Southwest Philly meets the South Bronx

This is an edited version of my response to Michael J. McCullough, who asked me to take a look at “Growing Up Philly,” which I did because it was so much like growing up in the South Bronx, where I was born. His $14 book is available as an ebook and through https://store.bookbaby.com/book/growing-up-philly and Amazon Www.amazon.com/growing-up-philly-Southwest-Philadelphia/dp/1667836005

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A lot in common, and a bit different.

But first, an opinion: The book is well-written, not in the William Faulkner sense, but in the sense that good writing creates a conduit connecting the readers with emotion and makes them feel. Your book does that.

And in a too-easy segue, I particularly enjoyed the chapter about Danny Faulkner, about whom I have written many times, but this gave me a view of his personality I had not enjoyed before.

For the record, I created the term Mumidiots, for the man who murdered the young cop.

We both come from ethnic working-class neighborhoods, yours one of private homes, mine of tenement apartments, but alike in that, years ago, neighbors would sit out at night. In my era, there was no television. I am surprised sitting out continued a generation later, in your neighborhood.

My “gang” was a core of five friends who lived on my block, Timpson Place, that was five blocks long, and the top of a T, almost like a dead end. We played on a single block, between Avenue St. John and 149th St. That was my world. The neighborhood was changing and crossing Southern Boulevard, one block west, took us into enemy territory. It was an era of white versus Puerto Rican gangs and it was not pretty.

We played stickball in the street, occasional softball in a vacant lot between the local moviehouse and an apartment building. We played basketball in the back alley without a hoop. Instead, we shot the ball through the lowest rung of a fire escape ladder. The result of that was I had a horizontal shot that ruined me for regular basketball that requires, as you know, an arc.

I do not recall ever eating dinner at a friend’s house, or one eating at mine. I wonder if that is a difference between house culture and apartment culture. Or maybe it reflected we all had working parents.

I lived at 600 Timpson Place. In the adjoining building, 588 Timpson Place, lived Jerry Goldstein, Nicky and Louis Ciocci, Louie Tamares, Donnie Janowitz. Gerard Verrichio in the next adjoining building, 576. That was the core, one or two others would drift in and out over the years. A handful of friends. A band of brothers.

As you can tell by the names, the block was heavily Jewish and Italian. The Irish and Germans didn’t have children my age. As I like to say, and mostly true, I never met a Protestant until I was in college, and he became one of the most important people in my life — Lutheran Gordon Lattey. He gave me my first jobs in journalism, setting my course for life.

Jerry Goldstein, one month younger than I, was my closest friend. He may have had a sandwich in my apartment, which was a street-level walkin. He hung around a lot because he loved my dog, and my mother, who was much warmer than his own.

At 15, I moved from The Bronx to a project in Brooklyn and slowly lost touch with my original friends. It was a minimum 90-minute subway ride from my new home to old, and no one had a car. I developed new friends two years later when I entered Brooklyn College, night school, working during the day.

About 25 years ago, deep into my career at the Daily News, I got an email from Jerry, asking if I was the Stu Bykofsky from Timpson Place.

I was electrified.

“Of COURSE it’s me!” I wrote back. (How many Stu Bykofskys might there be?)

After we found each other, and he was still living in The Bronx, I went up there to visit him. There was one visit he made to Philly, along with a hanger-on friend from junior high, Wally Macnow.

I was moved by the deep kindness of your neighbors, such as Franny, when your mom fell ill, and also by the warm relationships you had with your elders. I am thinking specifically of the Christmas Eve visits you made, something I knew about but never personally experienced.

My second wife was a South Philly Italian from a rowhouse on 11th near Wolf. Her experience with neighbors is a lot like yours. Her father actually took a homeless male teen off the street and adopted him. No papers, he just made Joseph his son.

My late father-in-law was named Paul Merlino, a WWII veteran who was awarded a silver star to go with his Purple Heart, plus the Italian war bride he brought home with him.

His wife Lucia was a kindhearted treasure, who spoke with a lovely Italian accent. She was his nurse in an Italian hospital after Paul got shot up at Anzio. I was privileged to attend his funeral in Arlington, where he wanted to be buried. When she passed, Lucy joined him there. The military burial service is beautiful, perfect in its somber respect.

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My first year in Pennsylvania was 1966, and we rented a house at 951 Bullock Avenue in Yeadon, which is adjacent to SW Philly so I am very familiar with Jerry’s Corner — a great place to kill a couple of hours with the kids — and the rat-infested 61st Street Drive-In.

The man you identified as the white-hatted federal agent handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald was actually a Dallas detective by the name of Jim Leavelle, who I interviewed in 2006 at the Texas Book Depository Museum. He was haunted by his failure to protect his prisoner.

Yes, we were all taught respect for elders.

That seems to have vanished, along with sitting out on the streets, and television has been replaced by cell phones, which is dubious progress as our kids become more isolated, more suicidal and less sure of their gender.

Stu Bykofsky