From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-All About The “Clip”

From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-All About The “Clip”     

By Sam Lowell

By now it has become something of a cliché as I have noted that out of the deep recesses of my mind I have dredged up some memories of my earliest corner boy experiences from down in the mud, down in the base of society where some Hobbesian all against all is at work even if the players are clueless about social dread of the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, let’s not kid each other “the projects” which strikes fear in the timid and respectable now, as it did then. Those dredgings running rampant form the basics of yet another piece. Part of what has stirred up those memory jogs revolved around getting together with the still standing members of my high school corner boy gang from Tonio’s Pizza Parlor for drinks and a little food at Jimmy Jack’s Lounge a few towns over from where we grew up, came of age, came of age as the story below will tell much too young. That in turn got me thinking about genesis and the guys I hung with early on well before high school doing the “best we could,” legally or legally. Here is what I had to say in the prior piece, actually cobbled together from the three prior pieces still germane to fill in some background as to why I have decided to take the trip to way back when, back to “from hunger” days mercifully passed if still embedded in my psyche:      

“Of all the corner boys (read: juvenile delinquents in some quarters a big term, a big concern in 1950s sociologist, criminologist, school administration, court and cop circles; sullen schoolboys serious in feeding their “wanting” habits in an age when all around them was plenty so maybe not so much sullen as angry in some other quarters; and,  misunderstood youth in yet others the bailiwick of concerned teachers, social workers, and library personnel- all three probably true in some senses) who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor while we were going to North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I am the only one still standing who started his corner boy career at Carter’s Variety Store across town in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (read: “the projects” and although I have already made the point a million times the unwanted fate of plenty down at the base of society, down in the mud where things and people are not pretty). That experience started when I was a student at the Snug Harbor Elementary School located just outside the projects.

“I mentioned that I am the only Carter’s boy still standing but I was not the only one who made the turn to Tonio’s (see * at end for explanation of how that happened). There was one other one Peter Paul Markin who at Tonio’s was always known as the Scribe and I will use that name here rather than that pretension-filled moniker his mother laid on him. Now much ink (and many tears, many tears still) has been spilled in this publication about his latter exploits and the craziness of the Scribe when he was in high dudgeon at Tonio’s and a little later but little has been noted about the early days, the early corner boy days in elementary school when most of the Tonio’s boys we knew were clueless about the value of desperately poor kids joining together, hanging out to do, well “to do the best they could.”             

“I am not quite sure how the Carter corner boys started since it was already formed when I started hanging out along with the Scribe. Let’s leave it that this store was the only one in the whole projects area (and sadly still is) where residents without cars, including my family many times, or in need of some quick item could shop. The urban legend folk lore if you will was that from about day one of the project’s opening some group of young men, boys really, somewhere about ten or eleven years old started hanging around there, to hang around which was alright with Mister Carter as long as we were respectful (which we always were-there). (I would not find out until later through my own progressions that Carter’s was step one in the corner boy stages in that part of town the denizens going to Bert’s Market on Sea Street in junior high school and Dexter’s Ice Cream Parlor in Adamsville Square in high school like in the Acre in North Adamsville the stages were Larry’s Variety, Doc’s Drugstore and Tonio’s.)   

“I met the Scribe the first day of school in fourth grade after my family had moved to the projects from another project in Riverdale west of Boston when my father’s company moved to the area and he needed the work. That was in Miss Sullivan’s class, an old biddy who trucked no nonsense and who made it her profession to keep us after school for detention-even that first day which was supposed to be easy stuff. The Scribe was looking at some book, forgotten now, and I commented that it looked interesting to start a conversation. That was all the Scribe needed as he wowed me with the contents. And didn’t wow Miss Sullivan who kept us after school many nights for the continuous talking. After that after school detention business we went to Carter’s to see what was up once he told me fourth and fifth grade guys hung out there and it was okay.

“Later and elsewhere the Scribe, and to some extent me, would be the leaders of various corner boy combinations, would plan whatever needed to be planned, legal or illegal but then we were frankly naïve and really just foot soldiers. The deal was already set for leadership with Ronnie, George, Rodger, Lenny and a little later also the legendary Billy Bradley running the operations (all would later do various stretches of time in county and state prisons I think except Lenny who laid his head down in Vietnam during that war after having been given the “choice”-join the Army or do a nickel in some state jail). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.”

