The Hawthorne Circle

By Martin Kleinman

May 30, 2018

It took the thought of cold Michelob on tap, poured into iced pilsner glasses, to get our dads out of their aluminum folding chairs and into the sun-baked Olds. It was hot and humid in the Bronx that Memorial Day, 1961.

Over the two-inch speaker of a coral, Realtone transistor radio, our dads listened to the first game of the Yankees double-header. “C’mon down to the Stadium,” Mel Allen, the Voice of the New York Yankees, drawled in a lazy Birmingham way, “there’s plenny a good seats left. C’mon down and make the three-ring sahn…for Ballantine.”

“Wanna go?” said my dad, Big Mort.

“Nah,” answered Willie the Cop.

“Let’s do something,” my friend, Barb, said to her Dad, Charley Cohen. “C’mon, Da-aad!” she whined, tugging at his cranberry Banlon shirt.

“Yeah,” Billy said, taking his cue from Barb and tentatively tapping on his Dad’s NYPD V-neck white cotton tee. Tentatively, because Willie the Cop was a vial of nitroglycerine on two legs. Just this spring, while fishing the West Branch, up at Purdy’s, Willie cracked Billy across the mouth so hard that he loosened an incisor and then pummeled him, in front of us all, just because Billy tangled his line.

“Can we go somewhere, Dad?” I asked, completing the three-kid circuit. Big Mort pretended not to notice. “Dad?”

“Talkin’ to me?” Mort turned, snapping off the radio’s volume control. “Wha?”

“Let’s go somewhere, ok? It’s so hot.”

Big Mort carefully rose from his folding chair. Cracking noises came from his knees and back, like the sound of snapping kindling. Barb, Billy and I all looked at each other and raised our eyebrows at the orthopedic cacophony as Big Mort slowly unfurled his six foot, eight inch frame.

“What, the hell, are you looking at?” Willie said to Billy, as he would talk to a skell, cuffing him about the head. “Huh? Making faces? At what? Have some respect.”

A tear welled up in Billy’s eye and he was about to blubber.

“Just cut the crap,” Willie said, as the three men stalked off to Big Mort’s car.

“Where are we going? Where are we going?” Barb asked me. I shrugged.

“I dunno. Hey Billy,” I asked, “where are we going?”

Billy shrugged. “Dad?” he asked, cautiously.

“What now, dammit?”

“Where are we going?”

Charley, Willie and Big Mort replied as one: “The Hawthorne Circle.”

Barb and I smiled goofy-toothed, little kid smiles.

The guys took Mort’s Olds 88, rather than Willie’s Chevy, because it was a boat, big enough to easily seat us all. We kids liked it because it had an AM radio with a bass boost control that made even the creaky Farfisa organs used in Top 40 AM hits like Wooly Bully sound like it was coming right out of the juke box in Pizza Haven.

The guys piled into the front, Charley in the middle of the bench seat, so Willie could smoke a White Owl and hold it with his right arm out the window, as they drove. In the back, we sat behind our dads, which put Barb in-between us boys.

In minutes, we were out of the neighborhood and lumbering down the steep Kingsbridge Road hill, headed towards the Deegan Expressway. Dad deftly avoided getting the big Firestone whitewalls caught in the exposed trolley tracks on the cobblestoned street.

Big Mort turned right on Bailey Avenue, past Mike Monsey’s Texaco station, and eased the Olds onto the Deegan just north of 230th Street. Big Mort punched the throttle and the ribbon speedometer swooped into the red zone.

It was cooler in the car now, out on the open road, as the softly-sprung 88 hurtled numbly North like a tuna on novocaine.

“I’m gonna have a hot dog,” Billy said, giggling with anticipation.

“I’m gonna have one too!” I said. “And French fries…and a chocolate cone!”

“Me three!” shouted Barb, giddy. “And a root beer!”

“I’m gonna have a Michelob!” Willie sing-songed, mocking our glee. “Maybe two!!!!”

