An Encore- When You Are A Jet You Are A Jet All The Way- The Centennial Of Composer- Conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Birthday-When The Acre Corner Boys Went Down And Dirty-In Memory Of Corner Boy Sergeant John “Johnny Blade” Rizzo, (Born North Adamsville, Massachusetts, 1946, Died, Central Highlands, South Vietnam, 1967)
By Seth Garth
[I have already mentioned in an earlier comment (see below) that I knew very
little about Leonard Bernstein beyond his classic West Side Story which resonated with me since I shared that sense
of being out of the loop growing up (and a few other writers here who also grew
up in the Acre section of North Adamsville and who had been corner boys as
well). Recently I had a chance to listen to a Christopher Lydon Open Source program on NPR which
featured plenty of scholarly banter about the creation of the production and
other aspects of Bernstein’s life and work so here is a link to finish up the
centennial year of his birth.
http://radioopensource.org/lenny-at-100/
Recently in a quick acknowledgement of the centennial of American composer Leonard Bernstein’s birthday I mentioned that I don't know much about the man but I did know his breakthrough West Side Story and could relate to the turf warfare in the piece from my old corner boy days when we defended our turf just as fervently as any New York City kid. Any Jet, any Shark.
The story has been told many times in this publication by me and others about growing up, particularly that high school coming of age corner boy scene that animated our lives, gave us a certain tribal identity, in the impoverished Acre section of working-class North Adamsville south of Boston but Josh Breslin has told me that the same fierce defenses applied in the Ocean View section of Olde Saco up in Maine, Ralph Morris the Tappan Street section of Troy in New York and Sam Eaton ditto down the Bog section of Carver also south of Boston. Mostly those youthful stories have been given a positive spin, or have been sweetened up for public consumption, but there was a dark side, a very dark side to much of what went on-and how we related to our poverty and other corner boy aggregates.
Maybe the single best way to describe this dark side is to give the event that made the late Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, take this corner boy stuff, this from hunger stuff to heart. Before he met most of us, except I think Sam Lowell whom he had known since elementary school when they would hustle the younger kids out of their milk money, the Scribe used to hang around a spot familiar to all of us-mainly to stay away from-Harry’s Variety Store since Harry had a great pin-ball machine there and a very cool ice-filled container of all kind of soft drinks. Being a kid and if you saw Scribe then you would know he was no threat to anybody, in the physical sense, to the guys who hung around Harry’s, that corner’s corner boys and so he was something like a mascot to them. Would run errand for them, and in turn they would give him some of their free games which they inevitably won since they were wizards at the game, knew how to sway the thing just right, especially when some young girlfriend was tucked in between his arms.
The funny thing is that this group, these guys were nothing like what Scribe and others would do and put together when their corner boy time came up at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. These Harry’s guys were hoods, hoodlums, bad-ass motorcycle guys, guys who nobody, and according to Scribe nobody messed with. Their leader was one Harold, never called that under penalty of broken bones, “Red” Riley, a guy who lived near Scribe’s grandmother, another reason why he may have been taken on as a mascot, was the baddest of them all. Nobody challenged his authority, not and be able to tell anybody about it. The corners, the corners with corner boys, in the Acre in those days sprawled out to maybe half a dozen locations, all protected by their members. That was the rules and you lived or maybe died by them. One day Scribe saw what Red could do when somebody from another corner even came near Harry’s. This guy who Scribe swore did nothing except walk across the baseball field the other side of Harry’s. Somehow Red knew though that the guy was from another corner, a different turf. Without word one Red pulled out his whipsaw chain, went up to the guy and beat his mercilessly leaving him a lump on the ground. Somebody called the cops and they called an ambulance which took the guy away a bloody stump. Get this-the guy never finked on Red, hell, the cops who actually used Harry for his real purpose at the store to make book-to gamble on the horses-never even asked what happened. Asked if there were any witnesses. Nobody, not Scribe, nobody said word one with that bloody stump in their minds. So the Sharks and the Jets had nothing on the Irish bad boys around Harry’s.
