Read Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob for Free Online Page A

others, they were the ones who had to leave their schools and their houses. A true South Bostonian is someone whose family has been there for two, three, or four generations; anyone else is an interloper. Today, sadly, South Boston is just a shell of its former self. And that is all a result of busing, the grand experiment that destroyed a once grand community.
    Things were rough all over Southie during those years. In 1974, a cop got beat up at the Rabbit Inn in South Boston and the TPF determined the patrons in the Inn had done it. TPF went into the bar in full riot gear, with their badges covered, and proceeded to use their sap gloves to whale on everyone there. When they started to whale on Eddie Crow, a regular at the Rabbit Inn who had braces on both legs, Flash Flaherty, another regular at the bar, dove on top of Eddie to protect him and ended up getting whaled on mercilessly. That was what was going on in South Boston, not just in the schools, but in the bars and on the streets.
    Even though there was never a day at the high school without at least one fight, it wasn’t a tough job for me. I could handle the fights and liked being around my friends. And besides, I could watch out for Pam. After the incident with Mikey Faith, they put metal detectors at the front door. But the black kids would take one or two teeth out of their Afro picks, put the picks between their fingers, and use them to punch kids. Unlike the black kids, the white kids weren’t using weapons. They just used their hands. They would walk up to a black kid and crack him and start fighting. But the black kids were scared for their lives, and doing what they could to protect themselves.
    It was a tough year for all the kids. You had white kids who were mad because no education was going on and their school and college plans were being destroyed. Attendance was way down every day. Kids were boycotting the teams, so all sports were canceled for the year. The parents who could afford it sent their kids to private schools, while some kids just quit and hung out, doing nothing during the day. Even though senior year was ruined for most kids, somehow they did manage to have a graduation. No more than twelve black kids came to graduation, but when one black kid went up to get his diploma, a white kid took off his mortarboard cap and whipped it at his head like a Frisbee.
    During that year, my brother Johnny kept speaking to John Marquandt, the dean of admissions at Harvard, about my attending Harvard. I guess the folks at Harvard thought it would be special if three brothers from the projects went there, so the dean arranged it so I would spend a year at prep school. If my grades were good enough, I’d get a full scholarship to Harvard in September 1976. I got a scholarship to the Commonwealth School, an academically demanding private school for grades 9 to 12 in Boston, and left my job at South Boston High to start at the prep school in September 1975. I moved out of the apartment with my friends and back to Pilsudski Way.
    But things didn’t work out so great for me at the coed prep school. First of all, I was nineteen then, and the kids in my classes were sixteen or seventeen, and had been there since the ninth grade. Nearly all of them were from the suburbs, and even though it wasn’t a religious school, most of the kids were Jewish. They even had this mandatory retreat for Yom Kippur. They were smart, nice kids, but I was an Irish kid from Southie and all I wanted was to be with my girlfriend. It was culture shock to be with these kids. I was a complete outsider and felt lost there.
    The school was in a Victorian house with small classrooms, no more than twelve to fifteen kids in a class. I liked the classes, but I didn’t fit in at all. Things came to a head for me in the dining room. Each kid was supposed to set the table and serve the food for a week. I had no desire to dish out anybody’s food, and I never liked anyone telling me what to do.