Anywhere you went, as soon as you said, "Navy Street," people said, "Oh, that�s where Al Capone comes from." He went to P.S. 7 right here on York Street. My old man knew him good. Used to play cards with him. This guy Casper, little quiet guy, you never would have guessed it. He made a run for him, drove a truck from Chicago to New York with a shotgun on the seat. ...during the depression Mr. Capone put a lot of people to work.

My grandparents came from Naples around 1860. My parents were born here. My father, first he worked at Wallabout Market. Then he worked for the sanitation department, made thirty-three dollars a week. I had five brothers, plus me, is six and four sisters. My brother Peewee took care of Carmine. Carmine took care of me. I took care of Frankie. Frankie took care of Benny. And last my brother Ally came in, and we all took care of him.

We had a couple of rich families down the neighborhood, and they used to give my mother clothes. My mother couldn�t afford to buy us all shoes, so I put on the shoes they gave us one day and went to school. This rich kid said in front of the class, "Hey, he�s got my shoes on."

I felt that big. Never again. I took those fuckin shoes off. I decided to rob every fuckin thing that ain�t nailed down. Robbed shoes, socks, you name it, so nobody would say, "You got my shoes on."

We took care of each other. I had hamburger, you had hamburger. I had steak, you had steak.

When I was old enough, I went out and shined shoes on Sands Street--the sailors. And robbed �em. Whatever they had, they�d be drunk, their wallet hanging out of their pocket. I�d take two dollars, three dollars, buy my brother some shoes. One brother, he helped the other brother. Even Frankie the Spic -- he done the same thing. He had 10 brothers. They helped each other.

You see a lot of train tracks around here. We used to rob the freight trains. That building -- that used to be Scripps pharmaceutical. We used to go in there and rob aspirins. On this corner, we had Mason Mints candies. We used to rob them too. Robbed every fuckin thing that wasn't nailed down.

Our gang -- we were the Sands Street Boys. You had the Navy Street Boys, the Coney Island Boys, the Red Hook Stompers, the Gowanus Stompers, the South Brooklyn Tigers. You heard of the Amboy Dukes? You know why they�re famous? They killed a teacher with a zip gun...by accident.

We didn�t carry zip guns, we carried automatics. They beat guys up for fun. We beat up Marines--and robbed them. The Amboy Dukes were a bunch of shit-head kids, that�s all they were. Mostly Jews from over on Pitkin, Livonia, over that way. We were the toughest gang in Brooklyn.

Navy Street come down here one time with about 35 guys. Thirteen of us took them down to the tanks and knocked their fuckin brains out. And the Italian bookmakers on the side taking bets. Our bookmakers told their bookmakers, "These kids down here, they fight sailors and Marines. They�ll knock their fuckin� brains out."

We all came out with chair legs. They were fighting with their hands. Whack �em across the top of the fucking nose, break their nose. He was down.

One night it was me, Veely, Frankie the Spic, Knuckles, Frankie Glom. We were going down Flushing Avenue to �Lover�s Lane.� Veely gives his piece to his girlfriend but she takes the clip out. Frankie don't know this.

So we�re down at Lover�s Lane, down Flushing Avenue, and a bunch of sailors come out of a bar: "There they are, get them." So they start chasing us. Veely says, "Stay here, don't worry." And he took out the gun, but there were no bullets in it. He hit his girl in the fuckin head with it.

So we come running up here, and we�re screaming, "Help! Help!" There was 50 or 60 sailors behind us. So guys come running out of the joints, the bars, out of houses, with baseball bats, chair legs. We were fighting from Hudson and Prospect Street down to the Navy Yard, in the street. Fuckin� civilians on the floor, sailors all over the fuckin� joint�.there�s a fire box. I see Veely leaning against the fire box, bleeding. He's cut across the arm, across the back. The sailor cut him with the bayonet. But he hit the sailor with a chair leg, and it had a bolt sticking out of it, and the bolt�s stuck in the sailor�s head. Frankie -- they stitched up. But the sailors, they had to carry them back into the yard. We fucked up so many sailors their ship couldn�t leave port the next morning. ...they had the old bakery on Hudson Avenue. The dwarf owned it. Two or three sailors -- we threw them in there. The dwarfs was hitting them with the sticks, you know, the sticks they cook with.

Today, the kids got no respect for nobody. Back then we had respect. I used to be standing on the corner of Hudson Avenue and Prospect Street. My grandmother would come out of the grocery store with a bushel of groceries. God forbid if I didn't run over and take her groceries from her . My uncle would have given me a size 10 shoe up in my fuckin ass. Believe it.

And when you seen the old-timers from the neighborhood, if you were smoking on the corner and the ladies passed by--you threw the cigarette away...you tipped your hat, you said "hello Grandma."