Scribe, or really Frankie Riley who was the real leader of softer and younger Irish boys, mostly in high school where Frankie’s con artist, grifter ways were quickly recognized even by Scribe who couldn’t have organized his socks despite his brilliant plans and dreams, of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys once he told him the Red Riley story, always made sure to have a tough guy or two hanging around in case some assholes wanted to rumble, to cut our turf. Enter one Johnny Blade, Johnny Rizzo really who was one of the few Italians allowed on the corner as a favor to Tonio who was Johnny’s uncle but really by his saving grace that his mother was Irish, a Doherty who had also grown up in the Acre. Johnny Blade, nobody ever said the Johnny without the blade even a couple of industrial arts teachers at school, the track they threw Johnny on, who heard about him early on. I hope I don’t need to explain how Johnny got the blade part but for those who might not be quite sure Acre boys at some point, maybe about puberty, sixth grade somewhere around there became fascinated with knives, jackknives at first which everybody had and the more dangerous ones, the kind Johnny carried around from early on-and used.
Johnny Blade maybe could have gone a different root, that Irish-Italian mix made an Acre girl’s dream and he could have if for no other reason that by force of will had whomever he wanted, some older girls too, college girls later so he had something. The thing is Johnny Blade loved his knife (knives really but only carried one at a time by law I think). Like I said Frankie, larcenous Frankie Riley, funny to say now, maybe, since he has been a very successful lawyer in Boston for many years, knew that Johnny Blade was just what we needed to defend our turf if trouble came. Naturally when a guy gets a tough guy reputation somebody is bound as if by osmosis to challenge him, test him. Usually the excuse would be looking at some girl, some “spoken for” girl the wrong way and the boyfriend had to assert his prerogative. This time, this time I speak of which shows not only Johnny’s usefulness but Frankie’s via Scribe’s wisdom to have a “hitman” on board, it was Mother Goose, a member of Red Riley’s corner boys, an older guy like Red and most of his boys, a twenty something although nobody said that then, who took umbrage ( I am being polite) that Cecilia Duggan had caught Johnny’s eye, or more probably she had glanced his way. Bad blood, bad blood no question. (By the way nobody knows why he was called Mother Goose except maybe he never had a mother because he was one tough and fierce looking guy who I would cross the street when I saw him approaching me.
One dark, probably weekend night I forget now, Mother came strutting, or maybe lumbering is better, into our Tonio’s space not looking for pizza but Johnny. Called Johnny out, started talking the talk that tough guys talk and guys who want to be tough guys have to respond to. I think Johnny was in having pizza or listening to the already mentioned fabulous Tonio’s jukebox (placed there as we later learned by the local Mafia who controlled all that kind of action then, maybe now too for all I know) when he heard the clarion call. He went up to Mother said something like “let’s go out back” who knows but that sounds right. That back was the alleyway between building in the commercial section of the Acre, the area where Tonio’s was located, dark, dark as the dungeon. They went out back together, alone (frankly most of us, whether we admitted it or not, would have freaked out if we had to watch this hand to hand combat in person). Several minutes later Johnny Blade came out breathing heavily, sweating from his forehead and maybe a little peaked. All he said was “maybe somebody should call an ambulance.” Somebody, I think Tonio but don’t quote me on that, did call and the cops and ambulance came. Mother had been cut up badly, a few deep gashes although mostly arm and leg wounds, nothing life threatening. Mother, eyes looking right at Johnny Blade when asked by a cop who had done this horrible deed said he had not been able to identify his assailant. Followed the time-honored, time-worn code of not finking out, ratting out to the coppers. Funny the cops never asked anybody if they knew anything, saw anybody run since they also knew they would get the time-honored, time-worn didn’t see a fucking thing. Didn’t ask sweated Johnny Blade anything.
We expected some blow-back, serious blow-back when Red Riley found out what had happened to Mother and by whom, but he may have been in shock that anybody would waste one of his corner boys and that person must have been a mean mother, meaner than Mother indeed. Or maybe it was just “collateral damage,” another term not used then in the turf wars since Mother had chosen, wisely or not, to confront a corner boy on his own turf. A few years later Red Riley, motorcycle at the ready and motorcycle mama in tow, got wasted by some redneck cops down in some freaking White Hen store in North Carolina trying to rob the place.
Johnny Blade Postscript: After high school we went our various ways as usually happens, and Johnny Blade whether he finished high school or not I am not sure I know he had been kept back at least one year, went his way. The story goes around the old neighborhood that Johnny Blade almost killed a man, by knife of course, in Riverdale out west of Boston, got caught and was given “the choice.” The choice in those days given by a judge was a nickel in the state pen or go in the Army. Johnny Blade, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, took the latter course and laid down his head in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1967. He forever has his name etched on the Adamsville town memorial wall and down in that black granite-etched wall in Washington, D.C. Every time I go down there, I go to the wall and shed a tear for him (and Frank White). Thanks for defending your corner boys. RIP, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, “Johnny Blade” (1946-1967)
