Splash

Are you lonely, or are you sad?

Are your thoughts of what you have?

Or should have had?

Has he chosen you to be the one?

From the gates of heaven, he will come

~ Gemini Joe ~

y grandfather came from Italy and opened up a haberdashery, which is a hat store. He had one customer that no matter what he did, he could not make the hat fit on his head. This man came constantly for fittings until my grandpa got so angry, he pulled the hat over the guy’s eyes and threw him out of the store. That was funny.

It seemed like everybody in my family was hot-tempered and had a stubborn streak. My Dad told me when he was young he tormented his mom.

“I want a penny. I want a penny. I want a penny,” he repeated, until she gave him money.

The neighbors could hear him in the street as his voice carried far beyond the open windows of the brick building along Mulberry Street.

Between my father and his three brothers, my poor grandmother, Antoinette, didn’t have a chance. She tried her best to calm them down, but they loved to fight.

“Stop that,” she’d yell as they rolled around the floor, punching and hitting each other. “Someone is going to get hurt.” But whenever my grandmother tried to get between them, she ended up with the scars.

No matter what problems there were within the family, they stayed in the family. If someone picked a fight with one of them, they soon faced the wrath of all.

After years of apartment living with kerosene heaters and cold water, we could finally afford our own home with more space to spread out.

The two-family brick house had a stoop with large planters on each side of the front steps. The main level had two bedrooms, and a staircase led up to three more on the second floor. Four detached garages lined the street, next to the house, which my father used for storage.

Dolly carried a box of personal items to her bedroom on the first floor, while I climbed up the stairs, following my brothers to claim our bedrooms. My room was the smallest, which I jokingly described as “a six by eight cell without bars.”

In the hall outside my room, an iron ladder led up to the roof.

Out in the country, people sat out in their yards, but folks in Brooklyn set their lawn chairs on the rooftops. They called it Tar Beach. High above the noise of the street, it was a place to relax and bask in the summer sun. Some people planted small trees and vegetable gardens in large pots. When our family moved into the house, we discovered empty cages on the roof from previous owners, who had raised chickens and homing pigeons.

Homing pigeons use to relay racetrack results from Gravesend Stadium to the pool halls in the city, until the track shut down. People kept them in a cage on the roof with the intention of breeding them and joined pigeon clubs. They entered their best birds in races.

I remember one time my father brought home two pigeons for my brothers.

Vic and Dom spent most of their time up there. They would scurry up the ladder and the trap door would close with a bang, leaving me behind.

After a few weeks, Dom came running downstairs. “The birds laid eggs!” he shouted.

“It’s called a cluster,” Vic corrected. He was always smart when it came to animals.

I said, “I want to see.”

“Okay, you can look, but don’t touch them, or you’ll spoil them for the races,” Vic said.

I climbed up the ladder and poked my head through the opening in the roof. The mother pigeon was sitting on her eggs to keep them warm.

After ten minutes, my brothers made me go back downstairs. I didn’t get to see the eggs again until one day they came barreling into the kitchen.

“The eggs are hatching!”

The whole family jumped up and followed them to the roof. It was so funny. My dad was a big man and it was hard for him to squeeze through the small opening.

I waited for my mom because she had to hike up her skirt before she could get up the stairs.

The birds were cooing and I found it very interesting to see the mother pigeon take care of her babies.

“No touching, got it?” Victor said. “They aren’t pets.”

He was right of course, but I couldn't get the pigeons out of my mind. When my brothers were up there, I sat in the hall under the stairs and played with the lead soldiers that my father helped me mold. I had a habit of sticking them in my mouth. Back then, we didn’t know that lead was dangerous. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing for me.

Whenever they weren’t home, I’d sneak up to the roof to have a look at the babies. They were chirpy little things with no feathers and looked quite ugly. There was one bird that was in the same predicament as me in the pecking order. He was born last and the smallest. I took to him immediately.

I carefully took the small bird out of the nest. He seemed to love me and stayed in my hand. Holding the pigeon, I put it in the water, but the pan was too big and I thought, it isn’t much fun for the bird, so I ran downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed one of my mother’s saucers from the china cabinet. It was the perfect size. I filled it with water and put the chick in. The bird splashed around. He loved it.

“I think I’ll call you Splash,” I said. I think he liked that name.

When it was time for the races, my brothers took the two oldest birds to the club headquarters. I was happy that Splash wasn’t one of them, just in case they didn’t find their way home.

Each bird needed to be fitted with a metal band, engraved with a number.

The officials loaded the pigeons onto a truck then drove the birds to the starting point over in New Jersey. They released them all at the same time.

We all waited for both birds to come back to our rooftop. The first bird flew in. When Vic tried to put the pigeon back in the coop, but Splash escaped and ran to me. I scooped him up in my arms.

Victor grabbed the bird from me. “You’re not supposed to make him dependent on humans.”

Just then, the second pigeon flew in. Now, both birds were home, in record time.

“We’re going to win,” Dom shouted.

My brothers rushed off to the Pigeon Club to have them take off the bands and record their time.

The birds didn’t come in first, but they came home with a third place ribbon for one of them.

They continued to put the birds in the races, but I was afraid to go back up to the roof because I didn’t want to get in any more trouble.

I did finally, go on the roof looking for Splash, but the bird wasn’t around. I didn’t know what happened. My brothers said Splash never came home from the last race.

Maybe something happened to him or maybe one of the other boys caught him. I thought… no one could hold that bird back and often wondered because I started hearing stories from bird enthusiasts. They said that once in a while they came across a renegade bird that did whatever it wanted to. It could not win a race because it wasn’t trained properly. What they did was liquidate it, and boy I’ll tell you that struck me terribly. I hoped that I didn’t do anything wrong. I was very down about that, but as time went by, I forgot about Splash.