Remember Joey Vinny?
So that was the crew at thirty thousand feet. They were good guys in small doses, all tied to the deal by Joey Vinny loser ways.
Like I said, Joey gambled. Badly. He earned, he bet, he lost. At least he was consistent. Most people craved variety. Oh no, not Joey Vinny.
Much like the Tommy Q gonna-make-pizza rant, Joey had a personal catchphrase. “1-7-19-23-24-35-41″. Those were his lottery picks. He played those numbers from age ten until death.
Legally the minimum purchase age was eighteen. Patel’s convenience store believed that age was no basis for discrimination. Customers that wanted lottery tickets – got lottery tickets.
Patel also had a liberal check cashing policy. A sign over the front door read: No ID? No problem! They only proofed for cigarettes and bidis because the state dispatched agents once a month. Bidis were flavored cigarettes from India spiked with caffeine. Not my thing. If Patel knew you from the neighborhood, then no worries about identification.
Joey worked there most weekends. He was the only white kid on staff. He was the only staff. Otherwise it was only Patel on point. The owner had a real soft spot for Joey Vinny because once Joey thwarted a robbery attempt.
The way the robbery almost happened was two thugs stormed the place five minutes before closing. Five minutes before close was always the riskiest time in retail operations. As the thugs demanded money, Joey wandered in for a pack of smokes for his dad. Joey always quick on the uptake, asked “What’s going on?”
Shocked, the thugs turned away from Patel and faced Joey, who was ten years old at the time. Big mistake. Patel kept a .357 Magnum under the counter. Only two people lived to tell what happened next. Final score: Patel 2, Wanna Be Gangsters 0. Problem was, it turned out that the thugs didn’t have a gun, so the DA wanted Patel on manslaughter charges. But Joey Vinny testified to a grand jury and said that the thugs had yelled that they had a gun and had threatened to shoot both him and Patel. When the papers got the story community pressure so overwhelmed the DA, he dropped the case. Patel was a hero for saving little Joey Vinny. After the dismissal Patel and Joey had some kind of father son thing going. Which was good because Joey’s real dad only bonded with a bottle.
I knew what really happened, or at least what Joey said really happened. I asked Joey once why he lied to the DA and he said, “Patel never called me no loser.” So Joey was loyal to Patel, like Tommy Q was to Joey.
For a reward, Patel offered Joey whatever he wanted in the store. Joey wanted weekly lotto tickets for life. This was before his scratch off phase.
And that was how at ten, he caught the lotto bug. From that point he was religious about the game, always playing the same the numbers, always twice a week, always losing. Joey was good like that.
So now flash ahead like twelve years. It’s the day we got the news about Joey and nothing matters but our friend is dead. I mean it was an absolute shock to us. No warning, just poof, Joey Vinny was gone. Life was fragile. It was hard for me too, you know? I not only lost a crew member, I lost a cousin. And he owed me fourteen bucks.
I’m not going to go into the wake too much, or the funeral neither, cause that wasn’t exactly the point at the moment. Suffice to say the whole affair was brutal.
What mattered was that during the wake we each had a moment alone with Joey Vinny to say good bye. He looked pretty good in black suit and white tie. The last time he wore a suit was First Communion. In my head I wished him good luck. Didn’t think too much about loving him cause that would be weird.
The morning of the funeral, I ran into Bobby in front of the church before the services. I’ve never seen anyone so upset. He was bawling. I couldn’t get a word out of him. He wasn’t even talking English.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Tommy Q is going to kill me!” said Bobby, tears streaking down his face.
“Woah! What’s up?”
“Please Gerald. Don’t let Tommy Q kill me!”
“What are you talking? Why would Tommy Q do that?”
“He’s going to kill me. Don’t let him kill me, Gerald. Please? Please?! Please don’t let him kill me!”
That’s what Bobby kept saying over and over. Tommy Q was going to kill him. I drug the kid out back and pumped a few shots of Jager down him. Bobby just couldn’t communicate sometimes. After boozing it up, I stuffed Bobby in a pew and told him to be quiet, while I waited outside for Tommy Q.
Tommy Q rolled up a few minutes later. “Still can’t believe it.” he said.
“Me either. If someone had to die, Bobby should’ve gone first.”
“Absolutely.” said Tommy.
“Is something going on with you and Bobby?” I asked. This was not the day to law down the law, but something was amiss with my crew.
“No. Why?”
“He’s going on about how you’re going to kill him,” I said. “Why would he think that?”
