Same City, Different World
Chicago, Illinois
June 18, 1949
He’d traveled north on California Avenue many times. The dentist’s office and Grandma and Grandpa Lipensky’s house was along the north-bound route, but the furthest south he’d ever gone was twenty-second street.
As the streetcar traveled south he was surprised at the change and deterioration of each following neighborhood. Well-maintained apartment buildings changed to hulking, dirty tenements. Once thriving neighborhood storefront businesses give way to dirty, steel-barred storefront windows and doors. White faces changed to black faces. People stood on street corners, or sat in the shade on door-stoops, or walked singularly, or in pairs or groups, just like the people in his neighborhood, yet they seemed so different… so foreign.
Shvartzers! Negroes!
Not accustomed to Negroes, even though they did nothing in any way threatening, still, he was glad to be behind the window of this moving streetcar, and though it was the eighteenth of June and the temperature was 78 degrees, he shivered. Mitchell had no idea why he was afraid. He’d never even met a Negro seemed to be so… Not at all like Charlie Chan’s chauffeur in the movies or Jack Benny’s “Rochester” on the radio. Uncle Al told shvartzer jokes all the time, but looking through the fly-specked window of this fast moving streetcar as it passed from corner to corner, he saw nothing funny and was very glad to be in here, and not out there.
Becoming cleaner, the stores, buildings and streets changed again and the black faces once again become white faces.
“Sixty-third Street!” The conductor called, “Sixty-third Street, next stop!”
Mitchell stood, went to the rear platform and waited till the streetcar came to a complete stop before he stepped off, onto the safety island… into a “different” place.
Standing in the wash of the departing streetcar he felt the humid wind and the air seemed hotter here than it was there—hotter now than it was before.
As he stepped from the safety island, a speck of blowing grit stung his left eye. Rubbing it, he walked from the street onto the sidewalk.
Along and around the corners of California and Sixty-third streets were dozens of intermixed shabby and somewhat better maintained stores.
Across the street, green and orange tissue-paper wrappers mixed with paper scraps and dust twisted along the gutter in a dwarf-sized cyclone.
Names on the plate glass windows of storefronts were unfamiliar to Mitchell’s eyes and memory: Vesuvio Bakery and Ristorante. Sicelia Cheese Co., Gesseppi Grocery and Olive Oil. Some were completely unpronounceable words in a gold scroll that was hand-painted on dirty, fly-speckled windows.
Looking from corner to corner he felt a sense of dread, but at the same time a feeling of adventure, as though when he’d stepped off the streetcar he’d stepped into a strange, foreign land. Even the air here smelled different…
“Ughhh!” He gasped as a pair of well-muscled arms encircled his waist from behind and lifted him off his feet.
“Jewish peeeg!” whispered in his ear by a familiar, but much deeper voice.
“Frankie!” Trying to twist out of the vice-like grip, released, Mitchell turned around.
“Jesus, Mitchie, you look just like always, only ten feet taller!”
Feeling his smile fade, thinking, It’s Sal Diamond! Mitchell blinked his eyes. No! Forcing his smile back. It’s really Frankie who now looks like Sal Diamond.
Frank Rizzo’s youthful appearance had drastically changed in the five years since the two friends had said goodbye at the train station in downtown Chicago. All of Frank’s features had…? Mitchell tried to put the changes into thought… Frank Rizzo’s features had hardened and…? dirtied. Frank’s face now appeared to be…? What? Chiseled out of white marble. His smooth skin and child-like features had given way to straight, hard, adult-like lines. His black hair was long and greasy and combed back with each comb stroke visibly etched in the sweeping growth that grew above and behind his ears, making a well-pronounced D.A. on the back of his head. He had a rash of blackheads above his eyebrows and across the bridge of his nose. There were clusters of small, white-headed pimples on either side of his lower lip. Frank’s hands, once well scrubbed, now had a grimy look. Dirt was ingrained in the pores of his knuckles and his fingernails were half-mooned with grease. But the change that most amazed Mitchell was Frank’s body. Wearing tight Levi’s and a cotton undershirt, his arms and shoulders fairly bulged with muscle that shined as though coated with oil. It was the torso of an adult rather than that of a sixteen-year-old boy and, with the exception of the blackheads and pimples, it was as though Frank Rizzo had jumped from childhood to adulthood completely bypassing puberty.
Finding it hard to believe that this… man standing before him was really his friend, his smile still forced, “Frankie,” swallowing, “you look so, uh, different!”
Looking at him, “Mitchie,” the worried look that crossed his face was quickly replaced with a broad smile. “Come on, we can’t stand here grinnin’ at each other or people’ll start thinkin’ we’re a couple’a homos.”
‘Homos’?
Taking him by the elbow, Frank steered Mitchell across California Avenue. “I can’t wait till Gina see’s ya… ’J’ya bring the ring like I told’j’ya?”
