the roll of quarters in my right hand. How strange his face looked! It was a different expression from when I was stabbing him. He had his head tilted back a little, with his chin protruding forward, sort of exaggerated. His eyes were tightly closed. He looked like a peculiar statue. I told him to get ready. I wound up and—aiming carefully so as not to miss and break his nose—I punched him right in the eye. Breaking loose his grip from the pipe, he started jumping around on his one good leg yelling, “Shit, oh shit, shit, shit!”
I started yelling, “I’m sorry, sorry; I’m sorry Johnny.” We walked over to the curb of the sidewalk, right outside of the playground, and turned a car’s side-view mirror around so that he could see how his eye looked.
“You didn’t punch me hard enough, fucker,” Johnny complained. There was a very slight red mark around his eye orbit, but not much more.
“OK, OK, let’s try again,” I offered.
At this point, I just wanted to get the whole thing over with. I decided that I was going to hit him with everything I’ve got. He grabbed onto the pipe again, I gripped the roll of quarters tightly in my fist, wound up again, wider than before, and punched him in the face as if my life depended on it.
Not only did Johnny stagger around, moaning in pain, but I too danced an awkward Irish Jig —the roll of quarters had crushed my fingers! They started swelling up like little balloons. But, more importantly, by the next morning Johnny had raccoon eyes. He spent the next few days with his girlfriend—off from work with no retribution.
* * * * *
Grand Theft Auto
#1 song on the radio: “Oh, What a Night—The Four Seasons”
Driving a car was for me—as I’m sure it is for many teenagers—a thrilling adventure, a realization of freedom, independence. You could just roll along the streets and venture out to other neighborhoods— even Manhattan. You were almost an adult now. You were in control of something “big.” I just loved to drive, probably more than anything else at that time; it was such an escape. I just had to figure out how to get enough money so that I could buy another used car.
Since my dad had left some years back, my mom was always working and struggling to raise my brother and I. My father had taken up with a blonde, “exotic” dancer who was twenty-five years younger than him and who danced under the stage name “Bobbie Lane.” She would do this bizarre routine with her huge, bare breasts that involved lit candles or something. I never actually saw her act, but I do know that my brother did, courtesy of a wholesome, weekend outing with my father. I missed not seeing my dad much, although some of the extreme violence that he’d exhibited had frightened me when I was a young child. I remember once, after he had assaulted a cop, breaking the cop’s nose, he was beaten by several policemen with clubs and sustained over one-hundred stitches to his head. Another time, later on when I was older, a local mob guy and his cronies were gunning for my father over some business dispute and he had to avoid going to certain places. They finally caught up with my dad one night near the waterfront, shooting out the streetlight to make it dark while they tried to pull him into their car. Luckily, he fought them off somehow and was able to get away. They never were able to get at him again though, because a month later that mobster was himself gunned down and killed in a Manhattan nightclub called Bedrock, a club that I would go to once in a while.
So, my dad was there on the periphery, fading in and out of our lives, giving “some” cash to my mom (who had a big heart, and never wanted to force him into court for structured child-support payments to us). It seems to me that it was somewhere back in the mid-‘70s when dual-income families started becoming more common, where both parents would be out in the work-force all day. So, it was no big deal to me, as I remember it, that my mother was working. I was a “latch-key kid,” coming home from school to an empty apartment with no real supervision until 6 pm or so.
In addition, a few years earlier, when I was about twelve years old, my mother had been physically disabled in a horrific car accident. (The local newspaper plastered a photo of her—bloody and unconscious, being pulled from a crumpled-up car—on the front page.). This accident prevented her from working for a couple of years.
What I’m trying to say is that by now there was very little money. We didn’t even have a phone in our apartment, and we had to endure the embarrassing task of handing over food stamps to grocery clerks—sometimes when my friends were around to see. Once in a while we’d try to buy non-food items with those stamps, but then the annoyed cashier would stop the whole line and loudly, clearly tell us that we had to put those items back.