“Everything’s fine as far as I know. I mean, except Joey dying.”
At that moment, I believed Tommy Q. He was a good guy. He didn’t want to kill Bobby. So we went inside and waited for the service start. And that’s when everything went nuts. Well, Bobby went nuts.
He almost cried straight through the whole mass. Couple of times, I punched him to shut up. He wouldn’t stop. Bobby kept talking to himself, real loud, like a soldier who spent the last month in a foxhole and wasn’t sure if he was alone or not. Finally, Tommy and I drag Bobby out of the church, right in the middle of the eulogy.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I asked.
Bobby looked at me, then at Tommy Q, then back at me. “Gerald, please don’t let Tommy Q kill me.”
“Enough with this already! No one is killing anyone.”
“Did you see the news?”
“What news?” I asked.
Bobby reached into his pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping with the lotto drawing results. He flinched like I might hit him. I ripped the paper away and read the highlighted numbers out loud. They sounded so familiar. “1-7-19-23-24-35-41. Hey, are those today’s numbers?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Bobby.
“Joey Vinny’s numbers!” said Tommy Q.
“Yes,” said Bobby.
“I can’t believe it, of all the bum luck the one time he doesn’t play, his numbers hit.” I said.
“I…well…I’m sorry…envelope…didn’t understand…” Bobby stumbled.
Bobby might have kept going like that forever so I slapped him right across the face then, so hard it almost broke the skin. Calmed him right down. He was being insolent. “Joey Vinny had the winning ticket?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“OK, now Bobby this is very important. Where is that ticket right now?”
“I….” Tears streamed down his face. He couldn’t look at either of us.
“You have the ticket?” I asked.
“No…I…”
Tommy Q leaned in real close, “It’s OK Bobby, it’ll just be between the crew. We’re not telling nobody.”
“I’m sorry guys…”
“It’s in the church somewhere? You left it back in the pew?” I asked.
“Help us help you,” said Tommy Q.
Finally the dam burst wide and Bobby confessed. “Last night at the wake, I’m about to go and I’m thinking about the last conversation I had with.
“A few hours before he died, he stopped by my place. He gave me an envelope and told me if something ever happened to him, open up the envelope and I’ll know exactly what to do. I’m thinking this is just a big joke, why should he give me something important instead of Tommy Q? I mean those two were tight and all.
“Three hours later, the call cames, Joey was dead. Next afternoon, I open the envelope and inside is a lottery ticket, and I’m not thinking or something, because I see this and I like freak out, and I think what the hell am I supposed to do with this thing? Joey said I would know what to do, and I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do at all…”
“Don’t make me smack you again.” I said.
Bobby recovered. “I stuff the envelope and the ticket in my back pocket and go to the wake, and I’m thinking the whole time, Joey said I would know what to do with the envelope. I would know. And it’s really bugging me. But it hits me like a shot. There’s one place that ticket truly belongs. There’s one place it’s meant to be.” he paused.
“Bobby,” I grabbed both of his shoulders and shook. “Where is the ticket?”
The recessional started. Ash and the smell of grief poured out the doors. We stepped aside as my father and uncle and two other pallbearers carried the casket down the stairs and into the hearse. Mr. Vinny closed the door.
Bobby pointed to the long black car. “It’s with Joey.”

The “conclusion” of Joey Vinny appears Wednesday. And now….

Bobby
Bobby was the last crew member and the worst of the bunch. One of Bobby’s most traumatic moments was on a train during a snow storm. A perfect place for an introduction.
It was freak weather that came out of nowhere. Jersey gets a lot of weather dramas like that; sixty degrees in the morning, sleet at lunch, and sunshine for dinner. All of us wore t-shirts and fall jackets. Meanwhile icy rain pelted our eyes and lips as heavy winds sliced through the station. The lobby was closed for renovations, sentencing us to the open air platform. We crouched and huddled, sitting close as possible without touching, wedged next to a trash can stuffed with rotten milk and shrimp shells.
The train was late that afternoon. As was habit, the crew busted each other to keep our minds off bigger problems, like freezing to death. We joked about the movie we had seen the previous night.
It was a rogue cop vs. good cop movie with whatever stars of the day. A guy flick with guns, fast cars and three seconds of fake boobs. The boobs were fantastic.
“When that cop took the other one down the alley, I was sure he was dead,” said Joey.
“Course he was going to live! We were like twenty minutes in.” asked Bobby. “What they got if he bites it?”
