Johnny (Son)

     Hi, my name is Johnny and I am fourteen years old.  I live with my mom,
 Maggie (my sister), and my Dad.  We had another family member, Sarah, but she
 died earlier this year of TB.  My mother and sister work real hard making
 clothes all day.  Dad is a plasterer who gets jobs every once in a while.
 When he does, he could potentially contribute $1.75 a day but instead he
 blows in on alcohol as soon as he makes it.  So, my mother and Maggie do most
 of the profit making.

    Mom tried to send me to school, but I was too
 aggressive in the classroom and couldnt handle it.  I would help with the
 work but I am out learning to be a man, learning to take responsibility for
 what I claim to be my own and take care of it.  I looked to the streets a
 long time ago to help myself deal with the hostility and anger I felt because
 I am forced to live the way I do.

    Sure I defend this house/neighborhood with
 my life, but I hate it.  The people I guard I do not love, nor care for.  I
 wouldnt even call my home a house.   It is a one-roomed apartment with one
 bed and no light or ventilation.  Watching Sarah die of tuberculosis was the
 most painful thing I have ever had to go through (next to my fathers
 "discipline beatings").  It was around that time that I met Jimmy, another
 street kid who lost his brother the year before to yellow fever.  He
 introduced me to his "family", which turned out to be the Alley Gang (not the
 original, they were broken up in the 1860s after they brutally murdered a
 young Jewish man).  But we are just as proud and powerful as the original.
 To fit in is easy.  All I had to do was rob a drunken Irishman on the steps
 of 98 Orchard Street.  Robbery gets you in, but murder enshrines you.  I
 sneak out of the house at night and one time, Dad caught me once in the
 middle of a rumble between us and the 40 Thieves (he was on his way back from
 a rendezvous with one of his Veranza, the local prostitute, I presume).  I
 got a good beating for that.  When things get tough, or very intense, there
 is a lot of danger in being in a gang.  Mickey, the leader, has killed
 before.  In fact most of the boys have.  The cops down here are always
 looking for troublesome boys, so a lot of my friends have been picked up and
 brought to the station.  When we arent fighting we are playing cards in front
 of the meat cart for pennies or playing dodgeball.

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
 
 

    Its rough living down
 here.  The family you have cant help you, but your boys, they can.
 
 
 

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
 

To find out about Benny, my father, click here