I'm a liar, i'm a thief, i'm a cheat.

Brooklyn 1927

Vito walked out of the dark alley unto the street feeling the cold breeze against his skin. It was early December and he wasn't really dressed for the cold but that didn't matter. His father was a stonemason who worked hard but he had six other mouths to feed so Vito didn't really blame him. Still he felt an exhilaration as only a 13 year old could feel. He had made it out, played hookie, gotten out of that damn place that he hated more then anything in the world. He had told the teacher he was going to the bathroom and had slipped past the janitor and the teachers. He was a big kid but he could by stealthy if he needed to. He had done it before with his friends from the neighborhood, broken into rich peoples houses and taking food and sometimes they had taken a few swigs off the bottle in the liquor cabinets. Vito had never much taken to the taste of the booze but after a few swigs it warmed him up nice and they all felt good. Vito reached into his coat and pulled out the folded piece of paper he had obtained at school. He pulled it out slowly and at first he wondered if it was real. He had stolen from Jimmy William's backpack after recess, five dollars. Five fucking dollars Vito thought as he unfolded the crumpled note. It was more money then he had ever held in his hands. He had seen his father with wads of the bills at payday but they were always gone almost as soon as they came in. But now he had one, to spend in any which manner he pleased. He felt powerful like the gangsters he saw who ran the speakeasy on the corner in the neighborhood. They always had plenty of the green bills and they never seemed to run out. 'Crime doesn't pay son.' His father had told him. 'Those are very bad men.' he had said. Still the words went in one ear and out the other. He thought of all the candy he would buy, the soda, maybe even a sirloin steak, he felt like the luckiest kid on earth. Vito had wanted to be like the men on the corner, the ones who never seemed to have a work but always had money, who life seemed to come easy to. He had seen his father bust his ass every day working on projects with little to show for it and he had always vowed that that wouldn't be him. That he would never have to want for anything like that. Vito turned the corner as he noticed the policemen coming down the street. Fuck, he thought avoiding the mans gaze. If they caught him on the street like this he would likely give him a good beating and then send him back to school. The beating he could handle, going back to that damn school he could not. Vito quickly crossed the street narrowly avoiding the model A tearing down the street. Vito was still somewhat unnerved by the massive metal bohemoth's coming down the street. The policemen hadn't noticed him distracted by something else. Vito pondered the rest of his day. Most of the beat cops in the neighborhood knew him so there was only one thing to do, take a trolley downtown.

Now witness, now witness love

I was thinking recently why I would never like to serve in the military. Not the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines or the National guard. Beyond the aspect of getting blown away and showering with other men I can't help but think what a horrible past our nation has. About the trail of tears where thousands of Cherokee and Seminole and creek Indians where forcibly removed from their homelands in the American Southeast and marched to Oklahoma. Of the use of slave labor to build our nation up from the start. And to think that I would be representing a nation capable of such acts, an instrument of its foreign policy is terrifying.