In my first piece, important to set a certain tone for the bad karma fate of most corner boys and not just from my gang who wound up serving long jail time, or fell down to early deaths usually after some cop shoot-out, I mentioned how one pissed off Ronnie, Ronnie Mooney to give a last name since he is long dead from some failed armed robbery, gathered us together to seek revenge for some slight some teacher had given him, and he was going to burn down the school. Although the attempt, a very real attempt, failed we went along with his rage, with his plans since he was a fellow corner boy half-strange as that reason sounds today. (And as strange as I have mentioned previously how even today that does not seem irrational under the circumstances.)   


I have mentioned on a number of occasions and this is central to understanding Ronnie, later Billy and maybe even the Scribe in the end that they say, maybe they said is better, that juvenile delinquents are born not made. Have some genetic kink missing which throws everything off. That was true of Ronnie I believe for he had a really devious and sadistic bent but as a I noted in a subsequent piece about his musical abilities that was not all of what Ronnie was about then, if the bad side, the dark side came out more and more later. He, and we did too especially the Scribe and Billy Bradley, loved the emerging rock and roll that would define our generation’s main musical thrusts. Ronnie had a natural feel, a natural beat for the music and a very good voice. The same was true of Billy but more on him some other time when I want to develop the bond between the seemingly unbreakable bond between Scribe and Billy (which caused me a serious amount of anguish as the Scribe started describing Bill as his best friend). Ronnie lived to play the latest tunes for us by Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and what is important here the rise of doo-wop be-bop music.

I have already told the story of how Ronnie (and later with Billy) would in the summer after Carter’s closed and we were looking for something to do would gather us behind the school (that almost burned down school) and we would sing whatever he knew from rock and roll which was extensive and at one point when doo-wop surfaced that genre. At a critical point and maybe by the sheer force of his voice girls would come around, a couple at first then a whole bevy. In the distance at first but before long right up with us clapping and tapping to the new age beat.


Of course the doo-wop sessions led to boy-girl stuff but also led then ambitious Ronnie (and later Billy but the reader will have to wait for that) to realize that maybe he had enough talent to go big, become a rock and roll star. That certainly drove him for a while. Ronnie seemed to think that doo-wop would be his way out of the mud, the way away from that Hobbesian base although he would be clueless to that tern or philosophy, the way out of the rotten projects. And he, rightly I think, and probably said so to us then focused on that kind of future. Certainly he had the swoony girls swaying in the breezes part down. One night he won a school dance during intermission talent show doing Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven and netted a fifty- dollar savings bond as the prize. That set a course for him for a while.  

Although that might keep Ronnie’s eye on the prize for a while, he, and here he can stand in for every corner boy, every Carter’s corner boy always had a nagging sense that he was left out, had “wanting habits” that given his family’s standard of living meant that “no” was the answer when he asked either parent for anything beyond milk money for lunch (most of the times I never even got that). This where the wicked kink, the rotten DNA I guess came in whatever was happening. Ronnie won some of his leadership role by being smart, I would say now street smart, but also because he was both fearless in what he wanted to do and like the Scribe latter was always working up some plan, usually illegal or something like that. The “clip” was the thing that first got him a leadership role.  

Enter “the clip.” The clip to grab some dough for whatever. I have talked to other corner boys both from the Acre and elsewhere and the minute I say the word “clip” that is all I need to say. All we do from there is compare notes and discuss techniques. This seems to be a rite of passage. There were many variations and different results but the main idea was to hit a jewelry store, department store, record shop, a supermarket only if we were starving and do what we called the five-fingered discount, stole stuff. (One of my high school corner boys was so well known for the clip that his moniker was “Five Fingers” Kelly.) Usually we worked in teams with one guy as lookout and the other snatching the goods (I was too clumsy to do the actually stealing so I was the lookout-later though I would excel at hot-wiring, stealing cars.) You did your business and then left. Usually bring the stuff to Ronnie who knew how to move the merchandise. He would have no trouble selling records to girls who always seemed to have plenty of dough for such stuff so getting it a lot cheaper kept a good revenue stream going. That action kept us in coffee and cakes for a long time although I know I never stopped having that unspoken wanting more habit picked up from Ronnie. Funny as long as we did the clip nobody was ever caught, not even close. Later other guys were not so lucky when they went to the bigs, took to armed robberies and other felonies.          

