Rebel Without a Cause (10 page)

When I was about six or seven I remember crossing a street when the hot sun was shining. I ran into a street sign. I think, I’m not sure, I got a black eye again then. The sun was shining so bright. I don’t know if I saw anything or not.…

It’s hard. It’s hard to get my mind way back in there. Hard to remember. It’s hard to put your mind on them and remember all the incidents.

I was about six or seven. It was before I even started school, I think. I used to run around on B—— Street, and I remember we had a big yard and my father had a garage there where he kept his car. We had a club house there too. It was Saturday night and there was a young fellow named Fred something who lived across the street in a four-tenement house. I remember it was getting dark, not very dark; it was in fall or spring when it starts getting dark around six o’clock. There was a touring car parked in front of a house down the street and Fred and I were sitting on the running board. I was talking to him. I don’t remember what we were talking about.

Some guy came along; he was about thirty I guess. He was drunk and he started talking to Fred. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t understand what they were talking about. They were talking like that for about half an hour. Then Fred and the other guy got up and we went to the club house. It was getting dark, about seven o’clock, and we went in. We had made sort of beds from automobile cushions and Fred and the other fellow laid down on them and they started playing with each other. Fred was about seventeen; he had dark hair, black hair. The three of us were in the club house. Then they came around and started going down on each other. Then they wanted me to go down on them. But I wouldn’t do it.

We were in there about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I remember when the fellow that was drunk came out he wasn’t drunk anymore and when he walked outside of the driveway of the yard and he said to Fred he’d see him again.

When I walked out on the street to go home it was eight-thirty. My mother and my aunt were looking for me. I had straw all over me from the club house. The reason they were looking for me was they wanted to give me a bath. It was Saturday night.

I never said anything to my mother about that.…

I can remember back to when I was about four. I remember we were driving on a truck, my older sister and me and my mother and father. We were moving from our old place and we stopped at a farmer’s house and stayed all night. I was about four when we moved to P—— Street, somewhere near C—— Street, and I remember there was a candy store I used to go to sometimes. I called the man “uncle,” uncle something or other. Then from there we moved to B—— Street, where we remained about five years. I started to go to school there, in kindergarten at the H—— Street school. I was about five and I remember playing with blocks. There was a big room, and when they wanted to make classrooms they would pull the big sliding doors together.

I don’t remember the teachers very well, their names I mean. The first and second grades are very hazy in my memory. I recall going to the gym class for exercise when I was in the fourth grade. And I remember belonging to a health class or something to build me up with milk, rest and the proper food. I remember also that the gym master made us stand at attention on a white line for half an hour sometimes. If we would talk in class the teacher would send us to the coat-room where we’d hang our coats and make us stand in that room all morning. I must have gone to this school until the fourth or fifth grade. Then I went to St. A—— School because my parents wanted me to be a Catholic. When I signed up for this school I think I had the classroom on the second floor, the first one to the left. I was about eight then and I used to wear knickers.

The sisters used to assign lessons and if you didn’t have them done in the morning you would get whipped in the hand, and they forced you to kneel before a statue, the statue of the Virgin, in the dirt. I remember the priest used to have a crooked cane. One time he got
a fellow with the cane around the neck and drew him close and then beat him up bad. Sometimes they made us all stay in. One time a fellow tried to get out through the window. I got whipped a lot.

We used to have a gang then. We’d pay our school dues, forty or fifty cents on Tuesdays. It was forty or fifty cents depending if you were Irish or not. I had to pay fifty cents, but the Irish kids paid forty. Many times we’d keep the money and go to shows.

One time my mother’s godfather came to our house. He used to board there. It was in the summer time. I know because we used to have watermelon every week. This godfather always had whiskey. Once my mother broke some of his whiskey bottles on the step, the stone step of the porch.

I remember when my sister Anna, the youngest one, was born. I was in the next room to where my mother was. I could hear my mother crying and hollering. I was sleeping on a small bed. I don’t know where my other sister was. It was when I was seven years old. Before the young one was born I remember my mother used to keep me on her lap and never let me go out. I used to sit and watch the other fellows outside. When it was six or seven o’clock she’d say it was too late to go out.

We had a victrola, about four or five feet high.

I remember one time I was sleeping in the front room, the parlor. Somebody was grabbing at the window shade. There was a man with a hat on out there: I know he was a burglar or somebody. Then I fell asleep. Next morning I told my mother about it but there was nothing missing from the house.

Down the block there was a small house. Nothing in front, just a few windows, no porch, nothing. I remember one time somebody’s furniture was thrown out on the street from it. And there was another house on that block, a big red house, three or four stories high. We used to call it the red house. Everybody said not to go there because it was haunted. Next to that house was one with a big veranda going around one side and the front. I think a policeman or fireman lived there. We used to spin tops on the sidewalk in front of this house.

There was a Mr. Vanderbilt used to live in the big house next to us on the other side. I don’t remember Mr. Vanderbilt very well. I used to see him when I was around twelve. The fellows used to
find money around his house in the garbage cans, fifty and one hundred dollar bills.

They would find this money and then take it back. Three years ago, by accident, I found out from a fellow who should know that this Mr. Vanderbilt was connected with a big bootleg ring. I met this fellow who used to drive one of his trucks and haul whiskey for him. They used to smuggle it into the eastern part of the country from boats anchored off Atlantic Highlands in Jersey.

I don’t remember Mr. Vanderbilt. Wait! Davis was his name. Davis. Davis.

He had a small wife who I remember better than I remember him. Yet I think he lived there alone and they had another house too. After he moved out there was a big fire in that house.

