Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

be anything better than that?”

  “Yea, it’s unbelievable.”

  “When I grow up I am gonna be just like The Babe,” Johnny started. “I’m gonna be a great baseball player and I’ll use my money to buy stuff for kids.”

  One day in the middle of April, Johnny came rushing over to my house with some big news.

  “Father Casey got ten tickets to see the Yankees play the Athletics in July,” Johnny said. “We gotta figure out a way to make sure we get two of those tickets!”

  “My mom and Reverend Casey are very close, and he knows how much we love baseball; he has to let us go,” I replied.

  “It’s about time all your mom’s praying actually did us some good,” Johnny said with a grin on his face.

  The Reverend William Casey ran our local parish, Ascension of Our Lord, and was the most respected person I knew. My mother was a very loyal church going person and made sure that Dad and I went as well. She and Father Casey had a wonderful relationship, and he was always there to help my family with whatever we needed. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but I knew that we would need my mom to use her influence on Father Casey to make sure we got two of those golden tickets.

  A couple of days later, on a Saturday evening, Johnny knocked on my front door.

  “Hey, why don’t you come and we can do something?”

  “Sure let me check with my dad, I’m sure he’ll give me permission.”

  I walked into the kitchen where my dad was standing on a chair putting glasses into the top cupboard.

  “Can I go out with Johnny and play?”

  “Sure, but do me a favor and pick up an Evening Bulletin on your way home,” he asked. “Here’s the two cents you’ll need.”

  “Okay Dad, I’ll make sure I get it on the way home.”

  I always liked going with my dad to buy the newspaper, since the store where he went to also sold penny candy and he always seemed to find an extra cent for a treat. There would be no candy tonight, all he gave me was two cents, and I knew it was strictly a newspaper.

  When we got outside Johnny looked at me and grinned.

  “I got a better idea for those two cents”, he said.

  I did not like the sound of that. My dad wanted his newspaper and there could not be any alternate plan for the money.

  “Let’s go to the train tracks and put the pennies on the rails and have the trains flatten them,” he said.

  “Flatten them?”

  “Yea, flatten them. We lay them on the tracks and wait for a train to come. When it rolls over them we have two perfect round pieces of shiny copper.”

  “But what about my dad’s newspaper?”

  “That’s no problem. By the time we get back my dad will be done with his paper and I will sneak it out of the house and you can have it.”

  It seemed like a logical plan, and it would be something to have one of those brand new 1923 copper pennies flattened by a speeding train to keep as a souvenir. The thought of just taking the money to the corner store and buying two cents worth of candy also crossed my mind.

  “Come on, don’t always be a scardey cat, your dad will never know the difference,” Johnny said with a phony sad expression on his face. “You never want to do anything exciting.”

  “I guess it’ll be alright as long as you are sure we can get the newspaper from your dad without anyone knowing,” I conceded.

  So began our journey. As we turned the corner of Tioga Street, I noticed Billy Brannigan sitting outside the drug store.

  Billy was the neighborhood troublemaker, someone my parents had always warned me to avoid. He had dropped out of school before ninth grade and was always getting into trouble with the local police. People in Kensington could not wait until he finally did something bad enough so that the police could lock him up for good and the neighborhood would be rid of him.

  Billy was about eighteen years old and was always out on the streets. He gambled in public, smoked cigarettes, and drank alcohol out in plain view. Even the adults in the neighborhood would cross the street to avoid walking in his path. He was about six feet tall and very thin. He seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face and I never remember seeing him smile.

  I did not know anything about Billy’s parents, or why they let him get into so much trouble. I figured that they were probably afraid of him too.

  “Hey there is Billy Brannigan,” I said to Johnny. “Let’s cross the street so he doesn’t see us.”

  “I ain’t crossin’ no street to keep away from no stupid Billy Brannigan,” Johnny replied angrily. “He doesn’t scare me none.”

  “He doesn’t scare me either,” I said, knowing it wasn’t the truth. “I just don’t want to start any trouble.”

  “Come on let’s go,” Johnny said motioning me forward with a nod of his head.

