Reprinted from THE JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 43, No. 3, July 1948

JOHNNY ROCCO

BY JEAN EVANS *

189 West Houston Street, New York City

WALK through the slum section of any American city some evening. Pause at the pool rooms, gyms, the dingy bars, the candy stores, and certain street corners where boys and young men gather. Any one of them might be a Johnny Rocco.

Johnny is a short, chunky fellow of twenty. He looks older than his years. His hair, which is dark with a slightly reddish cast, is receding at the temples, thinning on top. His dark heavy eyebrows, meeting over a slightly aquiline nose give him an angry somber look. His eyes are narrow, the skin underneath them tending to be baggy. There is a small narrow scar on his left cheek. His hands are stubby, the fingers square, the nails bitten short. Blue and red tattoos, their edges blurred, decorate both his forearms to just below the wrists. He carries his shoulders stiffly, walking with a cocky rolling gait.

* Miss Evans is a professional writer who specializes in life stories having sociological and psychological significance. Many of her cases have appeared in the weekly magazine section of PM. The present article is based upon her thorough study of the case record of Johnny in the files of a child-helping agency and upon personal acquaintance with Johnny himself, gained in a series of candid interviews with the boy. Although the names of persons and places are fictitious, the essential authenticity of the report is vouched for by the agency that worked with Johnny for several years. We present the case to the readers of this JOURNAL not only for its professional and scientific interest, but likewise for its possible use as instructional material with students of psychology or of social work. The ensuing article in the present issue of the JOURNAL contains a discussion of actual experience in employing "Johnny Rocco" as teaching material in an elementary course in psychology.—EDITOR

At first contact Johnny seems tough, very tough. "I used to have a heart. I was chicken-hearted," he says contemptuously. "Now I don't give a damn for anyone. Everybody's out for himself. ..."

"Cops? They're no good. Two-bit phonies and racketeers. I'm old now and I know the rackets they run. They beat the law themselves, and then they go out and arrest some poor kid. The guys outside the law, they'll gyp you, too. You got to watch your step. You can't trust anybody. Your own gang will insult you. Your own family, they'll call you a jerk. I don't team up with anybody. I'm what you call—here today and gone tomorrow."

But as you get to know him, the brassy quality of what he has to say gives way to something else, and the real Johnny begins to emerge.

"All my life—as far as I remember. If I wanted to have something, to be something—No! Never! Not a God damned lousy thing! Anything I wanted, I never could work for it. I never could accomplish—."

Johnny was born in a large midwestern industrial city. His parents, Italian immigrants, had settled there at the turn of the century. There were nine other Rocco children, each about two years younger than the next, when Johnny was born. Regina, who was twenty when Johnny came along, was the oldest. Then came Francisco, Aldo, Sebastian, Georgio, Paul, Antonio, Carla, and Richard. Two more children came after Johnny was born,

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David, a year and a half younger than Johnny, and Mike. Mike died in infancy.

The neighborhood where the Roccos lived was known as one of the worst slums in the city. It was known, too, for its high rate of crime and juvenile delinquency. It was a neighborhood of factories, abandoned tumble-down shacks, junk yards, pool rooms, cheap liquor joints, and broken houses with sagging steps and paint peeling from their sides.

Johnny's father worked irregularly—as a bar tender, teamster, or day laborer. Two things he did regularly—he drank and gambled. In his drunken rages he often attacked the children and their mother. The little ones learned to scramble across the floor like beetles, finding shelter under tables or beds, where his kicking feet couldn't reach them.

Johnny's short, dark, excitable mother was always sick and complaining. She suffered from heart disease. The children fought. They were noisy and destructive. There was seldom enough food in the house. The rent was never paid and Mrs. Rocco lived in constant terror of landlords and evictions. Nevertheless, the Roccos moved frequently. They moved every nine or ten months, but never to a better house or neighborhood. They moved through a succession of drafty, sparsely furnished four- and five-room apartments which were heated by coal or kerosene, the geography of their lives circumsumed by dirt, squalor, and factory and slaughter-house smells and noises.

Johnny's memories of his early childhood are sporadic. He remembers that the family had a dog, Teddy, when he was a very little boy. Teddy got sick and lay beside the kerosene stove, quiet and shivering. Johnny recalls that Teddy was still alive when one of his

older brothers put Teddy into a sack half-full of trash, carried him to the garbage dump, and left him there to die.

Johnny remembers visiting another of his brothers at a reform school. That was a little later, and that memory has the quality of a holiday; the reform school, Johnny says, was in a "country-like" place.

Johnny remembers hiding in a snowbank once, when his mother was very angry. He remembers fights between his brothers when his mother stood in the middle of the room screaming, and blood ran from his brothers' noses. And Johnny remembers how his father died. A heavy, regular thumping awoke Johnny one night. He got up, and, still dazed with sleep, wandered into the kitchen where the family usually gathered. His father was lying on the floor.

"Some men my father was out with had dragged him up the stairs and put him there. There was blood on his face. Blood was coming out of his ears. He was holding the leg of the kitchen table with one hand, an' he was moanin', and he kept pounding his foot on the floor. One of my brothers called an ambulance, but he died."

Johnny was then five. One of the city's many social-work agencies through whose hands the Roccos passed has a notation in its records on the death of Johnny's father: "Killed in a drunken brawl by his best friend."

The rest of Johnny's memories, many of them more in the nature of a quality of feeling than of actual remembrance, flew backward and forward in time, a merging of history and experience.

Time out of mind there was trouble in the Rocco family. Johnny knows by a certain "lousy feeling" he's always had; by certain conditions that seem to him to have had no beginning or end;

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by monotonously repetitious happen-
ings. There was sickness and violence.
There was trouble with social-work
agencies. The Roccos were known to
twenty-five welfare agencies in thirty
years. There was trouble with land-
lords, with the schools where the
Rocco children went, with the police.

By the time Johnny's father died,
four of the older Rocco children had
married and moved away. (Johnny's
oldest sister married a drunkard. Four
of his brothers contracted "forced
marriages" while still in their teens.
Two of them have been divorced and
remarried, one of them once, the other
twice, though the family is Roman
Catholic.) What was left of the Rocco
family continued in its dismal course,
the children getting into one difficulty
after another and Mrs. Rocco, sick and
confused, and inept, trudging from
school to police station to court, listen-
ing to complaints about them, and
from hospital to welfare agency, asking
for help and still more help.

If the Rocco boys ever had any ten-
der feeling for one another, that was
lost somewhere in the maelstrom of
accumulated want, frustration, and
jealousy that was the lot of each of
them. As much as possible, the mem-
bers of the household moved in sepa-
rate orbits, their paths converging
under the family roof only when
they paused to sleep or to eat their
pasta. Of the seven remaining children
only one boy, Georgio, assumed any
responsibility toward the others and
that was thrust upon him. He was six-
teen, the oldest of the children, when
his father died. If Georgio worked, he
contributed part of his earnings to the
family. When the rest of the children
got so out of hand that Mrs. Rocco
implored him to do something, he
applied the only discipline he knew; he
beat them brutally.

"My brothers—. I don't despise
them," Johnny says, "but the past I
don't forget. They used to push me
around, I wasn't afraid of them. I
used to tell them, 'Go ahead. Hit me.
Hit me. What do I care?' Except
Georgio! The fear I had for my
brother Georgio, if he threatened me—
if he only looked at me—I'm scared of
him, that's all."

