The cowboy way

I was reading the latest poetic writing of Brother Wild Bill while he discussed my favorite genre, good old cowboy movies, good guys winning the day, and the bad guy always getting his butt beat to a pulp.

The vigilante committee of days gone by was a welcome sight to many as well and prompted me to recall something from my youth, growing up in the city.

Just about every eastern city is the same, ethnic neighborhoods, smells of wonderful cooking, celebrations where the street is closed and the people party until they drop. We do not find much of this in the west, lots of ethnic flavor and God knows I love it and all the great food, but not like the east once had and still does in some places.

One of the neighborhoods I frequented growing up was about as ethnic as it could get. It also had neighbors that watched everyone else's child, gave a hug when they fell, a welcome ice cream, and a band-aid when a torn knee or elbow came into play. It was truly a neighborhood raising children and I was always happy playing there with my cousins.

Unfortunately, it was also the exact type of neighborhood that is always portrayed in every gangster movie we see today, even though I called mine, my second home and loved it.

I never really knew who was a wiseguy and who was not, nor did I ever care. I was safe and that was all that mattered to me.

Late one evening an unknown male came into the neighborhood looking for excitement. This was not a normal person though, his excitement consisted of peeking into children's windows at night and that evening, he made the biggest mistake of his life.

It just so happened, one of the ever-watchful neighbors saw this sick creep bent over looking into a window.

The next morning we learned that someone had found a guy near death in the corner dumpster behind a store. He had been beaten to within an inch of his life, but still among the living, he was wrapped in trash bags and tossed into the dumpster, where the trash collectors found him in the morning.

The story went that he was in the hospital for over thirty days and when the police asked him what had happened, he only replied that he had fallen into the dumpster, nothing more.

One could say that this was a classic case of vigilante committee justice and one I am sure that sick pedophile never forgot until his last days.