Photo by Tony the Misfit*

Pinhole heaped a heavenly helping of Honest Scrap Award upon me. Having mistook this for a Commemorative Metal of Honor for the erstwhile Rex 3000, I was not going to write this post until I learned that this is an award won before the recipient actually earns it! I’m supposed to “tell on myself” with ten juicy tidbits of truths known just by me. Frankly, I think these memes are an attempt to gain all of the possible information a home invasion crook needs to make it more difficult for me to signal my wife to not come home, but call the cops: “Darling, don’t forget the ricotta,” knowing full well from this meme that I never have called my wife “Darling.”

How symbolic! In naming the award “Honest Scrap”, one is pre-empted from absconding with said trophy prior to justifying its place on the bookshelf. Yet, like any good swindler knows, the hustle is only as good as the presumption of a guilty conscience. And therein lies my dilemma: if I don’t earn the Honest Scrap Award, I’m a swindler; if I do post, then I’m a wimp with a conscience.
This reminds me of the time when I told my cousin I would pay him to beat up Nate Blackwell’s little brother, Tony.

You may not know Nate, he played basketball for the Temple University Owls. Long before he became a legend in Philadelphia sports, he was just “Day-Day” from up the street. While he was a likable chap, his brother was a little snot. He actually spit on me once and ran into the house – as if the first order of business was for me to go chasing him, with flecks of saliva flying off my cheek!

Anyway, we used to play “street” football. Tony and I would play against Nate and my cousin, Peter. Sometimes, there would be other fools and we would have six or even seven of us (remember the “Steady Quarterback” who threw for both teams?) running, diving and recklessly endangering our skin and bones. Imagine a narrow street, just large enough to allow parked cars on one side and nothing larger than an ice cream truck to amble from Tasker St. to Pt. Breeze Avenue. A typical South Philadelphia cross street.

I stayed summers with my grandmother in this concrete jungle. While other little kids (including my wife) went “to the country” to be with their grannies and pop-pops, I tackled dirty street urchins on glass-strewn sidewalks. Well, we had the fire hydrant, you had the garden hose. Nanny-nanny boo-boo! You haven’t lived until you’ve run around in the blast from a fire hydrant. We didn’t bother with the soup can cannon, either! We just laced our fingers together and bravely “hugged the plug”.

Too bad the hydrant wasn’t running when Tony spit on me; I’d have dunked his little ass. That’s another thing. I cursed like a sailor.
Unless lumberjacks curse worse, in which case, I cursed like they did. My relatives thought I was crazy. I did, too. I was doing road rage before I learned how to drive. Hell, I probably invented it, although my late aunt gave as good as she got, behind the wheel.

We used to walk to school, then come home for lunch before going back. One day, a man nearly ran me over, coming out of a gas station. I gave him my best Rudy Ray Moore epithet and continued on my way. My cousin, himself a badass back in the day, was shocked. I know this is so because he has never forgotten this event. He brings it up at family gatherings, peppering it with all the little nuances that little cousins recall:

Mitchell raised his fist and called that man a #&@##!!-X$###@!

Then that man slammed on his brakes, jumped out of the car and said, “WHAT?!!”



Mitchell took off down the street! I laughed so hard.

Whatever, man.

Another time, we were playing wall ball, or pitching pennies. Maybe we were just standing in the middle of the street. Suddenly, one of the neighbors, who must have just gotten his license, backed his car into my leg. It didn’t hurt, but I was so startled, I yelped, “Sugar honey iced tea!” – pretty much the same way Ralphie said, “Fudge”. Pete promptly ran into our grandmother’s house, not to report the accident, but to tattle on me. Thankfully, the perceived trauma of having been struck by a moving vehicle was enough to grant me forbearance on what otherwise would have been a for-sure spanking.

I grew up all over Philadelphia, covering every region except the great Northeast. Good thing, too. I took an evening Real Estate Licensing class during a three month period. Twice a week, after getting off from work, I took the R8 train out to the end of the line.
This neighborhood, Fox Chase, is one of the most beautiful sections of the city (Chestnut Hill and Roxborough are the others.)
What was not to like? Well, for starters, the bus service stopped 15 minutes before my class ended. I had to walk for about ten minutes to reach the train station. The other thing, there was no good pizza for miles. Not that I tried all of the shops, I’m just saying.

The boardwalk at Wildwood, NJ had the best pizza on the planet. Except for that time when I grabbed the glass sugar container and sprinkled what I thought was some salt onto my slice. Not satisfied with the results, I liberally dashed sugar onto my pizza until it became inedible.

Well, that’s nine scraps and one fib (I didn’t really ask my cousin to beat up anybody. I did what any good boy would do when spat upon – I told his mother!)

The tenth scrap ties together my childhood memories of South Philadelphia and my emergent self-expression as a young adult:

Remember those scams where you received a letter in the mail, inviting you to send in a poem for a contest?
I sent one in, commemorating the innocent children gunned down during drug violence.
I got a form letter from the “Poetry School”, telling me that my poem was a winner. For once, I believed them.

How’s that for an Honest Scrap?