It was the beginning of another splendid fall day. The leaves on the trees lining the street were starting to turn color and the ground was damp with the early morning dew. A chill was in the air. Dark clouds gathered over the houses along North Fratney Street, foreshadowing the darkness that lay ahead for the city of Milwaukee.
A group of seven-year-old boys, Bobby Waters, Ray Palermo, Darwin Raymore, Anthony Hem and Davy Steckbower, started their Monday a little earlier than usual. Mr. O’Malley, the owner of O’Malley’s Corner Store where they met and hung out before school each day, told them he would be putting out his new shipment of Topps Baseball Cards first thing Monday morning. They wanted to be at the store when Mr. O’Malley opened to buy as many packs of cards as their allowance, and the money they got from chores they did around the neighborhood, would allow. They were looking for the elusive Stan Musial card, the star right fielder of the St. Louis Cardinals. Not many were printed so anyone who was lucky enough to find it in his package of baseball cards, was a lucky guy, someone who would be looked on with envy by all his friends. They would also be offering to trade just about any baseball card they had to get the one with Stan Musial on it.
Topps put five baseball cards along with a slab of stale bubblegum in each package. Mr. O’Malley sold them for five cents apiece. Each card had a picture of a major league baseball player on one side and his career statistics along with a short biography of his life on the other side.
The boys had been friends since they were able to walk, sharing each other’s lives in this small community in Northwest Milwaukee. They were like brothers. Bobby Waters loved rock and roll and had memorized the words to just about every top ten song of 1960. He lived in a walk-up apartment over McCoy’s Hardware store with his mother and father and three sisters. It was crowded and he hated it. Every day, as soon as he could, he would high-tail it out of there and not return until it was time to eat supper. He was always singing one of his favorite songs. His friends called him the Bopper, after rock and roll legend The Big Bopper. Raymond Palermo, who always wore white socks with hand-me-down pants that were too short, was called Socks. He was the oldest in a family of seven. His mother and father owned a bakery and a butcher shop where he was expected to work on weekends and during the summer when school was out. Anthony Hem was a quiet unassuming boy. His father worked at Grede Foundry in Waukesha. He was a foreman on the second shift, so Anthony rarely saw him. He was glad because his father had a bad temper and usually got in a few whacks to the back of Anthony’s head for no apparent reason whenever he saw him. Davy Steckbower, the oldest of the group by six months, was also the smallest, and they called him Little Davy. His father was in advertising sales for WTMJ Radio. They lived in a house known in Milwaukee as a Polish flat. The Steckbowers lived on the lower level and rented out the top level to his friend, Darwin Raymore's mother. Darwin’s father was listed as missing in action in the war and they survived on his government benefits. Darwin’s mother raised chickens in the backyard and sold fresh eggs to Mr. O’Malley and other stores in the North Milwaukee area to supplement their meager income. Darwin wished he knew what happened to his father.
The boys sat cross-legged on the ground, drinking the soda their mothers told them they could not have, but they purchased anyway at O’Malley’s that morning. Their bikes formed