Johnny slept in a bed with Richard
and David. Richard, a dark, scowling
boy who was born with a twisted foot,
was two years older than Johnny.
David, who was a year and a half
younger, had congenital syphilis and
suffered from anemia. Johnny always
felt that, because his mother was ill and
Richard and David were sickly, the
three of them were drawn into an
alliance from which he was excluded.

"I was the strongest so I had to sleep
across the foot of the bed. Even if I
wanted to swap places with them, there
was no dice. They wouldn't. And,
anyway, my mother wouldn't make
them. Those brass beds! You know,
they got bars at the end. Jesus! In the
winter, those bars are cold. I used to
lay there and they'd ball me up against
the cold bars. They'd kick my face and
my back and pull the covers off. I'd
be—half of me out of the covers, freez-
ing, or laying on those bars.

"Sunday mornings, hell, you wanted
to sleep. It was cold. Then the fight-
ing would start. They'd be crowding
an' pushing an' I'd yell or kick them.
It used to make me mad. Then my big
brother, Georgio, he'd be lying in his
bed in the other room, an' he'd yell,
'Johnny! Come here!'

"Whenever my brother Georgio said,
'Johnny! Come here!' Christ! I'd be
scared. Walkin' to the sink or the
table, wherever he was—to me, that was
walkin' into a death house. I'd get out
of the bed an' go up to the bed where

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he was an' bam! He'd let me have it. He used to give me charlie-horses so's I couldn't move my arm. He broke my nose once. My head hit the door an' I went out cold."

The only person in that household Johnny loved was his mother. "Sometimes she was wrong," Johnny says, "but she tried to be good to us. She would just as soon take a meal out of her own mouth and give it to us. But she never favored me. She favored Richie and Davie. Davie—he's dead now—he was her favorite. I was trouble to her. I was always on the outside," Johnny says heavily. "When Davie died she said she wished it was me instead."

Johnny was especially bitter toward David, who was the baby of the family. "I used to lick him. I used to fight and break things. I was always trouble. Even before he was sick, Davie was petted. He got everything, even a bike. I didn't get anything—.

"I never went any place. If I went any place, I had to go on my own. My people never took me out to a show, or any place with them. On Sundays when all the kids on the corner had money, I didn't. I'd go and clip it. I never had a birthday party. I never had a birthday present outside of what Mr. O'Brien, a friend I had when I was bigger, gave me. . . . Christmases, and I was always in the wrong. Maybe I cracked Davie, or I was yelling, or somebody complained. It was always something. My mother would get my brother Richie something, and my brother Davie something. She'd tell me in advance I wasn't going to get anything. Yeah, it made me mad."

Johnny didn't want to be "always trouble" to his mother. He wanted to show her how much he loved her, but he could never quite reach her. He wanted to make her love and pet him,

too, as she did David, but he didn't know how. He had a secret way of paying her tribute: "Money I stole, I would never give to my mother." He earned a little, periodically, selling *True Confession* magazines. He gave her that. Then she, in turn, would give him a dime.

Once, Johnny says he borrowed a shoe-shine box, "hook-jacked" school, and worked from morning 'til night. "I made two bucks and a half. Boyl I was hungry, but I wouldn't even buy a roll. I wouldn't even spend something for carfare home. I wanted to give my mother all of it."

But even when Johnny was determined to make his mother love him he was annoying, he was so insistent. He'd rush home after school and make a great show of sweeping the floors or polishing the stove. He'd urge and urge his mother to send him on an errand. Tense and watchful for the extravagant praise he craved, he'd even make overtures to David. But something always happened to burst the bubble, a quarrel with David, a rebuff from his mother—and Johnny, overcome with rage, frustration, and self-pity would swing back to thieving, baiting David, and screaming savagely at his mother.

One of the subterfuges Johnny's fumbling mother resorted to in her efforts to pacify landlords who were always hounding her was to keep her screaming, battling children out of the house as much as possible. As soon as each child was old enough to shift for himself, she would turn him out on the streets. It is not surprising then that one after another the Rocco boys became known to the police. Their father himself had a long court record for assault, disorderliness, drunkenness; five of Johnny's brothers, who started in childhood, ran up police records

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covering charges of disturbing the peace, breaking and entering, larceny, perjury, assault and battery, bastardy, and malicious injury.

"I was in the police station, too. Plenty!" Johnny says. "Saturdays, they had Kids' day. We'd be in this long corridor. There'd be all little kids sitting down, niggers and kids with their shoe shine boxes who'd have to go out shining shoes afterwards. They'd bring us in an' those jerks, the cops, they'd be sitting there. They'd ask us—" Johnny's sentence broke off, then he continued on a new tack.

"Christ! I remember a lot of times I got picked up for something—or maybe staying out late, or suspicion. They'd round us up an' bring us in, an' this cop here, he was always insulting me. 'You little fresh—you little bastard!' He'd belt me or anything he felt like doing. I was just — to him...."

Johnny hadn't been running the streets long when the knowledge was borne in on him that being a Rocco made him "something special"; the reputation of the notorious Roccos, known to neighbors, schools, police, and welfare agencies as "chiselers, thieves, and trouble-makers," preceded him. The cop on the beat, Johnny says, always had some cynical smart-crack to make. Certain homes were barred to him. Certain children were not permitted to play with him. Wh wherever he went—on the streets, in the neighborhood settlement house, at the welfare agency's penny milk station, at school, where other Roccos had been before him, he recognized himself by a gesture, an oblique remark, a wrong laugh.

"Everybody always knew all about me," he recalls. "I always had a bad name. I felt cheap. Everybody gave me hell."

If Johnny was sinned against, he was

also sinning. "Sure I was bad. I was fresh with my mouth. I stole. As far back as I remember I got in jams. There were things I never done, too, but I always got accused anyway. I didn't care. I didn't. Because I knew, if I was in court and the judge said, 'You're free,' I was going to go right out stealin' an' getting in jams again. I was noted for a crook. I had it in me."

Most slum boys get a feeling of protection and prestige from membership in some neighborhood gang, but Johnny wasn't one of those. He knew members of various gangs in the many neighborhoods where he had lived. He rotated among all of them but remained always on the fringes of their society. Johnny wanted to be a fully accepted member of a gang, but he could never get along with any one group for long. Johnny was a maverick:

"I never fitted in. I never belonged anyplace. I never found anybody that liked me a lot, and that I liked, and could trust. I never played baseball, football, playing with the kids. I just had kids I clipped with—Bagdads, they used to call us—like the forty thieves. You know, a bunch of sloppy kids that ain't got nothing."

Johnny and a pal of the moment played around alleys, junk yards, or hung around the doorways of pool rooms. If the weather was right, they'd swim in the oily waters of the river which runs through their part of the town. Sometimes they'd hop on the back of a trolley to Green Hill, a suburb where people grew fruit trees. "We'd steal peaches and eat all day," Johnny recalls, "and then come home." Of an evening, they would break into the plant of a chain bakery nearby and eat their fill of cake.

