Prelog: Yes, I can spell. In fact I was a perfect 100 percent speller in school. However, I am a smoke signals kind of guy now (think Lonely Are the Brave) caught in the technological age. Add that to LaVecchio (old age) getting to me; my hands don’t work right and a lot of other parts of my body. In football I never dropped a pass and now I am dropping everything I touch. Typos galore and the eyes don’t always catch them. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So to add to that, I know what a Prolog is and Prologue. I made up my own word: PreLog. I like being different.

Writing is like therapy for me. Always has been, and, I suppose, always will be. The pen IS mightier than the sword, though, I suppose, if I didn’t get things out on the printed page, I might take my frustrations out elsewhere.

I have wanted to write this story for quite some time. It has been stored in my mind and played over and over again, but because of the subject matter, and the people involved, I will once again set the scene in my fictional town of Greenwood Cove, and use my alter ego, Brian McCormack, as setting and storyteller respectively.

I am full-blooded Italian, though my spirit is Indian. Brian is half-Italian on his mother’s side and a mongrel mix of Scots-Irish and Lenape on his father’s side. In his blood courses the regal print of barons and Caesars from the old country, and frontiersmen and native Americans from the new world.

So, having established that bit of info for you, we will begin. The story is True! The names have been changed to protect the innocent, the not-so-innocent; the guilty and those almost so.

Those of us who were here and lived it will recognize all of it with no problems. The rest of you will have to use your imaginations and wonder what could have been.

In old EG we had a town whose richness could not be believed, unless, of course, you lived here. The diversity of people, the characters, the events that happened would have made a good movie. Disney would have loved EG. It was a model for a quirky, interesting small town America. Some things that went on here might leave you scratching your head and doubting, but it is all true, and it happened; right here in this little town, in the center of the smallest state in the greatest country on God’s big, blue marble.

Soooo, here we go again: 

Quarter Hopes and Dollar Dreams

Brian could never watch that scene without being transported back to that time. The scene occurred at the beginning of a movie called Goodfellas.

Ray Liotta is a teenager in New York. He is allowed to drive a Cadillac, and his job is to go around and pick up the “numbers” for his boss, the bookie at the local gathering place. He does odd jobs and hangs around the “fellas” and, in the movie, he becomes one, getting immersed in “the life” as they term it. It becomes a life from which he can not escape.

In Greenwood Cove, things are not so desperate, or serious. But, there was gambling that went on. Still does. In those days it was Brian’s job to go around and pick up the “policy slips” from different people around town. These people all had their own quarter hopes and dollar dreams. Everyone wanted to hit “The Big One.” Get that one way ticket to Easy Street.

They were, for the most part, average people, mostly blue collar. But, there were some upper crust too. They played the numbers, or went to the dog and pony tracks in the area getting their vicarious fixes in vicarious ways.

The ringmaster for this circus was Brian’s uncle on his mother’s side, Tank Rizzo, a local legend. The Tank ran his operation an old days’ SunnyBrook farm, from a grocery store at the bottom of Princess Street at the corner of Drake and Bank Streets. Another Uncle, Vincenzo Rosario, ran his operation from a coffee shop up on Main Street.

Tank had been an outstanding athlete in his younger days. He excelled at football, baseball, track, wrestling and boxing. He was Greenwood Cove’s answer to Jim Thorpe. After brief stints in the NFL and on the local pro wrestling circuit, he had settled down to running the family business, a mom-and-pop grocery store, from which he also ran his side attraction. Like I said, not unlike your modern day SunnyBrook Farms. A place to get your lottery ticket for that chance to be set for life.

At 14 Brian drove his Uncle’s $6,000 pink Cadillac with the power steering, power windows and power brakes. Criminy, he had had two minor accidents with it before he ever got his driver’s license.

The Caddy was a necessity. Brian had to drive around town to pick up the “policy slips,” the little papers that held the numbers of a person’s dream. People would write their number and a nickname, or initials on a piece of paper and wrap it around a quarter, or fifty cents, or a dollar or more and Brian would pick it up and bring it back to the store. On Saturdays, Brian took a large paper bag up to “The City” (called “downtown” in those pre-yuppie days) and dropped the bag off to “Joe” at the Produce Market. Now Joe was a little higher up on the numbers chain, but Brian’s knowledge ended there. He “knew” but didn’t know, if you get my drift.

Once, on a Saturday, Tank was tipped off (by a local cop indeed) of an impending raid by the state police. Brian and his cousin, Dink, walked out of the store with a couple of bags of “groceries,” the bottoms of which would have been very interesting to the Staties, who rushed right by them in an attempt to make a collar. All they got was thin air.

There was another thing that always amazed Brian, and that was how his contemporaries from school, guys who could not pass math in Coach Zaccanazzi’s class, could figure out the day’s number from the race sheet, and also the trifectas and perfectas.

In school numbers were a mystery to them, but on the corner they handled the numbers of card games, bets and money transactions from the “pitch” winnings with ease. It gave Brian ideas that he later put to good use as a teacher, using the lessons of the street to reach his students in the classroom. He used card games, craps and common sense to reach kids who might not have been reached any other way.