Joey pondered that for a moment. “He might not have lived.”
“And you might not be a loser,” said Bobby.
Everyone except Tommy Q laughed at that. Tommy Q kept his hands in his pockets, mumbling that cops would eat for free in his pizza place.
The tracks on the trestle shook, rattling the steel and concrete beneath the station. Waiting next to the gray and dinghy doors of the NJ Transit train, Joey patted his pockets and said, “Who did I give the tickets to?”
“Oh, don’t even tell me you did what I think you did,” I said.
Yep, Joey had lost the tickets. Between us, we had seven bucks, three cigarettes, a half pack of gum and no tickets back to New York. Joey had the tickets because he bought them. This was was penance for losing the crew’s basketball the previous week. The trip outta Brooklyn had worked just fine. But I had let my guard down and it had cost. I took it personally. They were my crew.
The bell dinged and warned that the doors were closing soon. We stood, paralyzed and uncertain. A conductor with an eye patch leaned out of the next car, staring down the length of the train. When the train pulled away, he’d collect the tickets. On he reached that last seat, he’d cross through the cars and nail us.
“Man! What we going to do?” asked Joey. “They’ll call the cops and arrest us at the next station for jumping fares.”
“We’re going to the bathroom,” I said, eying the next car.
“Here!?”
The conductor was two seats from the end of the car. He hadn’t seen us yet. I cranked open the door. Inside the next car it was half empty, and most of the people asleep, drunk or drinking out of bottles wrapped in paper bags. There was also a public restroom right past the door, handicap accessible. Enough room for a wheelchair, enough room for four. Waiting, I said, “Unless you want to spend the night in the tank.”
That’s all it took. Not saying that any of us knew exactly how bad or good a Jersey jail was. We had the idea that it was best avoided.
There was always the risk of undercover transit police officer on trains. One never knew for sure until they popped a guy. This ruled out bumming the other passengers for fares. Begging drew all the wrong attention. A rookie cop might miss the action, but not a seasoned one. That was just degrading anyway. We were thieves, cheats and liars, but we sure as hell weren’t deadbeats.
The crew piled in next to me. If you’ve never been in a bathroom on a NJ Transit train, treat yourself right and like, don’t. Besides reeking of industrial chemicals that stank was far worse than any portable potty at a construction site, the side walls and floor were paper thin. Imagine the wheels grinding against the track right next to your ear, and that’s how loud it was.
It was a trip with no end. The train broke down between Newark and New York Penn, dying on the tracks like a bum with two through the head. Voices rumbled outside the bathroom, something about another train being dispatched to push us into the station. When the train stopped, the power went, snuffing the overhead lamp.
And it was in the moments of blackness that Bobby needed the toilet. Like he really had to go. Refusing our pleas, he ignored all threats of physical beatings. Bobby whipped out the equipment. Nothing flowed. Performance anxiety, I guess. Not that any of the crew wanted visual confirmations about this disability.
“Don’t look or it won’t work!” Bobby whined.
“You miss and it won’t work,” I said ready to punch him.
I sure as hell wasn’t interested in executing the threat, but what choice did I have? Some guys just can’t go with other guys around them. Bobby always gunned straight for the stall, even if he was alone. Bobby had no chance against three guys ready for a nuclear grade pounding if he missed the mark. That was his lesson for shotgunning an eighty ounce soda at lunch.
In all we spent three and a half hours inside the stink hole of doom. Morale was shot by New York Penn. Bobby was bottled up, Joey Vinny was ashamed about losing the tickets, I felt bad about trusting Joey Vinny. I had failed the crew. Only Tommy Q was calm. “I’m gonna make pizza in the train station,” he said.
“Station stop is New York Penn! Everybody off!” said the conductor. People crushed into each other, filing off in a mass of sweat of anger.
No one moved, awaiting my lead. It was little moments like that, I relished leading the crew. In a low tone, I said, “We walk out, normal like.”
“What if the conductor spots us?” asked Joey.
“Tell him he already got our tickets,” I said.
I unlocked the door, and the crew poured out into the car, single file behind me. The conductor had his back to us. From the car and out the side door we trudged, blending in with the other passengers. Reaching the schedule display that hung from the ceiling on the ground floor, I called a halt. The crew was down one man.
“Anyone see Bobby?” I asked, glancing all over the place.
Bobby was nowhere. We waited a few minutes watching people run past for Eighth avenue. Still no Bobby.
