On my daily walk today I began thinking of when I was young and what I remembered. It was I was living on Mulberry Street and maybe 8 years old!
Welcome to my universe, where I spent most of my time in the street enjoying the people and I always playing! One day as I was playing with a friend Raife, taking turns hitting a ball back-and-forth to each other, I noticed that a black Van with only two windows on the side panels was parked in front of our famous café. It just wasn’t a café, it was a hang out where all the men on our street would go to play cards, or to talk, laugh with jokes enjoying life.
The van seemed to be just parked there with no particular reason directly in front of the Cafe, and it had some junky things on top like it was going someplace, and it just sat there!
Well, while watching and playing we got out of the way of a truck coming down the street and it parked directly behind the van. Then another truck came down and pulled in front of the van and backed up to its bumper. Then both trucks started blowing their horns and the one in the back drove forward and the one in the front drove back-and-forth, back-and-forth, as the van got pushed back-and-forth being crushed, not bad, but enough to make the van pull out around the truck and speed away. Just then, all the men came out of the café as they were yelling and laughing and having such a good time, one man stood out as a very special man! In the Van were undercover FBI men taking videos through the side windows of what was going on inside the cafe. Later that man would come over to me, as he did everyday, put his arm around me and put his mouth right next to my ear, and say “Give your mother a kiss for me.”
He really was a special man, and his name was Uncle Pete, and everybody knew who he was, as he was the leader who was protecting our “Street”! These people from the FBI called him, The mafia leader, but to us he was a wonderful,gentle, man who protected us all!! he was Uncle Pete!
Are you wondering why he would come and tell me To kiss my mother? Well, he and my father from the time they went to kindergarten until they went to high school they were best friends, just like my grandfather who came here in 1894 and worked with a man in the Famous Fulton Fish Market and my grandfather was able to do things without ever being bothered by anyone and earn a lot of money selling fish on a pushcart. His friend became the most dangerous man as it was he who started the Mafia!
We who lived on the street knew they protected us. They worried about us because at that time we were considered black, and not wanted, and that’s the reason why Mulberry Street was where all the Italians who immigrated had no choice, but to wind up there.This is a true story as I remember it 82 years ago! I, who am I, well, I’m Sal, “The One and Only”
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