Patrizio & Timotae

Patrizio & Timotae,

September 7th, 2024

It’s a very hot August day in New York City in 1965. Patrizio and Timotae are good friends and about 13 years old. They are walking through the Bowery, looking for an ice cream truckster.

Timotae: Are you sure we’re on the right street?

Patrizio: Yeah, Uncle Vito told me that the Donny kid drives his ice cream truckster around here.

Timotae: Uncle Paddy told me that Donny shoulda stayed in Queens. He’s on our turf.

Patrizio: The Bowery is full of drunks. What do they want with ice cream?

Timotae: I don’t know. Just know that Uncle Paddy told me to watch what this Donny Boy does.

Patrizio: Jesus! If you start singing “Donny Boy” I’ll put my fist on your lips.

Timotae: You’re swearing. That’s three Hail Marys for you.

Patrizio: Look! There’s Donny Boy and his ice cream truckster.

The ice cream truckster is down the block. “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine” is playing over the tinny speaker on the Cushman truckster.

The truckster is surrounded by bums buying ice cream. Donny Boy is raking in the coins.

Patrizio: There’s something going on here. I can smell it.

Timotae: All I see are bums buying ice cream.

Patrizio: That’s cheap rum I smell, and it’s comin’ from that truckster!

Timotae: Trickster you mean. So, Donny Boy is lacing the vanilla with cheap rum and selling it to the bums. There is a kinda art to that deal.

Patrizio: What are you talkin’ about?

Timotae: Well, vanilla comes from the East Indies, and rum comes from the West Indies, so, it’s a meeting of East and West.

Patrizio looks at Timotae as if he’s never seen him before.

Patrizio: This is gonna cut into Uncle Vito’s fortified wine business.

Timotae: And the Mickey’s Malt Liquor business of my Uncle Paddy.

Patrizio: We gotta stop this.

The boys come up with a plan.

…

The next hot sunny August afternoon, Patrizio and Timotae are again in the Bowery looking for the Donny Boy ice cream truckster.

Patrizio is dressed up like a bum and Timotae has a cop’s uniform on. They see Donny Boy on his trickster, and Patrizio approaches wearing his bum’s rags, hat, fake beard, and alcohol on his breath.

Patrizio: Hey! I want one of dem cups of ice cream!

Donny Boy: You got your quarter, boy?

Patrizio: I gots my quarter.

Patrizio hands Donny Boy a quarter and gets a helping of vanilla rum ice cream in a cup.

Timotae blows his cop whistle: Hey! You there! Stop!

Timotae walks up to Donny Boy.

Timotae: Do you have a license to sell ice cream in Manhattan?

Donny Boy: I’m not selling ice cream. I give the poor ice cream and in return they make a small donation to the Bowery Ice Cream Fund. We are sobering up the drunks one bum at a time.

Timotae: One rum at a time, you mean. I smell that Jamaican hootch. Let me look in that cooler.

Timotae looks in the cooler, but there is no rum in there, just vanilla ice cream.

Patrizio notices a bulge in the back pocket of Donny Boy’s pants. Patrick lurches in a drunken way and knocks Donny Boy over. Donny Boy falls backward on the fifth of rum in his back pocket and screams in pain.

Timotae: Donny Boy, I suggest that you keep your rummy ice cream truckster in Queens.

Donny Boy limps into his truckster and drives away, never to be seen in Manhattan again.

But then again…

TJM