“Oooohhhh…..” Charlie panted, in earnestness. “Michelob….”

Big Mort put the radio on, and flicked the fadar switch volume to the back seat speaker, so us kids could hear it over the drone of the wind. Out boomed WMCA and the Ed Baer Affair, right in mid-chorus of Lonnie Donnegan’s ’59 hit, “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor On the Bed Post Overnight.”

Back then, the Hawthorne Circle area in northern Westchester, which included the Kensico and surrounding branches of the reservoir system — was renowned by Bronx guys as a decent place to fish for bass and, later, to rest at a back-road stand for grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, soft ice cream and cold beer on tap, including Michelob, about the best you could readily get in those pre-imported beer, Hawthorne Circle, days.
***

“Hmmmm, smell those pines,” Charlie said, stretching his sweat-soaked arms as he got out of the car.

“In the pines, in the pines, where the sun, never shines…” Big Mort sang in a drawl.

Willie buried the butt of his White Owl in the dirt. “Where’d you learn that crap, Mort?” he asked.
“Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi – and man, I could tell you stories,” he said.

“We bunked in tar-paper shacks…the sheriff carried two six-shooters…it was the armpit of the world,” Charlie mimicked, needling Big Mort. “Hey, ‘Lead Belly,’ let’s get a pitcher of beer.”

“Army, huh – that wasn’t nothing compared to what the Marines saw in the Pacific,” Willie said, under his breath. “Did you have fun in Gay Par-ee, Mort? While we were sweating our balls off fighting Japs in the jungle over there? Huh?”

“I lost three toes in the Bulge, mister, freezing there in the snow, while you guys were slurping Mai Tai’s on Maui, asleep at the switch…asleep…at…the…switch,” Big Mort said, punctuating each word with a jab of his forefinger.

Charlie broke in between them. “Well that’s all well and good, fellas, but the kids here are hungry and this Swabby is thirsty. So, c’mon girls, let’s kiss and make up, shall we?”

And we were hungry, too, as the smell of grilled hot dogs, hamburgers and fries proved even stronger than the fragrant pines surrounding the Roadhouse. “Kids, let’s get in line,” Charlie said, ushering the three of us to the back of the line at the ordering window, as Willie and Big Mort straggled up.

Barb looked up at the blue sky, in the midst of a stand of looming trees. “Imagine,” she said, her head flung back, her arms spread wide like a TV preacher, “that this place, the whole country, the whole WORLD, was just a speck, in the middle of a Spaldeen, being bounced by a giant, and that the giant’s whole world was just a speck, inside the Spaldeen, being bounced by a BIGGER giant…and that…”

I looked at Barb’s earnest face and had to admit she was cute, and pretty smart. “That could be a Twilight Zone,” I said. “You should write it up and send it to Rod Serling and they’d make a Twilight Zone out of it. And at the end, they’d show your name on the screen. Your name…Barbara Cohen.”

“Yeah,” said Billy. “That’s pretty good, actually. We’re a speck. Inside a Spaldeen, bounced by a giant. And when the giant farts…”

“…it’s an earthquake!!!” Barb blurted, gleefully burying her face in her grubby hands, and the three of us broke into giddy, little kid laughter, falling to the pine needle-covered Roadhouse yard.
“Hey pay attention, you’re almost next on line,” Willie said. “C’mon, who’s next? Pipe up!”

“Ah, the kids are having a laugh, leave ‘em alone,” Charley said, downing the last of the pitcher, oblivious to the stare-down from Willie. “C’mon, let’s get some more Michelob.”

Well, we all piped up, got our lunch items and scrambled to one of the picnic tables under the pines. The Westchester air felt at least 10 degrees cooler than back in the Bronx.

And while us kids ate our hot dogs, burgers and fries, our dads sat at a separate table, drinking pitcher after pitcher of their beloved Michelob. After awhile, Willie lit up another White Owl, Charley smoked a Kent and Big Mort one of his beloved Raleighs.

