When The North Adamsville Corner Boys Strutted Their Literary Stuff- And Who Encouraged Them

When The North Adamsville Corner Boys Strutted Their Literary Stuff- And Who Encouraged Them 

By Phillip Larkin

Nobody uses the term “corner boy” anymore since as far as I know there are no corners for young boys, young men to hang out in their towns without being pounced on by the coppers, harassed by the corner venue owners or given the evil eye by the foxy girls who passed by but would not give any of those guys a tumble having a preference for mall rats and the like(that last probably the biggest reason but also hides a latter day truth that some of those girls back in corner boy days were not so snooty when the deal went down). Bur back in the 1960s, maybe before even the name “corner boy” read juvenile delinquent to straight society was a well-respected subculture of the post-World War II. Took its place along with West Coast hot-rodders, West Coast surfers looking for perfect waves, West Coast muck and crude bikers, Hell’s Angels but brethren, and on the East Coast the local corner boys around Tonio’s Pizza Palace in North Adamsville.

Definition, amateur definition of corner boys-sullen guys from hunger who did not fit in, could not fit in, would not fit with the golden age propaganda afloat in the post-World War II world to make a lot of dirt poor guys misshapen and world weary and wary well before their time.    

Now that definition is important in many respects because most of us, the Tonio Pizza Parlor boys, were as sullen and alienated as any, including the Harry’s Variety Store crowd who were nothing but chain-wielding biker mad men high on dope (not found out until much later) and sex maniacs (found attractive to some of those girls, so called virgins, who would not give Tonio boys a tumble). We were desperately poor or else we would have had money enough to abandon Tonio’s and head to bowling alleys, drive-in movies, drive-in eateries like the kids over the rival Atlantic section of town. (We were all Acre boys if I recall from the lowest of the low housing down by the river.) We would as we got older grab money any way we could, the midnight creep, and you can figure that one out yourselves, being the main way once we saw the “chip” of cheapjack jewelry as not worth the legal repercussions.    

Here though is where classic corner boys, Tonio’s corner boys, were off the charts of the worried sociologists and frantic criminologists. A number of us would actually survive the experience without landing in prison, a psych ward or an early grave. A number of us, not the majority but some have written here and elsewhere about everything from rock and roll to Pretty James Preston, our heroic bank robber single handed biker model who went down in a blaze of glory.   

There are two reasons, and two reasons only and it is hard to tell which is greater why we survived (and dragged most of the rest of the gang along except a couple who laid down their heads in Vietnam fight and a couple who spent a number of years in jail for mostly armed robberies having taken Pretty Boy’s route without blinking an eye. One is Pete Markin always called the Scribe after our leader Frankie Riley named him that when the Scribe wrote a few articles for the school newspaper extolling Frankie’s virtues. Pete was piece of work even if in the end he too would lay his head down too early due to the early formed hubris that stalked us all. He was our in-house intellectual always reading stuff that frankly we could have given a fuck about like the then “fag” poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg, talking up the “beats” who we equally could have given a rat’s ass about, going on and on about folk music (Jesus, to guys who lived for rock and roll and all that meant about sex and adventure not knowing until much later, college time that the girls into that music were much “easier” than our hometown Irish Bible between their knees teases).

Yeah, at some level Markin held us together, made us appreciate literature, writing, maybe culture in general. He couldn’t make it to the end like I said because between Vietnam service and that deeply held wanting habit he went off the road. The second reason which connects a little with Markin is that we all, and here I mean all those corner boys who have written here over the years, had one English teacher who made us toe the mark. Miss Rose Enos. The way that high school classes at North Adamsville after ninth grade where we were self-contained went at least for English and Math worked was that we had the same teacher all three years under some theory of continuity. (Frankly I don’t know the reason and I don’t know if this is still done educationally). Although we were not all in the same English class (I was with Markin, Sam Lowell and Frankie Riley) each of us had her for English for three years.

We could not believe our eyes when we compared class schedules one lonesome Friday night after school started. We had known since ninth grade who the “players” were in the upper grades when we got to tenth grade and knew her reputation as well which was something like the wicked witch of the West on steroids. The words was “all who enter here abandon hope” came to mind. Some guys suggested that they would try to persuade their parents to move out of the district, to go to Adamsville High and take their chances there. Others only half-seriously talked about dropping out and getting a job as a jack-hammerer rather than face three years of the witch.    

Needless to say we did not do any of that, at least of those corner boys who had her but a couple already mentioned went a different route without having her. Here is the odd thing and it not because I am nostalgic these days or because Markin would be her biggest champion (we tagged him as “teacher’s pet” even though no way in hell would Enos have such a student). She was all business, the business of teaching some unruly boys (although not in her class as we painfully learned after several after school detentions each) how to read critically, write with some kind of respect for the written language and speak with a little more eloquence than our Friday night habits would warrant. In three years she did make us appreciate what was then the Western Canon (she loved Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and Ernest Hemingway among others), made us do an infinite number of book reports, including arguing out the pros and cons and read a ton of poetry (although not Howl  that would have flipped her out which is one of the reasons Markin was reading to us on those lonesome Fridays because he wanted to recite the damn thing in class). Not bad, not bad at all for a witch