***Stories From The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-Pay Back
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The old neighborhood, the old
working-class neighborhood of North Adamsville about twenty miles south of
Boston before the demise of the shipbuilding industry broke up a lot of the old
civilities, broke up a certain sense of community although I don’t want to
overemphasize that because there were plenty of incivilities as well, was a
place filled with all kinds of dreams. Some, like my parents, dreamed of the
little shack of a house they were able to purchase by both working jobs in the
mother-stays-at-home 1950s and that was good enough for them as a token that
they had made it out of the “projects” which was our fate early on and appeared
to be all that they could do for a long time. Others like the Dolans from
across the street bought a small rug repair and cleaning company and left the
dust of the old town behind even though they stayed put on the same street and
house that they lived on when Mr. Dolan worked for the shipbuilders before those
firms started heading off-shore in the early 1950s. Other families had their
shares of dreams, better jobs, kids to college or a trade, stuff like that.
The family that interests me today, the
one I want to talk about a little was the family of my best growing-up friend,
Josh Breslin, from over on Maple Street. Josh turned out pretty well, made
himself a small reputation as a writer of short stories and essays in a lot of
less well known but respected journals and reviews (he may not agree with that
characterization about the size of that reputation but a guy who lived for
small press publication and regularly submitted pieces to the likes of the Evergreen Review rather than the Post or Times which were interested seems to me to be hell-bent on a small
reputation). Some of his four other brothers though, and the one I wanted to do
this piece on, Prescott (named after his uncle as the second oldest son), in
particular did not fare so well. Prescott fell under the cracks, fell hard to
the romance of the “life” in the early 1950s when there were plenty of guys,
corner boys really, ready to soak up that life. Just as Josh and I fell hard to
the 1960s hitchhike road in search of the blue-pink great American West night
running down that yellow brick road out on the coast. Since Prescott was
significantly older that Josh and I he was kind of like a legend, a presence
more than a person to us. However Josh later visited him a few times in prison
when he was doing a stretch for armed robbery or some such high crime and Josh learned
a lot about what made him tick. Josh passed on that information to me to see
what I could do with it so here goes:
Prescott Breslin did his first robbery
right after he had made his first communion (a Roman Catholic Church ritual to
bring the very young, usually at five or six years old, into the bowels of the
faith, to give them their first taste symbolically of the body and blood of
Jesus Christ, other religions may have similar strategies but that is the one
Prescott, and most of the kids in the neighborhood, including me and my
brothers, had to deal with). See first communion was one of those occasions
like Christmas or your birthday where you
expected to get some loot (and maybe other gifts too but loot is what we
are talking about here, money to go to the corner variety store, maybe a
department store or a hobby shop and get what you wanted to satisfy whatever
wanting habit hunger was gnawing at you at the moment) and he had gotten a pile
like his older brother, Kenny, had from his mother and father, grandparents,
aunts and uncles, cousins (cousins, some pretty far removed, giving on the
theory that if they gave then when it was their turn to get something for some
event they were primed for then you would be duty-bound to fork over something
to put in their pile).
He probably got about the same amount
as Kenny, maybe a little less since Kenny being the oldest and the favorite of
a number of relatives, including both sets of grandparents who believed he
would make his mark and move the family up the social scale a little, might
have dug a little deeper. That was not Prescott’s gripe though, not by a long
shot, not by a long shot was that the reason that he committed his first
robbery. Nor was it the fact that Kenny had, showing the good judgment that his
parents expected of him, decided that he would use that money to buy a new suit
at Raymond’s Department Store in downtown North Adamsville (the first communion
suit, all virginal white signifying some assumed purity as the candidates
embraced the faith, was, frankly, made of shoddy to Mother Breslin’s great dismay
since she had expected like with all their precious hard-earned and father-sweated
purchases to be able to dye the thing and let it pass as a regular everyday
suit to be passed down to the other three boys, starting with Prescott, once
Kenny out-grew it).
Prescott’s gripe, no, his obsession
with the justice of the thing, was that the money gifts for him were to be
wisely put away by Mother Breslin for him to use when he went to college. Prescott
was beside himself, all six years old of him, that he would not see that loot
for, as he calculated the numbers, about twelve years from then. A lifetime to
a kid, no question. Here is where his obsession came in, his sense that there
had been a grave injustice committed against his person. Talking to his parents
did no good, although he only half-heartedly tried to make his case knowing
that it was hopeless once the hard-bitten money decisions were made by mother.