I got arrested 27 times, my uncle went down the 84th precinct and paid off every time. They only booked me once out of all them arrests. But I got so hot, I had to leave the neighborhood. The last time I had six guns on me; my uncle had to pay $100 a gun to the lieutenant. That was a lot of money back then. So I joined the Army.

After I came back from Korea I found a nice girl. She was good. So I got married. So I said, "Let me change my ways." I took the city test, and I passed. I was working as a gardener in Williamsburg, in one of the city projects. I was on my lunch break. We were playing Knock Rummy. So one of the city housing cops comes in and throws the arm on me. And he pulled me out of the chair. So I says, "Take it easy pal, you're hurting me."

So he won't let go, so I come down with my boot, and I broke his toe. They rushed him to St. Catherine's Hospital. Couple hours later he comes back, he catches me in the room, and he says, "I wanna see you at five o�clock."

So I says, "No problem."

I was about 28 years old. That's all I was. Legitimate job, I wanna be a nice guy, OK? I punch my card, we�re going home from work, he's outside with his partner. His partner�s got a uniform on. They're housing cops. So I says to the guy, " If you're going start something, take the piece off." He had a gun on him.

"Naw, don't worry, I ain't gonna do nothing with the gun." So as he's talking I hit him, and he goes down. But he was drunk. I could smell it. So I whacked him, and he went down. So the first thing he did was go for the gun. As he went to the gun, I kicked his brains out. I got 17 witnesses. The superintendent comes out and sees me kickin him cuz he went for the piece, OK? They stopped the fight. I had to go before the civil service commission, went down there, I had 17 witnesses, nobody showed up for me. And I got fired. I said, "Fuck this shit." Now, I got no more job, and I got a baby. So I seen some people, went back down the pier.

Nine years I worked down on the piers on Buttermilk Channel--Van Brunt Street, right by the old sugarhouse. I was about the only Italian down there; I worked with the Pollacks from Greenpoint. We took coffee off the barges, loaded it into the warehouses. Had a small hook for the left and a big hook for the right. Grab the bags with the hooks and throw them up on the flats--stack �em 25 high. Hundred and ten pound bags, 3,000-4,000 bags a day. First day on the job, end of the fucking day, I went home half-dead. And I was out for three days cuz I couldn�t move. My hands were all crampled up. They actually had to open my hands like that to get the hooks out of them.

And they had blisters on top of blisters on top of blisters. And how we cured them, when we broke the blisters, we got the axle grease from the hi-lo and put it on there. And my hands, they were like rock after that. If I were to smack you, I would a took your head right off your shoulders. ...

we had hard work. You broke your fuckin ass doin that shit. That�s the way it was down there. And it was nice. You could go swimming off the docks when it was warm. I was making maybe 200 hundred a week, 250 a week...cuz we don�t work everyday. When the ships were in, we worked. When the ships was out, we didn�t work. So then, if I came home with 200 a week, I was lucky. But when you worked, you worked right around the clock, to get the ship out of there, and to get the stuff unloaded. And that was it �til the next day, �til the next week, �til the next ship cames in...

And then the clothes used to come in. Leather coats, leather jackets, from Italy, Brazil, shoes used to come in, and they used to take a walk. They used to walk away. We all got a little bit of it, that�s all. It wasn�t much.

This neighborhood where we lived, they destroyed it, tore it down to build the projects. They drove us all out. The city promised we�d have first choice to get in the projects, Yeah, up your fuckin ass we had first choice. You know who come in there don�t you, thems and the other ones�.I used to walk down the street, on any block I knew 25 people. Where I live now, I don�t know nobody�.Some of the old folks killed themselves, where they gonna move to at 80 years old?

Before they knocked it down, this was all two family houses. This wasn�t no slum. That�s one thing. The people were poor, but you could eat off the floor. We made sure of that cuz we used to rob the Kirkman�s soap factory. You washed your dishes with it, you washed your clothes with it, you washed your head with it. Best soap in the world. And one bar would last you two years. It was about that thick. It looked like a brick. What we used to do with it, we�d put it in sock, and hit you in the fuckin head with it. Just exactly like a brick.

Any regrets for the heads I broke? No, cuz I got my head broke too. Got my fuckin jaw broke too, got my arm broke too. When we got picked up by the cops, got the shit kicked out of us. We didn�t holler that the cop hit us. We knew we done wrong. If we didn�t do wrong today, we done wrong yesterday. We didn�t get picked up yesterday, so we got picked up today for yesterday too now. Now we�re getting the shit kicked out of us. Whaddaya cryin for? You do unto others, but you do it first. That�s the good book. And don�t get caught.