Amazon<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
ON THE STREETS<\/h1>\nAn editorial column<\/h2>\n
By PETE BRESLIN EARTHY<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THE DOCKS \u2014 The last time I saw him he was throwing chairs and smashing a bloodied fist into the faces of all comers with an explosiveness that split their lips, popped their teeth and pulverized their noses. He was depressed.<\/p>\n
But Sunday mass was like that. It was the only way to get his message of love through to this parish of leather-faced dockworkers.<\/p>\n
That was 30 years ago, when rotgut and I were friends and we all wore the look of the slums. We were poor. But we knew how to survive. With guts.<\/p>\n
And Father Timothy O\u2019Shaughnessy McGuire O\u2019Rourk had more guts\u00a0 than any of us. He was known on the docks as \u201cPadre OMO,\u201d and when Padre OMO said, \u201cKneel!\u201d, you asked only, \u201cFor how long, Padre OMO?\u201d He had a way with words. And an even more persuasive left hook.<\/p>\n
But even Padre OMO, who wore the face of the docks, could miss the boat. And he did. He missed women\u2019s lib \u2014 and he was not ready for Trixie Malloy. When it was finished, Trixie Malloy, with her look of scarlet, did him in.<\/p>\n
Trixie was the first of the long-shore broads. She was a descendant of Tugboat Annie, born on a dark and stormy night in the bowels of a barge on Murky Bay. She had red hair that flowed down over smooth, muscular shoulders, green eyes that cut fog, a narrow waist and long, slim legs \u2014 and a chest that bulged the bib of her overalls. Lead anchors hung from her long, pierced earlobes. Any man who got too close rank the risk of getting his throat cut with a quick jerk of Trixie\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
Padre OMO grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle and stood it on end. His Adam\u2019s apple bobbed as the rotgut reddened his face stilled the volcano is in his belly.<\/p>\n
\u201cSalud a todo el mundo!\u201d, he exclaimed as he hurled the bottle against the wall. \u201cIt was the overalls,\u201d he reflected, \u201cI had to see what was inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first it was good,\u201d he said. \u201cI left the church and she left the docks.\u201d But it wasn\u2019t good for long. Trixie had been to Boston. She was beat up and burned out from a hard-hearted and bloodied effort to unionize professional anchovy filleters there. She had failed, and Trixie was tired and ready to leave the East for the golden West.<\/p>\n
When she left Padre OMO, he thought of her dressed in a pinafore jumpsuit, standing at the kitchen stove, basting eggs. She made her way slowly cross-country with a group of over-the-hill roustabouts, shoring up their tents and their spirits with her strength.<\/p>\n
She had charm. She could sing. She could dance. But most of all, Trixie could play chess. She moved in with Bobby Fischer, then Viktor Korchnoi. Fischer was too erratic, always a sucker for the Vienna Gambit \u2014 first used by U.S. Grant in a drunken stupor while fighting the Battle of Lower Chicamaugua and Upper Chancellorsville.<\/p>\n
Korchnoi was her complaint. It infuriated her that he always led with queen\u2019s pawn-2. It was maddening, but Korchnoi, complaints notwithstanding, held her attention. Each time, she tried to leave, he would show her the Russian End-Around Gambit, named after one of Nijinky\u2019s moves.<\/p>\n
It lasted until Korchnoi\u2019s complaint got out of hand, and he beat her with a queen\u2019s rook. Checkmate. It was then she discovered rodeo and Chico Hernandez Alfonso Smith. She moved in with a rodeo bull rider.<\/p>\n
That was when Padre OMO made his move. The rodeo was playing Madison Square Garden. Padre OMO made his way to the dressing room when the bull riding was over. But Chico, who wore the look of the bull, pounded Padre OMO\u2019s face. Padre OMO wore the look of hamburger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess,\u201d said Padre OMO, taking a slug from a fresh bottle, \u201cthat\u2019s why I\u2019m telling you all this. You\u2019re the greatest bull-slinger in all New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
I roam the Big Apple for stories like Padre OMO\u2019s and Trixie\u2019s. But I do not wear the look of the docks. I prefer corduroy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I worked for many years writing and editing editorials at the (Tucson) Arizona Daily Star with Tom Turner. His work brought the Star as close as we could get to the Pulitzer Prize: One year his editorials on water conservation made the judges\u2019 short list. We wrote this parody after realizing that some columnists kept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}