Subway Robin Hood

 

My father as a Brooklyn teenager

Was your father ever in a street gang?

Growing up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, my Dad's childhood was never one of affluence.  His mother worked multiple housecleaning jobs while his father was, um, rarely gainfully employed.  None of their neighbors nor friends were wealthy by any economic measure.  And yes, in such neighborhoods, at least in big cities like New York, street gangs have historically been an unavoidable part of life.

Not that Dad was ever a member of a street gang.  At least, not in the "West Side Story" sense of the term.  But he did "run" with a regular "pack" of other guys around his age... and I mean, they RAN.  They raced each other around the park, the beach, and down sidewalks.  They played stickball in the street, and sprinted with gusto from base to base between parked cars and fire hydrants.  They ran up and down the stairs inside apartment buildings when it was raining outside.  A lot of it was noisy and gritty, but virtually none of it was criminal or harmful.

Most of the time, anyway.

There was one day down in fabled Coney Island, when a friend of Dad's was fooling around with a broken glass bottle, and tossed it to him when Dad wasn't ready for it.  Not that anybody can ever be "ready" to catch a broken glass bottle, but kids goof off with all sorts of potentially dangerous objects without a thought to logic or care.  And some random ideas that, for the briefest of moments, may seem fun or winsome can in the next brief moment become neither.

This was one of those random ideas that should not have been exploited.  As the broken glass bottle, all jagged edges and surprisingly heavy, crested in the air, its trajectory turned to just the right angle.  It met my surprised father's forearm as he reached up instinctively to try and catch it without realizing what it was.  And yes, there was a lot of blood.  Everywhere.  And this didn't happen in front of their apartment building, or down in the avenue, but in Coney Island!  Miles away by subway.  

For the rest of his life, Dad sported a sizable scar on his left forearm from that harrowing day.

After I graduated from college and was working back in New York City, I learned from my aunt Helena, Dad's sister, that he'd had - of all things - a NICKNAME!  Yes, a bona-fide, urban gangster-esque nickname bestowed upon him by his neighborhood pals.  Remember, in the culture of the street, even if you're not part of a vicious criminal element, you don't really ever get to pick your own nickname.  The other kids give you your nickname, whether you like it or not.  And Dad didn't like his.  

It was... "Zeke".  

Actually, as nicknames go, "Zeke" isn't that bad, is it?  But like I said, it was my aunt who told me Dad had a nickname.  Dad had never said anything about it as my brother and I were growing up.  So during my next phone call with Dad, I asked him about Zeke, and while he wasn't upset about his sister spilling the beans, I never could get him to elaborate about it.

His street years were so far removed from the suburban, corporate lifestyle into which he'd matured that reliving memories from those days made him uncomfortable.  Those memories of growing up as a first-generation American, with an alcoholic father, were undoubtedly painful for him.  He went into the Army after high school not so much out of patriotic duty, but to try and put some literal and emotional mileage between his adult self and his childhood self.

I never met my paternal grandfather.  To this day, we know precious little about him.  We know he did manage to eke out something of a journalistic reputation writing for one of the local Brooklyn newspapers catering to the city's Finnish immigrant community, which was clustered around Sunset Park.  We've heard that some of his articles are today part of the archives at the New York Public Library featuring collections from the city's vast, diverse legacy of culture-specific journalism.  

Indeed, before the Internet and social media, printed newspapers were a key source of language-specific information for the many niche cultures and diasporas populating the city's ever-evolving immigrant communities.  Brooklyn's Finntown is considered to have been the largest group of Finnish immigrants in America.  And while my Dad had a number of Finnish friends during his youth, Brooklyn's spectacularly broad cultural milieu meant he also had Italian, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Irish, and Jewish friends. 

But getting back to newspapers.  As America's long-time journalism epicenter, New York City boasts a robust history with the medium, at one time having 15 dailies.  Back then, as throngs of office professionals and blue collar laborers descended into the subways to go home every weeknight, most of them would purchase the latest evening edition of their favorite newspaper to learn what had happened while they'd been at work.

