Ethnic Studies at the University of West Somerville, Circa 1970
Boston Outsider / Humor
It was late afternoon on the last Monday of August, eight days before the start of ninth grade. Weasel Mullins and I were pitching quarters against the wall of our junior high school when Nickie Tsakos came by.
“Where you been?” Weasel asked.
“Greek School,” Nickie moaned.
“What’s that, something to do with bum-blasting?” Weasel smirked.
“Ha, ha, Asshole,” Nickie said. “I go to my church and study ancient Greek. It’ll come in handy if I ever go back in a time machine and want to talk to Socrates. I’ll be doing it every weekday, once regular school starts.”
“I don’t have to do any Irish shit after school,” Weasel replied. “But if I were a girl I’d be stuck taking step-dancing lessons.”
“You’d look cute kicking up your heels in a green dress,” Nickie laughed. “You got the red hair and all.”
“You think Irish dancing is real funny?” asked Weasel, narrowing his blue eyes. “You know what ‘Greek dancing’ is slang for, don’t you?”
“Fuck you,” answered Nickie.
“Exactly,” cackled Weasel.
“What about you?” Nickie asked me. “You got any Italian duties?"
“On Wednesdays, you know, Prince Spaghetti Day, if my mother is busy watching ‘Dialing For Dollars,’ I have to stir the red gravy so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.”
“A Meatball who eats meatballs,” Weasel said. “It’s fucking cannibalism!”
“Well, what does your family eat on Wednesdays, Weasel?” I asked. “Plain boiled cabbage?”
“No, you ignorant Wop, we eat fried peat moss on Wednesdays,” Weasel snapped.
The three of us pitched quarters for about another hour when Manny Oliveira joined us. Manny was an immigrant from Portugal, a good-natured kid, but Weasel love to ride him.
“How’s it going, you foreign fuck?” Weasel greeted Manny.
“Is that nice, calling me a ‘foreign fuck’?” Manny asked. “At least make up something original.”
“All right, your new name is 'Linguicia Breath,'” Weasel answered.
“I’ve heard worse,” Manny smiled. “Now let me in this game.”
Manny kicked our asses, winning almost every round. About half the time he actually tossed “leaners.” Weasel was amazed at Manny’s advanced state of assimilation.
“How did you learn to pitch a quarter so close to a wall like that?” Weasel asked. “I didn’t even know they had walls in Portugal.”
“There was an advanced civilization on the Iberian Peninsula when your ancestors were running around naked,” Manny proclaimed, puffing up his chest.
“Maybe that’s how the Irish got so many freckles,” I volunteered, “going bare-ass in the sun for centuries.”
Nickie guffawed, and Weasel threw his last quarter at him. It was hot out, and Manny offered to treat us to slush at Mike’s Spa. Mike’s was owned by Miksa “Mike” Kolbasz, known in town as, “Mike the Polack.” Mike was actually from Budapest, but he was the first Hungarian that anyone in the neighborhood had ever met, and nobody was sure of the proper slur. We went into Mike’s, and Manny, Nickie, and I got lemon slushes, lemon being Mike’s best flavor. Weasel, always the showoff, ordered a combination of lemon, cherry, watermelon, and root beer. An aroma of cooking filled the store, and Weasel, after taking the first lick of his combo, asked Mike what the nice smell was.
“My wife is making goulash in our place upstairs,” Mike, a short, powerfully built man, grinned. “It’s Hungarian stew. If you boys stay on my good side, I’ll give you all a taste someday.”
We went outside and finished eating the slush, and as we were walking up the street, Weasel announced, “It’s not right that Mike is called ‘Mike the Polack’ when he’s not even Polish. From now on, he’s officially, ‘Goulash Gus.’”
“Wait a minute,” said Manny, “if he can be ‘Goulash Gus' when his name is really Mike, then I want to change my nickname to ‘Portagee Pete.’”
“Listen,” said Nickie. “You’re not a Pete, and Mike isn’t a Gus, but I’m a Nickie, so I should be ‘Nick the Greek.’”
“There’s already a ‘Nick the Greek,” a big gambler guy," Weasel retorted. “I’m calling you, ‘Jackie Onassis.’”
”Jackie Onassis is a chick,” sniffed Nickie.
“So are you!” Weasel blurted.
Nickie tackled him on to the lawn of a house we were passing, and they started wrestling. An old woman came out on the front porch and started bawling something in a foreign tongue, and Manny shouted something back, and I deduced that they were conversing in Portuguese. She went back into her house and reemerged waving a two-by-four, and we hightailed it to Nickie’s, which was five blocks away
“Hey, what did you say to that woman?” I asked Manny, as we sat in Nickie’s living room.
“I called her, “Linguicia Breath,’’ he said, poker-faced.
We all roared at that, and I knew that Manny was going to be a fine citizen.
