The convict and the stained glass windows

Citation preview

THE CONVICT AND THE

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS

THE C O N V IC T and the

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS

Carnelo Soraci ILLUSTRATED

THE JOHN DAY C O M P A N Y

Newyork

© i$ 6 1

by Carmelo Soraci

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be repro­ duced in any form without permission. Published by The John Day Company, 61 West 45th Street, New York 36, N. Y., and on the same day in Canada by Longmans Green & Company, Toronto. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 61-8285

Illustrations follow page 128

M A N U F A C T U R E D IN THE U N IT E D STATES OF AMERICA

FOR MY M O T H E R A N D F A T H E R

THE THIEF STOLE SALVATION FROM THE CROSS AND MADE THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HIS PLUNDER. S t. C h r y so st o m “ o n t h e good t h ie f ”

Foreword

true understanding of a defendant standing in judg­ ment is probably the most difficult task confronting any sentencing judge. In support of his conclusions a judge is per­ mitted and obliged to seek out the truth from every available source at his command, in order to make the sentence fit the crime, and to give due regard to the possible rehabilitation of thedefendant. Upon such occasions inquiry is made of all per­ sons who have had some relationship with the conduct, de­ meanor, attitude and personality of a defendant. Inquiries and investigations are thus made with the assistance of an efficient Probation Department and from all available sources after a thorough examination of all the assembled information. It then becomes the duty of the Court to pronounce sentence. Carmelo Soraci, the author of this book, was returned be­ fore me for resentence as a multiple-felony offender after a previous felony sentence had been vacated, and consequently hisposition was changed from that of a fourth-felony offender to that of a third-felony offender. Just before that sentence ^ to take place, I received a communication from a Chap­ lain attached to the State Prison at Ossining, commonly known as Sing Sing, which informed me of certain extraor­ dinary efforts extended by this prisoner while an inmate at

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Sing Sing. It told, too, of his similar contributions to another prison. The information was so startling and provocative that I arranged a visit to Sing Sing, where I met the Warden and the Chaplains and from whom I ascertained the extent of Soraci’s contributions while he was incarcerated. I was amazed that this prisoner had, in cooperation with the Chaplain, the detention authorities, interested outside persons and other prisoners detained there, designed, created, and installed a number of stained glass chapel windows, the estimated value of which exceeded $75,000. Some were more than twenty feet in height and others consisted of more than six thousand pieces of glass colored by the prisoner. Never before in the history of that institution had a prisoner come forth with such talent and industry in the building of a glorious memorial to his reborn faith in God. These works of beauty will long endure and serve to rekindle the flickering ember of faith and hope in the hearts of many disconsolate and disturbed inmates. It has been said by a wise man in the past that service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy upon this earth, and it appeared to me upon observation that Soraci had rendered a service for which he deserved every credit I could tender him. Truly he had paid much more rent by his contribution than could have been demanded of him. Obviously taking advantage of his talents, his time, and the opportunity to create something beautiful from a dismal experience (for any jail experience is dismal at best), this prisoner served well with his every talent and deserved, in my humble judgment, great reward. St. Paul urged it perfecdy when he said: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need.” (Ephesians 4:28) A short time thereafter I resentenced Soraci, giving him his freedom as payment in full for his true confession, his declared design to serve humanity in a good way thereafter 8

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with every talent he possessed, and for the contribution he had made at the prisons. This book is one of the works he has performed since his release in an effort to show the way to those who might prefer, for selfish reasons, a career of crime. While the views of the author of this volume are not mine andunder no circumstances do I necessarily adopt any adher­ ence thereto, I am confident that they may, in time, serve as true guideposts for a younger generation. In the workaday world, religion is suppressed by so many people that little place is allowed for it in daily life. But I firmly believe that the example of a man displaying his religion under the most difficult conditions, as Soraci did, should be a hallmark in the lighted corridors of human understanding and the craving for eternal salvation. It is in this that I find true satisfaction in having recog­ nized clearly and concisely that faith is never lost even in the most despicable human. I humbly believe that there is nothing in life to which there is no witness and the case of Carmelo Soraci will long go down in the annals of justice as exempli­ fying that proposition. The Lord works in miracles, and the hands of this man applied so well have brought to him the opportunity yearned for during his adult life but never ap­ preciated. It is in the hope that he will adhere to his declared design in the future and, as in my prayers for him, that the Lord will keep him steadfast in that design that I append this Foreword to his book. E dw ard T

h o m pso n

Acting County Judge Queens County Court New York

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In the modern concept of penology, *whick stresses rehabili­ tation as well as custody, the part played by the chaplain has become increasingly important. He, by his personal contact and relationship with the inmate and by word and example, is able to inspire confidence and build up trust. In general, the purposes of a chaplain are threefold. First, he must inspire faith in God by making the inmate conscious of his religious needs; second, he should instill respect for authority by developing love for God and country; third, he must help him gain maturity and self-control by teaching him to stop and think before he speaks or acts. The chaplain achieves these purposes by satisfying the re­ ligious needs of his charges, taking an interest in the problems of the inmatey and through being a good counselor and show­ ing that he is interested in the general welfare of the inmatey thereby motivating him to a spiritual life in order that he may become a law-abiding member of society. / tried to do this with Carmelo Louis Soraci. F ath er G

eo r g e

M cK

Catholic Chaplain Sing Sing Prison Ossining, New York

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in n e y

If people would sincerely understand a man, his motives, his Mtudes, his talents, his errors of omission and commissionf md) best of all, his attainments and purposes for good, they must live with the man to really know him. Those years which Carmelo Soraci spent under my super­ vision, guidance, and counseling were years of pleasure for both of us, I am sure. Heart-to-heart talks while at work in the stained glass studio at Sing Sing Prison and in my office were sufficient to make me realize that some of his mistakes had been made because his family did not understand him and later even took advantage of his talents and his trust. Talent is a real gift, especially in the field of art, Carmelo showed this gift at an early agey but it took years of imprison­ ment under proper tutorship for him to become an expert in stained glass window design and construction. During that time he lived in the atmosphere of the labor he loved. We may be thankful for those men who combine justice •with understanding while administering the law in a strictly legal manner, noting the technicalities that involve persons •who err and seeing that justice is done. Such men were the Hon. Edward Thompson, judge in the County Court of Queens who resentenced Carmelo, and lawyer William J. Hiller, who argued for the setting aside of one of his con­ victions and is now Carmelo*s sponsor. Where there is a will, there is a way. CarmeWs years in prison were not wasted. Time was served but time also served him. Now, forgetting the things which are behind him, he can look forward with hope and renewed faith. CarmeWs success in finding himself is typical of a prisoner who really wants to go straight, for here in prison there are many ways of knowing help and encouragement if he wants them and does not forget what manner of man he is.

Carmelo Soraci*s is but one in a long list of stories I have known over a period of twenty years in which a worthy fel­ low has been persuaded to uabout face” and follow the light. R ev . L u th er K . H a n n u m , J r.

Protestant Chaplain Sing Sing Prison Ossining, N ew York

Sing Sing

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Chapter One

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k, I said to myself, what colossal gall. Your autobi­ ography! A panorama of the gutter. A catalogue of wretched humanity, juvenile delinquents, criminals, junkies, jailbirds, a world of walking foul balls. A smutty wil­ derness I once knew and loved. Sure, your childhood in the filthy, crowded sidewalks of New York’s East Side was a continuous war against privation, squalor, and the cops. So what? Now don’t dish out the failure’s excuse that environ­ ment, not getting the breaks, were the reasons why you turned out as you did. You can’t blame it on anybody or any­ thing else. You know that. Your conscience knows it. It was you yourself and the way you looked at things. Just like the juvenile delinquents today. Your attitude and actions bred by the gutter you looked up to as mother, friend and life. You were no good because you wanted to be no good; you were a wise guy because you thought you knew all the an­ swers. The credo of every criminal. It’s tough when a guy takes a long look at himself and doesn’t like what he sees. When I finally thought it all over, I realized that being a wise guy, a street punk with the philosophy of dog-eat-dog, !5

