Butchblog

It seemed to Butchy that no one ever left Philadelphia, so he wasn’t sure if that was a real option for when he got older. Amongst all his extended family: aunts, uncles, and a wide array of cousins, none had ever ventured much farther than across the Delaware River. In fact, most either lived in the same neighborhood they had grown up in, or had moved to a neighborhood not far away, maybe even in the close-in suburbs, like Bala-Cynwyd or Upper Darby, classier places. Butchy’s family had stayed in West Philadelphia, even when the neighborhood started to change. That’s the way people talked about it, like it was some sort of alien transformation. “The place is not going to be the same anymore,” his mother would say, shaking her head. “But your father he won’t move. Won’t even discuss it.” 

            Butchy eventually figured out that what his mom was talking about were the Black and Hispanic families who were moving into the neighborhood, even though their block was still all white families. Butchy knew almost everybody on Baltimore Avenue, and none of them looked to be going anywhere. The Black families mostly lived farther up on Baltimore Ave, past 48^th Street. Butchy was more scared of the Catholic school kids than he was of any the colored boys. The Catholic kids were always looking for a fight – especially if they knew you were Jewish. Once Butchy had to run home from school with a pack of boys chasing after him, yelling Kike and Jew-boy and other nasty stuff that scared and confused him. Why did they want to beat him up because he was Jewish? It didn’t make any sense to him, in the same way that he didn’t understand his mother’s fear of the what she called “the coloreds.” It’s all fucked up, is what he told himself. Fucking fuckers. Butchy liked using that word, though he never said it out loud at home. That would have gotten him into big trouble. But outside, playing stickball with his friends, he’d say the word every chance he got, along with shit and bastard and asshole and all those great curse words that he and the other boys used.

            It wasn’t till he started high school that Butchy began to understand how many different kinds of people there were in the city – not just Blacks and Jews and Catholic kids, but also Italians, and Irish, Asian, Mexican, and Armenian, like his friend Charley

Kapeghian. And, usually, everybody got along. There were the occasional fist fights in the school yard, but even these didn’t seem to be related to ethnicity, but were more a result of boys being stupid boys. Butchy mostly managed to avoid these fights, but on a couple days he walked home a bit bloodied.

            There were five guys he mainly hung out with in high school. Besides himself (Jewish) and Charlie (Armenian), there was Rodney Baker (Black), John Lampe (Irish) and Billy Wilson (a mutt). They called themselves the United Nations gang, and only figured out that they hadn’t come up with the name themselves when it was announced that the class trip for seniors was to go to New York City and visit the U.N. “How cool is this going to be?” Charley said.

            “Very,” Butchy answered. “The United Nations going to the United Nations. I’m definitely going to make out with Barbara on the bus.”

            “In your dreams,” Lampe said. John stood 6’5″ tall and was the center on the basketball team. Everybody looked up to him, was the joke.

            “You watch,” Butchy said.

            “We’ll all be watching your scrawny Jew ass,” Billy Wilson said. And all the boys laughed, even Butchy. They all knew that the words weren’t meant to injure and that Wilson and Butchy were still the best of friends. This was how they expressed their affection for each other, strange as that may now seem.

            “Dumb mick,” Butchy shot back.

            “Only part,” Billy said.

            “Yeah, the stupid part.”

            And so it went, all day long, in class and out. It was all about hanging out, having fun. Not thinking too deeply about much of anything except their own blossoming lives. Sweet innocence, really. A different time. Naive? Yes. Less sensitive? I think so. Happier? Definitely. But that was the 60’s and it’s a time long gone. Dammit.