Tony Talks: The Word from Belmont Ave.

There are a lot of chumps moping these days because a liberal arts business degree didn’t land them their six-figure wet dream at Lehman Brothers before The Reckoning began. For them, and everyone else farting around the post-American western world wondering if turning tricks or slinging dope ain’t so bad after all, we bring you the first installment of Almosting It’s column, “Tony Talks.” Tony was born during the “darkest days of the depression” in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, where he lived on Belmont Avenue. He’s fought his way out of enough “scrapes,” and knows where the best provolone this side of the old country rests on Arthur Avenue, to leave you no choice but to shut up, sit down, and pay attention. If you’re at that point where your parents have actually got sick of your graduated ass living at home, then, Tony says, read this and go be something useful like a fireman or a nurse.

“This would be circa - pronounced “cheer-ka” in Italian; it’s the same spelling - the 1930’s. We had a lot of young men on my block in the Bronx; Belmont Avenue between 181st and 182nd Street. We hung out in different groups; the younger with younger, the older with the older. On one side of the street were apartment buildings, and on the other were brownstones. We were sitting on the steps in front of the Florios’ brownstone. About ten, fifteen guys. Mixed ages. Just to set the scene. Now, you must remember these are different people, some going to school, some with no jobs. If you had a part-time job, it was the parents, not us, really. But things were bad.

Now, there’s a story about my shoes if you like that. My shoes flapped open. If you had a hole in your shoe, you found a piece of cardboard and you made an outline of the shoe with a pencil so it would fit in the shoe. And that would serve for a few hours. By the way, my socks had holes in them all over, too, because I was walking on concrete. But then after that it progressed to the point that the sole itself separated from the shoe entirely. It flapped in the front entirely. Now, I went to school that way. Elementary school. Grade five or six. That’s just the way things were, you weren’t ashamed or anything.

Now, I had a teacher in my class, a nice older lady and she would read everyday. Nobody’s Boy. It was a pathetic book; things were always very depressing in those days. The kid in the story was nobody’s boy. Exactly what it meant. The class was always silent because the book hit them in the gut. Now, one day she put down the book and said, “Anthony, can i see you after class?” And I was a bit of a pain in the ass and I thought I did something wrong. I threw spitballs and whatnot. Now, my father never hit me, but I would get a stern talking to sometimes and I was afraid that would happen. So the class left and I stayed in my seat and she called me up and said, “Anthony, I would like you to come with me to Tremont Avenue. I’d like to buy you a pair of shoes.”

It hit me like a shot in the head. I didn’t even answer. I got up and ran away. I was embarrassed by it all. I saw her the next day, and she didn’t even mention a word. She knew she struck a nerve. This was one of the episodes that happened in the dark days of the depression on Belmont Avenue.

Now, on Belmont Avenue, I was known as some sort of - at the age of 13 or 14 - they called me The Professor. I knew about things that most kids didn’t care about. I was an artist, I drew aeroplanes with the names of the plane and the types of planes and the engine — I had a book of ‘em in my pocket. Plus i worked in the pharmacy and I got a dollar a week. I loved to work in the pharmacy because Harry Goldman - he owned the pharmacy - was a very nice guy and I would sit in the store and read books. He was Jewish and came from a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. But there was a pharmacy at the corner of 181st and it was owned by Silverman. And Goldman bought the pharmacy from Silverman.

Now, this poor Jewish young man was in a neighborhood that was ninety-percent Italian. A lot of people came in and they didnt speak English; they were all from Italy. So he liked having me there. He said, “Tony I’ll give you a dollar a week. If you want to fill up some bottles of cough medicine and put the labels on, I’ll watch what youre doing, you’ll be ok.”

He figured I was a kid he could rely on. I never told the kids I made a buck a week, they thought i made five or ten. But anyway. One day, this younger man, about ten or eleven - he lived on the next block where the fire department had a house between 182nd and 183rd Street - but he came down my block because it was more interesting, I guess. One day he came down and looked upset and I said, “Hey, whatsa matter?”

He said, “You know, I don’t like to go to school.” So I said, “Well, what do you do?”

He said, “I play hooky, I sneak into the movie house.” I said, “How often do you do that?”

He said, “Three or four times a week. I tell the teacher I’m sick, I have a sore throat. For a couple weeks. She said she wants to speak to my parents.”

Now, he came to me because, obviously, I’m The Professor. He thought I could solve this problem. I said, “Don’t go back to school tomorrow and say you have a sore throat; a sore throat might last two or three days, but you gotta come up with something better. Tomorrow you gotta say, before you see my parents, you have to know that im suffering from chronic appendix. Because, if it’s chronic, you cant go bouncing around, you can hardly walk. You say, the doctors are watching it to see if they have to operate. So he said OK.

I saw him a few days later and he was much worse, his chin was on the floor. And I said, “Whatsa matter?”

He said, “I’m in more trouble. The teacher asked me why I didn’t come to school, and I said, ‘I’m suffering from chronic independence.’ He didn’t know the difference! So the teacher says, you go down to the principal and tell him that. So he went down the principal and told him what happened and the principal wanted to see his father. And now he was in big trouble with the teacher, the principal, and his father because he didn’t understand “appendix” from “independence.”

Now, that’s a true story. You think I would make up that story? Whatever I tell you, it’s 100% true. No bullshitting.”