CHAPTER THREE

            John’s paternal grandmother was very active in charity work.  She managed charity drives, scheduling donation hours and arranging locations, going to women’s club meetings to evoke interest and participation, writing hundreds of solicitation letters and creating flyers; she was tireless.  And she had no patience with anyone she trusted to help her who might not exert their maximum effort for whichever charity was most in need that particular day.  She instructed John to go door-to-door to solicit donations for her favorite charity for handicapped children.  She showed him brochures with pictures of the youngsters in wheelchairs, telling him how lucky he was not to be paralyzed like they were, children who would never walk again or run on a playground or dance or kick a football.  She always told him they had to do all they could to help these dear children because they were God’s children, too.  John’s compassionate and empathetic heart nearly exploded with love for these poor children and from that moment on, he was a dedicated emissary for his grandmother’s charitable missions. He absorbed her fervor and knocked on doors tirelessly, and he learned how cruel people could actually be, unless there was something in it for them.  Or unless there was an appealing gimmick to the fundraising that caught their interest. 

John watched a telethon every year, for as long as ten to eighteen hours, sleeping in between the bad vaudeville acts that were played throughout, even in the wee hours of the mornings.  He observed how excited people became when they donated to the cause of a telethon, and how their emotions reached a fever pitch.  He wanted very much to do his part and help out – and please his grandmother, of course.

He decorated a sealed plastic container with a picture of a disabled child in a wheelchair taped to the outside, and knocked on doors to collect coins.  At first, he quit early, going home dejected and most of the time, empty-handed, and his grandmother would dip her ladle in a bucket of guilt and slop it all over this impressionable little boy, saying, “You do NOT give up! Are you going to tell those poor children in wheelchairs they will never walk because you weren’t brave enough to ask for money, because you gave up?”  And that barrage on his conscience and his desire to help his grandmother had the same effect as shooting him out of a cannon.  Back out he went, facing the slamming doors and the rejection like the most courageous soldier in any war that had ever been fought. 
He walked the neighborhood with a dedicated fervor that was almost a reverence.  The fire in his eye didn’t stop the doors from slamming in his face, however.  The Italian women said, “What kind of family would send you out like this, young man?”  So then, abashed, he rushed back home and his grandmother told him to go back out and tell them his father had sent him. 

John nodded and went out the front door but sat on the stoop, thinking.  He didn’t want to use his father as a “bribe” because no one in the neighborhood even knew him or remembered even seeing him because he worked so many hours.  He stood up as if stung by a wasp because suddenly he had a great idea:  he would “borrow” a friend’s dad, or pretend to, because he knew the man was the local mob chieftain and everyone in the neighborhood knew that name.  Dan Delafino, the first born son of a bona fide godfather.

The first door he knocked on was opened by a scowling housewife, wiping her hands on her apron, and he had to swallow hard, knowing he had interrupted an Italian woman cooking and that was never a very good sign.  But the minute he mentioned the name of the mob chieftain and said the man was his father, the whole world changed.
 
“Mrs. Migliori, you might know my dad?  Mister Delafino?  He sent me here to ask if you would like to give some money to help the poor children who were born with crippling diseases so they can get wheelchairs and medicines?  Then I can tell my dad how generous you are.  .  .”
The canned speech worked like a charm but at the time, John had no idea what he had accomplished.  Later, he realized he had learned the first lesson of how to use leverage and persuasion.  The people in the neighborhood went crazy trying to gather up loose change to give him and even asked him to come back for more.  They wanted to make certain he told his “father” how much they gave and how glad they were to be able to help those poor children. 
As his collections grew bigger and bigger, his grandmother suspected him of stealing the money.  He turned in so much so rapidly, the local charity’s office sent representatives to his grandmother’s apartment to find out how she was managing to turn in such large donations.  They left, amazed at the young man’s success and were more than appreciative, even though they couldn’t figure out exactly how he did it.
*  *  *
Approximately three or four years later, John was walking down Soho’s West Broadway.  Suddenly, he felt his collar jerked from behind and he was forcibly pushed into a storefront and when he tried to resist, two thugs shoved him farther back in the dingy shop, through a heavy door into a back room.
“Here’s the little thief that’s been pulling the crippled kid scam.”  The man pushed him forward into the dim room and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw a man in a bathrobe glaring at him with narrowed eyes, his cigarette smoke encircling his large head like a gray, evil wreath.  His ugly expression frightened John, who recognized the man as one of the most cunning and dangerous of the Mafia chieftains.  The man was so secretive people whispered about it taking the FBI fifteen years just to find out he was even connected to organized crime.  Rumor had it that if you crossed Don Delafino’s path the wrong way, your cement shoes would be wet within two or three hours.  John’s knees shook as he stared at this kingpin of the underworld, whose name he had been throwing around.
The man who had manhandled him inside, straightened him up and pulled his collar back in shape. 

“Lissen, you little punk.”  The mob boss took a drag of his cigarette and blew a cloud of foul smoke right in John’s face.  “You’ve been using my name.  I hear you’ve pulled in some big money, too. And I want it.  That’s MY money.  My name brought it in!”

