Out of Respect (eBook)

Chapter 1

My Neighborhood I Called Home:
South Philadelphia 1965

“The first time my mother tried to kill me was the night before my confirmation. I was seven and a half years old.”

It was 1965. The cars of choice were Cadillacs and Lincolns, among others. I went to parochial school and wore a blue uniform to the knee with knee socks and dark shoes. When we attended church, which was several times a week, we wore white veils bobby-pinned to our heads.

South Philadelphia is where I grew up. It was more than just a neighborhood or a culture, it was a state of mind. In our neighborhood, walking to school, the candy store, or church would be a social event. Walking down the street, nothing could replace the smells of chicken cutlets, garlic, and gravy, and the sounds coming from the homes, sounds of babies crying, kids being called for dinner, or guys screaming because the Phillies made a home run.

I was an only child, the son my father never had. My father and most of his friends’ work was victimless crime. The Philadelphia crime family headed by Angelo Bruno, also known as “The Docile Don,” one of the most respected and powerful crime bosses in America, made it possible for his fellows to have a better life for them and their families. My father was part of the neighborhood organization, not a “made man,” but with the same honor and respect for the neighborhood and what it stood for.

As a child, I never thought of what my father and the other men did as a crime. Trucks would pull up at the back door of the storefronts, hidden back lots, warehouses, and storehouses, filled with boxes of stereos, TVs, clothes, you name it. I would watch them unload the stuff and then I would help sort and put it in different categories.

I was privy to this world so that I could escape the brutal psychological, verbal, and physical violence I was experiencing at the hands of my mother. My father and his world were my safe haven. I didn’t want to let my father know about what was going on because I was afraid of what would happen. At one time, she beat herself up right in front of me and then went out telling people my father had gotten mad and hit her. Because of this I never told him about the awful things that my mother was doing to me.

I was afraid that she would call the police, and my father would be taken away and I would be left with her and my secrets. In protecting my father, I felt I was also protecting myself.

It was in this world where I received attention, money, protection, respect, love, and laughter, things I could never get from my mother. The fellas felt protective of me as a little kid. As long as I was cute and quiet and made them laugh, they sometimes forgot I was even there.

I had my own little vinyl fold up chair that my father bought for me. Wherever he put it, that was my place in the room. I was out of the way sitting there being quiet and doing my homework.

My father came from the traditional thinking about divorce: you don’t do it, no matter what. He lived by the code of the neighborhood, Respect. We were all raised by this code for generations. This means respect for religion, for family, for elders, for one’s friends, and above all for the silence that bonded our neighborhood and protected it from outsiders. This same philosophy and code were slowly killing it.

When my mother married my father, he didn’t know she was Armenian at that time. She had a previous marriage to an Italian man as a cover to get into the neighborhood and to obtain an Italian name.

My mother’s con was using her looks and sexuality and telling people what they wanted to hear, to get any place or man she wanted, like her first husband. He was innocent and sent his allotment to her when he was overseas. Later he came home from the Army expecting to be greeted by a loving wife, instead he arrived at a house where his key would not fit in the door. The motive was to get an Italian husband and to get a cover as Mrs. Ruth Scavone. She took off, sold the house, and cleared out the bank accounts, only to have a new identity. I wasn’t even born, and I feel his pain today. He had to pursue her for a divorce, as I learned in divorce decree papers that I found decades later in which he was stated as the plaintiff.

She was then pregnant by another well-to-do man of Jewish descent. This was her way of trying to entrap him, but her scheme failed. He was already married, but she found that out after she was pregnant. She panicked and couldn’t let her family know. She needed someone to take care of her and have a way to justify that pregnancy. She plotted another con in her head.

She joined a clique with Italian girls with her new identity. She got into the Italian clubs, angling to find a man. That is where she met my sweet father. After a short courtship and her bewitchery, she told my father she was pregnant with his child.

Knowing my father and his loving soul, he couldn’t live with himself knowing that he hadn’t stepped up to the plate for a child that was his.

A visit to City Hall settled it. She told him that she loved him, and she wanted to have his children and take care of him and be part of his family, things he would have wanted to hear. Marriage at that point was not part of his plans. Unbeknownst to my father, it was a mixed marriage. My mother was an Armenian, a union which neither family would accept. However, when my Armenian grandmother met my father, she was happy to know her daughter married a good provider. Nevertheless, my mother considered herself an outsider to South Philly and my father’s family and friends. But he knew he would do the right thing. He was in his early forties, and she was in her mid-twenties.

A few days after birth, the baby died of unknown causes. It was said to be crib death. But after what I went through, today I have my doubts.

Following this, my father was adamant about having a baby. She had a couple more pregnancies which resulted in miscarriages. At long last, she conceived me and was ordered by her doctor to bed rest until birth. She was under watch by my father’s sisters who took shifts. There were three or four chairs around the bed. I remember her telling me that they had her trapped in a bed in her last trimester. My father’s sisters made sure she was staying put. To my father’s great joy, I was born.

She wanted to keep her own culture and religion alive in our house, as a convenient cover, because she was often gone. My father, Aunt Mae and Uncle Frank, and my father’s immediate family took care of me. More and more my mother became defensive and paranoid about my father’s family, but she didn’t mind using them to get what she wanted.

My father’s family was not so easy to get along with because they did not approve of this marriage nor of her. So, she began to turn on the person most vulnerable and dependent on her, who was me, her daughter.

I was raised in what quickly became a battleground both in my home and on our street. There was terrible turmoil erupting in the neighborhood, but it was nothing compared with the private brutal violence escalating inside our house.

I really wanted a dog so that I would feel safe, and I wouldn’t be alone. We went to a breeder in New Jersey, and I picked a beautiful German Shepherd out of the litter for myself. I named her Lady.

South Philly was a neighborhood of small storefronts and narrow streets of row houses. We were proud of where we came from. The code which the neighborhood lived by was respect, secrecy, pride, courage, and honor.

This was a time when tradition and the true code of honor meant something. People were respectful of each other’s territories and settled their differences in a civilized manner. We called it doing business the “Old School Way.”

Angelo Bruno ran our close-knit neighborhood, keeping the traditions that the family business would not involve drugs, because he was opposed to that.

The pride of South Philly’s neighborhood gave me my infrastructure. I would treat any place I lived like a neighborhood. I made it a point to know everyone’s name, their family and something about them. I made an investment in people, that was my way of life in order to survive. I was looking to give and get love. I needed to feel worthy. I have always felt at home no matter where I’ve lived because I immediately established that neighborhood relationship with my surroundings. As a child, I could go to any store and be welcomed because of who my father was and who I was. I liked that, even if I didn’t understand it.

Whether I was visiting Sam the Butcher’s, Willy’s Pizza, Frangelli’s Bakery, or even Cabana Steaks, I loved it because they made me feel good. I would visit the corner bakery, Volare, where I could smell fresh hot rolls, right out of the oven. I was always welcomed by the store owners with smiles on their faces and open arms. On my walks home I couldn’t resist biting the end of the loaf of Italian bread and turning it around to put the other side up so that no one would know that I had eaten any of it.

My adventurous part was entertaining to the “fellas” and...