“Yeah, I found it.” Taking the ring out of his pocket, he handed it to Frank, who looked at it a moment, then gave it back. “But I told’j’ya it don’t work, and still don’t know why you wanted me to bring it.”
Walking east on Sixty-third, “Mitchie, you gotta understand women!”
“Well, I ain’t had much opportunity till now, but what in the hell’s this busted ring got to do with understandin’ women?”
“Look, Gina’s had the hots for you ever since I told her ’bout you an’ it ain’t gonna be a problem to get her into the sack, but I want everything to go right, an’ you can’t treat a lady like a whore! That’s where the ring comes in. Understand?”
“No! I don’t understand what a busted ring’s got to do with treating a lady like a whore.”
“Mitchie, the damn ring don’t gotta work. But let’s say you’n’me’n’Gina’n’Lisa—Lisa’s my girl—are sittin’ ’round and I say to you: ‘Hey, Mitch, you bring your Captain Midnight ring? The one that shoots off all them shootin’ stars in a dark room!’ An’ you say to me, ‘Sure I brought it!’ An’ I say to you, ‘Gina would love to see it. Wouldn’t you, Gina?’ An’ she says to you, ‘Hey, Mitch, why don’t you show me your ring?’ An’ then the two of you get up an’ go into the bedroom. This way you’n’her go off to fuck, an’ she don’t have to feel like a whore… Capisce?”
The rational completely eluding Mitchell, “Capisce?” he asked.
“Don’t you remember anything I taught’j’ya?”
“Oh, yeah! Now I remember! Capisce! Understand!”
“Yeah, ya dumb Jew fart!”
“Oh, yeah! Well, you’re not so nishgafarelach either!”
“I’m not so nish-ga… huh?”
“Yeah!” Punching Frank on the shoulder, “See? You don’t know everything, you stupid wop!”
“What’s nisgha, uh,…. what you said mean?”
“Beats me, but whatever it is, you ain’t!” He laughed. “Or maybe,” remembering what he’d called him after their meeting with Skorupski, “maybe you are, you Dago tittie!”
Laughing, too, in a show of friendship, though he had to reach up to do it, Frank put his arm across Mitchell’s shoulder. Hesitating a moment, Mitchell put his arm across Frank’s shoulder, also, then, going a few steps further, both boys began to feel self-conscious and their arms fell to their sides. But together again, the years and the unaccustomed differences dissipated and each felt the warmth of their old friendship.
“Frankie…” Mitchell looked to his right. “I wasn’t sure till right now, but know what?” Without waiting for a reply, “I’ve missed you, a real lot!”
Looking to his left, “Yeah,” blinking his eyes, “me too, pal.”
Walking side by side, both boys quiet a few moments, “Where we goin’?” Mitchell asked.
“I got a couple’a things I gotta do for my old man, an’ I want him to meet you… There it is,” Frank said, proudly, “by the corner. See our sign?”
Sandwiched between a small savings and loan on the corner to the east, and a tailor shop to the west, RIZZO & SON. FRESH PRODUCE was written in gold, italic lettering on a comparatively clean, plate glass window.
Frank held the screen door open as they stepped inside to the accompaniment of a tinkling bell.
Wearing a green- and red-smeared white apron over a pair of denim overalls, a short, obese man with a thick patch of graying, black hair that fringed his otherwise totally bald head came from the rear of the store. “Frankie is’a good you come back! I’m’a’need’a you bring some orang’a’an’apple up’a the stairs.”
“Sure, Papa. You remember I hadda go meet my friend at the streetcar?”
“Sure, I remember!” Looking at Mitchell, he held his hand forward. “My Frankie, he’s’a tink his Papa’s stupid.”
“No I don’t, Papa… Papa, this is Mitchell.”
Taking the chafed hand into his, Mitchell shook hands with the older man. “I’m glad to meet you, Mister Rizzo.”
“Mitchie, it’ll take a few minutes to get the crates up from the cooler an’ it’s hot in here, so why don’t you go outside an’ wait for me. I won’t be too long, then we’ll go get somethin’ to eat, and by that time we can head over to the girls’. Oh, an’ by the way,” taking the canvas bag from Mitchell, “Papa’ll bring this home for you.”
“Thank you,” nodding to Mr. Rizzo. “Can I give you a hand, Frankie?”
“Nah, thanks, though. The stairs are kinda steep an’ Gina’d never forgive me if you fell an’ broke somethin’.” He winked. “An’ anyway, how’d you think I got these?” Frank flexed his right arm, causing the biceps to pop. “Go on, wait outside, I’ll be done in a couple’a minutes.”
“Guess I’ll see you at home then, Mr. Rizzo.”
“Sure. You have a good time wit’a my Frankie.”
Outside, standing a moment, he stretched. Noticing a nail and staple-studded telephone pole, he walked to it, leaned against it a moment, then, with his feet in the gutter, sitting on the curb, Mitchell rested his back against the dry, cracked wood. The warm sun feeling nice on his face, his eyes closed to the glare, the sunlight caused a pleasant red glow though his eyelids…