Johnny had one sport, as a small boy,

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that he liked above everything else—
going to the freight yards or parks to
trap birds. "It's easy," he says. "You
make, like a path with crumbs. Then
you wait. If one goes in the box, a
whole flock will go in."

One of the most urgent cravings
Johnny can recall was his fondness for
birds. He yearned to keep some of the
ones he trapped, but he couldn't; his
mother wouldn't permit it. She was
afraid the landlord would object. "I
liked birds. I was always thinking
about them," Johnny says. "I got the
nick-name, 'Sparrow.'"

From peaches, to cakes, to money,
whatever the sequence, by the time he
was ten, Johnny says, "It got so when-
ever I'd lay my eyes on something and
want it, I'd just clip it." Then he and
his cronies made a business of hopping
rides on trucks. Johnny describes it:
"A couple of guys would hop on an'
throw the stuff off the side." They
stole from cars, too, and broke into
places at night. It was at about this
time that Johnny began to make his
appearance at the police station on
"Kids' Day."

If Johnny's home and street life were
turbulent, it was no different at school.
He had entered kindergarten when he
was four and a half years old. During
the next seven years he had changed
schools seven times, had been in at
least fifteen different homerooms, and
was only in the third grade. His read-
ing was on a second-grade level; he
was poor in arithmetic, and was almost
completely unable to spell.

He was a trial to his teachers. They
complained that he was "nervous,
fidgety, sullen, obstinate, cruel, dis-
obedient, disruptive." "Teachers can
stand him for only one day at a time,"
one said. "He talks to himself. He
fights. He insists on wearing his hat
at school. When in Miss Clark's room,

he attempted to kick her. He isn't
going to be promoted. He knows this
and refuses to make any effort to study.
His present teacher is so tired she
refuses to have it out with him. . . "

Another wrote:

He is the most difficult boy I have ever had.
Does not belong in a classroom. He needs
individual attention and a lot of it. He never
applies himself. There is nothing in which
he is interested enough to apply himself.
He has more mentality than he seems to
want to use.

He is a showoff. I cannot keep him in
any one seat. The other children do not
like him. He has no regard for what belongs
to anyone else. He wants to rip everything
out of every one else's hand, to bully and to
fight. . . .

The only things he cares for are stories,
any kind of stories. They seem to have a
soothing effect on him. If anyone makes a
noise or interrupts a story in any way, he
jumps up and threatens to punch him. On
occasion he will bump his head hard against
that of another boy for no apparent reason.

There is just one period every day, when
he is not troublesome. During that period
he just wants to sleep. It may come on him
at any time during the day, but he has it
every day without exception. It may last ten
minutes or it may last an hour. He just puts
his head down on the desk and goes to sleep
for a while. Then he wakes up and is a devil
again.

At this period of Johnny's life it has
been possible to make a comparison of
two members of the Rocco brood,
Johnny and his youngest brother,
David, the boy who was suffering from
anemia and on whom the mother
lavished her affection. Both boys were
students at the same school at this time.

At the same time that teachers were
complaining so bitterly about Johnny's
behavior, teachers who had David con-
sidered him a "good, likeable child."
Observers noted that though David had
a violent temper and was sometimes
harder to manage than Johnny, he was
generally sunny, studious, cooperative,

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generous, and was popular with the other children at school.

"David is a 'regular boy,' all in all," one of them stated. "He likes to play and tussle. He is very well developed and healthy looking for a congenital luetic. He looks clean and well cared for. He's quite independent, seems more sure of himself than his brother, John, and is better in his work despite frequent absences when he goes to the clinic. He has no serious fears or worries. He never does anything seriously wrong."

Undoubtedly David had less energy for mischief than Johnny, his illness (though not yet in its terminal stages) limiting the scope and intensity of his activities. But his health handicaps also brought him prestige and advantages which Johnny didn't enjoy—the demonstrated solicitude of his mother; sympathetic attention from members of the community; presents; regular vacations in the country provided by the local childrens' hospital. Doctors even prescribed that he get plenty of sweets.

Johnny, feeling himself neither loved, wanted, nor respected, was forever in competition with more favored children. He was always on the look out for disparagement of himself. He was extremely sensitive about his scholastic standing. Above everything—it was his "best wish"—he wanted to be promoted. When special tests were given him at school, he assumed that was to find out "if I have any brains." He was obsessed with the fear that he would be placed in the "dummy class," thus proving once and for all, to himself, to the other children, and to the world at large, that he was different, inferior. (His IQ at eleven was 91, low average, but not so low as his scholastic achievements.) Yet Johnny didn't have the resources for concentrated effort.

He was fighting on too many fronts at once.

With every new failure he became less tractable, more vindictive, and was compelled to some new misbehavior. Once, at the beginning of a new semester he told his teacher, "I wasn't promoted. Okay. This year I'm going to make plenty of trouble." With every new dereliction and punishment, Johnny's conviction grew that his teachers, like everybody else, were "against him." Soon the most important thing was to harrass his enemies. He did this at the price of pain and humiliation to himself.

He sneered at the other children, fought with them, guffawed at their mistakes, disrupted classrooms. He disobeyed school rules "deliberately, slowly, and with full intent," as one teacher noted. He smoked, swaggered, used foul language. He stopped trying to learn.

The public schools in Johnny's neighborhood are poor, the classes crowded, the teachers undertrained, underpaid, and overworked. Johnny remembers only one incident of kindness. "There was one once, she gave me a pair of ice skates." But Johnny, devoured by feelings of inadequacy, thrashing about in an effort to bring order out of chaos, to find one final object on which to pin all blame, cannot afford to keep kindnesses in mind. What stands out, still rankling, filling him with anger, hatred, and futility, feeding and yet justifying his sense of failure, are his grievances—grievances real and imagined, piled up over the years.

"Teachers! Crumbs! Bitches!" he says. "All the way back, in the King School—Miss Smith, she was the first-grade teacher; why, as young as I was then, Jesus! Jesus! I had a special desk. Not with the other kids or anything, but right up in front near her. I was

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special. All my life I was something special. I found right then that I had to show off, I suppose, or be proud of it, or something—

“Teachers, and the different mothers. They always pointed to me. I was the example. They’d ask the kids, ‘You want to be like Sparrow Rocco?’ Once when I went into a new room, at the beginning of the term, the teacher asks me, ‘Is your name Rocco? I know all about you,’ she says—Jesus, in front of all the kids!—‘Don’t think you’re not going to be good in here!’ Her name was Miss Wayman, the jerk! I’d like to—

“I felt cheap. I had that reputation. If something was missing—like going through the pockets in the cloak room, whether I did it or not, I was always the first one accused. If the other kids did something, it wasn’t so bad. But if I did it, yeah, that was the worst. In one school, I had to go to the principal every morning, and every day after school to tell him if I was a bad boy. When I was a bad boy he used to give me the strap.

“In the class, if there was a book—you know, as it goes up the aisles, kids read from it—and they came to me, they never called my name. I’d just be sitting there like this. The guy behind me would read, or the girl in front. But not me. The teacher didn’t care.

