The Scary Guy Gets Mellow

People often say I'm a scary guy. My youngest daughter always tells me how all her male friends were terrified of me. I grew up rough, in the tenement Bottoms and Over the Rhine in Cincinnati. By age six, I had fought in over 100 street fights, had been slashed three times with a knife, and had broken my nose in a fight where the other boy almost died from head injury.

My Italian mother often fought in the street. She made me fight my first battle at age five: some shoeless kid wearing a womans' stocking on his shaved head because he had ringworm. I didn't know why he wanted to hurt me. I was afraid of him because of the ringworm. The kid kept pushing me. My mother came down, grabbed my arm and pushed me forward. Something snapped inside and I went after him. I punched him down fast and kicked him several times in the head with my heavy shoes. It was over quick. I had won my first fight.

My father was ox strong and a street fighter from the West End. My grandfather, Tony Marino, was a gun-toting ex-bootlegger who owned a bar at Third and Sycamore Streets. I fired my first gun at age five, a cop's gun, at beer cans in a drugstore on Main Street after closing time. Julie Montessi, the big local bookie, let me drive his big Buick along the cobblestone waterfront at age six. Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky were considered neutral territory for the Italian Mob during that time, but still had its share of gangsters. We were Italian Catholics, except for my English-Irish father. The only grass I ever saw was in Washington Park, unless we took a rare trip to Coney Island, until we moved to the suburbs.

When we moved out of downtown, my mother mellowed out. I did, too, somewhat. By age 17, I only had four assaults (among other things) on my police record, all from fights. I had broken my nose two more times, been cut again with a knife, and had, according to the family doctor, at least seven indents on my skull that should have had stitches, all from being struck from flying objects (mainly rocks or bottles) during fights. Guns in street fights were rare back then. I loved gang fights and bar fights. I liked to get in close and use what was available. Bar stools and tire irons were my favorite. Whatever I had, if you were my enemy, I would hit you with it, up close.

A lot of people can't fight up close with weapons. They hesitate because they fear injury. That was all I needed to win.

That was my life. If Vietnam never happened, I would probably be in jail today. I didn't know any other way until the Marines. It's funny how the Marine Corps shows you how to be a killer while teaching loyalty and a respect for all life. I was the top killing blow bayonet fighter in my three-platoon series in boot camp. I guess I would have made a good front line Roman soldier. (The picture above is Over The Rhine in Cincinnati pretty much like it was when I was a kid.)

It comes out in my writing. Michael In Hell (currently out of print but an e-book) is a tragic record of what could have been my life had I gone the way of my childhood.

The Bad Season is a glimpse of my good side facing ultimate evil.

Shocklines Bad Season

Driving With Ace (currently out of print but an e-book) and my just completed manuscript, Lord Of Homicides, are bizarre comic studies of our absurd human condition.

I'm currently working on the sequel to Michael In Hell with the working title Infamis, in Latin it basically means the social dead. This continues the tragedy of serial killer Michael Tucker (his face dyed red from the neck up) and his life as a state executioner for the psychotic Warden Burdeck in my fictional world of 2007.

My fighting days are long over. I turn 60 this year. I'm the oldest male left in my Italian family. I never did consider myself to be scary looking. I get along great with children (probably because I've never grown up), my wife thinks I'm a big funny kid, as do my children and grandchildren. My neighbors know me as the writer with red boxing heavy bag hanging on the porch. I guess I'm just a scary guy who laughs a lot.