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to the nurse’s office, where she came to.
    Another fight took place outside the office of the principal, Dr. Reid. I jumped in to break it up and ended up wrestling with a black kid whowas swinging and punching. When Dr. Reid opened the door to try and get the kid into his office, I ended up throwing the kid through the window next to the door. The window smashed, sending glass everywhere. The kid wasn’t badly hurt. And all I was doing was defending myself.
    One black kid, whose name was actually Sigfried Goldstein, would walk around with a Communist flag on his jacket. Older and bigger than the rest of the kids, around six-three and 265 pounds, he was always picking fights. Unlike most of the kids, who had no other place to go and who were trying to get an education—which was nearly impossible in that atmosphere—this kid wasn’t there for education.
    Finally, one day, Billy Allen, whose family was friends with mine, decided he’d had enough of Sigfried beating up on the smaller white kids. A fairly quiet, strong kid who never bothered anyone, Billy was pretty big himself, about six-five and 280 pounds. Billy came up to me on the second floor where I happened to be stationed and told me, “I’m going to get Sigfried when he comes to his locker.”
    â€œDo whatever you have to do,” I told him.
    That afternoon when Sigfried went to his locker, Billy was waiting for him. He walked up to him and asked, “Why don’t you pick on me?”
    Goldstein looked at him and said, “You ain’t shit.”
    At that, Billy Allen knocked him out. When a few of the black students tried to jump on Billy, I jumped on them and a big brawl broke out. When it had been broken up and everything had cleared, the authorities asked me what happened. “Sigfried suckered Billy,” I told them, and they put Sigfried in a holding room, where you went when you got into a fight. Nothing happened to Billy, but Sigfried got real quiet after that and stayed away from Billy and the smaller kids. A few years later, I heard that he got pinched for murder. Didn’t surprise me.
    One time a lady from the neighborhood came to me and told me that a black aide who was working there was giving her son a hard time. When she asked me to take care of the problem, I said, “Sure.”
    The aide was stationed in the stairwell in back of the auditorium, the spot where a lot of fights took place. Since I knew what time he went to lunch, one day I walked down the back of the auditorium as he was coming up the stairs and told him to leave the kid alone and quit bothering him.
    â€œFuck you,” he told me. “You’re bothering all the black kids.” With that I suckered him and he fell down the stairs. When he went down, I started banging him. Then I turned around and walked back up the stairs and out. The aide, who ended up with a cut over his eye and all lumped up, went to the office and reported me. No one saw the incident, so I had my friends, who were also working there as aides, say I was with them, and nothing ever came of it. The aide was a good-sized guy, eight or nine years older than me, but I was boxing at the time and in great shape. After that day, he was scared of me and wanted no problem with me or any of the kids.
    That first year, lots of teachers transferred. Joe Foley was a phys ed teacher who I knew from the Boys Club. He used to call me the Avenger, because I always got everybody back who did anything to me. But he was a great guy and a terrific teacher. He ended up getting transferred during busing, which was a real shame because he loved South Boston High and South Boston. Some other teachers left because they wanted to, some because they spoke out. The mess finally ended more than twenty years later when busing was declared a failure. But even then, Judge Garrity would not admit that. The day he died was one of the best days in South Boston history.
    Even today, I