“When the kids passed around the paper, to write something, it got so they just ignored me. Once a kid was passing paper, and when he came to me he asked the teacher, ‘Should I give John some?’ I said, ‘Why ask the teacher? I’m in the room, too, ain’t I?’ It used to get me sore. I took the paper and wrote any God damned thing on it. The teacher just looked at it and tore it up. The next time they gave me paper, I tore it into little pieces—

“Yeah—. I used to feel bad. Seems like nobody wanted me around, neither the teachers or the kids. If they could avoid having me at a party, they didn’t. I never had any real good friends. Once, in school, something happened. I cried over it. I know this girl. The bitch! Poletti. Mary Poletti. That’s her name. I’m not forgetting her. It was Valentine’s. She sent everybody in the room one except me. The teacher had all the kids to get up and say how many valentines they got, and to read them off and tell who they were from. I didn’t get any. I was the only one. Then the teacher had little candy hearts she gave out. I didn’t get one of them, either. Not because she didn’t want to, but somebody, some visitors, I guess, came in, an’ I was in the back or something, an’ she didn’t have any left. She asked me, ‘You don’t feel bad, not getting one?’ What did she expect? That I should bust out crying and tell her? I said, ‘Naw. I don’t care.’ Later, I cried. I didn’t get anything that day.

“I was dumb, too. I know it. Everybody knew it. I was just a jerk to everybody,” Johnny says fiercely. “Maybe I am stupid. Maybe that’s because I always felt so bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the brains to learn like everybody else. But teachers! teachers! that’s who I blame and no one else.”

Before he was twelve, Johnny’s attitudes toward society had crystallized in a hard, bitter core of rancor. He had his reasons: he had always been treated badly. He felt no one had ever loved him. Everyone was his enemy—his mother, his brothers, his teachers, the cops, even the other kids—all were against him. Okay, he was at war with them.

That was Johnny Rocco at the age of twelve when something very impor-

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tant happened in his life. That year Jim O'Brien, a tall, pleasant-faced man in his middle thirties became Johnny's friend. O'Brien was a counsellor in an organization devoted to work with problem boys. Before he even approached Johnny, O'Brien had familiarized himself with the Rocco family history by talking to police, hospital and welfare authorities, and by visiting the Rocco home.

Sad Mrs. Rocco, now fifty, tired and bedraggled, received him in her dingy kitchen which was festooned with lines of drying clothes. Yes, yes, she was worried about her Johnny. She "couldn't do nothing with him." Only Georgie—he was twenty-one now, poor boy, and wanted to get married, but she needed him at home—only he had any control over Johnny. Johnny was at school now, but she didn't know when he would be home. Every morning, after a breakfast of bread and cocoa, he went away and didn't come back until 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

She was doing the best she could, but there was so much—the cleaning, the washing, the cooking; the worry about money for food, for rent, and coal. The Welfare Department only gave her $38.00 every two weeks for herself and the seven children. Jobs were hard to get and didn't pay much. Yet if one of her boys did get a job, whether he contributed to the family or not—and a boy had to have some spending money, she knew that—it always made trouble.

Just last month one of her boys had got a job as a messenger, $7.00 a week. Seven dollars doesn't grow on trees. If she had reported that income to the Welfare Department, they would have deducted it from her allotment. She didn't report it, but they found out, and her allotment was cut off entirely. Now the boy didn't have that job any more, but she was still being penalized,

She was getting $3.00 a week less than her original allotment. It was almost better, Mrs. Rocco told O'Brien, if the children didn't try to work.

Then there was David. He was having trouble with that anemia. He had to be taken to the clinic regularly for X-ray treatments. (At that time she had no idea of the seriousness of David's illness.) There was Richie, with his retracted toes. The condition was getting worse all the time but she couldn't make him go to the clinic for help. Carla, the only girl in the household, was sixteen now. She had bleached her hair and was staying out late nights. Only God knew what would happen to her.

It was too much, too much, Mrs. Rocco cried. She was sick herself. Her teeth were bad. Her heart. Sometimes she felt so faint and dizzy she didn't think she could go on. Then what would happen to the children? See, her joints were swollen. She couldn't fasten her shoes. She held out her arms to show her swollen wrists.

O'Brien went to Johnny's school. He talked with the principal and Johnny's teachers, and then observed Johnny himself—"a sulky, hard-faced boy, intent on making trouble"—through a small window in the classroom door. Then when he felt he had a firm grasp of the situation he made himself known to Johnny.

Mr. O'Brien's friendship brought Johnny a sense of importance he had never known before. If Mr. O'Brien dropped in for talks with Mrs. Rocco and the other children, or performed small services for them, Johnny knew that was because Mr. O'Brien was his friend.

It was Johnny whom O'Brien took for drives in his car. Sometimes as they set out for a drive and Johnny saw some kids he knew on the corner

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he yelled and gesticulated wildly so they would see him. It was Johnny whom O'Brien took to a museum and on a week-end camping trip. He bought Johnny a white scarf, embroidered with his initials—the first birthday present Johnny ever got. He even interceded with Johnny's mother and the landlord so Johnny could indulge his passionate interest in birds by having some of his own.

On their rides, or during walks they took, Mr. O'Brien encouraged Johnny to talk. Johnny told him about the gangs and their hang-outs, about his troubles on the street, at school, and at home. Mr. O'Brien made it clear when he disapproved of things Johnny was doing, but he never harangued him as his mother did, and he never stopped being Johnny's friend. He told Johnny he only wanted to help him, so Johnny could make friends and keep out of trouble.

If O'Brien's friendship was a source of pleasure and comfort to Johnny, it sometimes brought him worry and embarrassment, too. The neighborhood kids began wondering what a man like O'Brien wanted with a kid like Johnny anyway?

"If I told the kids he was trying to find out why I stole," Johnny says, "and why I was so dumb in the school, they said, 'He must be trying to find out if you're bananas'—(crazy). If I said he was just my friend, they got wise. 'Yeah. He's a fruit.'"

Johnny himself was dubious about Mr. O'Brien's motives sometimes. He really couldn't understand, either, why an important man like O'Brien bothered with him. Once, when Johnny had been particularly difficult and Mr. O'Brien got stern, Johnny had a sneaking suspicion that O'Brien was really a cop, and was spying on him. Occasionally the thought crept into his

mind that maybe Mr. O'Brien was trying to find out if he was crazy and wanted to "put him away." He worried about that especially after Mr. O'Brien took him to a clinic for a series of special examinations and tests once, and when he learned that his mother, too, harbored that suspicion.

It wasn't long before Johnny realized that there were implicit in that friendship responsibilities and obligations which Johnny found hard to fulfill. Mr. O'Brien's friendship had introduced a new and befuddling factor in Johnny's orientation to society that split his offensive against those he considered his enemies. His skirmishes with those enemies continued, but for the first time he felt constrained to distinguish between friends and enemies. More formidable, Johnny found, were other, new encounters to be kept, alone, and with himself.

After he'd started winning Johnny's confidence, Mr. O'Brien arranged to have Johnny attend classes in the morning at a special educational clinic, while going to public school in the afternoon. When Johnny had been at the clinic for about two months, Mr. O'Brien discovered that an instructor there had given the boy a rosary and that Johnny always carried it with him. Johnny had been overheard urging another child to pray every night "because you might die before you wake up," and he had given the other child his own definition of the horrors of hell: "It's a place where you're cold and hungry all the time and you never get anything to eat."

