A Sicilian in East Harlem By Salvatore Mondello

Mad Russian,” to come with me to Bloomingdale’s to select a machine. I thought my friend Maxie knew everything that mattered. I told him I was inspired to be a writer by the woman in the negligee. He told me I should see how sexy some women can be in nylons. At Bloomingdale’s the Mad Russian selected for me a portable Underwood. It was advertised as a “silent” typewriter. It was not but I put it to good use over many years. However, I never wrote scripts for radio shows.

No one on One Hundred and Seventh Street had as large a collection of comic books as my friend Mondo. His father was a lifer and his mother was hard on him and that may explain why he enjoyed living in a fantasy world of superheroes. His building smelled of garbage and I didn’t like to go to his apartment but his comic collection was irresistible. He had comics under his bed, on top of his bed, in his closet and in drawers. Louie Jap and I considered his flat a neighborhood trading post where we exchanged comics regularly.

Comic book superheroes appeared on the silver screen. Our neighborhood movie theater, the Rex, located on Second Avenue between One Hundred and Seventh and One Hundred and Eighth streets, had an admission charge of ten cents for each ticket. On Saturday matinees it played two feature films, five animated films, a prize-giving horse race short and a chapter serial often featuring a comic book superhero. Louie Jap liked to sit in the first row of the Rex and we were naturally overwhelmed by the screen. One of our favorite chapter serials was the “Adventures of Captain Marvel.” Boy radio broadcaster Billy Batson was transformed into