Bean Belly McLaughlin

It never failed, every time we got a game of stick ball going (a broom handle and sprightly red rubber ball, a “Spauldine,”) “Bean Belly” McLaughlin would call the cops from Manhattan’s Tenth Precinct on 20th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue and they would dutifully show up and confiscate our sticks. Of course we made damned sure the sticks picked up were the lousy ones, the others ended up well hidden. We would resume play after half an hour but Bean Belly made our lives a torment. One day the cops really got pissed off after the third call and confiscated every stick and every ball and we decided that the old SOB had gone too far. We decided to wage war on the fat old Irishman who had a feeble wife and a rather voluptuous younger woman who kept house for him, but we knew better. That was the preface to the little known, nor much remembered, Chelsea uprising.

In those days there was a game you played with a foot long strip of paper with race horses printed on it. You lit a cigarette, we all smoked in those days, applied the hot end to the spot marked “begin” and the chemically treated lines would race toward the finish, burning at different rates of speed. They rarely burned evenly and it wasn’t much of a game until Mike found out that the chemical was a rather weak solution of fulminate of mercury and we were a bunch of very imaginative kids. Mike and I started experimenting with lengths of string dipped in the stuff and sure enough they burned wonderfully well. We were half way home. We collected half a dozen wax milk containers, cut off the tops, half filled them with dog droppings collected in the neighborhood. Next we added “India” ink which was as close to a permanent marker as we had in those days. We stuffed the top half full of toilet tissue and added half a dozen projectiles. The genius came in the means of launch, and as I said we were very creative.

We had experimented with the lengths of string and their burning rates, then punched two holes near the top of the containers and made a handle of twine. They could be carried if you were careful, and we took them to McLaughlin’s brownstone roof, approximately fifty feet up. Even native New Yorkers don’t know how water comes down a drain pipe. It’s simple, there’s a trough located toward the front of the roof which directs the water to the drain. We tied the half dozen containers to string held in place by a pair of “Red Murphy’s,” bricks to you, and draped the bombs over the front of the building. Six projectiles in place and the means of release, more saturated string draped over the top of the twine holding the containers. We had timed the burning rate of the saturated string at least a dozen times and knew it would take approximately fifty five seconds to a minute five for the ignition cord to connect with the string holding the first container in place. We had also timed our race down four flights of stairs and, believe it or not, could be out the front door of Ernie’s house in a minute flat. No one wanted to miss the action.

Mike remained on the roof and I went up to the door bell and jammed a tooth pick in it and it started ringing throughout the brownstone. I crossed the street to Nicky’s house where we all sat on the stoop as Mike touched off the saturated string. He escaped down the back fire escapes sacrificing his viewing of the disaster to come, greater love had no teenager. We watched the roof from across the street and McLaughlin’s door simultaneously. Sure enough he opened the front door, shook his fist at us and the first projectile fell, hitting him on the shoulder. That was when he made the fatal mistake of looking up as the second container, with its pungent load, hit him on the forehead. We were in convulsions and he was close to a coronary as the remaining containers rained down on his stoop and sidewalk. A half dozen of us were literally rolling around the streets as he raced back into the house and emerged a minute or so later with a Civil War navy revolver, 44 caliber, I believe, fired off a round as we went in several directions simultaneously.

Guns were a little extreme under the circumstances but he was in a rage and I genuinely believed he would have shot one of us had he gotten within range. There was a solitary car halfway up the street and I crawled beneath it as he ran up the block. He fired two more rounds and by now the neighbors were looking out their windows.

In those days perhaps one family in fifty had a phone but those that did started calling the Tenth Precinct and the cops don’t like guns of any caliber in the hands of lunatics. Three radio cars came roaring up the one way street from both ends and six cops had .38’s in their hands warning Bean Belly they would give him a new anal canal if he didn’t drop the old Colt revolver. I watched from my vantage point and made no noise at all as they cuffed him while trying to keep him at arm’s length. They marched him to the precinct house rather than let him in one of their cars, a very wise move I thought as even at that moment of exquisite triumph I started planning more devilment for old lady Scraggs who also called the cops when we played ball, but that’s another story.

-30-