doesn’t pay off. I paid for my philosophy and I will keep on paying for it one way or another through most of my life. Years in prison are behind me. I’m glad that chunk of hell is over. No more hanging around street comers with a chip on my shoulder looking for trouble, hating every cop I saw, defying everybody and everything, just being a rebel. No more acting the neighborhood tough brat, looking to make an easy score. No more cells where you eat your heart out thinking of life outside, the good things you’re missing. On January 22, 1906, I entered the world. The midwife was pop-eyed. Rumor has it that she took one look at me, crossed herself, and gave up delivering babies. Well, maybe that’s a bum rap, and maybe it isn’t. The talk was that I came into the world bad with the look of the devil in my eyes, shaking hands with trouble, as Mom used to say, and I’m afraid I didn’t change very much for a good many years. I’m not going to preach. Neither do I intend to justify my criminal acts. I’m not going to dress up my story with fine phrases or invent situations to make it interesting. Fll relate it in hard, understandable words that will leave no doubt as to my meaning. Even as I write this it is difficult for me to remember how wild I used to be. How my soul smiled when I was in the street. How each house stoop, fire hydrant, each person, each store, was a challenge, an adventure. The way I was able to spot all kinds of characters. It’s like trying to remember some guy you used to know and have almost forgotten. The kid who fought and cursed against all discipline, the kid who pre­ ferred the street to his home, the pull of his punk friends rather than the love of his mother, father, sisters, and broth­ er; the kid who ran crazy over rooftops, refused to go to school, and indulged in all the rotten things that gutter rats thrive on. The problem kid who jumped on the back of de­ livery wagons and stole packages, who clipped anybody for 16

an easy buck, and who would rather write a rubber check thanwork for a living. Why did I write bum checks? What were the reasons be­ hindit? The records coldly state that one Carmelo Soraci had broken certain laws. It did not state nor did it interest itself with the reasons why he had committed these crimes. It did not bother to find out what were the influences which had formed the personality of one Carmelo Soraci, artist, stained glass designer, forger, habitual trouble finder. No one even attempted to explain this to his satisfaction. Sure, I, like other convicts, could blame the courts, society, family, friends, in­ stitutions, for my troubles, for my shattered dreams, but I’d still have to look one thing squarely in the face—blaming the other guy or blaming something else is only another form of self-pity. And inevitably the day arrived when I had to take inven­ tory. Why did I continue making mistakes, knowing that I would only go back to prison? Was it because I, like so many other repeaters, had an unconscious desire to return to prison? Why do men who say they hate doing time still seek escape in prison rather than contend with the problems of everyday life? Whatever the other reasons might be, I was emotionally akid and so I acted like one. There comes a time in every guy’s life when he finds his account overdrawn and he has to balance the books. He can’t run away from his conscience forever. I made up my mind I wasn’t going to let life wash its hands of me. I began to realize that no man likes to live with the thought that his life has been a failure. Fm sure also that any normal man would like to feel his time on earth was of some value to himself and to others. While in prison I took that inventory of myself, and when it was completed I ap­ proached my art with renewed vigor. I felt that by banging 17

away I’d make it. That my art and a new approach to life would some day win my freedom. And it did. In the beginning there was just my new faith in myself. Then Father Ambrose Hyland of Clinton Prison, Reverend Luther K. Hannum, and Father George McKenney of Sing Sing, the prison cons, junkies, stick-up artists, murderers, swindlers, blackmailers, were all with me. All confident that I had something on the ball. I drew. I sketched. I painted. I studied. I experimented. I worked in my cell every evening, and during the day, and eventually I designed and executed the stained glass windows of two prison chapels. The faith that freedom was in the palm of my hand, at the tips of my fingers, was enough to produce my zeal. For me nothing existed but my art and my freedom. I felt that if life was to have any meaning it could only be achieved through deep faith in myself. I was going to fight, live, succeed. No more dates with trouble. Twenty-one years in prison. I had been tagged by the law as an habitual. Elmira Reformatory, Sing Sing, Great Meadow, Clinton Prison, Greenhaven. I am a professional artist, stained glass designer, a forger, who has spent the greater portion of his adult life in five New York State prisons. Now that I am out of prison where on my last conviction I served thirteen years of a fifteen-years-to-life sentence, I want to tell you about it. Maybe you will know more about guys like me when I am through, and maybe I’ll know more about myself. A guy named Joe Wilson and I made the trip up the Hud­ son River, handcuffed together, on our way to Sing Sing. For me this was the fourth trip to prison, sentenced to fifteen 18

years to life as a fourth offender. Joe was a tall, skinny guy, far-sighted to the degree that his eyes squinted from the years hehadbeen without glasses. We sat and smoked and thought. I stared out the window. We passed hamlets, towns, stores, suburban homes. Cars rushed by. Depots. People. Life and all its accessories, a boy on his bicycle, a little old lady in a man’s frayed coat selling newspapers, a young housewife waving a “so long” to her commuter husband, a woman with aheavy shopping bag waiting for a red light to change, a tav­ ern, a church with a signboard reading “Pray With Us.” I would miss things I had ignored while surrounded by them. Freedom. Love and kindness. Good food. These were my thoughts. I realized how possible it was that my mind and eyes were feasting on all this for the last time, that maybe never again would I taste the good things of life. A momentary feeling of desperation hit me. I wanted to jump up, fight, lash out at my captors and run. I wanted freedomeven at the risk of a bullet in my back. The thought of doing another jolt, this one fifteen years to life, would make anyone irrational. Joe snapped me out of it by asking me for a match. I gave himone and we started talking. He was a “ junkie,” a dope addict, doing fifteen to thirty years for a series of holdups. Crime was the only way he could get the large sums he needed to feed his habit. “What started you?” I asked. “At first it was a joke, a lot of fun. Y ’know, you have to be a regular guy. A pal says, ‘C’mon, try it, just one. Pots good for kicks. It’s out of this world.’ So I wanted to be one of the gang, not a square. Sure, I figured I was strong, I could handle it, take it or leave it. And from that first puff, it was i9

only a short step to bigger kicks. You become one of the devil’s apostles. Brother, you’re hooked, you’re trapped. “ You know how it is. No kid wants to feel chicken. That’s important to a kid. He’s got to feel he’s a part of something. People just can’t get that into their heads. If parents would spend half the time trying to understand their growing kids that they spend buying a dress, playing cards, drinking, there would be less junkies, gangsters, criminals. You’ve been around and you know it’s true. A kid gets the idea that if he’s left out of something he’s nothing, just a meatball, a big cipher. He’s a square. So what happens? One kid tries to show another he’s got what it takes. Some kids do this by bulldoz­ ing dough from younger kids. Another kid tries to outdo him, like taking dough from grownups. So another shows he’s a big wheel by stealing a car. You get what I mean? “When I didn’t have a fix, I had to get it somewhere. A buck and a quarter an hour in a factory couldn’t support a habit like mine. So I stole. M y first job was a burglary. I broke into a candy store with a guy called Jerry. He was twenty and a wise punk who’d hustle anything anywhere to make an easy score. I was a dumb jerk who needed quick cash to feed the monkey on his back. I was the kind of slob guys like Jerry need to get by on. “ The burglary was Jerry’s idea. I’m not saying he forced me into it. I went with him knowing what I was doing. I just wanted quick dough. From burglaries I graduated to stickups. He got nabbed stealing a car and was sent to Elmira Re­ formatory. I went it alone. And here I am. A grade-A sucker.” As we smoked he told me how he committed his first solo stick-up. He looked for someone to help him pull a score. Someone to bolster up his courage. He lacked the guts to commit a heist on his own. He hung around bars, loitered in candy stores, hoping to find someone with more nerve than him­ self. 20

