Chopper Unchopped (69 page)

PISS Ant was a tough little thief from Carlton. He was barely five foot tall, and so the nickname Piss Ant was slightly unkind, but it fitted.

However, Piss Ant made up for his lack of height with great physical strength. In tests of youthful guts and strength he shocked all us kids with his ability to stick a large needle into a very private part, indeed.

We stared in horror the first time Piss Ant did this trick. I went first, stabbing the needle through my cheek, in one side and out the other. Dave the Jew pushed the same large needle through his left hand and thought he had won the game. Then Piss Ant pulled his dick out and said, ‘give me the needle’.

Needless to say Piss Ant won the pain game, with no-one wishing to take up the challenge. How could you compete with a bloke as mental as that? He once carried me on his shoulders on a three mile walk from the Bush Inn Hotel on the corner of Williams Road and Malvern Road, Prahran, to Richmond Railway Station, with the Jew egging him on all the way.

I weighed fourteen and a half stone back then and Piss Ant weighed nine, but all of it was rock hard muscle. He would do 100 one-armed push-ups in a row, either arm. He prided himself on his strength. He had a classic little man’s complex, not to mention a killer right hand uppercut that, providing he got in first, would knock out most blokes with one punch.

Piss Ant had several sisters, all younger than him and all taller, which was a never-ending embarrassment. So, to make up for it, he would regularly give each sister a sound flogging for the slightest reason. Piss Ant’s sisters almost stood to attention when he walked in the door.

While not agreeing with Piss Ant’s treatment of his sisters, I must say they were the dumbest girls I have ever encountered, and all of them were famous dirty girls.

Piss Ant was not in our mob, the Surrey Road gang, but he was a mate of Cowboy Johnny Harris, having at one stage attended the same school. What school and where, and for how long, I was never told. But somehow Piss Ant and the Cowboy knew each other well and liked one another. Piss Ant’s mother was in prison doing a ten-year stretch and his dad was dead. More than that we were never told. Their old grandfather was a Scotsman who fought in the First World War in France, and a staunch member of the Orange Lodge’s Black Chapter. He was a lovely old chap but a little bit dippy. I will never forget that he was born in 1898, as he was two years older than the year, meaning that in 1972 he was 74 years old. Old Robbie was a good old guy and, to be honest, the only one in the whole family I considered even half sane. He is dead now, poor old fella. This is but an introduction to the main event and a story that took place in 1977, involving myself, Vincent Villeroy, Dave the Jew and the mad family of the Piss Ant and old Rob.

The whole thing took only a weekend but it taught me a valuable lesson, and that is that because the whole world seems insane to get ahead you simply have to be madder than the next guy.

It all started like this …

Old Rob was fond of a drink and would ring Piss Ant to come and get him when he got himself too drunk to walk. One Friday night myself, Vincent Villeroy and Dave the Jew were having a drink in the Tower Hotel in Collingwood, with Dave drinking tomato juice. The bar room door opened and in walked Piss Ant, and asked if we had seen his grandad, which we had not. We all went outside to help Piss Ant find him, as we all knew and liked old Rob. We were quite amused and puzzled to find a wheelbarrow on the footpath with a blanket and a pillow in it – and further shocked to see Piss Ant grab the handles and push it off.

It turns out that Piss Ant had taken to fetching grandad with the wheelbarrow. The old bloke would lie in the barrow with the pillow under his back and the blanket under him so as not to get his clothes dirty, and a drunk and sleepy Piss Ant would wheel him home, a sound idea if not just a wee bit comic.

When grandad said he was on the wagon, he actually meant in the wheelbarrow pushed by his grandson. However, old Rob was a wanderer and had taken to walking from Fitzroy to Collingwood, getting blind drunk and ringing Piss Ant to come and pick him up. Grandad would not travel by taxi as he believed it was highway robbery, and Piss Ant did not own a car, hence the wheelbarrow. We all walked up to the Gasometer Hotel and there was old Rob pissed and fast asleep on the footpath, having been tossed out. He was quite a sight.

Vincent Villeroy wanted to call a taxi but Piss Ant said, ‘what about the wheelbarrow’.

‘Forget the dam barra,’ pleaded Vinnie, but old Rob had woken up and was sitting up in the barrow like a jack-in-the-box and having plenty to say. He would not hear of a taxi and pointed one arm forward like Hannibal on his elephant, and yelled, ‘Home laddie!’ And Piss Ant pushed away.

