 |
The Lynch Letter Rants, Raves and Ripostes from LPP's Head Honcho |
GOD BLESS YOU JOHNNY BERGIN
John Bergin was a guy I grew up with in the red brick expanse of the NYCHA General Charles W. Berry Homes. If you didn't live there, you never knew the full name; no one ever used it. To this day, if someone from Staten Island asks me where I grew up, I just say "The Berries."
The Berries were built as a square, with a big common lawn (The Circle) in the middle of the thing. Three kiddie parks and a Community Center were tucked under buildings around the lawn's periphery. Us little loonies running around the place were, collectively, "The Berry Boys."
There were different crews of B-Boys. It depended on your block. John was Seaver Avenue. I was Jefferson Street. There were the Richmond Road and Dongan Hills Ave. boys, and some kids slumming from the surrounding private homes. On summer nights we could have games of "Manhunt" that would take hours, because together we would number twenty-plus players. "Johnny on the Pony" would turn into brutal affairs of endurance, because our rules let"Johnny" give the Pony the spurs.
We went to sports wars when we were old enough to cross the street alone and run crazy in Macarthur Park. That's another name you didn't know if you didn't live there. The park was "The Berries." We couldn't seperate the two. Cross Jefferson Street, and you were in the "Big Park."
It was playing football in the Big Park where I learned how good a guy John Bergin was. He was born to play football. He was big, he was fast, he would kick you on your ass. And then he would haul you up after drilling you into the ground and make sure you still knew what day it was.
As we got older, I traded cleats for skates. Me and the other hockey boys would invite John and the footballers to play, but they would have none of it. It was too alien a sport. This was before Al Michaels asking if you believed in miracles. John would point at Pete Karbowski, all five foot nothing of little blond Polock, and say "Not with that pyscho." See, Pete--another Seaver Avenue boy-- always being the smallest guy on the rink, carried his stick way too high.
When we all hit high school, there were lines drawn between the two camps. Football guys, they were bonafide jocks. Rink rats were a pack of undersized loons who called out the football players for fights once a week at the trophy case in front of New Dorp's gym. Sal Somma or Coach Pec would come out of the A.D.'s office and give us skateboys hell and call us assholes. Who cared? The school never paid a nickel for our team, so we didn't give a shit. We were Centrals despite the school. And then we came up with a brilliant dare:
"We play you jocks in football, you play us in roller hockey. No coaches. Both games at the Berries."
The jocks were drooling at the idea, except for Bergin. See, John knew that most of our guys played football, regularly, before we adopted the skate and the puck. None of the football boys knew how to tie on a pair of skates, never mind stand on them. And John knew we had a crew of recruits--AKA Berry Boys--that were sitting back at the Berries, waiting for a shot at the jocks. He killed the idea without anyone losing face.
John went on to be a New York Daily News All Star in football, and a guy you could have fun with in a sandstorm. I would have huge philosophical arguments with him over the merits of Pabst Blue Ribbon vs. Schlitz as the best bang for your buck. Whenever it looked like I was winning the argument, he'd wrap an arm around my head and say "Okay, Lynch, just shut the fuck up and drink."
We got older and didn't see much of each other. John went from being a Corrections officer to being a member of the NYFD's Rescue 5, one of the elite crews who went storming into things when reality went out to lunch. He went storming into the Trade Center on 9-11. He didn't come out.
After this thing happened, when I read his obit the other day, I found out him and his brother, Georgie, were prepping to open up their own place where a bar we all spent maybe too much time in once stood. I hope Georgie opens the joint, just so I can go drop a ton of dough into the till.
And I hope they got Schlitz on tap.
Semper fi. Berry Boys do not die.