On the strength of that manifestation of interest in religion, Mr. O'Brien got Johnny a scholarship in a parochial school for he would be able to attend classes there in the afternoons while continuing to attend morning sessions at the clinic. Mr. O'Brien also reasoned

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that Johnny's interest in religion might be an effective tool in dealing with him. In addition, Johnny had exhausted most of the public schools available to him, and it had become increasingly clear to O'Brien that Johnny's teachers in the public school he was now attending had accumulated such a backlog of hostility for the boy that they were cynical and uncooperative. The sisters at the parochial school, given an understanding of the boy's problems, might handle him more sympathetically.

Before he had embarked on these plans, Mr. O'Brien had considered a foster-home placement. Johnny, he believed, was a boy whose heredity was questionable, but who was also a victim of the worst possible environmental influences. Should he not attempt to transplant Johnny to a healthier soil? Though Johnny's feelings toward his mother were full of conflict, he was still deeply attached to her, and Mr. O'Brien questioned the wisdom of severing that attachment. He could try to help the boy in the school situation, he reasoned. If Johnny could develop good behavior and work habits at school, it was possible, O'Brien wrote in his case records, that "those adjustments would carry over in terms of a healthier outlook and satisfaction in other phases of Johnny's life."

About three months after Johnny entered the educational clinic, the clinic reported him doing well. His improvement in reading seemed to give him great satisfaction. The report noted that he had an "excellent" memory, but it also stated that Johnny would become suddenly impatient and discouraged. This seemed to occur when he was confronted with tasks like naming words in quick flash devices which demanded mental alertness. He appeared pale, tired, and tense.

Perhaps fatigue was a factor in his inability to respond quickly.

A short time later the director of the clinic told Mr. O'Brien that Johnny's behavior had become so poor that she did not think she could keep him in the clinic school any longer. She now realized the boy had never really adjusted to the group. She believed that that was mainly due to the deprivations he suffered and which set him apart from the other children. Most of the children at the clinic school came from comparatively comfortable families. Johnny's clothes were different. He was aware of these differences and seemed to feel them acutely.

Johnny's misbehavior had begun with little "fights and fusses" in the classroom and had gradually mounted to such hyperactivity that at times he was uncontrollable. What worried his teacher most: Often during a spell of wild, uncontrollable behavior he asked to go to the bathroom. When he returned his face was "pasty-white, his eyes narrowed down to mere slits." Walking as if his equilibrium had been disturbed, his body would knock against both sides of the door as he re-entered the room. His teachers knew that Johnny smoked. They were afraid he was smoking "doped" cigarettes but could not substantiate the fears.

Mr. O'Brien visited the educational clinic to see if Johnny couldn't be kept on. Then he took him to a medical clinic for a complete physical examination. It is likely that Johnny's suspicion that Mr. O'Brien was trying to find out if he was "crazy" was strengthened by the way in which he was handled during that examination. Johnny, already harboring the fear that his scholastic standing and his inability to conform to socially acceptable behavior had something to do with the

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state of his "brains," was examined in the presence of several medical students. To Johnny's mortification and Mr. O'Brien's chagrin, the examining physician and the students discussed Johnny's peculiar behavior at length in the boy's presence. Johnny, who may also have harbored the belief that masturbation causes insanity, was questioned searchingly about masturbation too. Afterwards, he was given an electroencephalogram test, mysterious and frightening to Johnny, to determine whether his behavior was due to the presence of epilepsy.

The general examination ruled out the likelihood that Johnny had been smoking "doped" cigarettes. The explanation for the "doped" states, the doctor said, more likely lay in a combination of deficient diet, fatigue, smoking, and possibly excessive masturbation. The electroencephalogram indicated some slight irregularity in Johnny's brain waves faintly suggestive of epileptoid tendencies.

"All we can say is that here we have a boy who shows certain behavior and reactions which are similar to epileptic attacks although not truly epileptic in their manifestation," a specialist commented. "The encephalograph findings are consistent with this behavior in that there, too, we find indications of an epileptiform brainwave which is not, however, perfectly clear as true epilepsy."

As a result of Mr. O'Brien's efforts, Johnny managed to stay on at the educational clinic three more months—six in all, after which he attended parochial school all day. During the rest of his time at the clinic his behavior continued to be sporadic though the peculiar "doped states" seemed to disappear. At times he seemed to be struggling desperately to study and be "a good boy." At other times he

would break into a crescendo of poor behavior that spilled over into every area of his life, at school, at home, and on the streets. Mr. O'Brien noted that these outbursts usually coincided with some condition of unusual pressure, often a crisis at home.

Despite Johnny's tumultuous emotional problems, the clinic reported, just before he left the clinic to go to the parochial school on full time, that his reading level had been raised from the second to the fourth grade. His work in arithmetic, though weak, had improved. His spelling was still very poor.

Johnny's behavior at the parochial school, where he remained for a year and three months—longer than he had ever stayed in any one school, followed a pattern like that he had set at the clinic. The children there came of comparatively comfortable families, too, and Johnny was troubled by the difference in his social and economic status.

"I never had clothes like the other kids," he says. "My people didn't have to pay for me. I didn't even have to pay for my books or pencils. When they'd come with the box and call the kids to put their money in, they'd never call me. The other kids got ideas about me. You know, I was different."

There was a special problem in connection with his size and age, too. Johnny was in the third grade when he was twelve, and again when he was thirteen. His classmates were all about nine. Johnny felt shabby, lumbering, and conspicuous. When the children lined up to march out of the classroom, he'd run away and hide, or slip out of the room early. Once, though, he worked up courage to fall into line and march with them down to the street. He kept at it for more than two weeks. Then some boys he knew who were his size, and who went to the public

JOHNNY ROCCO

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school nearby, began to lie in wait for
him. They mocked him with mincing
gestures, and called him sissy. Johnny
sprang out of line and into a fist fight
with one of them one day. After that
he didn't march with his classmates
again.

At times Johnny was extremely hostile to the other children in his class. He tripped them, stuck gum in their hair, broke their pencils, and crumpled their papers. He was especially cruel to the "good little kids." At other times, swinging to an opposite extreme when he yearned to be accepted as one of them, he made overtures to them. But the other children feared or shunned him.

"They didn't make fun of me," Johnny says fiercely. "If they did, I'd floor them. But they used to look at me in a certain way. The way they looked at me, Jesus—like they were scared. It was worse than if they said it. They all thought I was tough. I wasn't tough. I wasn't. I'd try to show them. 'I'm not tough.' The bastards! The way they looked at me, it used to get me mad. I'd be so mad, just trying to tell them—yah! yah! yah!—trying to get it in their dumb heads. I never could make them see it."

Once, after he had been at the school
for quite a while he succeeded in
gathering a gang of admiring little
boys around him. He reacted extrava-
gantly. He swaggered, swore, defied
school discipline. He encouraged them
to break school rules, too, and incited
them to trip or grab and hug girls.
The sisters would have liked to see
Johnny make friends, but Johnny was
far from a wholesome influence and
they had begun to get complaints from
parents of some of the other children
that Johnny was teaching boys to steal
and say bad words. Johnny's gang was
finally broken up.