What the hell, we thought, and all walked along with Piss Ant and the old man in the wheelbarrow, drinking cans of beer all the way from the Gasometer Hotel in Collingwood to Fitzroy.

It is a good long walk, let me tell you, and Piss Ant only rested twice if you don’t count the red lights. It was an hour’s walk, or so it seemed. Piss Ant may have been a tough, bad-tempered little ratbag but he loved his old grandfather.

It was about 11pm when we got to the home straight. Piss Ant’s youngest sister opened the door. The other sisters were working at a massage parlor in St Kilda, although they had told grandad they worked as mail sorters at Australia Post. Old Rob believed whatever he was told. Piss Ant and Vincent put him to bed and later we all sat in the kitchen, drinking. The chit chat turned to the wedding of Piss Ant’s best friend, Head Butt Larry. I won’t mention his last name. The wedding was Sunday afternoon and the buck’s night was Saturday night.

What with a little bit of talking and quite a lot of drinking we stayed up all night. We were all still in the kitchen drinking whisky, with Dave the Jew eating steak and eggs that Piss Ant’s little sister had cooked for him.

All-night drinking sessions were a way of life for us and a quiet drink in the quiet wee hours was a delight we all enjoyed. Piss Ant’s other sisters came home just before dawn. They were knackered after a hard night in ‘the office’. They were bleach blonde, heavily made-up, bad mouthed dumb molls who swore like drunken sailors. Naturally, being gentlemen, we were very pleased to see them.

After the hellos and kisses of greeting all round and the sisters’ delight in seeing my sawn-off shotgun sitting on the kitchen table and Dave the Jew’s .38 revolver next to it, the conversation again turned to Head Butt Larry’s wedding and the Saturday night bucks’ party.

Etiquette demanded, of course, that as best man Piss Ant had to provide the stripper to put on a show and turn it on for the boys. He was having a problem finding a girl, as he was too cheap to pay the going cash rate, and neither of his two prostitute sisters were able to con any of their girlfriends into it.

The youngest sister did not work in a parlor as she stayed home to keep house and look after grandad. Piss Ant looked at her, the biggest and by far the best-looking of the sisters and, as cool as a cucumber, said, ‘Well, I guess you are it.’

‘How come whenever you need to butter someone up I end up becoming the butter?’ replied the kid sister.

I thought Piss Ant would smack her in the mouth but he only laughed. Me and Dave and Vinnie were not invited to the wedding but Piss Ant invited us to the bucks’ turn. We were close, but obviously not that close. When he asked us to come along his sister said, ‘Well that’s okay. At least I will have three good guys on my side. Head Butt and his crew are a bunch of madmen.’

This should have been a warning to me because Piss Ant’s whole family were mad, and if this Head Butt Larry was madder than them it was saying something. The bucks’ night was to be held at a house in Richmond. This also should have been another warning as we did not get on good with the Richmond boys, and Head Butt Larry was a Richmond boy, as well as a madman. Not a good combination. The danger signs were there well before the night began, but I was too stupid or too pigheaded to take notice of them.

After sunrise we called a taxi and all went back to South Yarra. Dave and Vinnie dropped me off at Rockley Road and Vinnie went off with Dave to have a sleep at Dave’s place.

I went to bed after my old Dad cooked me breakfast of sausages and eggs smothered in black pepper washed down with a big mug of Milo. I slept like a log until about six o’clock that evening, when Dad woke me up to say Dave had arrived and was sitting in the lounge room.

I showered, shaved and dressed and with Dad’s help armed myself for the night, then Dave and I took a taxi back to Dave’s place to collect Vincent, who was playing chess with Dave’s Dad.

We had to wait a further half hour for the chess game, which had a $100 bet riding on it. Dave’s Dad won. Vinnie never could beat Dave’s Dad at chess; none of us could. We all headed off to Vinnie’s place in Port Melbourne and collected his old Pontiac car, a big old Yank Tank.

Vincent didn’t like going out half dressed on a Saturday night, so he went inside and collected his old 9mm Luger semi-automatic handgun. It was then that I started to feel ill-at-ease about what the night held in store. But it was too late to have second thoughts. We headed off to the address at Laity Street, Richmond.

