...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret at 278 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears and years ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried& unenlightened...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!
Turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.
...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.
This should be good...
(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)
Anyway...
He looked like a pushover.
"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."
He grinned bigly...
...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Jack Sparrow fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Dude because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...
I looked for another career...you could call it an object lesson in acceptance of others.
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