Chapter 5: Looking for Whitey

Chapter 5 really introduces the character of Whitey Bulger, but not right away. Chapter 5 talks a lot about the siblings of MacDonald and he starts off first by telling us of his new baby brother Seamus and the love he has for him. He used to take him for walks in the stroller, and even though he was only a few weeks old, Macdonald would get irritated if someone swore around Seamus. 

The MacDonald’s also got a bigger apartment. They were aloud to breakthrough the wall and connect two apartments and his mother would bring home random furniture from the dumpster, which mortified the kids, and made them the envy of all the neighbors.

Eventually Whitey is brought up and one of the first descriptions we have of him is as a protector. Southie was made to believe that Whitey was taking care of them all from “being overrun with the drugs and gangs we’d heard about in the black neighborhoods, as well as stopping the outsiders who wanted to turn the projects into expensive condominiums.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, as we later find out that Whitey was bringing in the most drugs and kicking out all the dealers, along with being an FBI informant. However at the time, Whitey was a celebrity and people bragged about having even seen him. His older brother Frankie the boxer was close with him through being such a great fighter. Frankie was known for working hard and for being a gym rat. His days at the gym turn him into a fantastic fighter and he is known throughout Southie as their pride. His other brother Kevin began working for Whitey as a drug dealer. Kevin began started off working as a paper boy but his criminal ways got the best of him and he lied, saying he was robbed of his money and immediately quitting, when in reality he kept all the money in the end and bought drugs to sell with it. He sold the drugs out of his mother’s house, while his other brother Joe (I know it’s a lot of siblings to remember and  I’m almost confusing myself with this blog) began making friends with some black kids. He nearly got his ass kicked for it because segregation was still occurring and so were the violent protests. The drugs that Whitey was bringing into Southie were turning almost every kid into a drug addict. Especially MacDonalds older sister Kathy. She was addicted to Angel Dust.

The politics in the story are a bit confusing but only because it’s overwhelming. MacDonald talks about how people in Southie wanted George Wallace for president because he was the only one paying attention to Southie but in reality he was a racist pig himself. This didn’t stop MacDonald from branching out and found himself at discos with other nationalities, but when push came to shove the racism was still around and he would run to the nearest mob in Southie for protection when it came down to it. Towards the end of the chapter we see racism begin to slowly decrease, but by slowly I mean a snail crawling slow.

Chapter 4: World War III: Southie Style

‘Twas on a dreary Thursday morn’

As the buses rolled along.

They came up on out peaceful town

With orders from The Law:

Desegregate and integrate

Or you will pay the price

Of loss of pride, humility,

And even your children’s lives.

But Southie’s spirit was so strong,

They made us a barrack town.

They took their horses, dogs, and guns

and set them on the crowd.

The TPF, their sticks did crack

On the youth and old alike.

But we united still, our spirits high,

We’ll fight for freedom’s right.

                                               -Helen King

            This poem starts off the fourth chapter, and I feel like it definitely geared me up for the chapter. I thought the third chapter was violent…but man; chapter four was like world war three. It was ridiculous.

            In my very first post I talked about Boston at this time, one of the more prominent points being the 1974 bus riots. When I read about it online it seemed like there was some resistance to it, but nothing too major. The way MacDonald described the riots made it seem like a much bigger deal than I thought. In MacDonald’s neighborhood, people lined the streets waiting for the busses full of black kids to roll through and just as they began to, all hell broke loose. Actually, that’s exactly how MacDonald described it, “Then all hell broke loose”. The crowd was throwing anything they could possibly find at the busses, while the cops tried to stop the crowds from rioting. In one section MacDonald actually made it seem like a war zone, describing the helicopters flying above their apartment buildings at night.

            In another act of rebellion, a bunch of people from MacDonald’s neighborhood got together, put pig heads on a stick and wrote things such as “KILL THE PIGS”, taunting the police. Although I was slightly disturbed by this, I had to wonder…Where does one get mass amounts of pig heads on such short notice? It’s something to think about.

            As I was reading through this, I thought it was obvious that the cops were trying to protect the blacks who were traveling through this neighborhood; however that began to come into question. A black man was killed while going through MacDonald’s neighborhood (he was picking his wife up at the Laundromat), and when MacDonald went by the scene of the crime, he noticed that no evidence was picked up to try and find out who killed him. Even MacDonald wrote that when this happened, he wasn’t sure whose side the cops were on. I was even more confused when the cops went into a white bar (with their badges covered) and started beating people up).

            Unrelated to the riots happening in this chapter, MacDonald’s mother, Helen, (who is now pregnant) had a slightly humorous encounter. One of her ex-boyfriends, who is thought to be the father of her unborn child yet is denying it, was in the hospital. Helen wasn’t pleased with the fact that he was denying her unborn child, so she went to the hospital, ripped out all of his tubes and wires, then started beating him up. I realize that she was completely wrong for doing that, but it was a little funny…you go girl. 

