5

A. Veresano interviewing Steve Sikora -3- 7/19/72
Tape 22-1
wheel from a carriage or something, with a piece of wire, and that's
the flat end- play Nipsy. I don't know if you ever heard of that?
AV: Oh, I heard about it! How did you play Nipsy?
SS: Well, you had a stick, you'd sharpen it on both ends, and you'd flip up
this here, and then you'd hit it - I forget, it's been so long - Nipsy-game,
we used to call it.
AV: You lived on the Back Street. What part of the Back Street was it?
SS: Yeah, House Thirty-two. It's up on one of them little homes. That's all
strip there now. Towards the breaker, that way.
AV: Was that considered Downtown, Back Street?
SS: Well, they used to call it the Back Street, and this used to call the Big
Street- the Big Street and the Back Street. That's what they used to
name it. But this is the Main Street, they call it, now.
AV: Well, didn't they have- well, Mr. Hartz was telling me that there used
to be kind of "gangs" of boys. There used to be the Uptowners and the
Downtowners and Big Streeters.
SS: They all used to hang out on the corners. Whenever there was a
corner, say, like down there by Spongey's. Well they used to gather
together, you know? And they used to have different games, tell jokes, or different things, you know, whatever they knew. Mostly games they
used to play. Like, with rocks they used to run back and forth, they'd
get the prisoner, you know?
AV: What's that?
SS: Well, it was a game. Like you had to touch the rock, back and forth,
and say Prisoner, you know? I forget myself what kind of game it was,
it's been so long! So, that's the kind of games we used to play. I
mean, we was always runnin' around, you know? Always doin'
something.
AV: Was there really kind of an atmosphere of togetherness, in the gang,
like, the Uptowners would be at the Downtowners if they came
into your territory?
SS: Well, it was something in that sort, yeah. I mean they, you know, one
guy thought he as tougher than the next guy. That's all. They used to
pick up an argument or something. Most of the time they was
friendly, though. The boys.
AV: Didn't they pick on somebody if he came into your end of the Back
Street?
SS: Well, before my days, they said, them Irish first came in, they used to
stone them and everything, so.
AV: So you heard stories of that?
SS: Yeah. They wouldn't let the Hukey people in, you know. The Irish was
pretty strict.
AV:What did they do?
SS: But then, they start comin' in, because they got jobs here, and they'd
start movin' in, and they couldn't do nothin' about it. So. But they
had a hard time with them, you know what I mean? The Slavic people
had a hard time to get in. Those Irish, I mean, they thought they own
anything, you know what I mean. Because they was the first ones in
here. But they'd start comin' in one by one and gettin' jobs, like my
father and the rest of them, you know. So, they had a lot of boarders
them days, they said.
AV: Did you have boarders in your house?
SS: No, not that I remember. Because we moved in from Farmertown.
And we lived down at Shanty Street. That's toward down there.
Frank Manellis used to live down there. That's where my uncle was
shot, down there.
AV: Oh, your uncle....
SS: Yeah...
AV: Joe Charnigy's brother...
SS: Cousin, ah, his uncle, too.