Then there were also the occasional eight-hour marathon waiting-sessions, every once in a while— just standing in line at the Welfare office in downtown Brooklyn to qualify for benefits. I’ll never forget how, one cold, dark and windy winter morning, my mom woke my brother and me up at six o’clock so we could get down there and be one of the first families on line. Just getting up was such a struggle because it seemed that we never had enough heat or hot water, so my mother would fire up the gas jets on the kitchen stove to help warm up this tiny eight-foot-by-five-foot room we called a kitchen. It’s kind of funny for me to think back to those days, because now I realize that we were burning all of the breathable oxygen out of the air with this lame heating method, leaving only carbon dioxide to inhale. I think we were kind of lucky to skirt the headline, “Mother and Two Children Dead of Asphyxiation.”
When we got down to the Welfare office, at about seven on this one particular morning, we couldn’t believe it—there were already dozens of other people standing like cattle, on a long line in the freezing winter cold, outside of the locked office doors. After the doors were opened at eight o’clock, several City workers started barking orders to us to start filing in. As the line moved into the outer hallway and stopped again, many people—already exhausted from standing for hours outside—sat down on the filthy staircase and even on the floor. I remember looking over at this very large woman with one of those big beehive hair styles that women used to wear back in the ‘60s. For some reason, my gaze just sort of lingered on her head—I guess because there was nothing else around to look at, except the wall. All of a sudden I saw this giant cockroach crawl right out of her hair and onto the wall behind her! I looked at my mom, pointed to what I was seeing, and I remember her putting her hand over her mouth, grimacing, and making the “I wanna vomit right now” face. My brother Ken just laughed.
I don’t think it was this particular day, but on another similar day, that we waited from early morning to late in the afternoon to see a caseworker. My poor mother was devastated when, after all these hours of waiting, we were told by this caseworker—with not an ounce of sympathy—“Oh no, you don’t have the correct documentation; you have to come back tomorrow.” After my mother inquired if we could then avoid the whole “waiting in line” thing because we had only forgotten some paperwork, she sternly replied, “No, you have to wait in line just like everybody else,” then yelled out, “Next!,” and coldly turned away from us.
As an adult, I now realize that—besides the fact that these city workers may not have been the “cream of the crop” of administrative personnel— this type of unforgiving behavior may have been promoted by management to discourage anyone who was just plain lazy, and didn’t want to work, from getting Welfare benefits. As a child, though, it simply hurt me very much, and made me very sad, to see these “mean” adults treat us—and all of the other people who were in the same boat—so badly.
Eventually, my mother recovered, partially, from her severe injuries stemming from the car accident, and she was able to work again at a modest-paying job. Between her and her live-in boyfriend, ten years her junior, contributing with his also-modest income, things were slightly better again. But we were still pretty broke.
A 1965 Pontiac Bonneville that polluted the air with blue smoke, had a noisy muffler, and a variety of other mechanical ailments, was the family car. I had accidentally discovered that the ignition assembly was broken, and found that I could start the car without the key by inserting a bent wire coat-hanger into the ignition. I’d just drive the car away without my mom knowing it. Many nights I would do this, while also making sure to put garbage cans in the parking spot. This was so I could put the car back in the exact same spot and she wouldn’t know that I was taking it every night—usually after midnight when I’d sneak out. I started doing this at about age 15—no license, no insurance card or registration, no driving experience. I’d sometimes drive around solo and sometimes pick up some of my cronies, but I always had an adventure.
As my passion for driving grew, I needed to drive more, all the time—during the daytime hours, too. I couldn’t wait for the middle of the night anymore. Somehow, I was always able to find a job here and there as a teenager—but nothing that could support my buying another car at this particular time.
When I hear the words “car thief,” I think of a bad person, someone who is an uncaring part of society. Someone who should earn their own money to buy their own things and toe the line with the “good” people and behave. A car thief steals from people who work hard for their money; he or she should be put in jail. I assumed at that time, as I still do, that most younger car thieves are in that business to make money by bringing their ill-gotten gains to places like “chop shops,” that in turn dissect vehicles for illegal sale of individual parts to unsavory business owners.