Chapter 4: Fight the Power

As Rosemary points out in her most recent post, the violence is pretty overwhelming – This is especially true in the 4^th chapter of the book. The chapter starts off right away explaining the boycotting of Southie schools. The reason behind it is that black kids are now being allowed to attend the schools and are coming in on busses, right through the streets of Southie. I hope it’s pretty evident at this point that you know Southie is made up of mostly Irish immigrants and their tolerance for any other nationality is slim if not non-existent.  It is expected that everyone knows their place, just as native Southie kids do, and the shock that someone would allow blacks into Southie schools is appalling at the time to these folks. The racism was so bad that people even stopped reading the Globe, calling it a “liberal piece of trash.”

The boycotting begins, and literally no one is going to school. They are all waiting along the side of the road for the black kids to ride by on the busses.  This is where the chapter gets intense. People are chanting “Here we go Southie, Here we go” like it’s a football game. This little eight year old boy at the time is standing there, chanting these words and the only reason he is doing it is because everyone else is too. It’s unbelievable to actually read about a witness’s story, and how easily this racism could have ceased to exist if only the adults had set the right example. MacDonald proclaims “I belted it out, just as a few other kids I didn’t know joined the chorus. The kids in the crowd all looked at each other as if we were family. This is great, I thought. I’d never had such an easy time as this, making friends in Southie” – These few sentences baffle me. Instead of uniting about love, they are uniting over war. It is truly disgusting but it makes the reader crave more.

People carried signs, yelled hateful things, threw rocks at the busses, and riots broke out. The S.W.A.T.  team was eventually was brought in and Southie began to hate the police too. MacDonald almost got hit by a car at one point. Kids were trying to break mounted policeman horses legs with hockey sticks. One guy even held up a KKK sign. It eventually got to the point that the police were beating kids. Teenagers were bold, being chased by officers and throwing pebbles on their heads from rooftops. A Haitian man was beaten and a day after that in retaliation, a white man was attacked by almost 200 black teenagers. Both of them had been passing by and they paid for other peoples racism. People were beaten in bars by police to send a message.

This chapter also involves MacDonald’s mom, who is one tough broad. She knocks someone out while pregnant, and takes her boyfriend to court, stating that he beat her. She is able to escape from a bar fight and feed her family all in the same night. I don’t want MacDonald’s mom to go unnoticed as she is a true testament to what a Southie mother was at the time.

The chapter closes with MacDonald’s older, mentally unstable brother making what could be seen as a crazy statement but it rings so clear and true after reviewing what has been read so far,  “They don’t want you to know what the enemy looks like, so you can end up killing each other, or yourself, in the frenzy. You become your own worst enemy!”

Chapter 3: Dumpsters and Cockroaches

As we continue our journey with MacDonald, we find his family moving from Jamaica Plain, back to South Boston. The title of the chapter (Ghetto Heaven) gave me an idea of what the atmosphere was like once they moved there. As you can gather from Brittany and Rosemary’s posts about chapter 3, there was quite a bit of violence and racism occurring, however I found there to be a few humorous parts of this chapter.

            MacDonald writes about him and his friends spending summer nights lighting dumpsters on fire. Although I’m sure that alone was loads of fun, MacDonald said they did it because they knew firemen would show up, and they would allow the kids to play on the fire truck. The way MacDonald put it was, “we knew we’d see them again soon, same time, same place, unless there was a real fire going on somewhere else”. Both parties knew that the only reason they were showing up was to hang out. To me this was a sweet moment amongst all of the violence. When MacDonald started describing this routine occurrence, I thought: 1) The kids were just lighting dumpsters on fire for the hell of it 2) They were climbing on the fire trucks without the consent of the firemen. Clearly my assumption was wrong. I also figured that these kids would get in trouble for lighting dumpsters on fire, but again, clearly wrong. If kids did anything like that these days they would have hell to pay….but for MacDonald and his friends it was chill.

            There was also the family’s battle with cockroaches when they arrived at the new apartment. Although this was a miniscule part of this chapter, I thought it was funny that Macdonald took ‘roach killing so seriously. He was basically waging war against all cockroach kind.

            Amongst all of the violence and racism that MacDonald describes in this chapter, there are still a few lighthearted and funny moments.       

Violence, and Racism, and Family.. Oh my!

