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         Along with moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn comes the stigma of making new friends and learning how to play in a new environment.  The year was 1974 and Brooklyn seemed more like a loosely knit weave of tiny villages and communities.  We moved into a second floor apartment situated on Sixtieth Street between Eighth and Nineth Avenues.  The neighborhood consisted mainly of Norwegian and Italian influences and I adjusted to the separate cultures very quickly.  Another boy lived across the hall named Robert Lombardi.  I knew that he would be fun to play with, because I would always hear him being scolded at by his mom.  But then again, his mom, Josephine Lombardi, was a pretty boisterous lady.  Whenever my mom cooked at night, one can hear Ms. Lombardi yelling from across the hall, “Mrs. Li!  Mrs. Li!  You gotta share some of that cookin'’ Tell ya what?  The next time you make some of that, I trade with you some of my eggplant.  It’s got some Parmesan cheese in it y’know?”  It was at this point that my mom’s face would squeeze up like a sour lemon.

     Robert and I journeyed around the corner to the A&P supermarket.  He was pretty excited to show me what he had learned.  Along with the assortment in my pocket, which consisted of my keys, some scraps of paper, a short pencil, a plastic ring, a small rubber superball, and some lint, he asked me to bring some dimes with me.  I brought three.  He walked across the parking lot of the supermarket with authority, and I followed.  He walked up toward the entrance of the place, and I scurried right behind him.  I thought that we were going to enter the place, but we stopped short of the swinging doors.
     He pointed down toward the side and mentioned, “There.”  My eyes followed his finger, and I saw a rack of candy machines.  Some of them were filled with hard candy; others had plastic toys; others just had gum.  He pointed to the machine in the center and said again, “There.  That one.”  I wondered what to do, and he motioned for me to place a dime in the machine.  I knelt down and placed a dime in the slot and turned the handle.  He stood beside me and looked cautiously in the store, and turned back to see the one gumball coming out, “That’s all?  Here, let me show you something.”  He motioned for a dime and I gave him one.  I stuck the gumball in my pocket.  “Tell me if someone comes.  An old guy with glasses.  He’ll have an apron on and a tag that says Al,” he states as he turned toward the machine and inserted the dime.  I looked into the store and no one was approaching.  I turned back and noticed that he was cranking the handle back and forth.  He did this four or five times.  He flipped up the lid, and out came a full handfull of gumballs.  He stuck them in his pocket.
     He stood up, stuck up his chest, and with authority, walked into the store.  And, I followed.  I looked around and did not notice anyone looking at us.  No one knew what we were doing.  No one even noticed.  Robert looked around once, then twice, and when no one was watching, he grabbed a small paper bag from the end of the cashier station, and he proceeded out the store.  I followed.
     We both knelt at the machine, I inserted the last dime, he held the bag, and instructed me how to crank the handle.  We knelt there for about 5 minutes, and the contents of the machine slowly emptied into the bag.  My mouth started watering and Robert’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. Suddenly, a yell was heard from the inside, “Hey!”  An old man, with greying hair, glasses, an apron, and a name tag that read Al charged at us, and it was a matter of seconds.  Robert and I looked at each other, stood up, and looked for the path of least resistance.  I clutched the bag and a few gumballs dropped out.  I turned to look and Al was almost out the door.
     Robert and I started running.  We hussled through some slow-in-the-way customers, scrambled across the parking lot, through a few jagged lane of cars, across the cracked pavement, and finally reached the open gate.  On the other side of the gate was the sidewalk.  I took my first step onto freedom and turned my head.  Al stood back by the entrance to the store and raised his fist in anger at us.

 
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