“So, Mort, I hear you saved enough Raleigh coupons for a new pair of jumper cables,” Willie said, flicking his cigar ash close to Big Mort’s blue canvas camp shoe.

“Careful with that ash,” Big Mort said, chomping down on one of three hot dogs on his plate, devouring half of it in one shark-like bite.

“No, really,” Willie pressed, pouring himself another stein of beer. “I hear you got a pillowcase full of Raleigh coupons. Gonna trade in that Olds for a Caddy, huh? Or maybe redeem them coupons for a vacation in the Jewish Alps?”

“I’m gonna get another pitcher,” Big Mort said, his face tightening almost imperceptibly as he ambled over to the kids. “You guys want something?”

Meanwhile, Charley got up and walked to the men’s room at the back of the Roadhouse. “Be right back,” he said. “Gotta tap a kidney.”

We kids were giggling at some joke, holding grilled hamburgers that must have looked monstrously large in our dirty little hands. Willie turned to us and pointed unsteadily with his lit White Owl.

“You kids better behave, ya hear?”

“Yes sir,” us kids replied, as one.

“I can’t hear you!!!”

“YES SIR!”

“’at’s betta,” he said, turning around as Big Mort came with another pitcher.

As he turned around, Barb put a fry in her nose and Billy burst out laughing and streams of soda plumed from their nostrils, prompting yet another eruption of laughter.

Cigar clenched between his teeth, Willie leapt from the picnic table bench to our table like a bobcat. He grabbed Billy’s arm and yanked him to the ground.

“You laughing at me? You little bastard. You laughing at me? Huh?” Each phrase coupled with a ferocious pull on Billy’s arm.

“No. No. No.” Billy wailed.

“You’re lying,” Willie said, yanking off his leather belt. “I’ll teach you to lie to your father. In public.” He reared back with his belt and cracked Billy one across his forearm, lifted to defend himself against his father.

I leapt from the table to defend Billy, only to be grabbed by the collar by Big Mort, who dragged me to the side. “Mind your business,” he said, brusquely, holding me back.

And as he did, I saw all the other families, looking away, pretending this all wasn’t happening, their faces in their franks and fries, enjoying an afternoon on Memorial Day under the canopy pine trees.

It was left to Barb to swing into action. She scooted under the picnic table and grabbed Willie around the ankles. “You brute, you brute, lay offa my friend. Lay offa him, hear?”

Willie tried to kick her off of his ankles even as he beat Billy with his belt, but she hung on tough, like a rodeo rider, until only one of her hands clutched Willie’s right pants leg, her grip slipping until she felt something around his ankle, encased in leather, and with her last drop of kid-style, superhero strength she reached back with her other hand, lifted his trouser cuff, revealed the ankle holster and shrieked, as loud and as long as a little girl could shriek.

“He’s got a gunnnnnnnnn!!!!!!”

Well that just about did it. Kids huddled against the skirts of their moms and dads clutched their wives, as they rose as one — in this era of Kitty Genovese apathy — and headed quickly to their cars, as Willie flashed his NYPD shield, muttering, ridiculously, “it’s alright, I’m a cop,” as if that would somehow ameliorate the impact of his display.

Billy was still on the ground, sobbing and moaning, his arms coated with welts from Willie’s thrashing and one eye nearly swelled shut.

“I’m…O…Kay….” Billy snuffled, tears running down his ruddy cheeks.

I broke free from Big Mort, now that the tempest had subsided, and ran to Billy and Barb, as Charley sauntered back from the men’s room and around the Roadhouse, with another pitcher and a tray of hot dogs.

Barb checked Billy’s matted head tenderly, like a nurse in a war picture. “He’s bleeding,” she whispered to Big Mort, before her eyes locked on her father, who could not believe the sight before him: a small circle around Billy, who lay bloody on the pine cones, Big Mort now holding me, and Willie, in the midst of it all, looking bewildered, spent, by his own torrential, ferocious rage.

