Songs of Passage
by
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Prologue
Each boy’s journey to manhood is different. This is my story. My name is Wayne Spivak. It all started a long time ago. I guess in 1950, with the start of high school. They say that to really understand something you have to have some distance. It seems important to me now, to gain some perspective on what happened to me then. Perhaps, after fifty years, there’s something to be learned, some insight to be gained…
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Chapter 1
His name was Big Mike “The Hammer” Malloy. And, indeed, he was a big man. When I met him in the 1950’s, he reminded me of the Heavy Weight Champion, Rocky Marciano. Only he was bigger than the champ. Neither man had well defined muscles. Rather they both were compact, a solid powerhouse of potential energy, ready to burst forth. This potential was not readily evident, unless you looked closely, at their wrists for instance. When I first became aware of Mike’s wrists, and realized they were as wide as the palm of his hand, and almost as thick, I was awed. I could only imagine the implicit strength within the arms that supported such massive extremities.
He was called “The Hammer” because of his inclination to hammer anyone who got in his way. He had thick black hair, which was always neatly trimmed. It had a tendency to be wavy, but there was always a slight curl over the center of his brow, above his steel blue eyes. A formidable indenture ran down the left side of his forehead, healed over with old scar tissue. He bore it as a memento of the first and only fight he ever lost. He wasn’t Big Mike then. People just called him Micky. It was 1945.
Micky Malloy sat at the bar of Peppi’s Roadside Tavern on the Wurtsboro hill in the
Peppi’s was cool, dark, and rustic. It was typical of the roadside taverns that had sprung up throughout the
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About the Book
Songs of Passage sings the songs of the “heroic” journey each adolescent boy must take on the road to manhood. It is the story of Wayne Spivak and his coming of age in the 1950’s. It is written, for the most part, as a memoir that captures the culture and social dynamics that helped shape this boy’s journey.
This tale is about the time in
the
Songs of Passage, however, is more than a memoir. It is also a mystery. It weaves a matrix of events that can lead to only one conclusion. Reflecting on the events as they unfold, an understanding emerges of the difficult choices this young man had to make starting out on life’s journey.
About the Author
“SONGS OF PASSAGE”
FROM THE AUTHOR
Written as a memoir, this autobiographical novel tells what it was like growing up in the 1950’s. It is a work of fiction drawn from what I heard, saw, or experienced, combined with a good deal of imagination and memory, warped by time.
For me, this writing has been a clearing out of psychic baggage that I have carried for decades, humming around in my mind. It made clear the powerful dynamics a young man contends with in his coming of age. I hope it will elicit a similar understanding for the reader.
Ken Skrivanek
"SONGS OF PASSAGE"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The overriding passion in Ken Skrivanek’s life has been the pursuit of a deeper
understanding of human dynamics. His
professional life has been dedicated to human service. He worked for twenty years on behalf of the
mentally ill and retarded persons in