An appeal to his father on a money question was out of the question because he
would just throw the thing back in mother’s court, a real united front. (It was
only later when Josh found out how really poor they were, found out that his
hard-working but ill-educated father was as likely to be out of work as in work
and that every mother-counted penny had to be husbanded against those white
envelopes she parceled out to the pressing bill-collectors on pay day like
clockwork that the “united front” of Prescott’s anger, his anger against his father for not
sticking up for him in such matters was not a united front at all but a finally
tuned strategic they had worked out unknown to him or his brothers probably in
the privacy of their bedroom.)
No, this required action on his part.
And that was where Prescott, like Josh and me later, probably having read too
many comic books or regular books about crimes, and criminals, or seen too many
gangster movies that played at the second-run Strand Theater on the outskirts
of Adamsville on Washington Street where his parents took him and his brothers
on the cheap went off the rails (everything on the cheap, including sneaking in
the candy necessary to get through the double features rather than purchase
items, items like that to die for buttered and salted fresh popcorn made right
there that all the boys craved, even Kenny). He knew, did he ever, that his
mother kept a lot of change in her pocketbook that she would leave out in the
open on a counter next to the kitchen table. That change, nickels and dimes,
but a generous helping of quarters as well for the public bus line that was the
family’s life-line to the outside world when there was no money for a car (or
it had hopelessly broken down requiring repair and thus back to no money and
public transportation) whose driver never seemed to have change for a dollar,
was in a little plastic bag.
Prescott’s idea was to grab some change
every now and again from the pocketbook until he had reached the total amount
given to him by his thoughtful relatives. He did not figure that his mother had
the change counted (and she didn’t as it turned out) and so would not miss it
like she would with dollar bills or more (which she certainly did count as
noted before when I mentioned the poverty level they existed under). Still his
first gambit was fraught with danger as he made sure his mother was outside
doing something in the yard when he made his move. He carefully opened the
purse, saw where the plastic bag containing the coins was located toward the
bottom beneath her wallet, and gently opened the bag to make sure that he did
not spill any coins out and took what turned out to be about a dollar’s worth
of coins. He resealed the bag, shut the purse, and then stealthily left the
house to run quickly to Carter’s Variety Store and bought a few candy bars,
some Twinkles and a Robb’s root beer (a locally bottled soft drink that I was also
crazy for when I used to hang around with the corner boys at Harry’s Variety
Store and he would order some just for
me and Frankie Riley, another corner boy) to wash it all down when he went over
to eat his new found goods behind the
school ballpark in private watching out for any stray brother, especially
Kenny, who would know something was wrong with Prescott having such luxuries. Prescott
later told Josh I am not sure when, and told his lawyer when that was necessary,
that those days were probably when he developed his life-long sweet tooth.
In any case Prescott did that household
robbery business for a while, although he said he figured that he never got all
the dough that was due him. All through
that time he never got caught, got so he could cadge money even when his mother
was in the next room. Of course he never got the money later for college since
he never went to college (unlike Kenny who worked his way through) and the
money had long before been taken out of his bank account when some family
financial crisis loomed and all the available cash was necessary to bail the
situation out. (Josh said he thought it was about pressing mortgage payments
but since his parents were extremely closed-mouthed about financial matters to
the boys he was not quite sure.) And that was how Prescott Breslin got his
start, for those who were wondering.
Funny about that wondering part, some
know the name from the police blotter or from reading about his occasional
forages with the law before they put Prescott, or had been trying to, away for
good. No, he was never a Jesse James (hell, no his wanting habits had no
revenge factor to them, all he wanted was to get that forever wanting habits
hungry satisfied just once), never a Pretty Boy Floyd who got all prettified in
song a some kind of Robin Hood until
Larry McMurtry put everybody straight on the real kick of that 1930s desperado
who might have given to the poor, given them a couple of slugs in the back
rather than a thousand dollar bill) or even a local boy, a Boston boy, Trigger
Burke, who was the trigger man on the great Brink’s armored car holdup that
captivated the minds of the kids, including Josh, in that 1950s Cold War night
when heroes were hard to come by and you took what you got.