"In that school," Johnny says, "they
didn't have no playground. They used
to block off the street. Once I went up
in a tree with some kids. I guess
maybe I was showing off. It was the
kind of a tree where you strip the
leaves off one of the thin branches and
make—you know, like a switch. All
of us kids were doing it, hanging in
the tree, swinging the switches around.
The sister caught us. She didn't do
anything to the other kids. She said
I was the biggest and I was getting the
other kids in trouble. She took all the
switches away and she took me in all
the rooms, in front of all the classes,
and she whipped me with those
switches.—To make an example of
me—a jerk, you know—in front of
all the kids. I let them know right
there that I didn't care what they done
to me. I hated them all. I didn't care.
I didn't."

One day Johnny folded his arms and,
with face ugly and sullen, refused to
do any work. The only thing he would
say to the sister was that he wanted to
return to public school. When Mr.
O'Brien came to discuss this with him,
Johnny, sitting stiff and upright in his
chair, would neither speak to him nor
look at him. Lips tightly pursed, his
face set in a hard belligerent expres-
sion, he stared straight ahead.

Mr. O'Brien talked kindly to Johnny,
but Johnny wouldn't answer. He tried
talking sternly, but Johnny merely
tightened his lips and shrugged his
shoulders. O'Brien knew Johnny was
unhappy because he was a big boy in
a class with little kids. He pointed out
that in public school the boys Johnny's
size and age were in the upper grades,
and that there, too, Johnny would be
among small children. Johnny indi-
cated that he knew this, but still
wanted to go back to the public school.
Then Mr. O'Brien reminded him of

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370

some of the things the public-school
teachers had said to Johnny—that he
would never learn to get along any-
where. “I don’t agree with them,”
O’Brien said to Johnny, “but maybe
I’ll have to admit that I’m wrong and
they are right.”

Finally Mr. O'Brien arose as if to
leave. "All right. I'm sorry about all
this," he said. "I'm not mad at you,
but I'm a little disappointed. I want to
help you if I can, but no one can help
you if you don't want to help yourself.
All the same, I know you've tried hard.
I think you're a good kid."

As he patted Johnny's shoulder in a
departing gesture, Johnny grabbed his
arm and, burying his face in it, burst
into sobs. Mr. O'Brien said Johnny
clung to his arm and cried until the
material of his coat was crinkled and
the tears soaked through. Then he
went back to his classroom.

Afterwards O'Brien learned that
Johnny had been particularly difficult
at home during that period, too, and
that he was reporting regularly to the
police because he had broken some
windows. When Mr. O'Brien asked
about that, Johnny burst out: "What
am I gonna do? If I play with the
big kids they get me in trouble. If I
play with the little kids, I get them in
trouble. What am I gonna do?"

Mr. O'Brien, who had a thorough
appreciation of Johnny's dilemma, re-
flected: There is more than one
Johnny. There is the winsome, puppy-
like boy, grinning, garrulous, grateful
for attention and full of high resolve.
There is the "bad" Johnny, cruel, self-
centered, his chunky body rigid, "his
face set in a hard expression of pure
hatred like a little god of evil." Some-
where between the two is the unhappy
and perplexed Johnny, impelled by
conflicting drives within himself, be-

sied by conflicting influences from
the outside.

There were the gang kids, cocky,
street-wise and seemingly invulnerable,
whom Johnny could not help but
admire. Though he wanted the pres-
tige of being one of them, he couldn't
make himself fit. There were the
"good kids" at school, whom Johnny
despised because he was barred from
their society, but by whom he also
wanted to be accepted. There was the
paradox of his mother, who, Johnny
said, "lived like a saint," yet found
lying, cheating, and chiseling from the
relief bureau a necessary part of the
war for survival. There were the cops,
the men who stood for law and order,
but who Johnny knew had their little
rackets, too. Finally, there was Mr.
O'Brien, Johnny's friend and the "big
man" whom Johnny wanted to impress
and emulate.

Mr. O'Brien realized that in giving
Johnny his friendship and help he had
also brought Johnny new challenges
and conflicts. He realized, too, that in
trying to win Johnny from the influ-
ences and effects of his environment,
he was fighting a formidable opponent.
"The more I learn about this boy and
his background, the more convinced I
am that it is going to be extremely dif-
ficult to achieve any betterment in him
in his present environment and home
situation," he wrote in his records.
"It is going to be a constant fight to
keep Johnny from following the pat-
tern so well grooved by each of his
brothers."

Johnny hadn't been in parochial
school long when Mr. O'Brien real-
ized that immersion in this religious
atmosphere served merely to increase
Johnny's anxieties and conflicts. That
was revealed as a result of the follow-
ing incident: One morning Johnny
appeared in his classroom wearing a

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371

bracelet to which a religious medal was attached. It was exactly like some others which were on exhibit on a small table in the church. A day or two before, two altar boys had seen Johnny kneeling in prayer beside that table, and the sisters had noticed that some of the thumb tacks holding the cellophane that covered some of the religious trinkets had been removed.

When the sisters saw Johnny wearing the bracelet they expressed the suspicion, among themselves, that Johnny had stolen it. But no one accused him of the theft. Later that day, when Johnny was sent to the office of the Sister Superior on some errand, she admired the bracelet and asked him where he had gotten it. Johnny flew into a rage.

"You think I stole it, don't you?" he asked.

The Sister Superior said, no, she didn't believe in accusing someone of something she couldn't prove.

"But you know I *would* steal it, don't you?" he insisted.

"I know no such thing," she said.

"Well, I would. I would," Johnny said. "You know I would. You think I'm a crook, don't you? Everybody knows I'm a crook. I'm even a worse crook than you think I am," he told her. "I'm worse than everybody says. I steal on the outside. Don't think I wouldn't steal in church, too. I'm no good. Everybody says I'm no good."

His family had been nagging and yelling at him, he went on. They kept "throwing it up" at him that he was the only one of them who had ever gotten a "break." He went to a Catholic school, and still was no good. "Okay. I'm a crook. I'm no good," Johnny said. "I'm not going to church any more. Anyway, the church is a fake."

Speaking in a low, tense voice,

Johnny told the sister how he had arrived at this conclusion. A boy he knew—he wouldn't tell his name—once heard of a sinner "way back" who took the Holy Host (communion wafer) and, in order to find out if it really contained the body and blood of Christ, desecrated it by urinating on it. Immediately, blood flowed from the wafer. Then the sinner was struck dumb. So the story went. Well, the boy who had told him this story had disbelieved it, so he'd made the test himself. Nothing had happened, neither to the boy nor to the wafer.

He'd had an experience, too, which proved it was all a fake, Johnny went on. He'd seen a photograph of what was purported to be the authentic shroud of Jesus Christ. He'd been told if he looked carefully he would see the outline and imprint of Christ's body. Well, he'd looked. There was nothing there.

Then Johnny told the sister something which was, perhaps, the greatest reason for his need to repudiate the church. He had committed a sin which was so terrible he hadn't been able to face going to confession for six or seven months. A couple of months ago he'd become so worried and upset about this sin that he'd forced himself to go to confession. He'd started by telling the priest that he hadn't been to confession for a long time. The priest became angry. "Are you one of those boys from the parochial school?" he asked. When Johnny said, "Yes," the priest, Johnny claimed, violated the secrecy of the confessional. He had asked Johnny to give his name; then, ordering him out of the booth, he told him, in future, he was to come to confession regularly, and whenever he came he was to give his name. He would never go back. "Never!" Johnny declared. A priest wasn't supposed to

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ask who you were. Confession was between you and God. No priest need expect him to go in there and identify himself and then tell him all his sins. But, just the same, the awful, uncon- fessed sin weighed heavily on him.