Hegot acquainted with a pusher at a bar. The pusher could seeJoe was in a bad way. He knew all the signs, all the antics of the monkey on a guy’s back. Joe pleaded with the pusher to trust him for a fix. The pusher laughed and told him that if he got a fix he’d be so happy walldng around the clouds he’d forget all about try­ ingto get the money to pay for it. Joe was sick. He needed a fix. He was getting desperate. Here was a pusher with a fix in his pocket and there was no way of getting it. He thought about mugging the pusher, do­ inganything, just to get the stuff. But that was no good. He’d never get away with it. The pusher had an idea what was on Joe’s mind. “Don’t get any dopey ideas, kid. I ain’t got a thing here. I keep the stuff nearby, not on me. Look, go out and pull a score. Grab yourself some green stuff and we’ll talk business.” “Right now I can’t. I’m too sick. Just give me a fix to steady myself and I’ll get me a score.” The pusher finally agreed. “ Okay, just a little fix. Get yourself together, but if you try to pull a fast one on me, you’ll get a going-over you’ll never forget. Get me, kid?” Joe got his fix. It wasn’t much, not enough to make him gay, but just enough to kill the shakes. He headed for Flushing Avenue. He walked several blocks, feeling everyone was watching him, knowing that he was looking to pull a heist. He sized up each store, acting as though he was searching for a house number. He could see into the stores. All he had to do was go in, pretend he wanted to buy something, then when the guy went to get it, pull the rod on him. Just like that. Simple. He looked up and down the street. No one was near. No one was paying him any attention. He saw a small grocery store and he studied it. Only an old guy behind the counter. This looked like a pushover. Yet he couldn’t get his feet to move into the store. He still could call it off. But soon he was

going to need a fix. The monkey’d be right back on his shoulders, sinking its teeth and claws into his flesh. No, he didn’t want the cold sweats and cramps that tore his guts out. Anything but that. That was too much for any guy to take. He walked into the store. He told himself if the old man resists he wouldn’t shoot. Just rough him up and scare the daylights out of him. He told the old man he wanted a pound of coffee. When the man turned to get it, Joe had the gun in his hand. At first the old man thought it was a joke. He told Joe to stop play­ ing Jesse James and go home and do his schoolwork. “Don’t get smart, Pop,” Joe said, “and you won’t get hurt.” “What do you want? I’ve got nothing.” “The cash in your register and in your pockets.” “ I don’t have anything but a couple of dollars. It’s not worth it, boy, it’s really not worth it.” “C’mon, Pop, don’t get me sore. Be nice and I’ll be nice.” The job netted Joe forty-five dollars. He hurried back to the pusher. He had to get his fix, a good one. He had to have it before he really got sick. When the pusher saw him, he smiled. “Got the cabbage, boy?” Joe threw the wad of bills on the bar. The pusher counted them. “Just enough for two decks.” “You’re screwy. I got enough for five decks.” “This is good stuff, boy. And good stuff costs dough. Take it or leave it.” “Make it four.” “Look, boy, I don’t run a bargain store. Now what’ll it be?” Joe knew he had to control himself. He needed a fix. He couldn’t afford trouble. Not now. “Okay, okay, give it to me.” Joe got his fix. 22

Three days later when he ran out of white stuff and tried topull another heist in a grocery store, a rookie cop nabbed himcoming out. We arrived at Sing Sing in the late afternoon, and a truck picked us up. At the prison we were marched into a large roomin the Administration Building and ordered to strip. The first and lasting impression one gets upon entering prisonis of orderliness and timed efficiency. The very air is filled with fear and terror. Perhaps this feeling is created be­ cause, upon stepping into prison, a man suddenly fully real­ izesthe deadly seriousness behind the judge’s words—“ I sen­ tence you to—” I was given a number. I was again robbed of my identity. My name was rubbed out. I was scared. Afraid to the core is how I felt. You never get used to it. Stem faces asked different questions. “Name? Age? Date? Married? Address? Nearest of kin? Ever been in trouble before? Oh, yeah! Back again, eh?” Always prying, forever opening the past. Always digging into a man’s soul, making much of his em­ barrassment. Always reminding him of his weakness. After I had been questioned, searched, and had showered, I was given a gray coat, a gray cap, gray pants, and a gray shirt, all stamped with my number. The uniform of my new gray life. This was Sing Sing. I was back in college. Elmira, where I had first served time so many years ago, was a prep school by comparison. A hard-faced guard asked me whether I wanted my be­ longings sent home or given to charity. Who cared what they did with my clothes? Send them home to remind every­ body of my existence? Give them to charity? Charity? What’s that? Where was charity during the de­ pression years when, as an ex-con, 1 sought relief from the 23

city, from churches, from private organizations? Where was charity when 1 explained to a well-fed clerk in the city relief office that 1 needed instant relief, a job, anything, so I, my father, and my younger brothers could eat, so we could pay the rent and not get thrown into the street? “ We'll investigate. You'll hear from us Meanwhile you wait. But hunger doesn't. Five days we wait. No investigator shows up. Then 1 re­ member a copybook truism . . . Charity begins at home. So, inspired by hunger, I write a bad check for $21 to buy food. Not the first Fd written, no. The third. And hooked for all three of them. Still, whose fault was it? Nobody's, really, but my own. I told the guard that since I didn’t know what charity was I wanted my clothes destroyed. He gave me a dirty look. “Don’t be a wise guy. It doesn’t pay off here. You ought to know that.” We were taken to the Old Cell Block, a huge bamlike build­ ing with long windows in the walls. In the center, reaching almost to the ceiling, stood a block of cells. Tier upon tier. A building inside a building. I was familiar with it all. The guard pointed to the second tier, known as “recep­ tion company.” “You’ll live there for the next two weeks.” He called out our serial numbers and gave us each a slip of paper on which a cell number was written. “Now get up to the second tier, find your cell, get into it, and no horsing around.” Up narrow flights of wooden steps. The galleries were cir­ cled by a wood walk about three feet wide. Thin iron stan­ chions along the outer edge of the walk served as a railing. Each cell had a number stenciled over its iron door. I looked at the numbers: 17, 18, 19, 20. . . . My home. My own particular vault. 24

Chapter Two

Acell is designed for thought. It is an incubator that hatches regrets, fears, loneliness, confusion. It makes you think of jus­ tice as you experienced it. It fills you with the question of right and wrong. It generates thoughts about society and its contradictions and fears. It makes you think. On the ride here the con I was handcuffed to had talked about his dope habit, how he had been forced to rob to feed his habit. Forced? What about me? I thought: I have no one to blame for my past. I certainly can’t blame my environ­ ment, my family, the law for it. M y environment didn’t in­ vent Carmelo Louis Soraci; my family didn’t map out a crim­ inal career for me. The law isn’t to blame. It just took care of mewhen I violated one of its rules. I was told I was antisocial, that I didn’t give a hoot about the law or society, despite my efforts at times to prove them wrong. And while I sat in darkness, scratching and thinking, I went back to the beginning of my memory and thought of how it all started. My mother was well-educated, came from a proud, well-to-do family living in Brooklyn. They disowned her when she married “that Sicilian,” as they referred to my 25

father. It happened Mom married Pop for love, and this was proved by the fact that Pop was poor, a mere tailor in a sweatshop, and a member of a Sicilian greenhorn family. Weren’t all Sicilians dirty, sneaky, and untrustworthy? Weren’t they all cutthroats? Weren’t they all members of the Mafia? There’s no doubt Mom loved Pop a great deal. To step down from comfortable living to the dirt and poverty of New York’s East Side, and to do it with a smile, took a lot of love. Mom was the boss of the family. She made the rules and when the rules needed enforcing, she had a way of doing it that left you floored. She tried to instil in me a respect for my fellow man and a love of God. The quickest way to get Mom on the warpath was to use a derogatory term in refer­ ence to a person’s race, creed or color. Her Catholic religion was a happy one. It had nothing to do with elaborate forms, systematic doctrines. It was life, every single moment of it, not just reserved for Sundays. She believed in God, but not in the stem, patriarchal God who demands that we spend our life trying to persuade Him to do the right thing for us through Whining prayers. To her all churches were alike—a place to pray and to meditate—and she would often go into the one closest to hand to communicate with God. She didn’t care whether it was Catholic or Protestant or Hebrew. Still, she never thought of herself as anything but a Catholic. She was just different from most in her feeling about a church. Our family lived on the second floor of a cold-water flat over a blacksmith shop on East Fourteenth Street near First Avenue on the Lower East Side of New York. In July and August the place was like an oven. During the winter, the four-room flat was heated by a coal stove in the kitchen. There were rat holes under the sink and behind the stove. No matter how many times Mom filled the holes with bro26

kenglass the rats chewed new holes. Many nights I’d see rats crawling over the sink and drainboard and sniffing around the floor. On one occasion a rat crawled onto my sister Ida while shewas sleeping and bit her on the shoulder. The four rooms of the flat ran from the front of the build­ ing, which overlooked Fourteenth Street, to the rear kitchen windowthat overlooked a rubbish-littered yard. The kitchen anddining room were combined, then came the room where Pop and Mom slept, the front room where my brother Bill and I had a bed, and a room for my sisters Beatrice and Ida. (Two more brothers were bom more than twenty years later.) The toilet for the two flats on the second floor was in the hall. It was filthy. All efforts on Mom’s part to keep it clean were useless. Our neighbors were careless how they used it and didn’t believe in flushing toilets. On Saturday nights we kids took a bath in the washtub in the kitchen. The Lower East Side was the center of the world for me and many others. It meant where the Italians lived and, to us kids the Italian people were the only people in the world. The East Side was a world where you could find anything. It was a way of life where it was natural for kids to have lice and for grownups to house them in the seams of their cloth­ ing. There was hardly a home where bedbugs didn’t take up residence in rugs, bedding, and overstuffed furniture. The pests were hunted, fought, exterminated. But to have them was no disgrace. People considered them a part of a poor man’s existence. It was nothing for a housewife to ask another what she did to get rid of bedbugs, a part of life where it was only natural for a kid to scratch his head. The East Side, where there were saloons, poolrooms, candy stores, pastry shops, churches, and stables. It was a place where you saw tough guys, sneak thieves, wise punks, priests, streetwalkers, and nuns. A neighborhood where every mar­ ried woman always seemed swollen with child and where every family always seemed to be burying somebody. The *7

