Backbone > Frankly Speaking

A Long, Long Time Ago
By Frank Crocitto . Illustration by Virginia Lavado

You! What do you know about famous people? Sure you met John Wayne and Marlon Brando and Vic Damone. But these are just actors. They’re not real. They got press agents that made them famous. I met somebody once. A real guy. And he made himself famous. I met a real guy once.

I don’t know if I wanna tell you about him. You probably won’t even believe me. But it happened. You know there’s a lotta things people don’t believe that happened and a lotta things that never happened that people still believe happened.

Well, whether you believe it or not I’m gonna tell you. I wanna see if I can stretch that lazy, dumbhead imagination of yours. You gotta go way back for this, way back to the neighborhood. This happened in my early twenties. It was a good forty years. I tell you this, old as I am, with all my bones creaking and with this goddamn hernia, my mind is still clear. I can remember meeting this guy—we didn’t just pass in the street, I met him—and I can see it clear as the morning. I can feel his handshake to this day. And the smell in that drugstore.

There was this guy, Vinnie Mook. Remember him? Come on, you remember. He was famous in the neighborhood; he used to bend all his fingers back and make them flap on the back of his hand. Big ears, kinda drooping nose, walked like a duck. ‘Member? Always a big smile, happy kind of guy. And he had that laugh; like an owl that just got punched in the belly. Whoo-whoo-whoo.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen him for a while. And one day I was up around Fifth Avenue and I get this tremendous headache. A lollapalooza of a headache. I was with this here girl. Kind of a date. No, you never knew her. Doesn’t matter. You should be glad you never knew her. She was one of those broads makes it seem like you’re going to get something but you never get it. We went from one place to another. Sodas, milkshakes, popcorn. She’s costing me an arm and a leg. But all she wants to do is talk about herself and what happened with her Aunt Tillie and Uncle Jake. Jeez, who the hell cares? I had other things in mind, you know what I mean? This freakin’ girl gave me such a headache I told her I had to go see my mother in the hospital. I don’t like to say things like that about my mother. I’m afraid it’s gonna happen. Of course she wasn’t in the hospital, goofball! I had to get away from this girl. I had to pretend to be listening but she keeps dropping things and bending over and showing me her melons. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to tell her something.

So I got this pounding in my head, so what do I do? I start looking for a drugstore. I never take aspirin but I had to take it that day. I walk a couple of blocks and I see Krasnoff’s. Up on 88th and 3rd. I don’t even know if it’s there anymore. Krasnoff or Kravits, I don’t know. Anyway I go in and who’s working in there but Vinnie Mook. And he’s as mooky as ever. “Rubber Man”—that’s what we used to call him!

We hardly say hello and already he’s laughing. So I tell him what I want and what happened with the girl. Whoo, whoo, whoo. He’s in stitches. The son of a gun knew the girl, too. He starts telling me his story. It’s like one joke goes into another. She cost him a lotta money too. Finally I say to him:

“Hey, Vinnie, aren’t you supposed to be working?” But he just laughs and he says:

“Don’t worry. The boss is deaf.”

He must have been blind, too, from what I could tell. By the time we’re done with the conversation I forget all about the headache. That Vinnie had the right name. He’s a mook if ever there was a mook.

Just then the bell rings and a guy walks into the store. I don’t take notice but Vinnie, who’s got eyes that are always zipping every which way, he notices him.

He leans over to me and whispers:

“Hey, Ceech, you know who that guy is?”

I turn to look and the guy’s just passing. But I don’t know. All I can see is a pretty big guy. Could have been a football player. But he’s on the old side, gotta be in his sixties. Lotta white hair along the sides.

And Vinnie starts laughing. He’s got that stupid laugh, you know, that Vinnie Mook laugh.

“You don’t know who that guy is, huh?”

He’s laughing like I’m stupid because I don’t know. What’re you supposed to know who everybody is? How are you supposed to know if you don’t know? You know what I mean?

So I say to him, “I don’t know.”

So he says, “Guess.”

“I don’t know. He’s the head of the Mafia.”

Then he really starts to laugh. He’s hanging on the shelves, like the monkey that he is. I felt like I wanted to hit him, but you don’t like to hit somebody stupid. So let them laugh and make a jerk out of you. What’s the difference? But he sees I’m annoyed.

So he says, “Frank, I’m gonna tell you who that guy is. That’s Charles Atlas.”

Charles Atlas?! I didn’t think there was a real person who was Charles Atlas. He was like the Lone Ranger or Clark Kent or Captain Marvel. To me, I mean. And here we are in Bay Ridge, in Brooklyn! How could he be here? What’s he doing here? I couldn’t believe it.

Why are you looking at me like that? You remember who Charles Atlas is. Don’t you? He’s the world’s most perfectly developed man. That’s who he is. Or was. And this guy is him. In this drugstore!