“Did he get pinched?” asked Joey.
“No way,” said Tommy Q. “Someone even thinks about touching Bobby, he screams murder.” Tommy Q was right. Bobby was puss puss like that. I think his mom beat him too often. He was real jumpy.
I took charge. “Tommy and I’ll check the platform. Joey wait up here.”
Downstairs the platform was desolate. A conductor stepped off the train, the same one from our trip. He didn’t recognize us, but walked towards us anyways like he did. “Northeast Corridor is Track 5 fellas.” The doors shut and the wheels cranked around as the train lumbered against the rails.
“Where’s that train going?” I asked.
“Maintenance,” said the conductor.
“So what’s the next stop?” I asked.
“No stops,” said the conductor. “Straight down to Trenton.” Trenton, NJ was the end point of the North East Corridor line, more than an hour and a half from New York Penn. Tommy Q tugged my jacket and nodded his head towards the train.
Bobby was inside, smacking the glass in the door, screaming for the train to stop. At least he got to use the bathroom.

Tommy Q
Now Tommy Q was the closet non family guy on the crew to Joey for a real good reason. Growing up Tommy Q said just one thing over and and over and over again, like a record stuck in a skip. He said it in the morning when he went to the bathroom. He said it on the bus ride. He said it at dinner. He said it at recess, at lunch and whenever anyone said anything that interested him. Even when the conversation had nothing to do with him, he said it then.
When teachers sent him to the Principal Dickhus office for saying what he said, he said it there too. Everyone already knew what Tommy Q was going to say before he spoke.
“Now Thomas,” asked Mrs. Meinert. “Who discovered America?”
“I’m going to make fucking pizza,” Tommy Q said under his breath, a bit too loudly. There was no denying what was said, the crime was clear.
Mrs. Meinert turned red and bellowed, “Go to the Principal’s office!”
Keep in mind that wasn’t the planned response. Tommy knew who discovered America. He wasn’t trying to mouth off, that’s just what he said all the time. I sat in front of Tommy in history class, and Tommy talked to me all the time under his breath about the pizza business. He had the details all scoped. Where to get the ovens, how much dough to use, what temperature to run the refrigerators, how long the sauce lasted. It was all part of the big Tommy Q plan. So when he said that thing about the pizzas in History, it just really slipped out. It was intended for me. Well probably more for him, but he said it to back of my head all the same. Mrs. Meinert wanted none of that. At that moment, I didn’t want to hear about pizza either. I was sick of it.
Inside the office, Tommy Q sat across from the big guy, holding his hands at his sides, awaiting the usual exchange, parry, raise and detention. Dickhus ended every statement with a question. Like if you asked about his weekend went, he’d answer, “It was adequate don’t you think?” You get the idea. “Three times in a week is a lot of trips to my office, wouldn’t you say?” asked Dickhus. Dickhus was a guy with a pile of big, dark secrets.
“Yeah,” said Tommy.
“And your language is a bit colorful for History class, no?”
“Well I am going to make…”
Principal Dickhus sighed. “We all know the dream,. I’m just concerned about your future Thomas. Your grades are unacceptable, and most teachers dread asking you questions. Think of it like me for a second, what would you do if you were me about a situation like yours?”
“Let me make fu…pizza.”
Dickhus stared at his own reflection on the shine of the desk top. “Thomas, frankly I don’t want to see you in detention again this week. At this time there might be some gain in a dialog with the guidance counselor. Perhaps someone else can put this all in the proper perspective for you. Here’s a hall pass. Go see Bob Stiles now, yes?”
As irritating as Dickhus was, Stiles the counselor was odd. Maybe it’s just me but there was something off center with high school guidance counselors in the first place. But when a fifty-three year old man resembled a weasel, lived with his aunt and had a mustache, that went double. Although, his aunt looked pretty good with a mustache.
Stiles ran down Tommy Q’s whole academic life at a glance, including pop quiz results from that morning. Stiles was ready for the meeting, ready for the respect-my-authority preach. The performance records showed a battlefield of bad grades, progress reports and red circles and arrows, all filed in a manila folder. As Stiles reviewed the pages, he skated a finger across the key points like a flat stone across an iced over lake.
“Thomas Quinosa the Third. 2.27987 GPA. Ten absences this term, twenty seven detentions. Average test scores. Poor penmanship. What do you think this academic file says about you as a person?”
“Says I don’t care too much for school.”
“Anything else?”