From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-All About The “Clip”     

By Sam Lowell

By now it has become something of a cliché as I have noted that out of the deep recesses of my mind I have dredged up some memories of my earliest corner boy experiences from down in the mud, down in the base of society where some Hobbesian all against all is at work even if the players are clueless about social dread of the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, let’s not kid each other “the projects” which strikes fear in the timid and respectable now, as it did then. Those dredgings running rampant form the basics of yet another piece. Part of what has stirred up those memory jogs revolved around getting together with the still standing members of my high school corner boy gang from Tonio’s Pizza Parlor for drinks and a little food at Jimmy Jack’s Lounge a few towns over from where we grew up, came of age, came of age as the story below will tell much too young. That in turn got me thinking about genesis and the guys I hung with early on well before high school doing the “best we could,” legally or legally. Here is what I had to say in the prior piece, actually cobbled together from the three prior pieces still germane to fill in some background as to why I have decided to take the trip to way back when, back to “from hunger” days mercifully passed if still embedded in my psyche:      

“Of all the corner boys (read: juvenile delinquents in some quarters a big term, a big concern in 1950s sociologist, criminologist, school administration, court and cop circles; sullen schoolboys serious in feeding their “wanting” habits in an age when all around them was plenty so maybe not so much sullen as angry in some other quarters; and,  misunderstood youth in yet others the bailiwick of concerned teachers, social workers, and library personnel- all three probably true in some senses) who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor while we were going to North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I am the only one still standing who started his corner boy career at Carter’s Variety Store across town in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (read: “the projects” and although I have already made the point a million times the unwanted fate of plenty down at the base of society, down in the mud where things and people are not pretty). That experience started when I was a student at the Snug Harbor Elementary School located just outside the projects.

“I mentioned that I am the only Carter’s boy still standing but I was not the only one who made the turn to Tonio’s (see * at end for explanation of how that happened). There was one other one Peter Paul Markin who at Tonio’s was always known as the Scribe and I will use that name here rather than that pretension-filled moniker his mother laid on him. Now much ink (and many tears, many tears still) has been spilled in this publication about his latter exploits and the craziness of the Scribe when he was in high dudgeon at Tonio’s and a little later but little has been noted about the early days, the early corner boy days in elementary school when most of the Tonio’s boys we knew were clueless about the value of desperately poor kids joining together, hanging out to do, well “to do the best they could.”             

“I am not quite sure how the Carter corner boys started since it was already formed when I started hanging out along with the Scribe. Let’s leave it that this store was the only one in the whole projects area (and sadly still is) where residents without cars, including my family many times, or in need of some quick item could shop. The urban legend folk lore if you will was that from about day one of the project’s opening some group of young men, boys really, somewhere about ten or eleven years old started hanging around there, to hang around which was alright with Mister Carter as long as we were respectful (which we always were-there). (I would not find out until later through my own progressions that Carter’s was step one in the corner boy stages in that part of town the denizens going to Bert’s Market on Sea Street in junior high school and Dexter’s Ice Cream Parlor in Adamsville Square in high school like in the Acre in North Adamsville the stages were Larry’s Variety, Doc’s Drugstore and Tonio’s.)   

“I met the Scribe the first day of school in fourth grade after my family had moved to the projects from another project in Riverdale west of Boston when my father’s company moved to the area and he needed the work. That was in Miss Sullivan’s class, an old biddy who trucked no nonsense and who made it her profession to keep us after school for detention-even that first day which was supposed to be easy stuff. The Scribe was looking at some book, forgotten now, and I commented that it looked interesting to start a conversation. That was all the Scribe needed as he wowed me with the contents. And didn’t wow Miss Sullivan who kept us after school many nights for the continuous talking. After that after school detention business we went to Carter’s to see what was up once he told me fourth and fifth grade guys hung out there and it was okay.

“Later and elsewhere the Scribe, and to some extent me, would be the leaders of various corner boy combinations, would plan whatever needed to be planned, legal or illegal but then we were frankly naïve and really just foot soldiers. The deal was already set for leadership with Ronnie, George, Rodger, Lenny and a little later also the legendary Billy Bradley running the operations (all would later do various stretches of time in county and state prisons I think except Lenny who laid his head down in Vietnam during that war after having been given the “choice”-join the Army or do a nickel in some state jail). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.”