Remember, they didn't have their personal social media accounts to visit during spare moments in their day!  Oh, how did they cope?

Along with several of his neighborhood pals, my father attended Manhattan's High School of Aviation Trades, which is now located in Queens.  Back then, aviation was still an emerging industry, and while Dad never went any further with an aviation career, he was pleased to see my brother do so.

Attending the Aviation Trades High School meant Dad and his friends were riding the subway to and from school every weekday, during both rush hours, like so many other commuters.  If I had been an urban teen, riding the subway to and from school like he did, I'd like to imagine myself using that time to study.  

My father, however, apparently preferred to use his subway commutes more for fun with his friends.

Well, "fun" as defined by unchaperoned adolescent juveniles, anyway.

Once, after I'd moved back to Texas from New York, in a rare - I mean, RARE - moment of fond recollection, he launched into a dinner table story of the times during their commute home from school when he and his fellow classmates would literally snatch newspapers from the clutches of unsuspecting subway riders.  

Yes, you read that correctly.

Back then, you see, the subways weren't air-conditioned, meaning that for much of the year, to circulate air, each subway car had windows that would be open.  They featured larger openings than the windows on today's trains, and were double-hung.  That meant they didn't have today's narrow partial-fold design, which likely was invented to thwart just the type of activity in which my father participated years ago.

As a subway train would be pulling into its next station, it would be slowing down while passing by rows and rows of people standing in tight rush-hour formation right along the edge of the platform.  And nearly all of those people would be holding an evening newspaper they'd just purchased.  Meaning each newspaper was completely hiding their face as they scanned headlines, using up every spare moment before the subway's doors opened for them to enter.

Dad even paused in mid-recollection to check with me:  "You know from living in New York, we fold our newspapers in halves length-wise, because when you're in the subway, space is at a premium."  I nodded in agreement.  It was a luxury for New Yorkers to be able to open up a fully-unfolded newspaper at home, where other people wouldn't be pressing against you in the crowded confines of a public bus or train.

Well, my quiet, honorable father and his high school friends would use that opportunity, riding inside their moving subway car, to lean through the open windows facing the platform, reach out, and literally grab newspapers from the hands of passengers waiting on the platform!  Because the papers were folded as I've described to you, they fit nicely back through the subway's windows!

The kids would then bring the paper into the subway car, unfold it, and yell out gleefully, "OK, I've got the Times here - who wants it?"

Or, "I've got the Herald-Tribune, or the Daily News" or whatever... and somebody in the car who didn't already have a paper would call out, "I'll take it", and my father and his friends would give the paper to that person.  Even the ethnic or foreign-language newspapers - usually somebody would take them.  Hey - they didn't have to pay for it.  Because the papers would be folded up, Dad and his friends usually couldn't tell which brand each was until after they'd hauled it back into the subway car.

At the next station, they'd repeat their exploits, and again at the next.  To be as adept as they were with their prank, they obviously must have done it during more than one subway ride.  I don't know what happened as the train would eventually become populated by people who'd had their newspapers snatched at prior stations.

As he described his exploits, my father was genuinely giggling - he hardly ever giggled! - at the recollection.  But then he caught sight of my mother at the other side of the dining table, and she was horrified!  Here he was, her kind and moral and loving husband, telling us about how he enthusiastically stole somebody else's property and gave it to yet another person on the subway!

He was the Robin Hood of subway newspaper readers!

I'm laughing out loud even as I type this recollection - both at the story Dad was telling, and the abruptness with which he cut it short after Mom started protesting!

It would be easy to cite an ethical argument against what he did, but I can guarantee you this:  If my brother or I had EVER done anything similar to what my Dad professed to have done on the subway, Dad himself would have been furious with us.

Oh, that Zeke.  He must have been a handful.

_____