Oops, we've been lagging with posts lately. That has nothing to do with how interesting the book is, and everything to do with how busy and scattered I've been lately.
Anyway, back to Southie, Boston.
Thus far the book has had many themes. From violence, to racism, to the family dynamics. It all makes for an interesting read.
You can't go a page through the book without someone getting into a physical altercation, or someone getting beaten, or some kind of violence taking place. It's crazy to think how vastly different MacDonald's childhood can be from my own. Although the times were very different, it still leaves me in awe at how someone growing up not too far from where I grew up and still live could have gone through such crazy, sad times. And the craziest part is at the point I'm at in the book he's still a kid! Probably around 9 years old and he's already seen such awful things. And as I'm told, it only gets worse.
The racism is just as abundant as the violence and often times it is what incites the violence. Everyone hates anyone whose not like them. Again, crazy to think about growing up in a time when there was so much hate and animosity.
The family dynamics are truly interesting. They all may have their issues but they've got each others backs at all times. Everything else seems so miserable, at least they have each other.. well, for the time being. Knowing what's coming in the book makes me nervous. I don't know if knowing is helping to prepare me for what's coming next. As I hear all kinds of tragedy is on it's way. I wonder how different my reading experience would be had I not read/heard about so much that's about to happen. Hmm..
Well, anyway. Time to buckle down and read some more.

Chapter 3

In Chapter three of the book, MacDonald explains how he and his brothers and sisters had to face initiations upon their arrival at Old Colony. They had to start to make a name for themselves against other tough Southie kids and stand their ground. It’s amazing to me to see that these kids were so loyal to the areas they lived in. There was Old Colony, The Point, D Street, and they all took pride in where they lived and in keeping their own crowds together. 

The kids that MacDonald grew up with and around all remind me of the word “punk” and it seems to be the defining word for most of them. It’s like they were looking for trouble all the time, and weren’t even scared of the police. The coolest thing about this book though, is that MacDonald makes you really want to like these people. They had to face daily struggles that a lot of us readers have never even seen or thought of having to endure, and so you can kind of see where this Southie attitude comes from and why they were so desperate to stick together. It’s like those kids that you let cross the road and they walk wicked slow and you get so aggravated because they seem like little entitled assholes, that is exactly what these kids are but this book makes it okay! He even says at one point “It seemed as if we were all hoping for some action, all the time” – It’s like they couldn’t get enough of the trouble that was all around them, and when there was no chaos going on they had to start some.

Another thing I noticed is that everyone is pretty much grouped by their nationality. His sisters boyfriend is “Jimmy the Greek” he is considered a “white nigger” or a “project rat” then there are “niggers” and then there are just regular black people that  lived in a certain spot for years and so they weren’t considered “niggers” – It is absolutely insane how racist these people all were against each other.

BUT my favorite part of this whole chapter is when he talks about how none of the rules that he learns in Southie work anywhere else. “All the rules we were learning didn’t make any sense anywhere else. Not the rules about heat and light, not the rules about what to wear, not the rules about money.” – It’s like they had their own little world and it basically was a different culture - But at the time what he didn’t understand was that in other places, their rules wouldn’t work in Southie either. It was all relative. 

I really wasn’t sure how I felt about this book in the beginning, but now I can’t put it down.

Chapter 2: So Many Characters, So Little Time

The first chapter of All Souls was all fine and good, but it really starts to get fun in the second chapter. MacDonald uses the second chapter to gives us an idea of where he was living at the time, introduce new characters, and give us some bizarre anecdotes.

First off, I thought I would keep a running list of characters, mostly because there are so many people that I can’t keep them straight without writing them down.

-Michael MacDonald (Duh)-Author, main character, 7^th child, makes a living playing the accordion

-Ma-Mother of the MacDonald children

-Dave MacDonald-The father 6/9 MacDonald children, violent alcoholic, abandoned family before Michael was born (later in the second chapter we find out that he IS NOT Michael’s father), makes a career out of playing country-western music on the guitar, Korean War veteran

-Nana, Grandpa-Ma’s parents

-Mary, Kathy-Michael’s sisters

-Davey, Frankie, Joe, The Twins, Kevin-Michael’s brothers

-Patrick Michael-Child before Michael, died as an infant due to pneumonia

-Nellie-Ma’s Cousin from Ireland

-Bob King-Ma’s second husband

-Teresa-Ma’s sister/ Michael’s aunt

-Sean and Kathleen-Teresa’s children

Places of interest:

            -Colombia Point is the location of Michael MacDonald’s first home

-Jamaica Plain is the location of Michael MacDonald’s second home

            In this chapter, MacDonald talks about how his brother, Davey, is put into Massachusetts Mental Association (which apparently still exists) for schizophrenia. MacDonald writes about some of what his brother goes through, which includes shock therapy. Now, I’m a huge fan of American Horror Story, so when I read about Davey getting shock therapy I had a flash back. But I’m thinking they exaggerated shock therapy on American Horror Story.

So, there’s a little sum up on the second chapter. I know you’ll all be waiting by your computers waiting to see what happens in the next chapter.