Page 10 Echo Feature Going home again with Pete Hamill By Pat Fenton he points to a long ago picture were the ones filling in the [email protected] of a young Pete Hamill just blanks.” home from the Navy, not he sun splashed along knowing that one day he FARRELL’S LEGEND the tops of the factory would be far away from this Talking about bars, there’s a buildings in Tribeca, safe Irish working-class world Windsor Terrace legend that Thighlighting the rows and and writing about people like still exists today about a night rows of water tanks on this Frank Sinatra, people that once in the 1970s when Pete Hamill perfect fall morning. As I came only existed for him inside a took the actress Shirley up from the A Train at Canal juke box. And drinking with MacLaine into Farrell’s, at a Street and started to walk them. And dating people like time when Farrell’s, like many downtown to interview Pete Jackie Kennedy and the movie of the saloons in the neighbor- www.irishecho.com / Irish EchoHamill, / OCTOBER 8 - 14, 2014 / my mind wandered star Shirley MacLaine. hood, didn’t serve women at back to a long ago time in the “There’s Jack Daugherty, and the bar, and she demanded to 1970s when I sent him a sample Frank Cioffi. That’s Patty Rat- be served. of my first, early uncertain tigan behind the bar. I’m not The story told over and over words. He was writing for the sure who this is. But that’s the again by different customers of Village Voice at the time. The place. Almost every corner had Farrell’s has different endings next week I got back a long, abar,”hesays,ashetakesme that have been passed down type-written letter from him back to his “drinking-life through the generations. In that urged me to keep writing. days.” some, Shirley MacLaine makes And throughout his career “You had Diamond’s on the abigsceneatthebarandde- he did that over and over again corner of 9th Street and 7th Av- mands to be served. She gets with so many other writers just enue, and Denny’s directly served, and she changes every- starting out. across on the other side. You thing. Standing in his Tribeca loft I came up from the subway and What actually happened that commented on the walls and there it was. night? walls of books he has. Lining a “Then the next block over on “That night I was with her in long hallway are book shelves 10th Street was Fitzgerald’s Manhattan,” Hamill recalls, reaching from floor to ceiling, and 11th Street was Rattigan’s. “and it was St Patrick’s Day. holding over a thousand On 12th Street was Unbeatable And I ran in to the Gates broth- books. Joe’s. Quigley’s was on 13th ers from the neighborhood. “I call them the tenements,” Street. There was nothing on One of them was a fireman. he says. “The Irish tenement is Pete Hamill will be presented with the Eugene O’Neill Lifetime the corner of 14th Street and And someone said to her, over from where you’re stand- Achievement Award on Monday, Oct. 20, by the Irish American 7th Avenue. That’s where the ‘Okay, Shirley, have you ever ing. Then there’s France, and Writers & Artists. Minerva movie house was. been to Farrell’s? And she Italy and Spain. And over there They insisted that it be treated goes, ‘uh, no.’ ‘Come on,’ and are all my books.” like a religious institution,” he into the cab we go.” The one book that stands out DIFFERENT, NOT BETTER go to the university. I didn’t says, smiling at the memory of “Was it something she was the most in his section of “the He talks about talking to a know a single person who ever aplaceheoncespentsomany looking forward to?” I ask tenements” is a book about his local real-estate guy on 7th Av- went to a university. Until later innocent Saturday afternoons Hamill. “Had she heard you mother called “Anne Devlin enue a few years ago while when I got older and was in in his youth. talking about Farrell’s Bar be- Hamill, An Irish-American working on a story about how the Navy and some guys had But there was also violence fore? Odyssey.” The Hamill family the neighborhood changed. gone and were urging me, and mixed in with the innocence of “Yeah. She went to high put it together. It is turned so The man, John Burke, who other of my fellow dropouts to the neighborhood. Previously, school, and she was smart. But that the full cover of the large grew up here, once made his make sure I get the GED and he had recalled for me on the she didn’t go to college. So she book is facing the room. On the living working a milk-truck then go on and go to the uni- phone an evening in the 1950s had a kind of curiosity. That front of it is a picture of her as route. versity. when a young gang member brought her to many places ayoungBelfastwoman,her “I remember asking him, the “I don’t know if the drug sit- from the Tigers, Giacomo For- that college wouldn't. That eyes filled with hope as she new people arriving here, what uation is better now than when tunato, was shot and killed at a brought her to Farrell’s Bar. stares out at an image of the are they like compared to what the heroin arrived in our gang fight with the South But she wasn't there to say, ‘try Statute of Liberty. we were like? He said, ‘we neighborhood in 1951. And Brooklyn Boys that took place to talk me out of it.’ She didn't “Did you call the neighbor- came from barracks. They that changed lives for the at nearby Prospect Park’s Swan do that. It was not confronta- hood Park Slope when you came from dorms.’ And I’m worst. You know 17th Street in Lake. The next day a group of tional,” he says, as he describes were growing up in Brook- not against it by the way. You Windsor Terrace where you the Tigers stood under the how she just went up on her lyn?” I ask him. “A lot of peo- know I hear people bitching came from was one of the marquee of the Minerva, some own and ordered a drink. ple who came from Windsor about the yuppies, but gentrifi- worst hit.” of them crying as they read the “They gave it to her. The bar- Terrace always just called the cation is better than heroin.” He then mentions an insti- news of his death in the news- tenders were not the old guys. whole neighborhood the “How would you describe tution that was a favorite of his papers. They were younger. She got Slope.” your childhood growing up in father’s and that he has written “The bars were all so very im- served, she had one drink and “Where I lived on 7th Av- Brooklyn and the kids that are about often in his newspaper portant to the neighborhood. It then we headed back to Man- enue and 12th Street we really growing up there now?” I ask. columns, and in his books. was not just the fun they hattan.” didn’t call it anything,” he “It was simpler. There were “If you go over there,” he would have, and the jokes in We talk about some of the says. “What I loved about the various reasons for it. One was says, pointing, “you’ll find a these places. The men could other bars of the neighbor- South Brooklyn Boys, as they there was no television. We picture of Rattigan’s Bar on my meet the local ward-heeler hood, some that were once in called themselves, Junior Per- had radio, serials, we had Cap- desk.” who would come around once the heart of Windsor Terrace, sico and those guys, they lived tain Midnight, Jack Arm- Rattigan’s Bar is the place aweek,andtheycoulddo some on the borders of it. All of in North Brooklyn. When you strong.” where it all goes back to for some kind of favor for some- them caught forever in the lit- looked at the map you realized “Does that make it better?” I Pete Hamill, a safe place where one who was going to give erature of Pete Hamill’s books. that. But they called them- say, “Or is it more complicated much of his life began in a them six votes forever. The “Here you are as a young selves the South Brooklyn than that?” tough Irish working-class whole family would. And they man on Saturday nights, hang- Boys. Geography was not one “No, I think it makes it dif- neighborhood of dock workers got jobs. I remember clearly ing out in places like Boop’s of their strong suits,” he says ferent. It’s not whether it’s bet- and cops, a place he often calls, guys saying ‘Jeez, I just heard Bar on the corner of 17th Street smiling, as he talks about a ter or worse. It’s better now in “the parish.” And there he that they are hiring at Ameri- and 10th Avenue, and the neighborhood street gang, so many ways. Race is so much stands in the old black-and- can Can.’ Which was out in Caton Inn down on Coney Is- many who went on to become better.