The first stages of a troubled adoles- cence came upon Johnny while he was at the parochial school. The sisters noticed, one day, that Johnny had begun to dress very cleanly and that he was paying a great deal of attention to girls. One day he came to school so doused in perfume that the air for yards around him was saturated. He wrote notes to some of the little girls in his class. The sisters, who inter- cepted several, said they consisted mainly of "I love you." The trouble was, they said, that Johnny chose the "best little girls" as the objects of his attentions, and that they were "scared to death of him."

One afternoon Johnny followed a little girl he knew from her home to the grocery store. It was late and getting dark. When the child realized that Johnny was following her, she became hysterical. The next day when her mother went to school to make a com- plaint Johnny denied vehemently that he had meant to harm the girl. "She was one of the little girls to whom he had written 'I love you,'" the Sister Superior said.

During this period Johnny was hav- ing similar troubles at the neighbor- hood settlement house where Mr. O'Brien had encouraged him to go for after-school and evening recreation. Johnny never felt that he was welcome there. He made himself extremely un- popular by harrassing the other chil- dren. He was especially hostile to the good children, who made a great point of avoiding him. He also antagonized settlement-house workers by intruding into classes and club rooms where he

didn't belong. He'd been asked to leave the settlement house several times, but he kept returning. He deliberately committed acts of vandal- ism. Once he emptied a bottle of ink on a desk, then rubbed the ink into the wood with some gravel and stones he'd brought with him. On another occa- sion he pulled all the notices from a bulletin board and tore them into little pieces. One day he walked into a meeting of Girl Scouts and broke up their gathering by exposing his geni- tals. When one of the workers caught him, Johnny said a boy in his gang had shown him that trick. Johnny was sent to bring the boy to the settlement house. A half-hour later he returned with a small army of urchins and they stormed the building with bricks and stones. The police had to be called.

Mr. O'Brien interceded with the police and persuaded them not to take any official action on condition that Johnny would never return to the settle- ment house. A few weeks later, though, Johnny went back. He was treated coldly, but was permitted to stay as long as he bothered no one. Gradually, starting in little ways, he began to mis- behave again. One evening Johnny went into the office of the settlement- house director where she had visitors. She ordered him out. A few minutes later, he poked his head inside the door again. He was again asked to go away. After the third time Johnny was put out of the building and the outside door locked. Johnny began kicking and throwing himself against the door as if to break it in. When one of the workers came to chase him, Johnny slipped in through the open door, ran to the center of the room, and threw himself on the floor. He had to be car- ried out bodily.

Johnny was nearly thirteen when the Sister Superior told Mr. O'Brien Johnny

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would have to leave the parochial school. Two or three times before she had yielded to Johnny's pleas for one more chance, but now she had come to a decision. It was final, not because of any new outbreak by Johnny, but for the sake of the school, and because she had become convinced that all her efforts, Mr. O'Brien's efforts, and the boy's efforts were in vain so long as he remained in his present home and environment.

"I don't want you to give this boy up," she told Mr. O'Brien. "I think he is trying a lot harder than we know sometimes. Often it seems he just can't help doing some of the things he does." She pointed out that, despite Johnny's many complex emotional problems, he had shown he was capable of at least "fairly good work." Indeed, on some occasions, he had shown "good, quick intelligence."

She realized that Johnny's road to self-improvement was made immensely more rough because everyone—the police, the parents of the other children, and the children themselves, condemned him so much that it amounted to persecution.

The police picked Johnny up for questioning at any hour of the day or night about any delinquencies that occurred in the neighborhood. It didn't matter whether there was direct evidence against him—he was a target of suspicion.

The parents of the children at school had overwhelmed the Sister with complaints. Why did she keep that awful boy in the school? When she questioned them as to why they called him "an awful boy," the reply was usually no more specific than, "Well, everybody knows he's no good, and that his family is no good."

Johnny couldn't walk down the street without being pointed out or jibed at

by the other children. In the classroom he was left almost entirely alone. As for his "going straight," in talks with the Sister Johnny had revealed how the boys in his neighborhood, the only companions he had, taught the younger children to lie, cheat, and steal. Stealing was done not only because it was lucrative. In Johnny's circles it was a major form of recreation and a way to prove one's mettle. If you didn't do as the others did, you lost caste. Johnny had also indicated to the Sister that there was a great deal of sex talk and sex play among the boys he knew, and that he felt guilty and uneasy about this.

She knew that during the preceding summer O'Brien, thinking in terms of possible foster-home placement, had arranged for Johnny to vacation on a farm of a childless German couple who hoped to find a boy they would want to keep permanently. Johnny, missing his mother and the excitement of his street-corner life, had insisted on returning home after ten days. Just the same, the Sister repeated, the only hope for Johnny's salvation lay in removing him from the environment in which he lived.

The next month Johnny left the parochial school and went back to public school. During his first months at the public school Johnny's teachers found that he was making a tremendous effort to behave, but that he was "like a kettle of boiling water with the lid about to blow off."

Johnny managed to get through that term at school without too much trouble, but school hadn't been out long before he fell into trouble with the police again, this time for breaking into a house with two other boys and stealing fifty dollars worth of jewelry. Before he appeared in court Mr. O'Brien visited him. Johnny, O'Brien

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reported, seemed "unhappy, but stolid
and apathetic, though once or twice, as
we talked, he verged on tears."

Johnny didn't deny the theft. The
jewelry, he said, had been taken to
the widow Hatfield, a neighborhood
woman whose eighteen-year-old crippled son, who pushed himself about on
a cart, was leader of a gang of smaller
children. Mrs. Hatfield had told
Johnny and the other boys that the
jewelry was brass, not gold, but had
given them a nickel apiece for it.

Mrs. Hatfield had lived in the neighborhood for years, Johnny went on. Her place was a kind of hang-out. There was always a gang of kids hanging around. He got to know her, a long time ago, when she'd called him into her house through a window and given him lunch with her son. Within a week he'd stolen a flashlight for her. He'd stolen lots of other things for her after that. There'd been a fancy umbrella and a camera which he took from parked cars and for which she gave him a quarter each. Once, when he and some other boys had shoved a side of beef off a moving butcher's truck and taken it to her, she'd given them three quarts of wine.

Sure, she bought from all the kids.
Georgie Minetti had stolen a dress for
her once. The dagger-like letter opener
with which she peeled potatoes had
been brought to her by a kid named
Micky. She never turned anyone
away. The kids knew she cheated
them, but when they balked she told
them, "I've got enough on you to put
you away." Since he had been arrested
and had talked, Johnny continued,
Mrs. Hatfield had been trying to get
him to say he had sold the jewelry to
her son, because she didn't believe the
police would be hard on a crippled
boy. As this confession poured out,
Mr. O'Brien asked, "Even when I

thought you were being a good boy,
Johnny, were you stealing all the
while?" Johnny, verging on tears,
replied, "Yes. But lots of times I didn't
steal because I thought of you."