As we got near the house, Dave said to Vinnie, ‘keep driving.’ I asked what was wrong. Dave had recognised a white GT Falcon belonging to the brother of a well-known Richmond hood who had been in a gang fight in Richmond in 1974, resulting in my near death and the death of our old and dear friend Cowboy Johnny Harris.

The Jew had put the gentleman concerned and two others on the missing list over the matter. We parked around the corner and added the situation up. Piss Ant was the Cowboy’s friend and too dumb to put a set-up like this together. We guessed that news of our invitation to the bucks’ night had reached the ears of certain Richmond gentlemen, and they had either gatecrashed or had been invited because they were friends of Head Butt Larry’s.

Nevertheless, Piss Ant had invited us to a dangerous situation, but we decided to attend anyway. We drove to the Royal Oak Hotel and I rang ‘Loxy’, my old mate Robert Lochrie, and told him to meet us at the Laity Street address. He was drinking at the Dorset Gardens Hotel with another mate, Frankie, at that stage the most feared stand-up street fighter in the eastern suburbs. Loxy agreed to be at the party in an hour’s time with Frankie, and two car loads of what was drunkenly referred to as Loxy’s crew. We drank at the Royal Oak for half an hour with old Tommy Ballis, then left to attend the party, waving a friendly goodbye to old Tommy, who worked at the pub.

We drove slowly to Laity Street, parked at the end of the street and walked towards the house. We were greeted by a handful of the Richmond boys, who gave us a very false friendly welcome. I felt like General Custer must have just before he got an Indian haircut.

Alarm bells rang in our heads. The set-up was on. We went inside and there were about 50 to 60 men in the house with about 30 of them in the lounge room drinking and about the same number in the kitchen, also drinking. About ten minutes later Piss Ant came in and greeted us. He was totally unaware of any ill-will or bad feeling or any set-up. Henry Kissinger, he was not.

Head Butt Larry was in the lounge room with the Richmond gentleman who owned the white GT, a well-known knockabout would-be Richmond gangster, who, for the sake of this story, I will call Leo the Lion.

Leo spotted Dave the Jew. He could hardly miss him … he was the only one in the house wearing a Yarmulka, or Jewish skull cap. The tension between the two men was chilling, but the party was in full swing, with Piss Ant’s sister dancing about in high heels and schoolgirl’s uniform with a dress that hung a few inches below her bottom.

It was a full striptease routine with Larry sitting on a chair in the middle of the lounge. Dave and Vincent had their eyes on Leo and I was trying to keep my eye on both the girl and Leo.

Leo could not keep his eyes off the girl. She had the buttons of the school uniform open and was rubbing a substantial set of tits into Head Butt Larry’s face. It was then I noticed that Larry had his hands cuffed behind the back of the chair, just to make it interesting.

To make it more interesting, she was undoing Larry’s pants, and his excited condition was evident, much to the cheers and laughter of the onlookers. Several men watching the performance exposed themselves and the stripper was encouraged to greater heights.

As she proceeded to sit on Head Butt’s lap and ride him like a jockey, Piss Ant told the crowd to stand clear and let her ride Larry to the finish. Larry’s handcuffs were undone and the cheers were loud and long. Little sister seemed to love the attention.

She then walked through the crowd and into the bedroom. As she walked past Dave the Jew she kissed him on the cheek and whispered in his ear. Then she went into the bedroom and yelled, ‘One at a time, you blokes!’

As the party goers queued to take their turn, I joined Dave and he whispered, ‘She told me to watch my back.’ The Richmond boys were gathering around Leo the Lion, but seemed to be in two minds about what to do first, attack us or pump the girl.

By this time she had attended to at least six of the Richmond boys and was yelling out ‘hurry up’. No doubt she was just telling their fortunes. She must have had a stopwatch in there with her. I was standing with Dave and Vincent when Piss Ant came over and said, ‘What’s going on?’

No sooner had the words got out of his mouth than Loxy and Frankie, with about a dozen drunken ratbags armed with cricket bats, lengths of iron pipe and broken bottles, came crashing through the front door, smashing everything in sight.

To quote Sherlock Holmes, the game was afoot. Dave attacked Leo and started pistol whipping him to the ground. I fired one blast from my sawn-off shotgun into the ceiling of the lounge room, then started smashing the barrel of the gun into the faces of anyone in my road.