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Gaetano Moretti owned a shoe repair business in my hometown of Rye, N.Y. His tiny shop, The Shoe Guy, was wedged in between the Clinton Trust building and a beauty salon called To Hair Is Human. All three businesses were located on Purchase Street, the main thoroughfare in town. There was a Citibank across the street. City Hall and the public library were nearby.
I don’t know when Mr. Moretti first opened his store. My guess would be that it was in the mid- to late-sixties. I cannot say for sure. Of one thing I am certain, his store had been open as far back as I could remember. I lived in Rye for the first 22 years of my life. I am 44 now, soon to be 45.
All too soon, actually.
I met Mr. Moretti in the fall of 1972. It was a few weeks after school had begun. I was 10-years-old. My friend Joey Rizzo and I were walking downtown one afternoon after school had let out. The two of us had been friends since kindergarten. Joey had a great sense of humor. Really, the guy was funny as hell. Everybody who knew him said that he was going to be a famous comedian one day. He was that funny. Maurice Stumper, the smartest kid in town, used to say that Joey was going to be another Curly Howard. This was no small praise.
Joey and I were pals for years. We saw our fair share of trouble together. Nothing serious, just harmless stuff. Like, ringing doorbells and running away. Making crank calls. Egging cars. That kind of thing. Good old Joey. We sure had a lot of fun together. I swear, it seemed as if a day didn’t go by without somebody chasing after us. The grownups back then had no sense of humor. You would think that they had never been kids themselves. The cops were even worse. They were always so serious. We used to laugh at them while they tried to make like Clint Eastwood. The whole bunch of them were so inept. They couldn’t even catch a cold.
The trouble began that afternoon when Joey and I walked by Mr. Moretti’s store. We had never paid any attention to the place before that day. There was no reason for us to do otherwise. We were 10-year-olds. What did we care about a shoe store? The Smoke Shop, on the other hand, was another matter. That place was like a shrine to us. It was the only store in town that sold Playboy magazines. They used to keep them on a shelf behind the counter. My friends and I would always try and sneak a peek at the cover of the latest issue whenever we were in the store. Mr. Bubbico, the owner, was wise to us, though. He used to chase us out of there all the time. It didn’t take much to set him off, either. The guy was tightly wound. Most of the time he would start making a ruckus as soon as we walked through the door.
“If youse ain’t here to buy, youse up to no good,” he’d yell. “Get the hell outta here!”
He was a cheap old bastard.
Mr. Moretti, on the other hand, never gave us a second look. Nor did we pay him any mind. He would, on occasion, be sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store when we walked by, but he would no sooner greet us than we would acknowledge him. It was a convenient relationship for everyone.
That afternoon was different. Something in the window of Mr. Moretti’s store caught Joey’s eye. He stopped walking.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He peered intently at the store window.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Joey started laughing. He was really doubling up. He pointed at the window.
“Take a look at this,” he said. “It’s a riot.”
I looked in the window. A large piece of cardboard had been taped to the glass. It was a makeshift sign. The writing on the sign was crudely scrawled in black magic marker. The sign read: We Fix A You Golf Bag.
I read the sign and burst out laughing. Joey and I exchanged a high-five. We laughed our asses off.
After a few moments, Mr. Moretti came outside.
Mr. Moretti was a small man. No taller than a fire hydrant, really. He was slender and wore thick glasses. He had a full head of gray hair. His pants barely came to his ankles. He was wearing black shoes and white socks. His blue shirt had a penguin on it. My dad wore the same for years. After that, he shined his shoes with it.
There was a perplexed look on Mr. Moretti’s face when he first saw us. In short order, his puzzlement turned to rage.
“What the hell are you two wiseguys doin’?” he demanded. “Youse a lookin’ for trouble?”
“No, man, we’re just laughing at your sign,” Joey said. “It’s too funny.”
“You think that’s a funny? Well, youse a wait until I’m a through with a youse,” Mr. Moretti threatened. He raised his fist to us. “You ain’t a gonna be laughin’, believe you me! Now, youse two hoodlums get the hell outta here before I call a the cops.”
“We weren’t doin’ anything wrong,” I protested. “We were just laughing about your sign.”
“Yeah, ‘We fix a you golf bag.’ That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Joey said.
Mr. Moretti failed to see the humor in the matter. Really, the guy was pissed.
“Hey, youse get the hell outta here right a now!” he thundered, shaking his fist for emphasis. “Pronto!”