East Side, where kids fought, stole, and looked for trouble all day long, where the hands, face, and clothing of the kids looked like the gutters they played in. A world where chil­ dren died young, everybody slept in his underwear, and par­ ents griped about money and the high cost of living. Even the girls were tough. They had to be. Between Fourteenth Street and Eighth Street, from Ave­ nue A to First Avenue, it was a tough neighborhood for a Jew to live in. Italian gangs would roam around looking for Jewish kids who lived on Second Avenue between Eighth and First Streets. As I look back now I realize what a hard time we gave these kids. The only time they had any rest was when the Irish and the Italians were battling each other. As a kid I acted like one possessed by the devil. It was like something was bottled up in me and wanted out. It was partly good but mostly bad. It seems everybody since I was bom was giving me another chance. The teacher, the principal, the tru­ ant officer, my friends, and many others because they all saw something good in me. And I let them all down. I wasn’t bad because my family neglected me or were poor. Lots of good people came from poor families, and my parents certainly didn’t fail me. Environment, I know, never made a man a crook or a woman a disgrace. Sure, I’ve heard men and women cry the blues that they never had a chance, en­ joyed no break in life, that their parents were poor, and a lot of other nonsense. These suckers don’t kid me. The answer is simple. These so-called smart cookies, including myself, just didn’t give themselves a break in life. I, like a lot of other kids in those days and the juvenile punks today, wanted to be a smart guy and nothing or nobody else made me that way. No kid could have had better parents than I did, and no kid ever got more love bestowed on him. The gutter only made me what I wanted to be. Even Mom and Pop couldn’t make me stay put or drag out the good they saw in me. A kid called Sal was the leader of our bunch. He was fif­ 28

teen, husky, with fiery black eyes and a fiery temper and quick fists. He’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down and he’d rather fight than eat. Without any question he was the best street fighter I ever knew. He was tough in capital let­ ters. When I look back to those days and compare the kids then with the present crop of punks we call juvenile delin­ quents, I’ve got to give Sal credit for one thing. He hated a guy who wouldn’t back up his mouth with his fists and who needed a weapon to show his toughness. I was happy Sal was the leader. Under Sal’s tutelage we did good at ripping out plumbing fromempty tenements. Sal knew a junkman who would buy all the plumbing swag we could carry to him. Sometimes we got tired of stealing lead pipes and brass faucets, so we’d add a little variety to our hoodlumism and wander through the Jewish section, especially Orchard Street, where both sides of the street were jammed with shops that sold everything from garlic to silk. People crowded the sidewalks so thick that wagons could hardly pass through. Orchard Street was a place where you got shoved around and cursed at in a dozen different languages. One evening we pushed through the crowd. Suddenly Sal stopped in front of a store that sold pickles, dried and pickled herrings, and what not. He said he suddenly had a desire for some dill pickles. He said he couldn’t walk another block without a nice juicy pickle. He told us kids to wait outside. Then he went into the store, found what he wanted, and dug his hand into a barrel of dill pickles. The Jewish owner saw Sal and started yelling “police.” Everybody in the store got excited in Yiddish. The owner kept calling “ police.” Sal got his pickle, pushed his way through the people until he got to the sidewalk. We kids were ready for anything. We were standing by a pyramid of salmon cans in front of the store. Men in the store started after Sal. We grabbed the salmon cans and began heaving 29

them at the onrushing men. One of the cans hit the owner of the store on the side of the head and he dropped like a ton of bricks. Then we heard police whistles at the comer. We dashed through the crowd, knocking over kids and scaring women. I knew we had knocked out the owner and it was fortunate he suffered no serious injury. It might have caused serious injury just because one guy wanted a dill pickle. We all thought it was one hell of a smart thing. A couple of days later we heard that a Jewish gang was coming for us. Somehow they got tipped off that Sal was the cause of the rumpus in the pickle store. Sal knew the Jew­ ish mob was planning to take us by surprise. Louie, and another kid, Red, and I took up battle stations on a roof near the comer, armed with a good supply of am­ munition in the form of bricks and pieces of iron—anything easy to throw or drop on the heads of our enemy. Also we were each equipped with bats in case we had to come down and join our pals in hand-to-hand battle. Sal and four other kids were at the end of the block, hidden in a hallway, and four other guys were at the far end, waiting in a basement. Word got around the block that a street fight was com­ ing off. Mothers kept their little kids off the street. Three nights passed. The Jewish boys didn’t show up. Sal could see the waiting was getting us jittery so he gave us a pep talk. On the fourth night about eight o’clock they showed up at the comer of First Avenue. They acted like they were sure of themselves and certain they were taking us by sur­ prise. But what they didn’t know was that we were ready to give them a first-class reception. They held a conference. I guess they were wondering why no people were on the street that was usually crowded with kids playing. They started advancing slowly down the block. Louie, Red, and I waited for the signal from Sal before we let loose with our bricks and iron. When they got near to 30

where we were stationed, Sal came out of the hallway. This wasthe signal and the three of us let fly our ammunition. M y brick sailed through the air and missed one boy by about a foot, and Louie flung one and it landed on the back of one of theguys. He went down, yelling his head off. The guys in the hallway and the basement came pouring outandthe battle started for good. I could see Sal swinging his fists. I wanted to get down there and mix it with them. But I knew Sal wanted us to rain down all the bricks and iron pipes we could get our hands on. So we started pitching like little demons, not giving a hoot if our missiles hit friend or foe. When we ran out of ammunition, the three of us hit for the street. When we got there the fight was all over. The other mob had beat it fast. A couple of cops came tearing down the street, blowing their whistles and swinging their clubs. Sal and the rest of us beat it around the comer. The next day we heard that four of the Jewish boys had to get stitches in their heads. One of our guys, a lrid called Jerry, got three stitches in the back of his ear. Sal had a black eyeandhe was as happy with it as a duck in water. Except for thisour gang did very well. We got word that the cops were looking for us. No matter what happened in the neighborhood the orders were to look for Sal and his gang. So Sal told us to take it easy for a couple

In our cheap and often dirty clothes all East Side kids looked alike and smelled like a roomful of wet dogs. Most every kid knew how to steal and fight, and walked around with a chip on his shoulder, trying to look like a wise guy. Wewere adept at rushing up to pushcarts and fruit stands and swiping what we could. 1learned a lot in the school of the street. One day a kid named Louie showed me how to make easy money. All we 3*

had to do was steal pennies and nickels off stacks of papers on newsstands. It made no difference if the newsie was blind or crippled. Our morals and ethical values were no higher than our imagination. We learned to be sneaky and fast and ready to beat it quick. At an early age I became a fast runner. It seemed that everything I ever did I had to run away from. I was always running. For fifty years I have been running. But my running never got me away from anything, especially from myself. Mostly I was running away from my real self— that part of me that loved art, color, graceful lines—beauty. As a kid I thought I had to be alert. I learned to think fast in my distorted way and beat the other kids to the pennies and nickels. I learned to keep my eyes open and watch everybody. The trouble was I never watched myself. It was also Louie who first gave me the idea of making money legitimately. He told me that among the orthodox Jews it was forbidden to light fires, even strike a match, on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Louie told me the Jews had to get a goy—a gentile—to light the fires in the stoves or they couldn’t cook, or heat the fiat. He said that on Second Street not one gentile could be found to do the job. Louie agreed to take one side of the street while I worked the other side. We decided not to tell anyone about our enterprise. So Louie and I became Second Street’s official fire lighters. In a couple of weeks we had the block under control. We were making thirty to fifty cents every Saturday, and that was a lot of dough for kids in those days. It was easy money, two cents a fire, and I was beginning to feel good because in a short time I’d have enough to buy a water-color set I had my eye on. One morning I was walking home with Louie after we had made our rounds of striking matches. My pal left me at the comer of Thirteenth Street and I headed for Fourteenth. Then I saw Blaclde, one of the leaders of our gang, standing in a doorway, throwing a ball against a door. 32

“Hi, Blackie,” I said.

