THE HEADLESS ROBBER

THE TERRIBLE HEADLESS

ROBBER OF TENTH

AVENUE

It wasn ’ t long after young Patrick Connelly

moved to Tenth Avenue from the crowded

tenement on Mott Street that he heard the scary

story of “ The Terrible Headless Robber of Tenth

Avenue” . When he first heard it behind the

Church near Fourteenth Street, it amused him

and he hid his giggle behind his covering hand.

Of course, it was only a few weeks before

Halloween and he suspected the two boys in the

dreaded eighth grade were trying to scare him

in front of the eighth grade girls so show how

capable they were in dealing with headless

thieves.

When he and his twin sister Patricia transferred

in from the Public School on the East side, he

was a bit intimidated by the way the seventh

and eighth grade boys and girls all sat in the

same classroom. He was in the seventh grade

and had expected to be only with boys because

that was the way they did it in his old school .

Like with everything else, there were pros and

cons to the co - educational classroom. The

biggest plus would be that his twin sister would

be able to pass him hints and signal clues

about almost any subject because she

remembered anything she read in a book. On

the other hand, being forced to spend all day

behind some red- headed girl with freckles on

her arms and legs made him feel a bit funny like

there was something she knew that he didn’ t .

He hated the fact that the girls tended to form

into little packs and laughed and giggled at a

bunch of stuff that absolutely bored him to

death. He wanted to put their silly pig- tails in

the inkwell but was afraid of getting into trouble

and causing a problem for his mother who had

plenty of problems of her own .

The two boys , who were getting a lot of

enjoyment out of telling the story slowly and

with dramatic pauses, were on the part where

the young man leaned forward onto the rail track

to retrieve a single thin dime that was in a crack

between the cobblestones. The girls close -by

opened their eyes wide and held their breaths to

hear the fatal words .

“ Young Timothy Leary wanted that dime so

badly that he never saw the tram rolling down

the track. It sliced through his stretched out

neck like a knife through butter. The funny part

was he was still trying to get the dime when his

head was rolling down the hill with his eyes

wide open in surprise . ”

Patrick had no doubt that something similar to

that had occurred right there where the tram

tracks turned and headed across town past the

department stores with vast piles of

merchandise for people to buy with hard -earned

wages . He even heard the rumor of the reputed

“ Mrs. Leary ” who lived behind the church and

kept a light in her window on Halloween just in

case her poor son’ s head wanted to find its way

home.

The two older boys called Donald and James

were tired of bothering him and moved on to

annoy young Lois who didn’ t seem to mind at

all from the way she kept smiling and twirling

her shining blond hair . The teacher was looking

out the window at the blowing leaves from the

trees that lined the sidewalk right outside the

small school on the smallest street in the city . It

went one short block before becoming a street

of another name which was totally confusing to

pedestrians and drivers looking for a destination

on one or the other .

It was the trickster Donald who drew the outline

of a headless young lad on the blackboard to

scare the girls and make them cry . Little Mary

Jones was so upset that she wet her undies and

had to go to the principal ’ s office for an

embarrassing interview.

Whenever Halloween drew close, all kinds of

shenanigans started happening regularly . It was

in almost all cases driven by the common

human delight in scaring each other . Some of

the boys devised costumes that made it appear

they had no heads and they chased the girls

down the street waving their arms and making

weird noises .

It was with this background of play - acting that

Patrick shrugged off the appearance of an

apparently he