Word: cornering
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Delinquent life in Cambridge centers around the gang and the street corner. Driven out of the home by an unpleasant family situation, the typical Cambridge delinquent finds companionship and prestige as a member of the gang. Within the gang itself, he may also gain prestige as a leader. This post usually falls to the boy who can outfight his contemporaries...
Each gang has a regular meeting place, usually at some corner store. The store serves as a communications center for the gang, for everyone usually stops by there at least once a day, and there are almost always one or two members around to pass on the word. On rainy days these places are jammed, as anyone who has walked past the corner of Mt. Auburn St. and Putnam Square can testify...
...almost unbelievable to an outsider just how much time the gang members spend loafing on the corner. "Some of the guys spend hours and hours and days and days on the street corner," one gang leader said. "Last summer, some of them would get up around 11 o'clock, go up to the corner, go back home when they felt hungry, go back up to the store until dinner, and return after dinner to stay till midnight...
...fact is that boredom pervades a good part of the delinquent's life. Walking through the federal housing projects in Neighborhood Four, one sees many boys sitting on the door-steps staring off into space for hour after hour. The same is true of the various street corner hangouts...
...especially in the advanced teens, are motivated by downright meanness. Around the ages of sixteen and seventeen some of the boys become so tough and anti-social that their acts become increasingly brutal. A good example occurred a few years ago when one local tough stood on a street corner flipping a coin in the air for fifteen minutes. He then let it drop to the sidewalk. Another boy standing nearby bent over to pick it up for him, and promptly received a kick in the face from the flipper. "That guy was real mean," a local gang leader reminisced...