  I walked with my head down and stared at the pavement in front of me. I made sure not to make eye contact as we passed and prayed that Johnny would do the same. However, knowing Johnny as well as I did, I knew he was not afraid of Billy Brannigan. I could feel my heart pounding at the very moment we passed Billy, and then subside as we eased past him without incident.

  “I told you he wouldn’t do anything,” Johnny said with a smile. “If he ever tried anything with either of us, I would beat his ass.”

  That was one of the reasons I loved Johnny. I knew that he would always protect me and together I always felt safe walking the streets.

  We walked for about a mile to get to the train tracks. In order to reach the tracks we had to climb a steep hill about forty feet high. Luckily, the hill had quite a few large rocks jutting out, so it wasn’t hard to get good footing. Johnny hit the top first, and reached back and grabbed my hand pulling me up the last few feet.

  “I’m always havin’ to pull you up,” Johnny said. “If wasn’t for me you would never get nowhere.”

  “Thanks,” I replied sheepishly.

  Standing on top of the hill it seemed much higher than it had appeared from the ground.

  There were two sets of tracks, one northbound and one southbound. A thin strip of black rocks separated the two tracks by about three feet. We walked along the strip for about a quarter mile or so until we reached a long and narrow bridge overpass.

  “That looks like a good spot,” Johnny shouted.

  “A good spot for what?”

  “A good place to get our pennies flattened.”

  We walked out about forty feet onto the middle of the overpass. I could not bear to look straight down, but I knew we were at least one hundred feet above the ground. Just peeking out over the side left me feeling quite dizzy. Johnny ran ahead and I pushed my legs forward even though they were beginning to feel quite heavy. He knelt down and peered down the tracks; leaning over them, he inspected the construction looking for the perfect position to place the pennies.

  “I got it,” he said. “Give me the pennies.”

  He held his hand out towards me. I squeezed my hand into my pocket and pulled out the two shiny coins.

  “Now, which side do you think will come first?” Johnny asked.

  “How the heck do I know?”

  I certainly did not know, nor did I care; I just wanted to get off the bridge before any train came.

  Johnny looked up and down the tracks, his head moving back and forth. His ears perked up like a dog trying to hear a high pitch sound. A moment or two passed as we waited in absolute silence, as if the world around us had stopped. Then a smile spread across Johnny’s face, a slight sound in the distance. His head turned towards the South. I watched him stare off in the distance until he saw what he was looking for. It was about a half mile away, but a train was approaching on the horizon in the northbound direction moving at a very rapid clip. Without saying a word, Johnny reached out for the coins, which I pushed hard into his hand. He slowly leaned over the tracks and placed the coins side by side on the inside rail of the track.

  As he positioned them, we jumped back onto the rocky divider and beg
an walking away from the train that was approaching on the northbound tracks. By this time, the noise had gotten so loud that my sense of balance was thrown off completely. Between the heights, the noise, and the approaching train I felt like I was going to be sick and throw up at any minute.

  “Johnny, we need to get off this bridge right now,” I pleaded. “I am feeling very nauseous and I’m can’t breathe.”

  “Don’t worry we have plenty of time.”

  I wanted to walk faster but Johnny was taking his sweet time, and I did not want to get out in front of him.

  “Come on, Johnny, let’s get out of here!” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

  “What are you so scared of?” Johnny said, laughing as he spoke.

  I glanced back over my shoulder to see how far away the train was, to make sure we would had enough time to get off the overpass before it passed. It was only a few hundred yards away from us. As I turned my head away from Johnny back in the direction we were walking, I saw the most terrifying sight that I ever seen in my life. Coming up the southbound track was another train curving around the bend near the entrance to the overpass. We had not seen it since there was a blind spot at the bend in the tracks. We would have heard it coming, except the sound of the northbound train had completely drowned it out.

  It was a moment I will never forget, I completely froze. My body parts felt like hundred pound weights and I could not move my arms or legs. My dizziness and nausea turned to sheer terror. My body started to sway and I could feel myself losing consciousness. I felt my legs giving out and started