Prescott Breslin was what you would
call a “soldier” a guy who did his dirty work for somebody else, somebody
smarter, somebody more reckless, somebody who needed something done and needed
a guy who knew the score, knew the code, and knew what breaking the code meant.
Yeah, a soldier was all he was even if he did make more trouble than whatever
it was that he wanted was worth going in for. But a soldier, a “stand up” guy,
a guy who knows the score just doesn’t walk into a saloon, a bar, or some back
alley restaurant and ask for work like some stinking bracero, hat in hand, or
some rummy day labor pearl-diver looking for his next bottle. One needed a
history.
Although one criminal act did not have
to follow the other after Prescott had had his fill of sneaking small change
from his mother’s pocketbook (he would laugh later that old habits die hard and
admitted that, just to keep in shape, he would cadge some change from that
purse over the years into his adulthood whenever he was not on the lam and
living at home when he needed money for coffee and crullers). At least to keep himself in dough, he moved up
in the world, the hard world of the “projects” where if you didn’t hang with
corner boys you were in for a very long teenage-hood. So naturally he had his
rite of passage just like every other corner boy by learning the “clip,” you
know the five-finger discount, the no pay , no way for various items from
jewelry stores (the preferred venue, especially as guys got older, got
interested in girls and in girl wanting habits, and had no other way to satisfy
them except the clip, or later in effect to exchange the trinkets for sex, lots
of it if you had diamonds for them), department stores (good for guys who
needed to upgrade their wardrobe although Prescott was rather indifferent to
that aspect of his image), record stores (when every teenager was crazy for
rock ‘n’ roll and just needed a fistful of the latest 45s to spread around at a
discount, no questions asked) and, a few times, a grocery store when things were
tough at home and the younger brothers needed feeding. (He had a deal worked out with one of the
cashiers for the food-he would load up a cart, head to that cashier’s counter,
the cashier would ring up every third or fourth item, and present the bill, Josh
would pay whatever it was, give say twenty dollars, and get fifty or sixty
dollars back which the cashier pocketed when they met later.
The clip was the life blood of Prescott’s
early teenage-hood, and he never got caught. Part of the reason for that was
his partner, Billy Riley, was a pro at the
business (you really needed a partner for this one because the guys who
got caught were usually the guys who went solo. You needed the look-out to
watch for owners, brown-nosed employees, or the cops, private and public).
Okay, say you wanted a bracelet for some girl, you and Billy went to Sam
Sloan’s up the Square, and watched to see what the customer action was (always
have other customers as cover or forget it because they provided the distraction
for you to do your work), once the owner/employee was busy you moved fast
(Billy moved fast and Prescott learned the value of speed after almost getting
caught the very first time when he could not decide which ring he wanted, onyx
or emerald, Jesus). Easy, although Prescott later told Josh that too easy led
him to think he was invincible until that first stretch that he wound up doing
at Norfolk County. But that was later, much later when the stakes were higher
and he got careless which back in the Billy days he never was.(Billy would have
taken his head off if he had although in the end Billy wound up face down in a
White Hen parking lot down south after a botched armed robbery for about sixty
bucks. But by then the dope had Billy’s head on wrong.)
Once you decide of a life on the edge,
once your wanting habits only get satisfied on easy street, kept angling the
quick grift, the midnight shifting then there has to be some progression or you
fall off of the cliff (or somebody pushes you). Prescott never called it the
criminal life, never thought that was where he was heading, just thought all
that he did was part the game, part of not being a sucker like his father who
worked hard, when he was able to find work, and keep at it and still wound up
down in the ditch somewhere when rewards time came. That was not the life for
him, not for Billy or Ronnie or Georgie Boy either and at some point it stuck.
He remembered one time in the summer after sixth grade when he was hot and
restless he went into the Timothy Clark Public Library branch that was attached
to the Adamsville South Elementary School with one of his corner boys at the
time, Pete Markin, to sit and maybe nod off for a while before going back out
into the heat. Pete went and grabbed a book, maybe two, and sat down to read. Prescott
sat opposite him and nodded off for maybe an hour. When Prescott awoke and
called across to Pete who was engrossed in some book Pete told Prescott to go
by himself because he wanted to finish the book he was reading. Prescott said “okay”
and that they would meet with the other corner boys behind the school after
supper. Pete never showed. Never came around again all summer.