He didn’t look at me when he said, “ I’m lookin’ for you.” “What about?” He dropped the ball into his coat pocket and came up to me. Without saying anything he grabbed my right arm and yankedit behind me, holding it in a twist. “Awright, smart guy, get in the doorway. I got a score to settlewith you.” My arm felt like it was coming off. I tried to kick him in the groin with my heel, but he was wise to that trick and tightened his grip. He shoved me in a doorway. “What’s the matter, Blackie, I ain’t done nothin’,” I said. He started to curse and swing at me. “So you and Louie been having a good time. Lightin’ the Jews’ fires, huh? Look, punk, where’s my split?” “You got me wrong, Blackie.” “I got you right.”

His left fist chopped at the back of my neck like an ax. I was crying and yelling without realizing it and cursing at the creep. The blows were making me dizzy. Just then I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It was aman. At first Blackie didn’t see him but I did. Then Blackie spotted him, dug his hands into my pockets, took out the money, and rushed out the door. Now I knew I would have no rest because Blackie knew Louie and I were making money on Saturdays. From then on we would have to pay Blackie off. With Blackie went the sixty-five cents I had saved to buy my first paint set. One summer night when I was thirteen, my pals, Louie, Red Zagarino, Blackie, Sal and I were sitting in Tony’s candy store. We schemed and plotted to relieve the Jewish shopowners of their money and talked about how we would spend it Everyone agreed he would right away buy flashy clothes 33

like the real toughs wore around Nick’s poolroom—all ex­ cept Louie and I. M y dream, still, was to buy paint, brushes, a lot of white paper. Louie said he wanted to go to college and become a lawyer. He was the smartest kid in the class. He’d steal, or play hooky, but he always managed to keep up with his class work. And he was the best crap shooter on the block, so we all respected him. Suddenly Blackie said, “Right now let’s forget all that. I got something on and it’s a sweet job.” Then Blackie gave us the dope about an old guy who made booze in his cellar and sold it to the bums on the Bowery. Blackie said the old man always went out in the evening to peddle his booze. The way he talked we were sure to make a good score. The old geezer kept a lot of dough stashed down in the cellar. The next evening we broke into his cellar and found the place crammed with five-gallon tins and a lot of empty whisky bottles. W e started throwing things around looking for the money. We looked everywhere, almost taking the place apart. But we couldn’t find a cent. Blackie was really sore. “ If we can’t find any dough, then let’s break up his lousy bottles,” he said. So we smashed all the bottles and poured the alcohol from the five-gallon tins all over the floor. We were just getting ready to leave when the old man walked in. He grabbed a hammer and came at us like a madman. Blackie managed to grab his arm and dig his right into the old man’s stomach. He sank to the floor, screaming that he was going to call the cops. Blackie kicked him in the side and said, “Nuts to you, you rat.” Had we known that the old man was under the protection of the neighborhood “ don,” boss of a Sicilian organization, we would never have gone to the cellar. To the Sicilian the 34

donwasthe big man—the boss. No Sicilian would dare oppose or show disrespect for the don. He was the law. W e kids didn’t know then anything about the eye-for-an-eye, toothfor-a-tooth philosophy of some of these Italian societies, but we did know enough to abide by any rules or decisions handeddown by them. The next day we were picked up by a couple of toughlooking characters who took us to a cafe where the don sat atatable, sipping red wine. He and the men sitting with him didn’t look unfriendly to us. A little smile played at the cor­ ners of his lips under his handle-bar mustache. The old man was there and the don asked him his story. He told how he hadfound us in the cellar when he returned from his booze deliveries. He said he found all his pint bottles smashed and over five hundred dollars’ worth of alcohol poured on the floor. Then he described how Blackie beat him up. The don asked us our story. Blackie spoke up. “We heard this guy had dough stashed in his cellar so we wantedto swipe it. We didn’t find a lousy cent. So we busted his botdes and dumped the alky all over the floor. Then he came back and caught us. He grabbed a hammer and made for us. I wasn’t going to let anybody beat me with a hammer soI jumped him. But what got me sore was when he said he’d tell the cops.” The don turned to the old man and said, “Was you going totellthelaw?” “I don’t know what I said,” the old man said. “ I was so mad I didn’t know what I was saying.” The don bawled the old man out for even mentioning cops, saying that no Italian goes to the law but to the don for justice. Then he turned on us and gave us a tongue-lashing that made us tremble. He finished with, “If you kids want to steal, steal from the Jews, the Irish, anybody but the Italians. I’m going to keep an 35

eye on you and if I find out any of you do anything against your own people it’ll go hard with the bunch of you. Now beat it.” That was one lecture I listened to. I was so scared of these men that had they told me to keep off the streets, be a good boy, go to school, I would have done so without hesitation. When a tough like the don or his men talked, you listened.

3*

Chapter Three

The only dissension between

Mom and Pop arose out of my desire to draw. Mom felt I should be encouraged and consid­ eredit wrong I should not be allowed to develop a gift God gave me. Besides, she maintained, it would keep me occupied and off the streets and away from bad companions. Pop, however, strenuously objected to my “wasting time drawing pictures.” Mom said he just couldn’t isolate a person from his talent, his desires, his dreams, merely by demanding he stop. She told Pop the spirit of art was in me. A person and histalents were inseparable. I know Pop’s hatred of art in any form stemmed from the fact that art had fared badly in the Soraci family. For gener­ ations there had always been an artist in the Soraci clan and each one had been a black sheep. Pop considered art a rich man’s plaything and a poor man’s excuse not to earn an hon­ est living. I was a tailor’s son, Pop pointed out, and some day I too would become a tailor. Tailoring was honest work, a breadwinning vocation for a poor man. To create clothes fromyards of cloth was an art, but at least it was an art that put bread on the table and clothes on one’s back. I suppose Pop thought his words would effect a transformation in my thinking, that it would erase from my heart the deep longing 37

I always felt to create with my hands. Being very young, I was unable to put into words what was in my heart. I was too young to tell him that a closed mind constipated progress. I’m not trying to give the impression that Pop was un­ naturally stem and selfish. He was the opposite. He seldom argued or got excited. Only once did he give me a beating. Except for his aversion to my interest in art, he gave his chil­ dren everything his meager wages could afford. Sometimes I think that perhaps Pop’s opinion about art and artists was formed by his estimate of his eldest brother, Frank. Uncle Frank was an artist. He was the most unusual and colorful man I ever knew and I loved him a great deal. He had been a famous portrait artist in Italy, but his fondness for the ladies kept him constantly in hot water. Endowed with a superabundance of erotic inclinations, he was forced to flee his beloved Italy when a hot-tempered Roman resented Uncle Frank’s attentions to his wife. He came to America, opened a studio in Greenwich Village that soon became the gathering place for every type of eccentric nature ever inflicted on mankind. I remember Uncle Frank coming to our tenement, singing “O Sole Mio” in his beautiful tenor voice as he climbed the dark, rickety stairs to our flat, and I remember him stepping into the kitchen and standing there almost as high as the ceil­ ing, pulling at his dark mustache and looking at all of us with his happy smile that came so easily to his handsome face. He was a bom diplomat, and undoubtedly the most demo­ cratic man anyone ever knew. He was a Republican, a Dem­ ocrat, a Socialist, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Hebrew, de­ pending on the person he was talking to at the time. A ladies’ man, Uncle Frank believed there was no such thing as an ugly woman. A ll the women hung around him. When asked why he never married, he’d declare he loved all women and since he couldn’t marry all of them, he had de­ cided to remain a bachelor. He was an inveterate fanny 38

pincher. He couldn’t resist pinching a well-developed female. Howmany times he got slapped, I don’t know. Pop and Uncle Frank argued frequently over Pop’s deter­ mination to suppress in me an interest in art. He told Pop that art was the poetry of the Italian heart. Words, he said, were no match for a man’s heart. Whenever Pop ridiculed artandextolled the merits of tailoring, Uncle Frank gave evi­ dence of his reaction by holding his nose. Then you’d see the storm-warning glint in his dark eyes. Suddenly the air became furious with Italian curses and the sizzling swish of hiscane as he called Pop a fool who should be nailed to the kitchendoor and skinned alive. I listened in fright and fascination. Uncle Frank would let loose a furious barrage in Italian, punctuating each sentence with a vicious slash of his cane which, had it landed, would have cracked the thickest skull. But Pop wasn’t buying any of Uncle Frank’s ideas. Pop didn’t realize drawing was my only release. Even then 1 knewthe great urge to express myself through art, to work outmany things within myself by drawing. When Uncle Frank finished one of his diatribes he gave me thefeeling that to become a tailor when I had artistic talent was disgraceful. The result was that Uncle Frank gave me art lessons at his studio twice a week for three years without Pop’s knowl­ edge. Under his expert tutelage, I learned to draw eyes, noses, mouths, and to put them together to make a face. As a lad of ten I can recall his asking Mom about my taste in literature. He showed his dissatisfaction with her reply by going out and buying a copy of Dante’s Inferno, several Italian novels, and a couple of art books. He brushed aside Mom’s protest that the books were too advanced for me. “You’re bringing up Carmelo saturated with trash,” he de­ clared. “Why, when I was his age I could quote line after linefrom Dante and—” 39

