The Last Catholic in America (Loyola Classics) by John R. Powers

Author:John R. Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-04-08T18:05:00+00:00

IX

Dirty Shirt Andy

Dirty Shirt Andy owned what passed for a grocery store on the corner of 103rd and Allen Street. He went under a number of aliases such as "The Slob," "Fat Man Andy," and simply "The Pig." But Dirty Shirt Andy was his real name. No one could wear a shirt as dirty as Dirty Shirt Andy.

A kid never went to Dirty Shirt's unless it was to look for something that was "out." Dirty Shirt Andy always had the stuff that was "out" simply because no one went to him to buy it when it was "in."

Kites in August, marbles in October, and hockey sticks in April. That was Dirty Shirt. His store was about four months behind all the other grocery stores in the neighborhood. In toy turnover, that is.

In food turnover, he had to be at least five years behind. All the food in Dirty Shirt Andy's looked the same. There'd be a little yellow shriveled-up label on one of the shelves that would read "bread." All there would be above it would be large greenish brown lumps. Then on the next shelf there'd be a label that would read "cookies" and above that would be a lot of little greenish brown humps.

The canned food looked the same, too. Silver. None of it had any labels. The only edible stuff in Dirty Shirt Andy's store was his potatoes. They were growing out of everything.

Dirty Shirt's storefront boasted the only ghetto-gray windowpanes in the neighborhood. Behind one of the panes was a group of ten-year-old comic books, stripped of their covers and thrown around a pile of canned Henrietta's Beets, unlabeled of course. Two of the cans were half opened and Louie Vega, the foremost beet authority in the neighborhood, said they were definitely "Henrietta's." It wasn't a matter of faith and morals, but Louis's opinion carried a lot of weight when it came to beets.

Now everyone knows there's only one source of evil in the world. It's just that no one seems to be able to agree on what that particular source is. Christians claim it's Adam and Eve while non-Christians claim it's Christians. Other speculations have included certain animals, witches, the devil, and politicians.

But in our neighborhood, there was no doubt whatsoever what that one source of evil was. It was Dirty Shirt Andy, though most adults simply referred to him as "that moron on 103rd and Allen Street."

Anything that went wrong in my neighborhood could be traced back directly to Dirty Shirt Andy. If church attendance was down, it was because people were too busy reading the dirty books they had bought at Dirty Shirt's. If a kid was late for school, he had probably stopped at Dirty Shirt's to buy some cigarettes. If a Black family was seen driving around the neighborhood, it was because they were looking to buy some old food from Dirty Shirt Andy.

It was so accepted that Dirty Shirt was the one source of evil in the world that if

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