Charley’s eyes narrowed as he put the tray down on a table and a muscle on the side of his face twitched. “What the hell happened here?”

“Ah, it was nothing. Everything’s fine,” Willie said. “Right, son?”

Charley looked at Big Mort, who stared back at Charley, blankly, not revealing a shred, an inkling, of emotion.

“Let’s finish up and let’s leave,” Big Mort said, finally, pouring himself another beer, downing it, and pouring another.

“Hey, take it easy, you gotta drive,” Willie said, half-smiling.

“Yeah,” Big Mort said, his eyes down at the pine needles, his glare not meeting Willie, as he muttered under his breath and walked to the table.

“Whazzat, Mort? You say something?” Willie shouted. “Huh? You got something to say?” He returned his shield to his back pocket and looped his belt back into his chinos.

Charley bent over Billy and helped him slowly get to his feet. “You OK, kiddo?” he said tenderly. “C’mon, forget it. Smile. Smile for me. C’mon, a little smile for your uncle Charley, huh?”

Billy’s face contorted into the sorriest smile I’d ever seen, but he tried, and Charley wiped an errant tear from Billy’s face, Barb clutching her dad around the legs, real tight, as if for ballast. “That’s the ticket,” he said. “A little smile for uncle Charley — that’s a good boy.”

But I was concerned about Big Mort, about the way the little blue vein in his forehead started to bulge, and about how his hands clenched and unclenched and how he kept his eyes down at the ground, his long, lean body seeming to coil even as he walked away, cursing words only I could hear, words that I heard many times before, just as Big Mort’s long lit fuse would finally reach the powder keg: “That sonuva bitch. That f…..g sonuva bitch.”
***
Not one of us spoke as we piled into the Olds. Big Mort turned the ignition key and the big V-8 roared to life. We rolled down the windows and Big Mort gunned the engine again and again, for no apparent reason. Stray pine needles were blown aside by car’s dual exhaust pipes, until he put the car in gear and slung gravel exiting the lot and heading south on the two-lane to the Saw Mill.

I saw Big Mort’s forehead vein throb as he nudged the car onto the twisty highway, a bucolic old road beautifully framed, in the especially tight turns, by fifteen foot high retaining walls made of native stone. It was nice and cool as the speedometer ribbon surged from green, to orange, to blood red, Big Mort urging the car faster and faster.

Willie lit a White Owl, exhaled, and rested his right arm on the windowsill. “You wanna slow down a bit, there, Mort,” he said. “This ain’t the 500.”

Charley chuckled, then turned around to check on us kids. Billy was already asleep, and leaning on Barb, who looked at her dad and smiled sweetly.

“And how are you doing?” Charley said to me.

“Fine, I guess,” I said, just as the car’s rear tires edged off the road onto the dirt shoulder, prompting Charley to turn back around in his seat.

“It’s a little tricky on the Saw Mill,” Charley said good-naturedly.

“I know what I’m doing,” Big Mort said.

“I’m just sayin’…”

The heat of the day had broken and the air was fresh, as another turn came up fast and Mort swung the steering wheel left to avoid a stone retaining wall, grinding a rear tail fin and sending a trail of sparks behind us. “Alright,” said Willie, swinging his right arm for emphasis, “you made your point. If you want me to drive, just say so.” The red-ribboned speedometer passed 75, 85, 90.

“Alright,” Willie continued, his stogie between clenched teeth, his arms out wide, like a Shakespearean actor in a court scene, “I apologize. There, I said it. Is that what you want?”

Big Mort punched the accelerator hard and veered right going into the next tight country turn, just as the towering stone wall came into view. The softly sprung Olds wallowed into the corner leaving just enough room for Willie to pull in his arm, had his Michelob-dulled reflexes been just a little quicker.