Joseph W. Montaperto, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Joseph W. Montaperto
The Edge of Whiteness 11/14/2014 5:45:57 PM
The continuing saga of a life for a kid in New Jersey in the early-mid 1970's! THE TITILLATING WORLD OF JOE MONTAPERTO
Friday, November 14, 2014
As I said in my last blog post - "The Joys of the 1970's" - that was probably the last time period before everyone became a tight-ass and things got so serious and corporate. To read more about the freewheeling, yet gritty and funky 1970's (particularly the early-mid 70's) check out my memoir on the subject - The Edge of Whiteness.
So there was this guy who lived around the corner from my cousins, Skinny and Ricky.Gentile, his name was We called him. Mr. Gentile, cuz we we're kind of polite kids. At first. He seemed to be cool. I mean, like, we would always say hello to him when we all played baseball or touch football on the street. But we were kids - what the hell did we know?
Anyway, when I was about 16 years old, I had gotten become pretty muscular from weightlifting, boxing and exercising, and I guess he saw a chance to exploit that. I don't know if he was kind of a contractor or he worked for Fabco Shoes or what, but he enticed me to demolish and then help (alot of help, if you ask me) to rebuild the building in order to get it ready for a grand opening of another Fabco Shoes store in Hoboken, NJ. He used to drive me over there from Roselle every morning as we went to work. That's when I realized he was one of those Italian fathers who wore a pinkie ring, and slapped way too much Aqua Velva and Old Spice on his face as he looked in the mirror Sported that stiff kind of wave hairstyle, that resulted from using the ubiquitous "hair tonic" guys used in the 70's, you know? It was actually hard and crunchy...oh, and he only chewed Trident, also He sweetened the deal by promising me a part-time job in the store after school when it did open. So I did a tremendous amount of work tearing up and throwing out and rebuilding this place in the heat of a particularly insanely humid summer - with not even a fan to help cool me off! I'm sure he saved a bundle paying me basically nothing while not having to pay union construction guys - but when the store actually opened - Gentile fired me!Totally lied! Canned me on the first day! Bastard!
Of course, I felt like a total asshole having been played like that.... and he was so smug and cavalier about it, too. Didn't even talk to me, after having been like my "best friend" for a couple of months. So that was it. Revenge was coming. For like a week or so before Halloween, this guy had these two Jack o' Lanterns he had put on the steps leading up to his front door, he had candles inside them, that he lit up at night. Ah, a perfect opportunity.
One night, me and Skinny go over there with a few packs of firecrackers we had left over from 4th of July. Skinny ingeniously knew how to delay the fuses, so we sneak over there, he delays the fuses on like 5 packs of firecrackers, we throw 'em in the lit Jack o' Lanterns, ring his doorbell, and run across the street to hide in the bushes, laughing all the way.
"Who is it? Who's there?"
Gentile himself comes out the door to see who rang his bell, and is pissed because nobody is there. He starts yelling out something like "If i ever catch who's doing this, I'll -"
BAM! BOOM! BAM, BAM!
The firecrackers all go off in sucesssion, and Gentile is jumping around like he's been shot - I swear, he probably thinks it's a mob hit - and then the f***in' pumpkins explode! He's got like pumpkin seeds and insides all over his face, and head and glasses... the thing is it keeps going - and he keeps jumping and contorting his body in like a hundred different ways! Meanwhile, my cousin is laughing like a crow, like Hekyll and Jekyll. I mean, that's how he normally laughed - and really loud too! Gentile knows now that he's been punked and he's shaking his fist, saying he's gonna kill us if he ever finds out who it is... but it's f***in' pitch dark, he can't see a thing, and besides that, he's got pumpkin shit all over his glasses! Hahahahaha.... he has to go back inside really embarassed, with pumpkin all over his face! But, hey, he deserved it, ya know? Revenge is sweet