I don’t know what kind of drugs he’s buying. Maybe he’s buying something for his daughter or his wife. What’s the world’s most perfectly developed man need that’s in a drugstore? This is the stuff that’s shooting through my head as we’re gawking at him. I can see him up at the counter. He’s got a nice tan. He didn’t get that in Bay Ridge. I know that.

“He lives here,” the Mook says. “Not far. He used to live next to my grandfather on 84th Street. He doesn’t live there anymore. He sold the house.”

I say, “Vinnie, you know this guy?”

He says, “Yeah. He comes in here all the time.”

By this time he’s done at the counter and he’s coming back down the aisle, and Vinnie says to me, “You want to meet him?”

Now I feel funny. Sure, I want to meet him, but who am I? Plus I’m beginning to feel a little skinny.

“Nah, it’s all right,” I go.

That Mook. What do you think he does? He steps right out, right in front of the guy. He says, “Hiya, Angelo.”
The guy looks up. He stares at Vinnie. You can tell he can’t place him and the poor guy was deep in thought, too.

“Vinnie. It’s me, Vinnie, Vinnie Mucalune. You used to live next store to my grandfather on 84th Street.”
The old fella smiles. He’s got a nice smile. You could see he’s a nice guy. I didn’t know what to think when I hear Mook call him Angelo.

“A friend of mine wants to meet you. This is Frankie Randazzo. Frankie, meet Charles Atlas. I was telling Frank all about you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Charles Atlas goes. And he shakes my hand. I thought he was going to make orange juice out of it. I mean, what a grip! And then he says he’s sorry.

And I say, “Ohh, that’s all right.”

“Tell him, in your prime, Angelo, what you measured.”

You could see the guy’s embarrassed. He’s over the hill; he don’t care about inches. Even though he used to be able to pull a locomotive—by himself! You think I’m kidding you? I saw pictures. With a rope he’s pulling this big black engine. This guy was powerful.

“Well,” he says. And he doesn’t have a deep voice. “My waist used to measure thirty-two, my chest was—I think it was forty-two, forty-three—and my biceps were seventeen.”

“Imagine that, Frankie,” Vinnie says. And he’s feeling the guy’s biceps. Freakin’ Vinnie’s got no shame. He does anything. He was always that way.

“Feel this bicep, Frank.”

I hesitate. You know, the guy’s not on exhibition. But he says—Charles Atlas—“No, feel it.”
I’m telling you, and you know I don’t lie. It was like a rock. The guy’s sixty-five and he’s still built. Hard as a rock. You know what a rock is—it’s hard.

I wanted to ask him something. I could see the guy wanted to go. But I wanted to ask him so bad I asked him. You remember the comics—his advertisement in the back—with the muscle man walking with the girl and he kicks sand—on the beach—in this skinny guy’s eyes. You remember. It was everywhere, that cartoon. So I asked him.
“Sir,” I said (I didn’t know what to call him), “is it true about the bully kicking sand in your face at Coney Island?”

He don’t answer. He looks down.

“I mean, were you the ninety-seven pound weakling?” Stupid me I can’t shut up.

Then he looks in my eyes and he says, real sad and tired, “That happened a long, long time ago.”

That was it. He left. Charles Atlas. When he was passing the window he looked back at us and waved and I swear to this day he winked. I saw him wink.

I’m gonna tell you something now I never told nobody. I sent away for those lessons. He had these sixteen lessons, with all the exercises. There was even a diet in there, all sorts of things. The guy was way ahead of his time. It was basically isometrics. That’s what they call it now. I think they teach it in the Navy now. You pit one muscle against another. No weights or nothing. He used to call it Dynamic Tension. Pretty good name, too. So I got the exercises and I did them a while. I bet if you really worked at it you could really develop some muscle. I didn’t have time. When I decided to get his lessons, I was in my thirties and I was married and I didn’t have the time. And by that time I was resigned to be skinny. I wasn’t a weakling though. I worked on a milk truck. You didn’t know that? Yeah, I was a milkman once—a long, long time ago.

So Mook slaps me on the back and says, “What do you think of them apples?”

“Thanks a lot, Vinnie,” I say.

“I told you I knew that guy. You think I’m a jerk, you think I’m nobody. I know Charles Atlas.”

“I know him, too, now,” I say. “But tell me, Vinnie, you call him Angelo…”

“That’s his real name. Angelo. Angelo Siciliano.”

Son of a gun, for all those years I thought Charles Atlas was a Greek. And he turned out to be Angelo Siciliano.
Charles Atlas, that’s who I met once, a real guy. And, you know, I went to school with a kid named Michael Siciliano. We used to call him So-silly-ano. ‘Cause he was always giggling. When I thought about it—after meeting him—Mike might have been his son. Looked like him, same face, same shiny, brownish skin. I might have gone to school with Charles Atlas’s son and I didn’t even know. And he was a skinny guy if ever there was a skinny guy, Mike Siciliano. He was even skinnier than me!