John was shaking so badly he was afraid he was going to topple over and then he was sure he was going to die, right there.  His mind was spinning and he knew he might have a chance if he could get help from the priest of his parish or from his grandmother.  He started talking to the mafioso as if his life depended on it, which it did. He told the man exactly what he was doing with the money and finally the man agreed to listen to the charity officials and the priest who consented to meet with him and show him all the receipts from John’s collections and where they had sent the money for the crippled children.  The man liked what he heard and when the officials and John’s grandmother offered to earmark the donations as having come from this mobster, he backed off and explained the situation to his fellow gangsters, telling them to get off John’s back and let him be.
 
For nearly a month, John woke up several times a night after that encounter, soaked in perspiration, amazed he had gotten away with his little white lie, which could so easily have meant the end of HIM. 
*  *  *
John spent hours staring at the ads in the back of mail order catalogs, such as the ones tempting readers to order ant farms and live sea monkeys and books on hypnotism.  His daydreams hovered around the latter most of the time, which was truly prophetic.
His school was always involved with fundraising of one kind or another, and usually pushing some product no one wanted.  One of these products was the Rutolo   chocolate candy bars, which were thick and rich and full of almonds, the size of a gold ingot, and a bargain at fifty cents.  John coveted the rich candy bars and because he loved the taste and quality, he didn’t mind trying to sell them.  There were always prizes for the students who sold the most candy bars and the most coveted prize for John was getting out of having to do his homework.   He tried everything he could think of to sell the candy bars and raise more money than anyone else.  He seethed with jealousy when he found out other students whose fathers or mothers worked in large corporations or businesses and their parents sold crates and crates of the candy to their employees, without their children having to do a thing but turn in the money and get the applause.  John worked the ferries, crossing the New York harbors many times to end up selling only half a box.  He was close to giving up his determination to reach what was beginning to look like an unattainable goal, when he had another of his life-changing moments.  He realized no one was soliciting the New York subways.  Nobody begged the passengers for money for anything.  John walked up and down the aisles asking if anyone would like to buy some of his candy to help the Catholic children who desperately needed help from kind strangers.

It was very discouraging at first.  People yelled at John, saying, “Hey, kid, does your family know where you are?  Do they know what you’re doing?”  And all he could think of was the fact that he didn’t care what they yelled at him as long as he got out of doing his homework.
After that, John’s sales topped all but the kids whose parents owned large companies and their employees were coerced into buying literally cases of the candy bars.  All John cared about was being so busy nobody yelled at him about his homework, and the other benefit was that every tenth candy bar was his, alone.  And he savored every tiny bite of those Routolo Chocolate bars. 
*  *  *
When John was only nine years old, his father bought him a shoeshine kit, complete with several tins of waxy polish, two soft cloths for dabbing into the wax and for polishing, a hand brush for pre-cleaning and buffing  and the box itself, boasting a metal, shoe-shaped footrest for the customer.   John’s dad was almost parsimonious and kept his allowance about the same as the cost of one of those Routolu candy bars, so to John, the shoeshine kit looked like the opportunity of a lifetime, as good to him as a hamburger franchise on the busiest corner in town. 

John didn’t even read the instruction booklet but pulled the shoulder strap of the shoeshine box over his shoulder and took off, anxious to make his fortune.  He didn’t realize everything has to be learned and that there is a wrong way and a right way to accomplish just about everything.  His way was not the right way.
Ignoring the circled job ads in the newspaper classifieds his father shoved under his nose, John impulsively decided to start his shoeshine business at the nearest subway station, in order to intercept the morning rush.  He figured correctly that the passengers on their way to work would be more likely to have their shoes polished before they got to the office.  John nabbed a customer right away, a gentleman in a gray flannel suit, wearing a fedora pulled low over his eyes, who ignored John kneeling at his feet on the dirty pavement.  The man was preoccupied working the crossword in the morning paper and didn’t realize John was about to pass out from a panic attack. He had no clue even how to begin polishing the man’s brown leather shoes.

He clicked the shoeshine box open and withdrew the brush, a can of polish that happened to be black and not brown, and one of the soft cloths.  Out of the corner of his eyes he watched a young African American shoeshine boy, an expert, pop his long polishing cloth over and over and it made a sound like a cork flying out of a champagne bottle.  The boy’s brilliant white teeth flashed in a triumphant smile because he knew John was a rank beginner and couldn’t begin to polish shoes like he could.

John swallowed hard, and pried the lid off the small can, staring at the smooth waxy surface of the new polish.  He covered his forefinger with the edge of the cloth and dipped it in the polish, pulling up a large blob of black wax, then started smearing it on the man’s brown shoe.  He immediately suspected something was wrong but hoped when he rubbed the wax in and buffed it with the brush, the color would lighten but it did not.  And to top it off, he smeared the man’s gray silk hose with ugly black streaks.  By the time the man looked up, John was ready to jump under the oncoming subway car, but the man yelled so loudly and threw the newspaper at John’s head so violently, all he could do was grab his shoeshine box and run as fast as his nine-year-old legs would go. 

For young John, the grown-up men that lost their tempers because of his inability to shine shoes, their kicking and spitting at him and their verbal lacerations and rudeness failed to reduce him to tears, and only tempered the steel he was developing inside. 

Some of these angry customers felt sorry for the young boy trying to shine shoes and gave him small change, which he put into an envelope and sent every penny to the charity his grandmother was sponsoring then.  He knew if he earned anything, no matter how small, he had to turn it in as he had agreed to do.  John Petrocelli was growing up with his ethics intact.

Foreward | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3| Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6| Chapter 7