Keep the Frigging Car Running.

JP Chronicles #1

I’m driving JP’s ’73 Antiqua Blue El Dorado convertible. JP is riding shotgun. He wants to check out a tip and find the guys who broke into his dry-cleaning store, stealing ‘a shitload of clothes.’ The customers want their clothes or get paid. JP is on the hook for significant bucks if he can’t find the stolen goods. There is an Italian saying that goes, ‘A Sicilian would rather eat their young than part with their money.’ JP is Sicilian on both his mother and father’s side.

“These stealing sonavabitches are tailors, they’re making alterations and selling the clothes to the whole neighborhood.”

JP can be intimidating on any day, and this is not a good day. As a kid, he boxed welterweight until he got knocked out a couple of times and his mother made him quit. Now, he’s old, fat, and still dangerous.

JP is my girlfriend’s father. I’m working my way through Temple University driving a delivery truck for JP- King of the Cleaners. It is a scorching, sticky July afternoon as the ’73 Antiqua Blue El Dorado convertible sails through the steaming streets of West Philly.

“Make a left on Florence Avenue, look for 5832.”

JP opens the glove box, pulls out a stogie and a snub nose .38. He sticks the cigar in his mouth and the gun in his pants.

“There it is. Pull over. Keep the frigging car running.”

5832 is a three-story row house with a postage stamp garden in front. A steep set of steps goes from the sidewalk up to the front door.

Air conditioning is a luxury in this neighborhood, so most people sit outside searching for a breeze. Girls play hopscotch, boys play box ball, old folks sweating it out on lawn chairs, and the Mister Softee truck’s jingle is luring a steady line of customers.

It’s not easy for two White guys in a ’73 Antiqua Blue El Dorado convertible to blend in this 110% Black neighborhood. And we don’t. Some neighbors notice.

“This is gonna be fast. Remember- you keep this frigging car running.”

JP chomps down on his stogie and charges straight up the steps like Teddy Roosevelt taking San Juan Hill, crashing through the front door without hesitation. More neighbors notice. Inside 5832 there’s screaming, and things being thrown around including the two thieving tailors. JP comes out with bundles of clothes still in plastic dry cleaning bags and tosses them in the back seat. He turns to go back up but stops…he glares at the neighbors standing on the steps, sitting in lawn chairs, at kids playing and at the steady line at the Mister Softee…nobody says nothing.

JP knows there’s a time limit on this and he charges back up the San Juan steps, comes out with another load, throws it in the backseat of his ’73 Antiqua Blue El Dorado convertible and jumps in.

Let’s go, let’s go! Get the hell outta here.”

He puts the snub nose .38 back in the glove box, lights that nasty black stogie and laughs all the way home. I had no idea what JP was going to do that day. I didn’t count on a gun and being a possible accessory to murder; I didn’t figure on being a White sitting duck in an ’73 Antiqua Blue El Dorado convertible in a 110% Black neighborhood. But you know what JP counted on?

Me keeping the frigging car running.