The Gang Starts Here

Based in the 1920's this story is about a pre-teen boy who learns a valuable lesson as he and his friends decide to start a gang based on the role models whom they admire in their lives.

 

My name is Raffaele James ,  my family refers to me as JR or Ralphie and I am named after my father.  I will never forget the night of October 8, 1929, the IRS had arrested my father right in front of me, while he was sitting at a boxing match and had him led away in handcuffs. He spent that night in the slammer because it was so late that a bond could be set to bail him out. That was not the first time a family member of mine was ever arrested and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last time.  However, my story does not begin on October 8^th, 1929, it begins the Summer of that very year.  I will never forget that summer.  It was the summer that I will cherish for the rest of my life.  I just noticed while writing my adventure that I began the story by stating my name.  Please remember this is not my full name I left my last name out on purpose.  I figured that if I told you my last name then this story would not be able to be told.  You would assume and judge me right away.  So, I figured once I have you captivated with this story you will have already figured out my last name or it will be the right time for me to divulge my last name. Either way, you will be amazed about my life and my family. It was June 5^th 1929 and on this date I found out next fall I would be moving  forward into the 5^th grade I knew I would be more successful then both of my parents when I grew older.  I knew I would graduate from high school and that I would be one of the first members of my family to have ever accomplished this achievement.  I was so excited because, it was then I realized I was one year closer to being more educated then what my father ever dream he would have achieved.  My father at the age of one moved from Italy and arrived with his parents on Ellis Island in 1893. His parents settled in New York near the Brooklyn Navy Yard at number 95 Navy Street.  My father was the second of nine children and he and his older brother Vincenzo James were the only two children born in Italy. The rest were born as citizens of the United States of America.  My father’s parents were very proud people who devoted their time and energy to raise their nine children with the strong family morals that most Italian families still possess to this day.  Eventually, three of those siblings (one whom was my father) would move to the city of Chicago in 1921. I was born in New York in the winter of 1919 and when I was a year old my father and mother divorced.  My father worked an honest job as an Insurance debit collector but was fired shortly after my parent’s divorce for stealing the payments. He told me he did what he had to do to provide for me.  That was his excuse for everything he did wrong in his life. I accepted it I had to and I loved my father very much. When he left for Chicago with his brothers my father took me with him leaving my mother back in New York. I never saw my mother again until I moved back to New York after my father was arrested in October 1929.  That is another reason why the summer of 1929 was one of my best memories ever.  Little did I know in June 1929 that this would be the last Summer I would live in Chicago.

Author's Note

Igonore Grammar as book has not yet been edited.