Here are some oddities from Dr. Scolapasta..
While they aren't characteristic of most of us who grew up in the North End in the 1950s and 1960s, they certainly were typical of the strangenesses that from time to time occurred in our home town.
Posted July 16, 2018
Two North End guys die and go to heaven. St. Peter meets them at the Pearly Gates. He asks where they are from and they say “the North End.” He hesitates and says he has to talk it over with God, so he goes back and tells God there are two North End guys at the Pearly Gates.
God says, “Well, let me talk to them.”
Peter goes back and then a few minutes come running back to God, shouting “They’re gone! They’re gone!”
God replies, “The North End guys?”
“No,” Peter yells, “the Pearly Gates.”
“You might not find it as funny as I do,” the good doctor said, “But it is who a lot of us were
I think the doctor right on both counts.
Posted July 12, 201
A certain MB wants to piss.
Most of us just walked home and used our toilets.
Outside of the apartments, the toilets, but they flushed.
But MB didn’t care where he relieved himself.
So he’d walk to his building and piss in the hallway.
He'd pass by fifty buildings to piss in his own hallway.
I mean, even if you were so shameless that you'd rather pee in a public space than go upstairs to your private toilet, wouldn’t you choose someone else’s building to soil?
Posted July 11, 2018
A classroom.
Parochial school.
Nun distributing ‘holy cards,” with pictures of saints or the Virgin Mary or Christ on the cross.
Manny G not accepting.
“Take a card, Manny.”
“No.”
“What do you men, No?”
“No means I don’t want one.”
“Everybody has one.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Why?”
“Because my old man told me that anything you get for nothing is no fucking good.”
At which point the good sister’s patience at an end, and it being a different era, she goes to the blackboard and returns with the long wooden pointer.
She delivers Joey a few smacks on his shoulder and back.
Joey jumps up, winds up, and slugs the good sister on the side of her head.
Not too damaging, really.
But Manny was just eight-years-old.
While, for the most part the North End a wholesome place to grow up, strangenesses abounded.