Billy Russo

1964: My mother taught me how to drive. She sat close to me on the big bench seat of her ’61 Impala. Every time I made a mistake, she smacked me. Pam, my sister, says from the back seat, “how is that teaching him? Mother calmly replied, “he knows how to drive. He’s just being smart! Remembering how many times the police brought me home for driving commuter’s cars around the train station parking lot. She paused, looked at me, and hit me again.

I was the youngest entrepreneur I knew.  The old Italian men in the neighborhood would pay us kids twenty-five cents if we brought them pigeons (squib), mostly roadkills.  For my birthday, circa 1959, I got a badminton set.  I remember holding the racket in my grubby little hand: dollar signs flashing in my eyes!  Wearing one of my Dad’s big winter coats (it was July), I headed for the courthouse.  I’d sit on the steps of the busy entrance waiting for an unsuspecting pigeon to venture too close.  It one swift movement, I’d whack the unsuspecting bird with the racket  and stuff it under my coat.  The old men loved me!

Late in the Fall, my Dad donned his winter coat.  Looking at me with a wary eye, he asked, “where the Hell did all these feathers come from?”

I grew up on Dobbs Ferry Road, half way between White Plains and Yonkers.  Our stretch of road was fairly steep.  On a snow-filled winter day around 1956 I discovered that if I rushed to the edge of the roadway, vehicles would break and start sliding in all directions!  What a delight!  I was well known in the neighborhood.  Many already thought of me  as “dangerous,” a kid that would not live to see adulthood.  I was eight.  That Xmas, Dad took me to buy the traditional tree at the lot next to the Tasty Freeze on Tarrytown Road, a busy four lane thoroughfare.  Nearby,  a snowplow crew was preparing for a run.  They wanted me to pull my latest stunt on the busy avenue.  Dad cursed out the work crew as he snatched me up.  I remember the drive home with the tree tied to the roof of our ’51 Plymouth, me tied up in the back seat.

Imagine: Greenburg, NY, circa 1954. I’m heading into the backyard with a length of rope. As I head out the door, I announce that I’m gonna try a circus trick I saw on television. My mother turns to my father and says, “stop him, Dutchie.”
Dad: “don’t worry, he’s already knocked out most of his teeth.”
Mom: “they’re beginning to think we’re abusing him at the ER.”
Dad: “it’s better he learns now before his permanent teeth come it.”
A scream rings out from the backyard….