I was a full-fledged member of the gang, minus one. The third part of the initiation was how I performed in a rumble. But for now, I was a Baron. I could swagger with the rest of them.
I didn't even have to learn the primer for gang kids; it was instinctive. Simple.
When he's down, kick for the head and groin.
Never make it on the scene unless you're shanked and the blade's got seven inches on a quick switch.
Avoid cops. Play it cool.
There aren't many rules in the primer for gang kids, but what few there are, all count. They're all easily understood because they use a simple, sound philosophy: it's a stinking life, so get your kicks while you can. The gang is home, the gang is mother and father and clergy and teacher; take what you want before some sonofabitch takes it first; tell themnothing—and don't get caught.
And today, in the five boroughs of New York City, and all across half-sleeping America, wherever the Hell of the cities forces kids into the gutters, young toughs are applying those rules.
When they're laughing at the authorities, they call themselves "the men," or "the guys" or simply "we are juvies." It's short for juvenile delinquent, but there's nothing short about the knives they carry, or the lengths they'll go to in obtaining revenge. They revel in the notoriety they receive in newspapers and cheap periodical exposes. Then they try to outdo the fabricated fantasies of writers who have never been down there in the gutter, on the turf with the kids; writers who are doing more, damage with their wild yellow-journalism than they can imagine.
Get it straight right now: these aren't kids playing games of war; they mean business, bad business.
By now the kids are also aware of the potential dangers of the social worker and the honest reformer—they no longer trust them. When the gang counselor, youth worker, settlement attaché moves in, the rumbles cease, the kicks get less; oh, sure, there are less cats making it over from other turf on raids, and more policed dances, and the block cools off, but that only makes the scene that much more of a drag for them. So they tell the social workers what they want them to know, and keep the dark facts tucked into their boot tops.
Here are some of those dark facts.
The gang stud pays first homage to the club. He attends meetings religiously, he never finks on a brother member, he never crosses member unless the circumstances are inevitable, and then, only under specified, almost formalized, conditions—equivalent to a duel. He is as ruthless as a Syndicate torpedo when those circumstances and conditions arise.
Armed combat in the world of the tenements is a make-shift thing. It is a field of endeavor that has allowed the old Yankee bathtub-inventor room to swing. While today a kid can mug a drunk and collect twenty-five dollars to buy himself a piece—a gun, that is—in New York it is still not the easiest thing to find a fence or a pawnbroker or a junk salesman or a gang pusher with that many pieces handy. So they invent their own weapons.
Forget the common utensils of destruction, the switch-blade, the ironwood chair leg club, the broken bottle, the blackjack made from dumping two dozen half dollars into a U.S. Army cushion-sole sock, the brass knucks made in shop class by agile hands. Forget them for the moment, they can't be really classified as ingenious, nor can the lead pipes, the baling hooks or the sheath-knife carried behind the neck in an oiled case, so just discount them.
Consider for the moment such lethal weapons as the raw potato studded with double-edged razor blades. A perfect in-fighting tool used formerly by the Black Irish in their war with England, the kids have found it perfect for stripping the flesh from an opponent's face. And if the fuzz bust the rumble, why, you just roll the weapon down the most convenient sewer opening. Lost: only an old potato and a quarter's worth of Gillette blue blades.
Or how about that homemade cannon, the zip-gun, about which you've heard so much? Have you any idea how simple they are to make? Not the detailed and involved weapons made by kids who only want to sport a deadly-looking piece, but the quickly-made item to be used in a killing.
The tube-rod in a coffee percolator is the barrel. Did you know it's exactly right for a .22 calibre slug? Or perhaps it's not the stem from a coffee pot. Perhaps it's a snapped-off car radio antenna. Either one will do the job. They mount it on a block of wood for a grip, with friction tape, and then they rig a rubber-band-and-metal-firing-pin device that will drive the .22 bullet down that percolator stem or antenna shell, and kill another teen-ager. What they don't bother to tell you is that a zip-gun is the most inaccurate, poorly-designed, dangerous weapon of the streets. Not only dangerous to the victim, but equally dangerous to the assailant, for too often the zip will explode in the firer's hand, too often the inaccuracy of the homemade handgun will cause an innocent bystander to be shot. It is a booby trap of the most innocent-seeming sort, and there are many kids in Brooklyn (or in Queens, Long Island City and Astoria, where the Kicks, another club much given to the use of the zip, roam) with only two or three fingers on a hand, from having snapped that rubber band against the metal firing pin.
But there are even more terrifying weapons, if one only takes the time to seek them out:
Garrison belts, with the buckles honed to a razor's edge. Barracks boots with razor blades stuck between the toe and the sole, protruding just enough so that a fierce kick will slash the tendons of an opponent's legs, render him a cripple. The Molotov cocktail—gasoline and a rag packaged in a large size Coke or Canada Dry ginger ale bottle. Blinding fuse-packets of potassium nitrate and powdered magnesium, gauged to explode in a magnesium flash when they are thrown into someone's face.
The weapons of the gang kid have a charm all their own.