Joey and I took off. We were still laughing.
“Hey! We fix a you golf bag!” we yelled as we ran away.
“I’ll a fix a you!” Mr. Moretti shouted. “You stay the hell away from a here if youse a know what’s a good for a you!”
We laughed all the way downtown.
The sign was still in the window the next day. This time, though, there were five of us.
“You guys gotta see this sign,” Joey had told three of our friends. “You’ll crack up, I swear.”
Our friends laughed like hell when they saw the sign. Then, on a signal from Joey, all five of us stuck our heads into Mr. Moretti’s store.
“Hey! We fix a you golf bag!” we roared.
Mr. Moretti was behind the counter examining the heel of a shoe. His face quickly became contorted with anger.
“Hey, youse hoods, get the hell outta here!” he yelled. He flung the shoe at the door, nearly hitting Bobby Grimaldi, who let out a yelp. Mr. Moretti grabbed a yardstick and came barreling around the counter after us. “I’m a gonna kick a youse ass!” he screamed. “Come a back here!”
We got out of there as fast as our legs would carry us. We did not look back.
After a few minutes of running, we stopped to catch our breath by the wall near Blind Brook Lodge. All of us were huffing and puffing like sprinters after a big race. Nicky Tomaselli said he was scared. Nicky was a tough kid. His dad was a truck driver. Mr. Tomaselli had forearms as thick as a redwood. His son was thick, too. Especially in the head.
“I ain’t goin’ near that store again,” Nicky said. “That old man’ll kill us.”
“You said it,” Bobby agreed. “That old bastard almost hit me with that shoe.”
“Like hell he did, Bob,” Joey said. “You were halfway home before the thing had even left his hand.”
“Yeah, and I’d a gotten home quicker if you hadn’t been runnin’ in front of me,” Bobby retorted.
Everyone laughed.
We went to Jerry’s and ordered sandwiches. They had the best sandwiches in town. There was a wall outside next to the store where people would sit and eat their sandwiches. It was part of the experience of eating at Jerry’s. All of our brothers and sisters had sat on that wall.
My friends and I sat on the wall and ate our sandwiches and laughed about Mr. Moretti. It was a good afternoon.
My father was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came home a couple of hours later.
“I want to talk to you,” he said to me when I came into the room. He pointed to one of the chairs that were around the kitchen table. “Sit down.”
My father was a big man. He never said much, but when he did speak I was careful to listen. He never hit me the whole time I was growing up. He didn’t have to. His mere presence was enough to keep me in line. Most of the time, at least.
I sat down without a word. He took the chair opposite me. The room was still.
“What were you doing running away from Mr. Moretti this afternoon?” my father asked.
The theme from Dragnet popped into my mind. Not that I felt like smiling. Far from it.
My father continued, “I came home from work early today and saw you and some of your pals being chased out of Mr. Moretti’s store. What was that all about?”
He said all of this calmly. I almost pissed in my pants.
I swallowed hard. I knew better than to lie. That would only compound matters. I told him exactly what happened. I did not leave anything out.
When I was done, my father leaned back in the chair. He looked at me for a long time. I could feel the sweat running down my arms.
Then, something wonderful happened: he smiled.
“We fix a you golf bag?” he said. His eyes were twinkling. “The sign really said that?”
A surge of relief swept though me. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, though.
“That’s what it said,” I told him. “Honest.”
My father chuckled and shook his head. Then, he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. The muscles in his upper arms were straining underneath his short sleeve shirt. There were tufts of gray hair coming out of the open collar. His eyes were fixed intently on my own.
“You and I are going to go see Mr. Moretti tomorrow,” he said, evenly. “First thing in the morning. When we get there, you are going to apologize to him. Understand?”
I nodded my head. “Understood.”
My father leaned back in the chair.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
He nodded to me.
“All right,” he said. “Your mother should be home from the market any minute.” He stood up and went out the kitchen door. A few seconds later, he was in the back yard positioning the lawn sprinkler. He turned the water on and watched the sprinkler for awhile. Our backyard was lush and green. The flower patches and rose bushes were interspersed with tomato and pepper plants. It was a beautiful and serene setting. My parents enjoyed tending to our backyard. Neither considered such activity to be work.
I laid in bed thinking for a long time that night. The moon was full and the stars were out in full force. A nice breeze filtered in through the open window. With each breath of the breeze, the promise of autumn flowed into my room.
After awhile, I fell asleep. In some respects, I have yet to awaken.
