BILL CADY Word Count: 149,227 - At My Friend's Place

Bill Cady, The Early Years … by Bill Cady 72
play in other yards than just mine. He‟d pick on me a lot. Whenever I reacted, he‟d beat
me up and laugh at me.
When we weren‟t fighting each other, John and I had a “fort”, a half attic in his
garage. It had a foldaway door, each section three feet high. In the rear of the garage a
piece of the ceiling folded upward, the trap door to the attic. There was an opening above
the garage door, letting us see out the driveway and to the street. We‟d go out and gather
rocks by the bucketful, then store them in our fort. Once armed with enough ammo to get
it started, we‟d head over to Knollwood Avenue and hit a couple guys with rocks.
They‟d all get pissed, gather a few guys together and come after us. By that time,
John and I were upstairs in his garage with the trap door shut and locked. We‟d throw
the bigger rocks at „em, and use slingshots for the smaller ones. The attackers would
usually stay and throw rocks until one of them started bleeding, then go home after
threatening to kill us when they caught us.
I guess the unnecessary violence was the second “stupid part” of what we did.
The first was the fact Fabiano‟s Market was on the corner of Knollwood and Willow
Streets, where we went almost every day to buy something. Based on that deficiency in
the male mind that always wants to fight, or go to war, I see where it must‟ve made sense
to us at the time.
John was in high school, obviously, many years ahead of me, so he learned things
I hadn‟t yet seen about life. Bad language was a part of it. To impress me, or anyone he
thought he could impress, John would use what he learned around me. I had no one to
explain it to me, and sure didn‟t want to look stupid, so I never asked for definitions
when he insulted me.
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