The mighty (but dumb) Ducals

Some bad boy happenings might have a funny side. This one did.

One day our guys decided that we should have a name and that we would get matching jackets and have the name embroidered on the back so the world would know who we were.

We tossed around names for a week, but nothing seemed to be just right. One night. as we were on the corner doing what we usually did—hanging out, smoking, spitting, and being obnoxious—Joe Zablonsky came up with “Ducals.” 

Not bad, we thought. We didn’t know what the name meant but we liked the sound of it. Not bad at all. We would be the “Ducals.”

But that decision did have a downside. If we were doing anything incriminating, people would know who were. Okay, when that happened, we decided that we would turn our jackets inside out so that the world would not know who we were. We never considered the fact that we could be identified because we were all wearing the same black jackets with identical backwards writing on the back saying “SLACUD.”

Since we wore our Ducals jackets all that time SLACUD, indeed, might not be too hard to decipher. I didn’t say that we were the smartest juvenile delinquents, did I?

Well, the funny part is that one night we were playing basketball at Rainey Boy’s Club on East 55th Street, and I went downstairs to go to the bathroom. I lifted the lid on the commode and saw the manufacturer’s name on the white porcelain in blue letters. The name was “Ducal.” 

“We were named after toilets?”  I thought. “Son of a bitch, toilets?” When I told the guys they were furious. They said, “Why didn’t we just name ourselves the Crappers!”

No one wore the Ducal jackets after that. We decided to go in another direction. We used our regular jackets and with a magic marker drew a big “5” on the front, with the words “Big Five.”

We were The Big Five! This would signify that we were some bad dudes from 55th Street. We hoped that it would, anyway. Why didn’t we use the whole 55 instead of just the one 5?  I don’t know.

A breach of our sovereign territory: When Harry got stabbed                                                                                                       

One pleasant summer evening, a bunch of us were standing on the corner not doing anything but nothing. Funny thing, the two major participants in this story were not regulars among the merry men who frequented the corner.

Kevin Grahm and Harry Hardaway were both friends of mine from two different neighborhoods who just happened to be visiting on the same evening. Anyway, at some point during our social discourse, two unknown guys approached us walking on our side of the street.

This was an unusual breach of protocol because if you were walking down a street and you saw a bunch of guys hanging out it would be wise to cross the street to avoid them. Not only did these two yahoos continue walking on our side of the street, but when they passed us one of them made a disparaging remark.

This was so outrageous that we stood there in stunned silence for a few seconds, marveling at the temerity of these two brave but stupid souls. To walk by us on our corner was inexcusable. To insult us while doing so was outrageous.

So about six of us lit out after them. Harry got there first and jumped on one of them. He disappeared into a writhing ball of New Yorker topcoats and flying fists.  Harry shouted, “Ouch! the bastard stabbed me!”

When I got to the scuffle, I thought I pulled the kid off Harry. But I was mistaken. I actually pulled Harry off of the kid. In the confusion, the two kids shot down an alley, jumped over a fence, and got away.

Kevin went to get his car. We all piled in, and we took Harry to the factory hospital on East 47th and St. Clair.   A couple of us went into the examination room with Harry and took off his coat and shirt. He had a stab wound on his back below the armpit that was about four inches long and it was open nearly a half inch.

The doctor said, “This is a stab wound, I have to notify the police.”  We told the doctor, “No need to notify the police.”  The doctor insisted, so we explained to him the reasons why it would be a bad idea to notify the police.  He didn’t press it then and stitched Harry up.

In the meantime, the young hoodlums waiting in the other room found a cash drawer and made a withdrawal from it leaving only the change.  When Harry was fixed up, we were leaving and the doctor said, ‘Wait minute, who is going to pay?”  We said, “Send us a bill.” We explained to him why it was a bad idea for him to expect payment and the conversation was over. We said, “So sorry, bye-bye.”  

We took Harry home and went back to the corner.  On the corner, Keith said, “We gotta find those bastards.”  So, he and two other guys got into his car to search for them.  I went home and went to bed.

The next day on the corner I asked the guys who went looking for the offenders what happened.  They said they had found them, and I asked what happened.  They said, “Keven hit them with his car.” 

I asked. “Are you sure you got the right guys?” They said, “Yeah, we think maybe it was them.  What’s the difference anyway?  “No difference, I guess,” I said. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  Kevin did in fact hit them with his car, but he wasn’t going very fast and they bounced off a cyclone fence and ran away. Maybe it was them but what’s the difference? I love inner-city logic!