I’m prefacing the upcoming story with all of this background, for one reason. I never did have—nor do I have as an adult,—larceny in my heart. I was then—and consider myself now—a hard worker who doesn’t expect a free ride in life. At that time, I was psychologically (as well as, at various times, physically) addicted to hard drugs. Suicide was a common thought. At many different times during my teenage years, I just didn’t care about life. I felt I was given a bad break, that my family was given a bad break, that nothing mattered—that the entire world was so screwed up, that I could do anything I wanted and feel justified because I was in such pain. To be honest with you, if someone told me this same story—even if they told me that they only did this stuff as a teenager and would never do it now as an adult— I’d still be afraid to trust them. I guess its human nature. But the absolute truth of the matter is that, in my pre-teen years, I was an honest person, and today I am once again one of the most honest and trustworthy persons you’re liable to find. When I didn’t care about living and didn’t care if I died, however, I would forsake everything and everybody. Yes, this former altar boy had fallen to the lowest depths of despair.
So, I drove. How? Stolen cars. All types, all makes, all models, all years. Was this for financial gain? Nah, I just wanted to drive—have the radio blaring, and drive anywhere, everywhere.
No, I never learned to “hot-wire” a car. That called for choosing the correct wires from under the dashboard and then splicing them together in some “magical” configuration. I needed a car with the keys in it that I could then own for a few days; the “bending the coat hanger trick” that I so successfully employed to start my mom’s car wouldn’t work.
My solution: There was a neighborhood food establishment that had such a thriving business, that on any given Friday or Saturday evening, there would be four, five, six or seven cars double-parked outside of it, starting from about eight o’clock and continuing until about midnight. The owners of these vehicles all made the same mistake, over and over again— almost all of them left their motors running with the keys in the ignition.
I often would arrive within the “window of opportunity,” jump in—and just drive off. I did this so many times that eventually the owners of the establishment put up a sign on the wall saying, “Please do not leave keys in car.” People ignored that sign. Many more cars disappeared.
After a day or two, I’d realize that the car was now on the so-called “hot sheet” and I’d have to relinquish my temporary ownership. Believe it or not, once in a while— if the registration was in the glove compartment—I’d actually call the person from a public phone and tell them where the car was parked so they could get it back. I’d say that the keys were in the ashtray and that I was sorry. I figured that this would help me in the long run somehow, by both relieving my guilt and halting any further investigation by the cops regarding this offense known simply as grand theft, auto.
One Saturday night I was hunched over, tip-toeing toward the driver side of a targeted running car, just about to grab the handle to open the car door, when I heard, “Jerry, what are you doing?” It was my mother! She and her boyfriend John were driving by and pulled over to see what I was doing.
I stopped, turned around and sort of laughed it off and stammered, “Nothing, I’ll be home later,” and quickly walked away and around the corner. As I’ve said before, I was uncontrollable.
There was another time when this straight-laced older kid, Larry, had embarrassed me in front of some girls. His family had money, he had a brand new car, and he would always find a way to put me down in front of others. I decided that I’d go to his house and talk to him. It was drizzling that day. I stood on the front stoop and rang the bell. His dad answered. I nervously asked him to call his son out to talk.
After a minute or so, Larry came out. He didn’t have a shirt on, and was puffing up his chest. (A weightlifter, he was showing off.) And he was chomping on an apple. He had this smirk on his face that seemed to say, “What do YOU want and why are you here at MY house?” I tried to nicely tell him that I was upset with the way he’d poke fun at me in front of other kids. He just kept smirking with this stupid, goofy look on his face, and biting off these big “man-size” chunks of the apple, seeming not to care about how serious I was about this. After repeated futile attempts to garner any empathetic feedback from him, I decided my efforts were to no avail.
I wound up and punched him square in the face!
We wound up grappling, falling off the side of the stoop and into the front flower bed. The dirt was muddy from the rain. The mud eventually covered us both from head to toe, as I punched, kicked, clawed and finally bit into his left pectoral muscle—leaving, I later found out, a row of my teeth-marks in his chest.