There were three or four houses that had a big yard together with no fences between. They had no inside toilets. We used to sit on top of the outhouses and sometimes shoot staples at cats. They had a lot of cats there, hanging around the outhouses.

Downstairs from us lived this lady who used to shave. She used to get dark in the face, like a beard. She had a son, the kid that got his leg cut off on the railroad. She also had two daughters. One time me and my cousin Riggs got one of the daughters in back of the garage. She was only a baby, about seven. I guess we just tried to do it to her. She didn’t want to. She cried. Then Riggs hit her. So she ran away and told her mother, and her mother told my mother. I remember Riggs’ father and my mother and his, I mean, her mother all sitting in the kitchen; and Riggs, he pointed at me and tried to tell them I was the one who hit her. I hated him then.

I don’t remember my cousin Tony very well. He used to hang out with the older fellows, the big clique. He was about eighteen then. He used to steal everything he could get his hands on. He’d hitch on the back of one of the big pie trucks and steal pies and we would
have a real feast. He went to live with my grandmother one time for about a week because his father was going to give him a beating.

There was a gang of kids in the next street who came over and had a fight with the fellows from B—— Street and I got in between. I got the worst of it. One of the fellows hit me with a piece of rope in the eye. He hit me in the eye. And Gimpy hit me one day with a snowball. Afterwards he swore to God he didn’t do it. It was in the inside of a big house. I was just coming in and he was throwing a snowball out at somebody and he hit me in the eye. I remember Gimpy well. One day he got the loan of a bicycle and he took me out to a dump on the handlebars. We went looking for copper. That day I didn’t go to school. When I got home I got a beating for not going to school.

Right at the corner of our block there was a fire-station, a hook-and-ladder company. Next door was a Presbyterian church and a big house, the preacher’s house, and then another big house. On the bottom floor there were two stores, one a candy store and one a butcher store. One fourth of July a man came around and parked his car right across the street. He had a lot of cap pistols in the car and some of the fellows saw that and stole some. I stole one too. Afterwards my mother made me bring it back.

I remember the fire-engine parked on the street in front of the fire-house. The fellows used to blow the siren. We would press the button and blow the siren. We would press the button and blow the siren and pull the cord and ring the bell.

We lived a block from the river. I don’t think the river is as dirty now as it was then. Once some of the fellows found a credit book from the store in the center of the block where we lived on B—— Street. They erased all the numbers and give it to me and told me to go in and buy some things. The man didn’t give me anything because he saw that the whole book got written in before.

When I was four we lived on M—— Street near C——. My grandmother lived on C——. We lived on the second floor, and I remember I used to climb the stairs on my hands and feet: I used to help myself up with my hands. There was a store on the bottom. I think it used to sell fruits, vegetables and fruits.

I don’t remember much. I don’t remember much about living
in P——, but I remember coming on a truck, moving from P—— …

A lot that I am telling you about comes back to my mind. Shall I repeat things again?

I remember when I was eight or maybe nine years old. We were still living on B—— Street. One time I went out toward the river and I saw my cousin Riggs and another fellow come out of the brewery warehouse. They broke some boards out of the side. I was sitting there with a group of other fellows at the dock and a policeman came over. He was there to see that nobody went in swimming naked: and he asked the bunch of fellows if they had seen anyone enter the warehouse. He asked me too and I said that I didn’t see anybody.

I used to spend a lot of time across the river in the swampland, a big area of thirty acres. It was marshy and swampy and in some spots it was sandy with brush growing all over it. We used to go over and catch and shoot bullfrogs there, and sometimes we would swim over with a hammer and some nails and get some logs and boards and make a raft and come back with it. On the shore I remember it was all muddy except some spots. When you stepped in the mud you got in it up to your knees. Once a fellow stepped in the mud and cut his foot on something.

We used to take a rowboat down the river about four miles or so where there was a landing near a railroad track and big cars of watermelons used to come in. We always stole watermelons there.

I only saw one man drown in the river. I must have been fourteen then. I remember the police pulled him out of the water. There was a big crowd of people around watching. They put a respirator on him to pump the water out but he was dead. So they put him in a basket and put it in the ambulance and drove away.

The fellows from M—— Street had a clubhouse that was out in the water. They put poles into the ground and on these poles they built the house. You only could get there on a cat-walk and sometimes they took the cat-walk down and you would have to go by boat or swim. One time the police raided it, knocked the house down, tipped it right over into the water. They used to have big
crap games in there and guns on the wall. Most of the fellows owned rowboats and some even had sailboats.

Right across the river there was E—— Hall which was owned by a politician named F—— where they had meetings once a month or more. Me and two of my cousins used to watch their cars so nobody would bother them till the meeting was over. We used to make a little bit of money that way, not much. Sometimes we would let the air out of the tires when we knew a fellow wouldn’t pay us. This politician used to own a saloon of F—— Avenue. When I still lived on B—— Street I used to go to see a fellow once in a while who lived next door to this saloon. We would get in through the back of an apartment that nobody lived in. It was full of empty whiskey and beer bottles and on a bureau there was a cardboard box full of papers, just filled with papers. I remember digging in it and finding something hard way down in the papers. I pulled it out. It was wrapped around with paper and tied with a string. I broke the string and took off the papers and I found a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun. Three or four years later, when I lived on M—— Street, I told another fellow about it and we went back there to look. We found everything still there, the bottles and all the papers, but the shotgun wasn’t there anymore.

There was a fellow in that water gang who used to carry a blackjack. Several times he would get a dog or a cat and hit them with it. One time he threw a lighted cigarette into a parked automobile and the cushions got on fire.