He rhapsodized about his boyhood ability. And he would go into a lengthy list of accomplishments of which I was no more capable then or now than I was of swimming the Eng­ lish Channel. But Mom’s protest meant nothing. Uncle Frank went right ahead and made me read aloud from Dante every time he came to the flat. I would stumble over words and read lines I did not understand. In the same fashion I was drilled in art before I had mastered addition; I was coached in symbolism in art before I reached the fourth grade; I learned how to shade in pencil and charcoal before I knew my own shoe size. I was a constant source of bewilderment to my teachers. I often knew things that they didn’t, but rarely anything that I should. I was designated the smartest dope attending public school. When I was fifteen Pop and Mom decided to get us kids away from the East Side; they wanted us to grow up away from the filth and badness of slum life. They were afraid of what I was turning into and that I would get into real trou­ ble. So Pop bought a small farm in Smithville South, now known as North Bellmore, Long Island. I believe Pop paid only $500 down, with small monthly payments, for a ten-acre farm and a seven-room house, a barn, chicken coop, pigsty, one horse, and two scrawny cows. We had only been in the house a few days when Pop in­ formed me that I was to feed and milk the two cows. I con­ sidered this a gigantic task since they were the first cows I had seen. I didn’t know how to get milk from a cow and it was a seven-day wonder when I learned that the large bag suspended between the cow’s rear legs was the receptacle from which I was to coax milk. A neighboring farmer gave me a few lessons in how to manipulate the udders. In a short time I became quite an expert milker. I was enrolled in the village school and from the very first day I got off on the wrong foot. I told the teacher I hated arithmetic and would not waste my time doing the problems. 40

The teacher glared at me and I soon discovered she had a cruel streak in her. She slapped the kids’ hands with a heavy ruler and often made the whole class stay after school writ­ ing, “I am bad and I should be punished,” even though only acouple of kids had done something wrong. Many times she kept me in and made me write one hundred times the words, “I amvery stupid.” Despite the sorry mess I made of my elementary schooling, I think I could have done better if I had put my heart into it. I always did something well if I cared a great deal about it. But if I didn’t, I was licked. And one of the reasons I didn’t care about schoolwork was due, I believe, to an idea I enter­ tainedthat such stuff robbed me of the time I could otherwise devote to drawing. Most of the kids in my class were a couple of years younger than I. Some of then> came to school in overalls and torn shirts or sweaters. Most of the boys needed haircuts and those who had their locks trimmed had it done at home. They would have looked better with their hair long. I thought theEast Side kids were bad! These country kids weren’t any better. In the class they were always throwing spitballs or causing some kind of mischief. There was never a dull mo­ ment. The teacher never knew what was going to happen fromone minute to the next. I was expelled so often for refusing to study, disobedience, playing truant, that I lost count. Toward the end of my school career, just before the teacher threw in the towel and gave up trying to teach me, I overheard her tell another teacher, “That Soraci boy is driving me crazy. I can’t under­ stand it. He draws so beautifully, but he has a black heart. Why God should give such a mischievous boy a fine talent when there are so many good children who deserve to be so blessed I simply don’t understand.” She was certain I was absolutely no good and capable of any mischief.

I convinced her I wasn’t interested in schoolwork. One day while the other pupils were doing long division I was cover­ ing my exercise paper with thumbnail sketches of the teacher and Pop’s two cows. On the bottom of the paper I scrawled the words “The cows look better than teacher.” When she pussyfooted up to my desk and saw what I had been doing, I thought I was in for one of her ruler-slapping jobs. Instead she just stared at the drawing. At the time I wondered why her anger subsided when she saw my conception of her sour face and read my uncomplimentary caption. It was beyond my youthful understanding. One look at the two cows would have convinced anyone my drawing was insulting, but I realize now that she must have seen the truth in the com­ parison. From that day on she hated me. She asked me difficult questions and gave me a zero when I stumbled over an an­ swer. She did everything she could to make me appear as a first-rate dunce in front of the other pupils. As a consequence I was always running away from school. It got so no one could drag me to the classroom. The princi­ pal threatened me with truancy school, but I yelled back at him that it couldn’t be any worse than his lousy school. Fi­ nally, for some reason I didn’t understand, the truant officer let me alone. I stopped going to school. Pop told me I was a bad son. He said all I could do was get into trouble and worry my parents. He went on to point out I was completely lacking in feeling or responsibility, and that the only solution to my being a flop as a boy was in work. In other words, he had been too easy with me. So he got me a job on a neighboring farm where I milked five cows each morning and evening, cleaned stables, shoveled cow and chicken manure, and did every dirty job the farmer could find for me to do. My pay was three dollars a week for ten hours a day, seven days a week. 4*

I was allowed to keep twenty-five cents a week, fifteen cents for the town’s weekly movie and a bag of candy. The rest of my wages Pop saved so I could accumulate enough money to buy a Boy Scout uniform and equipment. He be­ lieved every boy should be a Scout. He felt it was the best thing for a growing boy, and that it would teach him the qualities necessary for forming good character. I know other boys thought about scouting. But I was different. A ll I thought about, all that interested me, was drawing paper, howto get a paint set, and how good it would feel to turn a plainwhite sheet of paper into life with lines and color with aset of my own. One day in the village general store I saw a fine watercolor set displayed in the window. The price was $1.50. It seemed like a fabulous sum to me. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from that store window. At home at night I thought about the set and all the wonderful things I could do with it. Pictures alive with color passed through my mind. The more I thought about it the more determined I became toget the set. Every available chance I got I rushed off to the village and stood at the window and gazed at the set, dream­ ing about all the pictures I could make with it. A question framed itself—how could I get a dollar and fifty cents? If I saved the movie and candy money I received each week it would take me six weeks to have enough to buy it. And six weeks to me was a lifetime, the way I felt about that paint set. I schemed to get the money. I never gave another thought to a vital thing: What would I dowith the set when I got it? I couldn’t take it home. Where could I use it? Maybe in the bam, or the chicken coop or per­ haps the cellar. Some place where Pop wouldn’t catch me with it. But that really didn’t matter. W hat counted was how was I going to get the money to buy it?

f

43

I have always felt that set was a turning point in my life. I can trace so many things back to that day so long ago. At that time Mom had about a hundred Leghorn chickens. They were good layers and after the needs of the family were taken care of there was always a dozen or so Mom could sell to some customers she had in town. On this particular occasion she asked me to deliver some eggs to one of her customers in the village who lived a few doors away from the general store. I delivered the eggs. I received exacdy $1.50. The money jingled in my pocket. I was constandy aware of it. One dollar and fifty cents. The price of the paint set. I stopped at the store and looked at my prize. The more I feasted my eyes on it the more I jingled the coins in my pocket. Then suddenly I found myself in the store. It didn’t take long to exchange the dollar and fifty cents for the set. I walked out of the store hugging the paint set like a little girl with her first doll. All the armies in the world couldn’t keep me away from that small cardboard box of colors. I was so wrapped up in the colors and all the wonderful things I could do with it that I scarcely thought of what would happen when Pop found out what I had done. When I got home I hid the set in the cellar and told Mom that the lady would pay me for the eggs the next time she saw me. That night in the darkness of my bedroom I felt lousy that I had robbed Mom. I felt that I couldn’t even tell the priest at confession. Two days later I was so engrossed dabbing with my water colors that I didn’t hear Pop coming down the stairs. He found me painting a landscape. He picked up the set and asked me where I got it. I said nothing. “ Carmelo, I asked you where you got this paint set?” I still said nothing. 44

Pop put the set on the workbench and began to take off his belt. “I want you to answer me when I talk to you. Where did you get this paint set?” “I can’t tell you.” “Why not?” “ ’Cause I can’t.”