When Prescott caught up to Pete on the
first day of junior high at Brook Meadows he asked Pete where he had been. Pete
answered that he had been in the library all summer, said he was not cut out to
be a corner boy, too much monkey business, too many moving parts for him. Prescott,
after giving Pete a shove to show him he had to wake up to the world that they
lived in, that reading books was for squares (a word via the “beat” scene that
had worked its way down to the sullen corner boy streets and was gaining
popularity as a way for the “wild boys” to separate themselves from all the
normal television stuff they saw that was weird, very weird), and that he would
wise up some day and see that. As for Prescott he went on to have a very
productive career in junior high grabbing milk and lunch money from kids,
jack-rolling an occasional drunk on his way for the night to the Sally’s
(Salvation Army) up the Square and grabbing loose change by having the weak
ones (and in junior high there are always weak ones) pay him protection in
order to avoid being beaten up by the school bullies (or if the kid was not too
weak to avoid being beaten up by Prescott or one of his boys). Girls, well, in
those days they got a pass, except if they didn’t “come across” (“coming
across” being anything from an innocent kiss to a blow job behind the gym
lockers and what it would be on any given was totally whimsical and not
dependent on the reputation of the girl. Many girls, prissy girls too and not
just junior whores on the training program, who would deny it later found
themselves, willingly or not, behind those gym lockers on their knees). So Prescott
had the soft life, for maybe the last time in his troubled young life.
Of course if you are living the easy
life then school at some point is for “squares” but you still have to make some
kind of calculation about what you are going to do for dough. And school was a
no dough situation so when Prescott came of age he left school, left because
there was nobody at home to stop him at that point and nobody in school who
wanted to keep him there, when in a rare fit, he almost killed the headmaster
when he questioned him about leaving and Prescott hung him by his feet outside
his second story office window. And the headmaster never said peep one to the
cops or anybody else. So from there Prescott was ready for graduate school-his
first, well, not his first if you count that mother’s pocketbook stuff, but
first out in the streets, robbery. A gas station late at night when Jim Sweeney,
a fellow classmate in junior high was on duty, and Prescott strong-armed him
into giving up the one hundred and eleven dollars in the cash drawer. And Jim,
when the copper questioned him said he could not identify the robber. Jack’s
luck was holding out.
But like all luck it is fickle, goes
south on you sometimes and it did with Prescott. Jack was a born soldier but he
was also crazy for cars, learned how to drive when he was about fourteen from
Lenny Lawrence the ace driver for the Winter Street gang the other side of Boston
who took a shine to Prescott when he “hot-wired” a ‘61 Chevy that Lenny had his
eye on and led the coppers on a merry chase through the back streets of Boston
down by Storrow Drive where they thought they had him and he just jumped over
the divide and said “adios, suckers.” So yes his luck ran for a while, quite a
while until he got caught in front of the Boston Five Cent Savings Bank waiting
for his comrades to come out with some loot and got caught in freaking traffic
with only one way out down Tremont Street since an MTA bus had broken by the
old Orpheum Theater(this was in the days when it was possible to pull an honest
armed robbery without all hell breaking loose and also before the advent of
ATMs and other technological gadgetry which made it crazy to pull such stunts,
and unnecessary as well). But see a guy like Prescott, a soldier, had that
driving skill and that was about it, didn’t have the smarts or the serious “connections”
to get pulled out fast and he drew to a
five and dime when the judge came down on his head.
Prescott did three but when he came out
things had changed somewhat. The old connected crowd was learning ways to get
their money in easier ways and Prescott was stuck, stuck good since nobody
around needed a good stickman any longer. So he hired on as a guy moving stolen
liquor from Canada for a while, had it going pretty good, for a while, and then
the other shoe dropped when the “Feds” got nervous about that lost tax revenue
just like they did with the good old boys down south, and he rapped to a ten
(he could have gotten out from under all the charges since he was way down the
list of who they wanted, Sonny and Soupy Barger who had run that liquor for
years, if he had talked to “Uncle” but his old corner boy instincts came into
play and he dummied up, dummied up good (besides if he had squawked he was a
dead man with those guys he was mixed up with in that operation as they made plain
(and as he learned about two guys who squawked and who were never heard from
again. Prescott needed no other picture drawn for him). So Prescott drew his
time but as he later told Josh when he was leaving the courthouse all manacled up
he thought for a minute about what might have happened if his damn mother had
given him his first communion money like she should have.