“You got me on the penmanship thing. I suck at writing,” said Tommy.
“What I’d like to talk to you about is why you don’t think you should care. You don’t strike me as a middle of the road sort of person, although your grades are borderline average in every way. Forget the university, at this rate you can’t even get into a community college in Idaho. Why?”
Tommy Q considered the question carefully and went with the truth. “I don’t need college to make pizza.”
“That’s very true. However, if you went to college, you could learn how to write a business plan. Then you could borrow money and expand the pizza business. Maybe start franchising.” Stiles really believed he had Tommy against the ropes then. I forget what method therapists use to break down barriers. Psychology was crap, really.
Anyway, by feigning some deep interest in Tommy’s future in pizza, Stiles bet the teenager would listen. Tommy had other ideas. For Tommy Q this was a chance out of detention.
Patting the green book bag that laid next to his sneakers, Tommy Q patted the binder through the nylon. The binder with thousands of details about the pizza empire to be. He shook his head. “Hadn’t considered that angle, Mr. Stiles.” That was an outright lie. He had considered that angle. He had an organic growth model mapped out to the dollar for completely self-financed expansions. I had heard all about them. Didn’t care to hear about them, but Tommy told me anyway.
“And would it be fair to say that maybe there are other angles you might not have considered? And if you applied yourself a little more thoroughly in your studies these answers might present themselves.” Stiles was on a roll. This was the high point of the week, maybe the whole month. He probably believed he had gained ground with Tommy Q. What a mustached weasel.
“You could say that,” said Tommy Q.
“And so going forward maybe this new perspective will help focus your studies?”
“Sure,” Tommy said, seriously as possible. He listened to Stiles drone about the importance of academic performance in the face of global competition and so forth. How what he did in high school would dog him for the rest of his life. Phrases like permanent record, don’t sell yourself short, why make things hard for yourself. The usual guidance counselor mantra. According to Tommy later this went on for thirty more minutes.
“OK, then Thomas, back to class with you. I feel like we’ve made a breakthrough here.”
“Oh absolutely, Mr. Stiles.”
“And when you go back to class if Mrs. Meinert asks who discovered America, what’s another possible answer?”
“Christopher Columbus.”
“Very good!” Stiles was delighted. “That’s the spirit Thomas!”
Tommy Q collected the book bag with the binder and rose. “The Vikings brought pizza to this great country. Did you know that?” asked Tommy Q.
“No I did not.”
“Maybe I’m not the one who needs to pay attention in History class.”
Now the reason this has much to do with Joey Vinny is simple. All Tommy Q wanted was to make pizza. And Joey Vinny was the only guy who ever believed in Tommy Q. The lone buddy who believed the dream and believed in him. When Tommy Q spouted about mixing dough with cornstarch, Joey Vinny listened real polite like and said, “You’re going to be the king of all pizza. King of all pizza.”
That sentiment always cheered Tommy Q bunches, especially during their daily stints in detention. Joey was in detention almost every day for losing one thing or another, be it the attendance cards or milk money.
Joey and Tommy Q were close in a straight guy sort of way. Joey boosted Tommy’s ego; Tommy never faulted Joey for being a loser.
Still, the rest of us busted Joey something fierce. You know how guys got, dog pile on the rabbit and the weakest rabbit got the beating. Not Tommy Q. He never knocked Joey Vinny. Not once.

Mr. And Mrs. Vinny

The rightful place to start is with Joey’s parents because they molded him more than anyone besides me and the crew. When Joey was two they visited a psychic out in Greenwich Village. It was a basement apartment with plastic beads dangling from the door frame, walls that needed paint and candles that reeked of sandalwood. A typical shyster operation. The City was built on them. By the way, by City, I meant New York City. Anyways, that night the old, wrinkled face psychic forecast a long and uncertain journey for Joey. She declared that with more sessions, the path might clear.
His mother spotted that ploy right for more money. Not really the smartest move for the psychic. One liar never believes another. And Mrs. Vinny was a horrible about lying. She lied about everything. My mom said that she just wasn’t bound by convention.
I loved my aunt. Really I did. She was my kind of liar. Her tales were top shelf. If you bother to do something, might as well go for it all the way, no holding back.
You know how some lies are just flat and pathetic, like the people who spew them? Just no way anyone would ever buy them. They ooze insincerity. Well hers were out there, stretching the bounds of reality and good sense, but they were entertaining. Even though she didn’t intend it, she could’a buried any stand up comic. The best part was she couldn’t understand how funny what she said was.