In my first piece, important to set a certain tone for the bad karma fate of most corner boys and not just from my gang who wound up serving long jail time, or fell down to early deaths usually after some cop shoot-out, I mentioned how one pissed off Ronnie, Ronnie Mooney to give a last name since he is long dead from some failed armed robbery, gathered us together to seek revenge for some slight some teacher had given him, and he was going to burn down the school. Although the attempt, a very real attempt, failed we went along with his rage, with his plans since he was a fellow corner boy half-strange as that reason sounds today. (And as strange as I have mentioned previously how even today that does not seem irrational under the circumstances.)   


I have mentioned on a number of occasions and this is central to understanding Ronnie, later Billy and maybe even the Scribe in the end that they say, maybe they said is better, that juvenile delinquents are born not made. Have some genetic kink missing which throws everything off. That was true of Ronnie I believe for he had a really devious and sadistic bent but as a I noted in a subsequent piece about his musical abilities that was not all of what Ronnie was about then, if the bad side, the dark side came out more and more later. He, and we did too especially the Scribe and Billy Bradley, loved the emerging rock and roll that would define our generation’s main musical thrusts. Ronnie had a natural feel, a natural beat for the music and a very good voice. The same was true of Billy but more on him some other time when I want to develop the bond between the seemingly unbreakable bond between Scribe and Billy (which caused me a serious amount of anguish as the Scribe started describing Bill as his best friend). Ronnie lived to play the latest tunes for us by Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and what is important here the rise of doo-wop be-bop music.

I have already told the story of how Ronnie (and later with Billy) would in the summer after Carter’s closed and we were looking for something to do would gather us behind the school (that almost burned down school) and we would sing whatever he knew from rock and roll which was extensive and at one point when doo-wop surfaced that genre. At a critical point and maybe by the sheer force of his voice girls would come around, a couple at first then a whole bevy. In the distance at first but before long right up with us clapping and tapping to the new age beat.


Of course the doo-wop sessions led to boy-girl stuff but also led then ambitious Ronnie (and later Billy but the reader will have to wait for that) to realize that maybe he had enough talent to go big, become a rock and roll star. That certainly drove him for a while. Ronnie seemed to think that doo-wop would be his way out of the mud, the way away from that Hobbesian base although he would be clueless to that tern or philosophy, the way out of the rotten projects. And he, rightly I think, and probably said so to us then focused on that kind of future. Certainly he had the swoony girls swaying in the breezes part down. One night he won a school dance during intermission talent show doing Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven and netted a fifty- dollar savings bond as the prize. That set a course for him for a while.  

Although that might keep Ronnie’s eye on the prize for a while, he, and here he can stand in for every corner boy, every Carter’s corner boy always had a nagging sense that he was left out, had “wanting habits” that given his family’s standard of living meant that “no” was the answer when he asked either parent for anything beyond milk money for lunch (most of the times I never even got that). This where the wicked kink, the rotten DNA I guess came in whatever was happening. Ronnie won some of his leadership role by being smart, I would say now street smart, but also because he was both fearless in what he wanted to do and like the Scribe latter was always working up some plan, usually illegal or something like that. The “clip” was the thing that first got him a leadership role.  

Enter “the clip.” The clip to grab some dough for whatever. I have talked to other corner boys both from the Acre and elsewhere and the minute I say the word “clip” that is all I need to say. All we do from there is compare notes and discuss techniques. This seems to be a rite of passage. There were many variations and different results but the main idea was to hit a jewelry store, department store, record shop, a supermarket only if we were starving and do what we called the five-fingered discount, stole stuff. (One of my high school corner boys was so well known for the clip that his moniker was “Five Fingers” Kelly.) Usually we worked in teams with one guy as lookout and the other snatching the goods (I was too clumsy to do the actually stealing so I was the lookout-later though I would excel at hot-wiring, stealing cars.) You did your business and then left. Usually bring the stuff to Ronnie who knew how to move the merchandise. He would have no trouble selling records to girls who always seemed to have plenty of dough for such stuff so getting it a lot cheaper kept a good revenue stream going. That action kept us in coffee and cakes for a long time although I know I never stopped having that unspoken wanting more habit picked up from Ronnie. Funny as long as we did the clip nobody was ever caught, not even close. Later other guys were not so lucky when they went to the bigs, took to armed robberies and other felonies.