I started getting a little wild in between 3rd and 4th grades. This was the summer of my business partnership with Harry Eichelberg, who I'd known since pre-school at Temple Beth El. Harry was a precocious boy who ate raw hot dogs and whipped his 13 year old retarded sister, Judy, with a belt, in a hall closet just outside of his bedroom. I liked to watch. He would also pull down her pants to reveal a mound of pubic hair. I watched that as well.
     Our business started out innocently enough with Harry and I collecting refundable bottles in his little red wagon. We'd go door to door, asking for empties that were returnable and in exchange for our service, we got to keep a 3-cents per bottle refund from Taylor's Grocery. This worked out very well at first, but eventually we drained the neighborhood of empties, and people got sick of us coming around. They weren't drinking fast enough was the problem, and we entered a recession period in the second week of operations. Harry hit upon a plan to boost profits. He called it "Buy low, sell twice", but we had to add another partner to the business.
     Our new, prospective partner lived across the street from Harold, was a year older than us, and was uncircumcised. His name was Charles. Initiation into the business required him showing us his dick. To put Charles at ease, Harry and I pulled ours out first, after which Charles took a deep breath and reciprocated. We stared at it for awhile. Charles then pulled back his foreskin to reveal a purple head. Harry asked him what had happened, to which Charles replied, "someone kicked me." We were satisfied and Charles was in. Work would resume that Sunday morning.
     Taylor's Grocery kept all their returnable bottles inside of a 6-foot high, cinder block enclosure. This enclosure was outside, behind the store, and had no roof. We assembled behind Taylor's on Sunday morning, at peak church time. Taylor's was of course closed, and the streets were dead. Charles boosted Harry, then me over the wall. I stacked two milk cartons together and stayed perched at the top of the wall, as Harry handed me bottles. I tossed these to Charles, who put then into the little, red wagon. We got our wagon loaded and left. Monday morning we sold Taylor his bottles back. No more schlepping around town everyday with the wagon for us. We were men of leisure, working once a week, strolling casually down the Avenue smoking expensive, pink cigars, and waitin' on the Mister Softee truck. Little did we know that Old Man Taylor was suspicious, and started marking his returned bottles. These bottles were headed back to the distributor, and had no business crossing his counter. Harry tried to return some of these marked bottles by himself and got nailed. (I hadn't gone to work that day for some reason.) Our business was kaput, and I stayed away from Harry until things cooled off. I started hanging around with John Tyler, who lived in some apartments across the street from me, and could ride his bike with no hands. Life without Judy crawled forward.