Posted By:
Joe PelaezA different time, and possibly a different background.
This is not from books, not from stats, it's strictly from life's experience.
I'm talking about the the late 1930's, early forties, up to 1945.
My pre teens, early teens during the second world war years, living in Spanish Harlem, Manhattan NYC.
I was surrounded by a lot of fine good people, but within the envirement, there was also the element of street gangs, gang wars, zip guns and drugs.
If you did not grow up in a large inner city, you will not know WTF I'm talking about.
Competing in those days was a training field that gave me all the background that I'd need in later life.
Whether it was in stickball, I was so bad, with two left feet, that they would prefer to trade me for a stickball bat, and a spauldeen, when it came up to choosing a team.
Some of those guys were great natural athletes, whereas I really had to work at it.
The sad part is that some of them got killed or wounded in gang wars, while I was the only one from that group to later on go for a football scholarship.
The hard part was the peer pressure, and the hardest part of the peer pressure, was going against it.
Gangs of every kind were all over the place.
A group of my peers joined a gang 8 blocks away, not knowing that in a short time, that gang would declared war on the gang that lived on their block.
They had to sneak home over roof tops, or whatever.
One of them, was killed by a sniper as he sneaked into his apartment house during the night.
He was a former schoolmate of mine in grammer school.
Although I didn't do gangs or drugs, I definitely needed to change the scenario.
That means no gangs ... no drugs ... a different group of friends and ideas.
In other words, how to make friends, and influence people.
To say that my peers looked down upon me, and were not happy with me ... Is an understatement.
The change turned out to be easier than expected, new classmates from Junior High school, in the middle of an oasis just 3 blocks from where I lived.
NYC is an amazing place.
Now this, depending in what circles Mr Jeffery Lichtman travels ... he might find this interesting.
I eventually got to play some football for a local team called the Eagles, the N.Y. Eagles.
That team was made up of NYC.
I mean every possible kind of diversity.
The good the bad, and everything else of every gang, religion, color or crede. ... We were one Team..........
To give you just one small example.
In one game, we had this sub come in for one play.
He wasn't very tall, and he came in to replace the quarterback.
He threw me the prettiest touchdown pass that you would ever want to see.
A few years later, he had to serve some time because he shot a very disagreeable person.
To show you the other side of the coin, and this is the part that Jeffery may, or may not recognize.
We had halfback that was fast and shifty, and light on his feet.
His name was Eddie Torres, better known now as Judge Edwin Torres.
Now for those of you that may not be familiar with Judge Torres, asides from being a noted Judge, he wrote a few books.
One of them was "Q & A", that was made into a movie with Nick Nolte, and I believe Armand Assante.
He also wrote "After Hours" AKA Carlito's Way with Pacino.
Let me take a brake.
OK Mr J Krasner, being that you said I was all wrong, let's hear a little about your background, and experience?
Joe Pelaez....................