But more than that, gang warfare is typified by a callous disregard for Marquis of Queensbury rules, or for that matter, rules of simple decency. When they fight, they are amoral…totally without mercy…almost inhuman.
A cat that's down is a cat who can't bother you, man! Stomp him! Stomp him good! Put that lit cigarette in the bastard's eye! Wear Army barracks boots—kick him in the throat, in the face, kick him where he lives. Smash him from behind with a brick, cave in his effin' skull! Flat edge of the hand in the Adam's Apple! Use a lead pipe across the bridge of his nose—smash the nose and send bone splinters into the brain!
And after it's over, slip your switch or your piece to your Deb; let her shove it into her bra or garter belt, the waistband of her pants, to be carried boldly away from the rumble. The fuzz don't search the chicks, they get away clean. Or play it cool, use the spud-and-blades bit and then heave the weapon down the nearest gutter.
No loss.
There's grocery and drug stores on every block.
The young rocks of the Barons (or the Blooded Royals, or the Kicks, or The Jolly Stompers, or The Egyptian Dragons, or The Centurions, pick one) think very much alike. Their morals and language, their dress and weapons, they're all much of a kind.
Imagination is a sometimes thing, but mimicry and the ability to pick up on something useful, to imitate what they have seen on television or in the movies, what they've learned from commando and judo manuals acquired through the mails, this is a talent well-developed in the gangs.
At one time the sincerest form of flattery was practiced so much, that each member of the Barons wore a black and gold basketball jacket, shiny satin, with the club name in bold script across the back, the wearer's name across the pocket. But the Barons, as with most kid gangs these days, finally realized advertising was poor form. The nice shiny satin jacket with BARONS scrawled big across the back was a signpost to every cop in the turf. They realized it was easier to keep a gang swinging if the fuzz didn't know they existed. So they made it mandatory that the jackets be hung away for good, and anonymity settled over the Barons, as far as ballyhoo was concerned, though the neighborhood knew who they were. It didn't need to be advertised in theAmsterdam News —the people knew.
The social structure of a juvenile gang is very much like that of a fraternity. There is a top man, a President, a cabinet of officers, and lay members. There may or may not be a girl's auxiliary—the Debs—-and a sub-group of juveniles who are underage for the adult club, but are more or less "in training." These younger kids are usually used to run errands, case holdups, steal hub-caps and automobile parts for sale to swell the club treasury. They are Fagin's Tots, idolizing their older brothers and worshipping those members of the adult gang who have graduated from the streets to a life of crime, and inevitably, to prison.
It is the Twenties all over again, with the worship of hoodlumism returning. It is these snot-nosed youngsters who need to be saved.
Few gangs are interracial; it would appear the bigot and the narrow-minded are predominant in the gangs, but more likely it is the corrupting influence of parents with their casual dark references to "niggers" or "kikes" or "wops" or "spies" that does the trick. Were it not for the adult poisons poured into these kids' ears, the gang lines might easily cross color or race or religion. But since they hate Puerto Ricans and Negroes and Jews and Catholics, the gangs are generally made up (as was the Barons) of one nationality group or race, or cultural strain.
The female's position in the social structure of a street gang is cut and dried. She is property.
The chicks of gang kids are even more ruthless than their male counterparts, of that I'm certain. Their affairs with gang members are violent, often deadly, and if a girl is caught cheating, her punishment can range from a sound beating to the slicing of a pretty face sono one shows interest in her again. And they never talk. They never tell what happened. There are easier ways to commit suicide, more pleasant, quicker methods to take one's own life.
And when Debs fight, there are few sights as unbelievable. Perhaps ghastly is the proper word. It is a knock-down-blot-up of the first order, with such fury and horror it is impossible to describe without the use of a movie camera.
The knees, teeth, nails, and hair-pulling carried to a strange degree are merely openers. Knives, beer can openers, hatpins in the eyes, acid, pain pain pain! A girl jumped by more than one Deb can expect to have her face slashed for life, her body racked out of shape, her vitals explored with every foul, cutting implement sick and tormented minds can design.
The Debs join the club for kicks, and they'll get them, one way or another. Literally.
The current fad among kid gangs and their Deb auxiliaries is the carving of the current boy friend's initials in the girl's back, arms, or more usually, breasts, with a knife.
A sign of undying affection.
At least until the next stud comes along; which makes it difficult for the chick with someone else's initials in her hide. I've seen Debs whose breasts looked like much-used trees bordering a Lover's Lane.
Names for Deb groups are usually imitative of the parent club (as in the case of The Baron Debs), but occasionally a bright youngster will name a girl's auxiliary The Rockettes, or The Ladies Aid, or The Bitches. It all depends on whether there is a member of more-than-average literacy and imagination, something rare in the gangs, where poverty and the fight for survival have combined to hold down the intelligence of most of the kids.
They aren't stupid, they just don't know any better.
With the antediluvian school system through which most of these kids are shunted, the out of touch with reality aspects of the Church, and the criminal negligence of parents, to what teachers do the gang kids resort?