I could see Pop was getting his temper up. “ Didn’t I tell you over and over I don’t want you drawing and painting? You just don’t listen, do you? Now, are you going to tell me where you got this paint set?” “I bought it.” “Who gave you the money?” “Nobody.” “Then where did you get it?” I said nothing for a moment, then I said, “ Mrs. Carbone paidme a dollar and a half for eggs so I took it and bought the set.” “Then you stole the money.” I knew it was useless fabricating a story so I told him the truth. Pop rarely got angry. But when he heard I had stolen Mom’s egg money, he lost his temper and gave me the only whipping I ever got from him. The paint set was destroyed. Several years later, while we were still living on the Island, I wanted another paint set. I had never worked in oils and I wanted to try it. I didn’t have a job, so again money was the problem. It was 1926, and I was almost twenty-one. I had long since been thrown out of school, and I passed the time drawing, loafing, dodging work. But I wanted the set badly. The price was $21. This time it wasn’t Mom’s egg money. Instead I wrote a phoney check for the exact amount. I never had a chance to use it. It was still wrapped and in 45

my bedroom closet when the detectives came for me three days later. They came for me shortly after Pop left for work. I was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast when I heard the knock on the front door. Then I saw Mom come into the kitchen followed by two men. Before I really had a chance to ask what was wrong, they had the cuffs on my wrists. Mom just stood there, tears in her eyes. They had told her what I had done. She looked small and frightened and I couldn’t go to her. One of the cops, a big fat guy, told her she was wast­ ing her tears. “These bad kids have got to learn the hard way,” he said. “Don’t waste your tears.” I lowered my head. When they got me to the station house they took me be­ fore the captain who told me to empty my pockets. After I took out my fountain pen, a pencil, some change, he began asking me a lot of questions. Name, date, birth, occupation, address. The fat cop stood behind him, looking from me to the captain’s arrest form, then back at me again. When the captain said he was finished, the detective led me to the lockup in the rear of the building. I was put in a single cell adjoining a larger cage where about twenty men were confined. They were the drunks, vagrants, reckless drivers. It seems that the single cells were reserved for felony cases. The stink in the place was nauseating. It was a blend of odors consisting of stale beer, unwashed bodies, urine, disin­ fectant and stale food. I went to the bunk, stretched out, and stared at the ceiling a long time. About four-thirty the “ screw,” the prisoners’ name for guards and keepers, brought my supper. I couldn’t eat the stuff they called stew. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t. I was fright­ ened by everything around me. This was my first night in jail and I never thought I’d live through it. 46

The next morning I was taken from my cell and escorted into the detectives’ room. The same fat detective told me to sit down. He had a big smile on his face. He put his hand on my knee and talked inalow friendly voice. “Look, Carlo, you’re a young man, a good boy, and not likethe criminals we usually get in here. I don’t want to hurt you. You know, I’ve got a boy almost your age.” I looked at this fat man before me. He was a big hulk with ared face. He looked like a soft-hearted man. His soft voice went on. “ I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You tell me all about the checks you have forged. I know the Judge andthe district attorney very well. I can get you a break. It’s upto you, Carlo.” I told him the only check I had written was the one I had forged to buy the paint set. I admitted I knew it was wrong andthat I was sorry. I tried to explain to him I did it just to get the set and not because I wanted money. When I got through he opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. He studied it and frowned. Suddenly he whacked me across the face so hard that I fell sideways off the chair. He was standing over me before I got to my knees. He pulled me to my feet and held me by the front of my shirt and again slapped me with his hamlike hand. Gone was his fatherly attitude. He became a red-faced monster that blew its foul breath in my face. He was actually grinning as he slapped me over and over. My head began to spin and everything went black. When I came to there were three detectives in the room. They started shooting questions to me and taking turns slap­ pingme. “How many checks did you cash? Who is your partner? Who gave you the blank checks? There’s been a lot of bad checks passed in the last month and we think you know some47

thing about them. Are you going to talk or do we get rough and knock the truth out of you?” Over and over again. I was against the desk, against the wall, shoved here and there by one or the other of the dicks. I don’t know how long the session went on. I passed out a couple of times. I couldn’t forget the pain in my body no mat­ ter how hard I tried to ignore it. It was like every tendon, every nerve, was on fire. It was like my joints were all out of place. At first I thought the wetness on my chin was spit but when I touched it and looked at my finger I saw it was blood. When the fat dick drove his big fist into the pit of my stomach I was barely able to open my mouth to talk. I finally got the words out. “ I’ll tell you everything.” I would have promised anything. I would have done any­ thing. I think I would have signed a confession to murder. One of the dicks handed me a cigarette and a glass of water. The fat one stood in front of me with a phoney smile on his face. These men were worse than I. They wanted me to admit to things I hadn’t done and they knew it. They would do any­ thing just to clear up their books. They showed me a typed confession. I read words that I never said, accusing me of things I hadn’t done. I was tired. Just sign the dotted line. I signed. And so a long series of prison experiences began. I went through police line-ups like a guy in a prolonged fog. Every­ thing they told me I did. I got in line with others on a stage where I stood blinking at the audience through the blinding lights. I answered questions that were thrown at me. I was photographed and fingerprinted. I went through it all like a guy in a dream. I was sent to County Jail. On the tier there were about 48

twenty men. About six-thirty each morning a bell rang to get usout of bed. There was only one bed in each cell. The doors were unlocked and we ate breakfast on the tier and then sat aroundand waited for lunch. We told our stories or listened to other guys tell their troubles. They were heist men, prowlers, hot-car bandits, pimps. There were guys who were scared and there were guys who just didn’t care. A burglar who had spent twenty of his forty years in prison told me I would get a break. “This is your first rap,” he said. “You got no record. It’s only a small check. You’ll get probation. And kid, if you get out, take it easy. Believe me, it ain’t worth it. Look, crime only pays the lawyers.” Another guy who bragged he had pulled more burglaries during one year than anyone ever had before said, “ Don’t believe him. They’re gonna throw the book at you.” When he saw the look on my face, he grinned. I was worried. I didn’t know what to make of it. I tried to bury myself in some old library books available to us. I tried to talk with other guys. But it was no good. I couldn’t erase the fear in my mind. Twice a week the prisoners held “kangaroo court,” and tried each new man on a charge of “trespassing on the tier.” The oldest man on the tier was the “ judge” and the next old­ est was the “district attorney.” The defendant was allowed topick an “attorney” from the rest of the men to defend him. He could either take a plea and throw himself on the mercy of the court or stand trial by jury. And no kangaroo court jury would ever think of returning a verdict of not guilty. When I appeared before the kangaroo court the “ judge” was a man of fifty who was in on a charge of indecent ex­ posure. He had a distorted sense of humor and his favorite punishment was to have the victim wash out every cell on the tier. His lightest sentence, if the accused had money, was the 49

payment of a pack of cigarettes for every prisoner on the tier. The fellow ahead of me, a heavy-set farm boy, was sen­ tenced to roll a pencil with his nose along the floor of the tier. It so happened the boy had a pug nose that was almost flush with his face and in order to roll the pencil he had to rub his face along the floor. I felt sorry for him because he was too stupid to protest. The other guys roared with laughter each time his pug nose rode up over the pencil. The boy’s face was red and wet with perspiration. The “judge” laughed and the idiots around him joined in. Somehow word got around that I was an artist. The “judge” knew I didn’t like him. He’d make fun of my looks and my speech and say that every artist he knew was either a junky or a pervert. I resented his hints. He made constant reference to the feminine characteristics of most artists. It got so bad I forgot my troubles. I knew sooner or later I would tangle with him. When my turn came to stand trial I was found guilty and the “ judge” sentenced me to make a portrait of each man on* the tier. I refused and he planted himself in front of me, arms akimbo. “ So you’re a smart guy, too,” he said. “Well, you’ll either do the pictures or clean out every toilet bowl on the gallery for the rest of the week.” I said nothing. I cleaned the bowls. The night before I went to County Court for a hearing I washed my underwear and shirt and spread it soapy wet across the steel wall of the cell, as I had seen others do. By doing this in a certain way, it dried stiff against the wall. In the morning you pulled it off the wall, ironed and starched as stiff as a board. When I got up in the morning I found my shirt smeared with dirt. Only one man could have been responsible for it. I told the “ judge” what I thought of him. I was immediately knocked down. 50

