13,206. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,084

RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,084

(the insides of something)

One time, long ago, I watched

two guys fighting it out on the

streets of New York. This wasn't

any genteel fight, mind you;

these two guys were right out

of some Mob movie, pounding,

slashing, cutting. A real duo of

pure punishment, of which I

knew neither the guys nor any

of the issues. There was, as I

found out, always a certain

protocol in NYC for these types

of imbroglios. It wasn't like the

kid-gangs, Sharks and Jets and

all that choreographed dance

and fight gibberish of, say, a

scene out of West Side Story.

This was real, and legal, tender.

It was usually about money; who

gets what, and by percentage and

by how. Many times it was racial

too, not in the sense of black vs.

white, but more in the sense of

tribal animosities, Irish among

the Irish (plentiful, way, along the

westside docks). There were always

Italians, and Jews and Poles too, but

each of the tribal things tended to

bash each other  -  it was only when

that over-reached, to the point of

a Wop bashing, say, a Mick, to use

raw terminology, that the internecine

aspect of the warfare then signified

big-time upheaval. Need I also add

the two other contributors to these

just causes. Alcohol. And Women.

-

I'll spend an old-style, sexist, moment

here  -  Devil take the hindmost (joke

there?)  -  extolling the highpoints of

Womanhood. It's often worth the fight.

In the 1967 sense of old, Irish NYC,

I spent a lot of time along the W30'and

W40's, where there were amazing

level of Irish hoodlum interaction.

Amongst each other  -  they all, in

consort, worked and dealt  -  and, more

importantly, amongst the highly

detailed and specific means of

covering up, concealing, or hiding

out, a criminal  -  of the same blood,

freshly involved in some near dastardly

heist or fight. The goods were most

often still hot; the hijacked truck, say,

emptied and left pitifully along some

nasty dock, wharf, or siding. Oftentimes

those hulks of abandoned trucks, within

a day or two, became prostitutional

living rooms, open  for business. An

always amazing scene and transformation.

I seldom saw police (mostly Irish in

any case) closing in on an investigation;

things just kind of stayed where they'd

ended up, and rotted from that point

out. There have been instances, and

even books and articles written, of

great capers which the perpetrators of

went un-apprehended and were

kept in a suspended safety-zones

deep within the tenements and the

courtyards of those confined areas.

-

Anyway, these two guys were 

pounding with intensity, one into 

the other, so hard that I truly thought

one or the other's jaw would pop off.

The 'protocol' I mentioned before has

to do with  a form of circling. The

challenge is met, the circle is formed,

and mostly the issue at hand is never

disclosed  -  although others of those

watching may well be in on the issue:

Which could be crime, murder, wife,

sister, money, and even food. But which

mostly concerned a form of organized

crime held deep within the confines

of the neighborhood. Many a man

walked with the scars of such trial.

-

Television and movies can always

keep one caught up with the 'quick

slice,' the dart and stab, but these

fights were nothing like that. Blood

and exhaustion were mostly the

referees. And in case of a dire and

seemingly final KO, any sign of later
movement was welcome. Face it,
 'Death' was never really intended. Dock

and waterfront crime was always weird

to me  - things out in the open, and

taken, or purloined, with some secret

intent to return 'later' and get the

goods, were always pretty obvious.

But the trick was to keep one's own

mouth shut  -  the less said about the

more known, the better. My own

father, and other 'kin,' used to come

home talking about whatever 'fell

off the truck,'  -  a simple occurrence

but one fraught with peril. Before the

forms of sealed freight and containerized

shipping, with which things of today

are done on massive scale, in 1967 it

was still possible for single items,

open and obvious, to be listed for

(what was called) 'shrink.' Shrink

was the term used for when 80

Hitachi TV's are loaded, in Korea

or Japan, but the final lading reads 

73. Numbers that no longer matched,

too many hands on the cargo, etc. It

was all somehow 'built in' to the

final price, etc. There was always

going to be loss, but the sorts of

things the loss was on were usually

so dumb that I'd wonder why in the

world anyone would risk life or

limb; for a color TV?

-

Lots of life-lessons, always there,

for a rube like me. Later on, yes, it

all got much more serious  -  between

serious pharmaceuticals, drugs, jewelry,

(all this before tech and computers and 

phones, etc.), and, lest we forget,

methadone, freely dispensed from

medical-clinic Methadone boats at

wharfside, to placate both the 'city'

itself, and the addict. How weird

was all that, I never understood; in

fact, to me it all seemed derelict and

somehow incorrect, as if to be named

Method One, instead of Methadone.

By 1970, '71, already things had grown

way too outlandish, and were far and

away on their path to greater glories.

Called the ruination of New York City.