Monday, June 16, 2003 7:02:28 PM Joe Coluccio

Con'd from last rock
Message from Barney to Fred on the Road to the Bronze Age.

One Thanksgiving Art and another friend took off. Live fast. Left the gripes of home and parent behind and grabbed a bus to Chicago, where a childhood friend of Art’s, Frankie, had moved the year before. I drove them to the bus stop and pledged Omerta! I would never reveal where they went to anyone for any reason.

It was cold, just a slight stick of snow on the windshield. We sat in the heat of the car with a bag of burgers between us, ten for a buck, bought at a shack mid Frankstown Road. Talked until our noses filled with the heavy smell of diesel and our ears filled with the swish of air brakes. They took a last bite, grabbed their bags out of the trunk. Left.

I lived up to that promise the next morning when the Art's father called and demanded that I tell him where his son was. "Do you know what he took with him?" Art helped himself to the stash of cash from the bottom of the dining room china closet. The roll looked round and rich, more than a few months worth of saving. "He took my gun!" Die young.

I held silence, through the onslaught dealt by my own parents who couldn’t really figure out what to make of the situation, and the glass tears of Art’s mother and the blazing indignity of Art’s father and the stern looks of the police who visited. You could see the real story in their authoritative eyes. ‘Two more juveniles we won’t have to hassle with.’

I felt that it was an unfair burden foisted on me by some imagined Italian code of honor made up from gangster novels and Mafia movies. Not only did I take the beating from all authority, but I lost my two closest friends.

Two week later they came home. One hating the other more than the other hated the other. It came out in drips in conversation in the following months. Art thought his former closest friend was a slob. “He picked up French fries that had fallen to the dirty greasy street and ate them,” in a voice that said clearly that such actions lacked dignity, honor, panache!

“We were starving!” Explained my other friend. Art and Frankie attempted armed robbery. Pleading, he stopped them from killing the victim. Somewhere along the line dreaming ideology met irrational practicality. Leopold and Loeb meet Holden Caulfield. And have a good looking corpse.

For the next year I was in one camp or the other. There would be no reconciliation. Then Art disappeared seriously. Left for New York City and did not reappear for five or more years.

We graduated from High School, failed miserably at Penn State, worked at too many poor jobs, restaurants, book stores, machinery shops, and traveled to Europe. Always gathered back in Pittsburgh.

Art reappeared as suddenly as he was gone. Relating stories of days of hustling in New York City. He had money. Taken from the suckers and the queers. As he talked I felt smaller and smaller. It was a part his hustle to grow large, laugh large, keep the world under his control. Until someone bigger and badder and one up comes along. Many people think this is a technique worth mastering. Mostly, I laugh at the foolish posturing, but catch me on a down day and you can bluster and become king of my world. For what its worth.

He finagled a position as salesmen in the phonograph record industry in the city of Pittsburgh. He got a me job with one of the many arcane companies and corporations that made up the business. I was hired to transship phonograph records, a slightly unethical practice with borders on illegal that was cross purposes with the Record Labels and Distributors. I learned how to strip shipping cartons of all but one destination label. Anonymous boxes delivered to the bus station three or four times a day. Art wore salesman well with thin ties and shining suits. He would grab me by the arm and laugh with his big laugh. 'We're still friends, Joe. We know what’s going on here' he seemed to say as he circled higher and higher with the buzzards. Flew with the mighty and high ones. I was grounded.

Winter came. I went to work at a place that made Rolling Mills for the Steel Industry.

Somewhere along the line we lost touch probably when I married and left for California. He was married with three children. Stunning beautiful wife and dissatisfied. Looking for more action. Cheating in open green pastures.

I saw his father maybe ten or fifteen years ago at a movie theatre with a pretty young woman. Said nothing.

In the night I can hear that big laugh.