I went to court in a borrowed shirt. There I couldn’t think straight because I was so filled with a fighting rage. In court I took a plea to forgery in the second degree, hop­ ingthat by doing so I would be placed on probation. When I returned to the jail the “judge” came up to me and started to kid me. He aped my voice and knelt on one knee. “Please, your honor, give me a break. I’ve been a very, very bad boy but I promise you I’ll never write another phoney check.” The other men laughed. He got up and told everyone he’d make sure I made their pictures before another week passed. I talked about my anger to the burglar, who tried to cheer me up. “Look, kid,” he said, “let me tip you off. I’ve known a lot of guys like the ‘judge.’ There’s only one way to handle them. Fight back. Show him you ain’t scared. When they see you will take what they dish out, they’ll keep making a chump out of you.” The next morning at breakfast the “ judge” started insult­ ingme again. I was shaking with anger. Before I realized what I was doing I was out of the chair, digging a right into the pit of his stomach. A look of puzzled surprise and pain came over his face. I started to swing again and before the blow landed, he brought up a blow from nowhere. I went down. I got to my knees and a blow hit me on the side of the head. When I woke up I was on my cot and the burglar was sprinkling water on my face. Fromthat day until I was sentenced I had no further trouble with the “judge.” Later I was sentenced to Elmira Reformatory for an in­ definite term for forgery. It turned out to be fifteen months. For the next thirty years or so I was in and out of prison.

5*

Chapter Four

I came out of Elmira I was not as good a man as when I entered it. I left there ripe for anything. And there were many others like me. What was this hell hole like? What was there about this cesspool that made a man hate authority, cops, law, even God? I learned to hate there. I knew that Vincent “Mad-Dog” Coll increased his hate there, and that Elmira helped to make him worse than before he was sent there. I know because I knew Coll during the time he was in the “El.” He was a mixed-up guy, and Elmira helped to mix him up a great deal more. I remember the first day I was in Elmira. It was 1926. It was a long, lonely ride from Mineola, Long Island, where I had been sentenced for forgery, to Elmira where I was to serve an indeterminate sentence. At the station we were met by two guards who hustled us into a model T Ford parked at the station. It was raining and the visibility was poor. The hand-operated windshield wipers clicked against the wet glass.

W

h en

5*

The guard at the wheel swore and drove toward the re­ formatory. A line of blurred figures with heads bowed as they plodded against the wind-driven rain were on the road ahead of us. They carried shovels on their shoulders and were dressed in gray uniforms. They were inmates of the reforma­ tory. “Lousy bums,” the driver said. I turned my head as we passed them and looked out the rear window, squinting as I peered into the heavy rain. The convicts looked like ghosts, misty gray, heads down, their feet shuffling along the muddy road. “Workin’ the switch gang,” said the driver. “Now that’s a good gang to put these new guys on.” He turned his head andglared at the two of us. “ How’d you like that, boys?” We said nothing. The guards laughed. “Hey, you,” said the guard, talking to my companion. “How’d you like to work shovelin’ coal, lifting all kinds of heavy crap. How’d you like it, huh?” “I wouldn’t, sir.” He looked at me. “How about you?” I said nothing. “The silent kind,” he said. “But we’ll take care of that. Won’t we, Joe?” “You bet,” the other guard said. They laughed. But it was without humor. The car climbed a small hill. I could see ahead the blurred buildings that looked like a gigantic pile of rocks. A few minutes later the car stopped beside a red brick build­ ing and we got out. My companion and I waddled beside the guards, leg irons clanging noisily. The guard opened a door andwe followed him into a brightly lit room. Two men were inthe room. One of them was working his jaws over a wad of tobacco and every time he opened his mouth he showed broken, widely spaced yellow tusks. 53

“ New candidates, huh?” he said, showing his discolored fangs. “Yup. I’ve got a good one, too, Stevie,” said the guard, in­ dicating me. “ He don’t like to answer questions.” Stevie grinned a yellow smile. He rolled his cud to the other side of his mouth and looked at me. “We like that kind here.” “ I’ll bet he’s a real smart one.” “ I kin see by his face. There’s a lot like that here. But they soon get over it in here. Don’t they, Joe? Where’s he from?” “New York.” “ One of those wise city jerks, huh? Yeah, I’ll bet he’s real tough.” The guard walked over and unlocked the cuffs and leg irons. M y wrists and ankles were sore where the irons had rubbed against them. I was watching the guard. He had a grin on his face. He stared at me. The others in the room were just watching, like they knew what was coming. “ You know, I’ve got something to take care of,” he said. I had no idea what was going to happen. I stood there be­ side my companion. Then before I realized it, a fist struck me flush in the mouth. Another blow sank into the pit of my stomach. The next thing I knew I was on the floor, my face pressed against the concrete, my mouth filled with blood. A foot kicked me in the side. I was picked up and knocked down again. It was a nightmare. I whimpered. I groaned. I crawled and cried, the tears mixing with the blood on my face. I had never felt so bewildered in my life. Never had I been so alone. What had I done to deserve this kicking around? Did the judge put this on my commitment papers? Was this what the public wanted because I had forged a check for twentyone dollars? Is this redemption? Was this what they call re­ habilitation? 54

A shoe poked me in the ribs. “ Get on your feet, you city jerk. C’mon, get on your feet and out of your clothes. I ain’t got all day.” Get up, Carmelo, get up before they kick your head in. On your feet before they kill you. Take off your clothes. Hide the shame that you feel, the shame a man feels when he’s whipped before others. Hide your fears and your emo­ tions. I got up. I took off my clothes. I was given an ice-cold shower in a cold room. They threw a coarse striped shirt, gray pants, high shoes, a gray coat, on thefloor and told me to get dressed. My companion looked at meandI saw he had pity, fear, on his face. Just like me he was ascared guy. We put on our clothes and followed the guard. We stopped infront of a desk in the cell block known as South El. A guard was sitting behind a high desk. He glared at me. He looked at me and saw my bruised face and grinned. “What’s your name?” he said, looking down at a paper. “Carmelo Soraci.” “Oh, another dago,” said the guard. “Say that again?” the other guard said. “Carmelo Soraci.” The guard grinned. The one who had kicked me around cocked his head to one side and said, “Looks like you ain’t learned your lesson yet. Now tell the officer your name?” Suddenly I knew what I had done wrong. Don’t forget the “sir” Learn your lesson. Don’t you know that right now this manis God. Say “sir.” I said, “Carmelo Soraci, sir.” The guard behind the desk grinned. He leaned over the desk toward me. “You’re a smart wop. And remember this, wop, this is a reformatory. We got rules here and from what I can see you’re just like the rest of those New York punks, 55

you ain’t going to like the rules. Well, that’s going to be just too bad. Bad for you ’cause we intend to have them obeyed or you’ll get your tail kicked in.” He ended his speech with a resounding slap on my face. This was it. The notorious EL This was where fear and hate and brutality were manufactured. These were their prod­ ucts. This was the education they gave you to prepare you to go back into society. Fear was their control over you. They assigned me to a cell. It was designed solely to inspire fear and loneliness. A narrow cell with an iron slop bucket, a straw pallet, and one thin blanket. Nothing else. No smoking, no newspapers, no magazines, no books al­ lowed, except the few classics they had in the library which half the reformatory population couldn’t understand. Just a Bible in your cell and even a minister could get tired of read­ ing that all evening; every evening, day after day for months. It was dark in the cell. I didn’t bother to turn on the tiny bulb. There was nothing I wanted to see. My face and body ached too much for me to care about anything. I lay on the cot and stared into black space and I could hear whispers. They were around me. Coming from other cells. “ Two new guys came in today.” “ I don’t know where they’re from.” “Yeh, they’re in college now.” I heard the whispers. It was like the buzzing of flies, fright­ ened flies afraid to buzz. This was the El, and I was lonely. It was a long first night. The first thirty days dragged by. I began to have contact with my brother haters. And even though I was one of them, I was still alone. The officials didn’t give us much time to worry about our­ selves. They had us on the move all the time. When they 5