Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 4, April 1955

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“We got to protect ourselves. We got to have a gang, some guys with guns and all... just to protect ourselves...”

The neighborhood’s no good. It’s not safe to walk the streets. Yeah, stay out of trouble, they tell you. And you’re in it up to your neck. There’s no way out. You’re goofed before you start. But I don’t care no more. Be like the rest, I say, but be slicker.

There’s only one trouble with that. We ain’t organized, and you got to be. You got to stick together, get a rep. Take the Royal Hoods on Twelfth. They got a real mob, they’re real rocks. Us?

We can’t stop them when they come through, can’t fight them, can’t keep them away from the girls. Man, if they don’t like you, you’re dead with a capital D. I’d join up with them, if they’d let me, but they don’t want nobody outside their own territory.

I guess you can’t blame them. They got to stick together. But us? We’re nothing. Just punks, and slicksters like Lubo. That’s a mean cat. He was born evil. Making like he was my friend till he got that five dollars from me. Now he don’t know I’m breathing. But I’m going to get me that money back.

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