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Growing Up in Southie
By South Boston standards, my childhood was surprisingly normal. I grew up in the Old Colony Housing Project, the fifth in a family of six kids, with two older brothers, two older sisters, and one younger sister. The odds were good with a family of six in Southie that one would run afoul of the law. I was that one.
Our apartment on 8 Pilsudski Way, apartment 554, was about 1,200 square feet, with four small bedrooms, a parlor, and a kitchen. My parents were in one bedroom; we three boys were in the other. My older sister Maureen had her own bedroom, and Patty and Karen shared theirs. I was born on March 21, 1956, and, at fifty, am two years older than Karen, who is the youngest of the six of us. Billy, at fifty-eight, is the oldest. All eight of us ate dinner together in the kitchen. While I never saw my mother without the crutches her arthritis made necessary, she made sure there was more than enough food for all of us to eat. Our clothes might not have been brand-new, but they looked fine. I never remember wanting for anything.
My father, John, changed tires for a living and later worked for the Boston Housing Authority. The most he ever brought home was $160 a week. He grew up in Brooklyn, joined the army as an infantryman during World War II, and was a professional boxer, a middleweight. He had been pretty good at it. A throwback, a big puncher, he was the type of guy who would take two of your punches just to land one of his. He'd also trained boxers. He was twenty-six when he married my mother, Margaret, who was from Boston. My maternal grandparents came to Boston from Ireland, while my father was Welsh and Irish.
My father had a real bad temper and was always in a bad mood. He ran our house strictly. We all went to bed early and got up early. He was very physical with all of us. He'd slap the girls, but he'd punch the boys. He was quick with his hands, but you never knew why or where they would strike. He could hit you on the head for no reason at all, saying, "That's for nothing. Now do something." Or he would give you a crack, saying, "That's in case you did something and you got away with it." Not only did he hit his kids, you never knew when you would see him in the street fighting a neighbor. With us, he was a strict disciplinarian who often went over the line in his forms of discipline. By today's standards, he might be arrested for the way he handled his six kids. As a result of the beatings I got from him, I never touched my own sons when I became a father.
My mother had a hard life. She was in constant pain from her severe arthritis and had numerous back and knee operations. Both my parents were voracious readers, and books and school were important parts of our lives. Until grade four, I went to the Michael J. Perkins School, right in the Old Colony projects, at the top of my street. For grades five and six, I ventured a little bit farther, to the John Andrew School in Andrew Square. For the next two years I was at the Patrick F. Gavin School on Dorchester Street. All of these were public schools.
Our family was a close one, and every Sunday all six of us kids went to nine o'clock Mass at St. Augustine's. Jack, whom we all called Johnny while we were growing up, is four years older than me. He was an altar boy. I wasn't cut out for that. Back then, Mass was still in Latin, and that had no appeal for me. When we got home, we had to tell our father what the sermon was about and the color of the priest's vestment. He wasn't religious, but he made us go. My mother stayed home, and the priest used to come to the house once a week to give her communion.
But even more than books and religion, my father made sure that boxing ruled our family life. From as far back as I can remember, I boxed. Whether we wanted to or not, my brothers and I boxed. Every night we would move the furniture in the parlor and the three of us boys would box in the living room. My gloves were hand-me-downs from my brothers and were practically bigger than me. My brothers wouldn't seriously bang on me till we were older, but Johnny and I always boxed in our bedroom, as well as in the parlor. From the time I was eight and he was twelve, right up until he left for Harvard, Johnny would be Muhammed Ali and I would be George Chuvalo. Chuvalo was the Canadian heavyweight champ who used to take a lot of punches but would never quit. That was why I liked him. And when I boxed with Johnny, I would take a lot of punches from Muhammed Ali, but like Chuvalo, I would never quit.
As a kid, when I wasn't boxing, I was on the swim team, traveling to meets all over New England, or playing basketball or Ping-Pong. It was fun to get out of the house to travel to swim meets. In high school, I was a diver for the swim team. I enjoyed the exercise, but, like with every sport I did, I always tried to win.
Every summer, from ages seven to seventeen, I left the city and went to Boys Club camps down the Cape or all over New England. I was usually sent for two weeks, but most summers I wanted to stay for a longer period of time so I'd get some kind of a . . .