Larry’s dad came out. I guess he was trying to break us up. But as he held onto me, it just allowed his son to get a few extra punches into my face. When I was finally free, I just got up and ran.
The acquisition of my next stolen car was not really for joyriding. I now had to secure a “tool”—a tool I could use to exact payback on Larry.
“Rosalie, come on out; it’s Jerry,” I yelled. Rosalie was a local girl, a year or so older than me, who I’d hang out with once in a while. I was honking the horn outside of the apartment she shared with her Italian-immigrant mother who spoke almost no English. The window blinds shook for a moment. I could see someone separate them enough to look out and see who was honking. Then Rosalie raised the blinds. I hollered, “Come out!” She told me to wait a few minutes.
As we drove around, she commented on what a nice car I had and I said “Thanks,” without elaborating. Little did she know that I intended this to be my “weapon” that I’d use to take vengeance on the “apple chomper.” It was still too early for me to execute my plan, so I suggested that we go to the liquor store.
Several hours later, at about 11:30 pm, I was ready. Unfortunately, Rosalie seemed to have had too much to drink. She was now acting “loopy” and saying that she felt sick to her stomach. I got her something to eat. I then turned the car around and headed for Larry’s house.
Larry had this beautiful new Pontiac Grand Prix. It was parked along the curb, by his family’s tidy little brick home. I pulled “my” car up so that it was perpendicular to his car, with the back of my car facing the driver’s side of his car. I told Rosalie to lie down in the front seat because I didn’t want her to get whiplash.
I pulled my car away from his, a bit, to make sure I could gain the necessary momentum. Then I stopped, looked around, put my car into reverse, and then floored the accelerator pedal. We screeched in reverse for a couple of seconds before violently ramming into Larry’s new car. I hit that Grand Prix hard enough so that I actually pushed it sideways and up onto the curb. His alarm went off, producing a deafening wail that filled the air of this nicely-kept block of homes.
Rosalie quickly sat up, opened her eyes, and started screaming “What’s happening, Jerry, what’s happening?” I screeched away. She started puking.
Larry and I eventually lost touch with each other. We didn’t talk for many years, and I never expected to see him again. Then something quite ironic occurred. After falling down a flight of subway stairs in the early ‘80s while inebriated, I was taken to an emergency room with severe cuts to my forehead and lower lip.
To my surprise, Larry was now a physician specializing in plastic surgery. We spoke briefly, never mentioning the problems of the past; it was as if we were just two old friends—the best of friends. His benevolence moved me to tears. Although I didn’t have any medical coverage except for what the Army had given me when I was discharged in 1980 —the Veterans Administration doesn’t cover cosmetic surgery—he saw how badly I would be scarred, and offered, free of charge, to do the needed work.
He never knew it was me who demolished his car; for if he did, he could have taken that opportunity and could have really “rearranged” my face.
* * * * *
The Mob, the Bookie and the Leisure Suits
#1 song on the radio: “Disco Duck”—Rick Dees
It really never occurred to me that I could someday steal the “wrong” person’s car. You know— a person who, if they were ever to catch you, would take the law into their own hands and not want to involve the police. Someone who could make you “disappear.”
The roof of the four-story apartment building that I lived in had a black tar surface, which was commonly referred to—as were most similar roofs in Brooklyn—as tar beach. All you needed was a folding lounge-chair, a radio, a beer and a joint, a shiny silver “melanoma producing” sun reflector to focus the sun’s damaging rays on your face, a concoction of baby oil mixed with iodine— and you were “at the beach.”
I was thoroughly enjoying such a day when I suddenly heard a gruff voice coming from one of two, large imposing figures standing over me and blocking my sun. “Ehh… You’re Jerry Castaldo, right?” asked the bigger guy, who seemed to be in his late forties.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s him,” said the other one. As I squinted into the sunlight, holding my hand in a “saluting” position over my eyes, I recognized this one; his name was Nunzio, he was in his mid-thirties, and he lived in my building.