At Johnny's hearing, late in August,
Mr. O'Brien discussed Johnny's case
with the judge and suggested that
Johnny be sent to a state-supervised
foster home instead of to a school for
delinquents. A police officer who had
known Johnny for years and had noted
the improvement in his behavior during recent months also spoke for him.
Johnny was sent to one of three temporary homes in the neighboring town
of Baldwin, where delinquents were
placed until more permanent arrangements could be made for them. This
was the strictest of the three homes and
Johnny was sent there because he was
the toughest looking of a group of boys
who were being committed that day.
Mr. O'Brien, knowing how Johnny
responded to discipline, anticipated
trouble but there seemed to be no
alternative solution.

A few days after Johnny's arrival at
the home he ran away after becoming
involved in a series of thefts from
parked cars, along with two older boys
from the home. In court, at Baldwin,
Johnny cried continuously for three-
quarters of an hour. He had been
treated roughly, he said, had been
glared-at at the table and whipped for
picking grapes from the vines in the
yard. He hadn't wanted to stay in this
place so he had committed the thefts in
the hope that he would be transferred
immediately. Then he had become
frightened and ran away.

The judge who heard the case ruled
that Johnny had not yet had a fair trial
at foster-home placement, and, recommending that another home be tried,
returned him to the juvenile authorities
in his own town. Early in September

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Johnny was sent to a second temporary foster home run by Mrs. Baker.

Johnny stayed at Mrs. Baker's for nearly two months while more permanent arrangements were being made for him. Except for a flurry of poor behavior during the first few days, Mr. O'Brien reported "an amazing change for the better in his personality and behavior." Mrs. Baker, whom O'Brien described as a "very loving, affectionate woman who doesn't resort to measures of strict discipline," didn't send Johnny to school with the other children during his first two weeks there because she thought any day he would be transferred to another home. Mornings, Johnny stayed at her side, helping her with the household chores. In the afternoons, he went to a park nearby to watch the ball games.

Mrs. Baker was touched profoundly by the thin, tough-looking ragamuffin, Johnny, whose brittle surface seemed to melt under the warmth of attention. When he ate voraciously, she ignored his manners and praised him for his good appetite. Johnny exclaimed, "I never had such good things to eat."

Johnny had never been in such an attractive place, either. He noticed the flowered cretonne curtains on the windows, the bright oilcloth on the table where meals were served, the potted plants scattered lavishly through all the rooms. He was outraged once when one of the boys spit in a flower pot. Mrs. Baker remarked: "I've never had a boy who seemed so impressed with little touches of beauty."

Sometimes Mrs. Baker kissed him. He still squirms with pleasure and embarrassment as he recalls this. "She used to kiss me in front of everybody. I used to be embarrassed. She was all right. She was nice to me."

When the State gave Johnny some clothes—a suit, underwear, and shoes,

and Mrs. Baker added two brightly colored lumber jackets—Johnny was beside himself. His happiness was complete when on Sunday afternoons, well fed, well scrubbed, and well dressed, and with the money that Mrs. Baker gave him jingling in his pocket because he was such a good boy, he started for the movies. He was happy and incredulous, too, because he was getting along with the other children. "I guess they like me," he told O'Brien.

When Mrs. Baker finally sent Johnny to the neighborhood school, Johnny got along perfectly. His teacher, who sensed his need for importance, asked him to help a smaller, badly retarded youngster with his lessons. Johnny took great pains with his charge. "He ain't dumb outside school," he told Mrs. Baker. "He knows how to get along, and the kids like him. But his lessons—well, I keep trying and trying to explain it to him, but I can't get it in his head. If I tell him six apples and six apples is twelve apples, and then I asked him another question, about maybe, eight bananas, he always gives me the answer I told him before, 'Twelve apples.' I try my best, but like I tell the teacher, there's some kids that just can't seem to learn."

During his stay at Mrs. Baker's Johnny often spoke of his mother, expressing love for her and saying he wanted to see her. One day Mr. O'Brien took him home for a visit. During the drive Johnny asked O'Brien about the length of his "sentence." O'Brien tried to explain the difference between an adult prison sentence and the placement of a child in a foster home, but Johnny found it difficult to understand the distinction. He was very happy where he was, he assured O'Brien, but just the same he wanted to see his mother. His eagerness, O'Brien thought, came from a mixture

376

JEAN EVANS

of affection for his mother and his
pride in what a good boy he had be-
come. He wanted a chance to show
his mother.

When they got to Johnny's home,
O'Brien said, Johnny's mother was
wonderfully happy and excited. So
was Johnny. Georgio, who had mar-
ried and moved away but was visiting
his mother, found the change in Johnny
almost unbelievable. He had grown
and gained weight. His face was clean,
his hair carefully combed. The bags
had disappeared from under his eyes;
he was almost handsome. David and
Richie clustered around Johnny, exam-
ining and envying him his new clothes,
especially the bright new lumber
jackets. Johnny, who had never had
so much attention from his family
before, grinned happily.

But when his mother asked him to
stay for supper, Johnny told her he had
to get back to the Bakers. When his
mother began insisting, in a manner
that formerly would have brought from
Johnny an explosion of nerves or ill
temper, O'Brien became a little appre-
hensive. But Johnny, calm, poised,
perhaps a little self-important, repeated
that he had decided to be back at the
Bakers for supper. Before he left, his
mother tried to give him a box of
chocolates. "Nah," Johnny said, "the
kids at the Bakers would eat it in no
time. Better keep it for Richie and
Davie and Carla." She offered him
some money. "I'm not supposed to
have any money," he explained, then
added grandly, "Anyway, you need it
more than me."

Johnny went back to the place he
liked so much, but within two weeks
an official order came that he was to be
transferred to a farmhouse on the out-
skirts of town. Mrs. Baker and Mr.
O'Brien both tried to have the order
rescinded, pointing out to the authori-

ties the wonderful progress Johnny had
made and how well he had become
adjusted to life. But their pleas were
ignored. A change would disrupt
established routines, they were told.
Mrs. Baker's home was not an approved
foster home for permanent placements.
Johnny had been placed there on a tem-
porary basis. The authorities argued
also that the steady flow of delinquent
boys through Mrs. Baker's temporary
home would prove upsetting to Johnny.

Within three days of the time
Johnny arrived at his new home on the
farm he had been whipped for breaking
a house rule and run away. He was
returned to Mrs. Baker's while the
situation was being investigated, but
this time almost immediately ran away
from Mrs. Baker's, too, with another
delinquent boy who had recently been
placed with Mrs. Baker on a temporary
basis. On the morning after his dis-
appearance from Mrs. Baker's Johnny
turned up at the police station in his
own neighborhood. He pleaded to be
permitted to stay at home. He knew he
had been a bad boy, he said. He didn't
want to be bad ever again. If they
would only give him a chance, he'd
never get into trouble again. Please,
would they let him try?

A police sergeant took Johnny before
the judge who had originally sent him
to the foster home. Johnny made a
very good impression. Before he was
through, the judge was smiling and
nodding. He placed Johnny on proba-
tion and sent him home.

Johnny didn't go straight home from
the court. He went to school where he
had been a student before his arrest
and asked to be re-admitted. He made
a good impression there too, and was
permitted to go to his class. Later that
day, when Mr. O'Brien learned of what
had happened, he went to the school
and he, Johnny, and the principal had