Another lesson learned was how to read people. He learned early that people were not always what they seemed. Sunday Best people. Street angels and house devils. All kinds made their way down to the bottom of Princess Street. Gambling was the lure for rich and poor alike. Even the rich harbor Dollar Dreams. Quarters are not enough for them. The rich can never seem to have enough.

Tank ran card games on Friday and Saturday nights in a room behind the store. From Tank’s grocery storage room Brian could look through a peephole and see who was playing in these games.

On any given weekend night Brian would see his teachers, coaches, administrators, police chiefs and an assortment of elite businessmen, movers and shakers sitting down to gamble over cards with quahauggers, truck drivers and other blue collar types.

It always amazed him when he ran into these people from Mondays to Fridays and how they acted so “pure,” not knowing that he had observed them, in essence, breaking the law on Fridays and Saturdays. It gave him a good look at the behavior of people and served him well down through the years. He could always pick out the “holier than thou” types and have a private laugh over their “correct posturing” and “phoniness” especially those who preached to the kids about gambling, and breaking the law.

Another lesson learned centered on a man we will call “Jim Smith.” It was from an incident with this man that gave Brian the lesson to stay away from gambling. And he did, for most of his life anyway.

Everyday, Brian used to drive to Mr. Smith’s house to pick up his “policy slip.”

Everyday, Mr. Smith gave Brian his slip, with his initials and a number wrapped around a dollar bill.

One day Mr. Smith hit the number! He went down to Tank’s store to collect $500. Once there he was congratulated by all “the boys,” who hung around the store. He was congratulated and then walked across the street to Mickey’s Tavern, where he had to buy everyone a drink per tradition.

Brian sat back, kind of detached, and observed this whole scene. Though only 16 at the time, his mind worked differently from many of his pals. Watching this scene caused his mind to shift gears.

“Funny,” he thought to himself. Mr. Smith won $500. But, Brian thought, he really didn’t win $500. He gave me a dollar a day for 365 days. So, in reality, Brian’s thought process continued, “he only won $135. By the time he leaves Mickey’s he will probably have spent another $100 treating everyone. Ergo (means therefore) thought Brian, he really only won $35.

And from that little scenario, Brian came to the conclusion that gambling really wasn’t worth it. He decided he would never gamble.

And for 50 years he never did.

The last scenario in this story deals with Las Vegas. No, not the Sin City in Nevada, but the one that was carved out under that mom-and-pop grocery store at the corner of Princess, Drake and Bank right here in Greenwood Cove.

See, Tank loved to gamble. He was also very lucky. On a couple of occasions he won huge sums at the track. He played the ponies. He played the dogs. He played cards and threw those little cubes loaded with dots.

The thing about Tank though. When he won, everybody won. He was not only lavish with his winnings, he was also good hearted in running his store. He carried people on the tab for years. He wiped out debts. Some people who later became successful in life had their tabs wiped out by Tank. Funny thing, they never paid him back, and they never shopped in his store again after they had “made it.” People are funny like that. It was another lesson Brian learned, and, of course, seeing as he helped with the books, he knew who these people were, and he never forgot. He looked at them later in life through a different prism, as they put on their airs and tried to impress others with their success in life.

Yes, all the lessons one gets and needs are not always learned in school.

Anyway, going on with our story, to further enhance the gambling thrill, Tank and his “boys” dug out a good-sized room underneath the back storage room at the store.

It could only be reached by going down between the boiler and a wall and entering a boarded, braced up area that held roulette wheels, crap tables, card tables and slot machines. It was used by a “chosen few” and Brian only got to go into it a couple of times.

Who would have thought! Little Greenwood Cove! A podunk place in the middle of nowhere (at least according to the city folk) had its own mini Las Vegas! Brian guessed Tank and his boys had more than a few thrills there.

So, who would have thought? All this action and excitement in a little town, that later, in college, many of Brian’s classmates said was “the boondocks” (tho’ many of them live here now).

Tank and most of the people in this story have passed on to that Las Vegas in the Sky. Brian lives on Mystic Island just off the Jersey Shore and just north of that eastern gambling mecca of Atlantic City. He is retired now, has a little more disposable cash than he did back in the ‘50s when he drove that pink Cadillac, and he makes the short trip down the highway to the board walk and drops some of it at the machines. He likes video poker and Wheel of Fortune best, and though not as lucky as one of his buddies, he still manages a nice win every now and then.

The lessons learned back there “on the Corner” don’t seem so important now. He is in the last quarter of his race, or “rounding the far turn” as Tank used to say.

Now, he too has his Quarter Hopes and Dollar Dreams, just like everyone else.

Author’s Note: I hope you like this story. It really happened, though as they say in the disclaimers for “Law & Order” on TV: This story, though fictional, was based on real events. I want to dedicate this story to all those great people who lived down and around that corner. Real Salt of the Earth people, who loved the Tank and knew what “real” was back in the day. I love you all and love bringing your story to life. Until next time, with Much Love and In The Spirit . . .