Like one time Joey was real late for basketball camp, and his mom drove him and told the coach they were late because the entire street blew up on account of a construction project that went wrong. Mind you, I made it on time and lived right next door. To be fair, road crews had painted a new crosswalk lines at the other end of the block the previous month. A construction job, just like she had claimed. Just there weren’t no explosives involved.
Hell yeah Mrs. Vinny saw right through the psychic scam. Shaking her fist and cursing, she never returned to the ripoff parlor with Joey. So much for astrology. Cosmically speaking though, that was one shyster who spoke the truth. The path of Joey was murky.
Maybe Mrs. Vinny didn’t want to admit that she had suspected the same fate for Joey. There were plenty of cues. Like how she spoke to him. She stood on the front stoop yelling, wearing light blue sweats, palms hovering near the rail without clutching it. Mrs. Vinny never used the rail even though she was heavy and her backside rippled when she walked. She didn’t want to break a nail. They were blue and real expensive and matched the eyeliner. And at two minutes to seven six nights a week, she yelled, “Break it up ya losers! Joey, get your ass in here!”
Sure she loved Joey. Mrs. Vinny just showed love differently. Like on his birthday she always bought cupcakes for the whole class. Actually she never paid for them. What she really did was order from a pay phone with a phony name, send Joey in first, trot behind and tell the baker that her purse was back in the car. Every year Mrs. Vinny stiffed a different shop. She stiffed every bakery in the five Boroughs. Joey was real good at sprinting with a box.
At school Joey opened the classroom door and carried the sweets in, then passed’em out like a cigarettes to everyone while she watched in the corner, breathing heavy and checking her nails. The sugared treats were pretty cool when we were seven. At eighteen it was sorta odd, but what the hell, you know? If it’s free it’s for me. Besides, there was nothing I could do to stop my aunt. Ratting her out was unthinkable. She just wanted the best for her boy. Only the worst kind of scum turns on family. There had better be a grand jury with a sealed indictment and your name on it, before you even dreamed about thinking about doing that. It sure as hell was not over a buck and half worth of flour. Anyway, she taught them bakers a lesson – cash deposit in advance.
Joey had other problems besides a lying mom. His dad was a boozer. One year the day after Joey’s birthday I ran into Mr. Vinny on the front stoop draining a half liter of vodka. “Hi!” I said, rushing past the apartment on my way to park, bouncing a basketball. As leader, I was in charge of the gear. I was in a hurry that day too, but I stopped. Mr. Vinny was my uncle and godfather.
“How dare you look at me like that!” he said. “Your godfather no less.” The words struck hard. He meant no harm I thought.
“Huh?” I asked.
“I know what you kids say about me behind me back.”
“Who would talk smack about you?”
“Don’t lie to me Gerald. You’re an amateur.”
“But I’m not lying!”
“Are you saying I’m a liar?” she asked.
“No Uncle Ron.”
“How many times I gotta tell you? Don’t call me that.”
“OK, OK Mr. Vinny. I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a liar. I swear.”
“I’m calling my sister right now, and when your father gets home tonight you better start apologizing for hurting his hands. Cause he’s going to smack that pretty boy face of yours raw. You’re going to learn some respect.”
Mr. Vinny never did call mom about whatever it is that he thought was said, and I never asked about it. Maybe all the other vodka bottles each week in their trash can had something to do with that temper. I could be wrong.
Looking back, the cards were stacked against Joey in a number of ways, right from birth. Still, nobody loved Joey Vinny more than Mrs. Vinny. And that was good. She had a big heart. It’s not just those cupcakes she bought him either. It was tons of other little things. Come Christmas time, everyone wanted to be Mrs. Vinny’s friend. She gave the fattest gifts.
Money was no object with her. One thing was you never asked her what store she got them from, because she said the same thing. “Just fell off the back of a truck,” she said.
One year she gave my mom a solid glass coffee table. Pretty impressive that it didn’t break falling onto the street. Guess it was made from special bullet proof glass. Anyway the table was nice and shiny and my mom polished the table once a week. That same year Joey Vinny got a television, an awesome set with surround sound, huge speakers and a massive screen. Now that was love. Picking that big set up off the street and dragging it inside, risking her nails and all. And she had sciatica.
Her love didn’t stop there. Like I said, Mrs. Vinny put on the production to end all productions at the funeral. There was barely a dry eye in the house. But that was for later.
We’ll get there.