"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt Page B

on me to rake harder. He said, “You’re a little lax on that rake.” I tried to ignore him, and he said, “You hear what I said, boy?” I asked him who the hell did he think he was talking to. He said: “I’m talking to you, boy.” He said that if I didn’t put more effort into the job he’d stick the rake up my butt. I told him I’d do him one better and stick the rake down his throat. He was a big black guy, and he came at me. I tapped him and put him on the conveyor belt unconscious. I stuffed blueberries in his mouth. That took care of him. The cops had to take me out of there.
    After that my mother went over to see a state senator named Jimmy Judge. My mother had some political connections. One of her brothers was a doctor in Philly. Another one was big in the glass union and was a freeholder, which is like a councilman, in Camden. He’s the one who got me the union apprenticeship at Pearlstein’s. Anyway, one morning when I woke up she told me she had arranged with the senator to get me on the Pennsylvania State Police. All I had to do was pass the physical. I wanted to be grateful, but that was the last thing I wanted to do, so I never went down to pay my respects to the senator. Years later when I told my lawyer, F. Emmett Fitzpatrick, that one he said, “What a cop you’d have made!” I said, “Yeah, a rich one.” Rape, child abuse, things like that I’d have arrested you for. Anything else and you’d have been on your way with an out-of-court settlement.
    I tried to be easygoing again like I was before I went in the war, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. It didn’t take much to provoke me. I’d just flare up. Drinking helped ease that a little. I hung around with my old crew. Football helped a little, too. I played tackle and guard for Shanahan’s. My old pal Yank Quinn was the quarterback. They had leather football helmets in those days, but with my oversized head I couldn’t get comfortable in one. So I played with a woolen cap on my head, not for bravado or anything, but it’s the only thing I could get to fit my big head. There’s no doubt if I was born later on in better times I would have loved to try out to be a professional football player. I wasn’t just big. I was very strong, very fast, very agile, and a smart player. All my teammates but one are gone now. Like I said, we’re all terminal; we just don’t know the date. Like all young people we thought we had forever to live back then.
    One afternoon a bunch of us went downtown to sell our blood for $10 a pint to get some more money to keep drinking shots and beer. On the way back we saw a sign for a carnival. It said that if you could last three rounds with a kangaroo you’d win $100. That was a better deal than the blood money we had just made. So off we went to the carnival.
    They had a trained kangaroo in the ring with boxing gloves on. My pals put me up to fight the kangaroo. Now a kangaroo has short arms, so I’m figuring I’ll knock his ass out. They put gloves on me and I start jabbing away at him, but what I didn’t know is that a kangaroo has a loose jaw so when you hit them it doesn’t go to their brain and knock them out. I’m only jabbing at him, because who wants to hurt a kangaroo? But when I couldn’t’ get anywhere with him with my jab I let loose with an overhand right, a real haymaker. Down the kangaroo goes and I feel this hard whack on the back of my head where my old man used to whack me. I shake it off and go back to jabbing the kangaroo who’s hopping all over the place, and I’m trying to figure out who the S.O.B. was who clipped me from behind.
    You see, another thing I didn’t know is that the kangaroo defends itself with its tail. It has an eight-foot tail that comes whipping up behind you when you knock the kangaroo down. And the harder I hit him, the harder and faster his tail came up behind me. I never saw that tail come whipping up behind me, and I never paid attention to the boxing