Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

Joey quickly bonded with three other Green Ridge boys: Charlie Roth, Tommy Bell, and Larry Orr. They spent Saturdays, their free day, together. They could roam as far as Green Ridge Corners, where they spent their pocket money on penny candy and caps for their cap pistols, or they could explore the always interesting city dump.

A fascinating feature of Scranton for kids was the “breakers,” steep piles of dirt and rock left over from coal mining. This debris was heaped up in mountains larger than the pyramids of ancient Egypt. However, the breakers were not as solid as those pyramids. And traces of coal left in the rock easily caught fire, creating slow-burning furnaces under their slopes.

One day Joey and his friends were playing around a breaker, built up by the Marvine Coal Company, in Green Ridge. Charlie bet Joey five dollars that he didn’t dare to run up to the top. Maybe that seemed like a safe bet to Charlie, because the boys knew it was dangerous to climb on the loosely balanced pile. You could fall through the surface, far enough to break your neck. Or you could stumble into a hidden pit of fire.

But Joey couldn’t resist a dare, especially for such big money. He charged at the mountain and kept going, as nimble as a mountain goat, until he reached the top. Inspired, Tommy followed his brave buddy up the slope.

Such a daredevil boy as Joey Biden might not seem like the type to take care of his little sister. But Joey considered Valerie, two years younger, his special charge. Not that he would stay home and babysit her—he took her along on his neighborhood adventures. As Valerie described it years later, “From the time I opened my eyes, he was there, he had his hand out and said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ ”

Joey was Valerie’s hero, and she was his loyal sidekick. He showed her how to throw a baseball and how to jump for the basketball net. He taught her to vault onto the back fender of his bicycle so she could ride everywhere with him. Years later Joey would include his much younger brothers, Jimmy and Frank, in his adventures with Valerie.

Every Sunday morning the Finnegans and Bidens went to Saint Paul’s Catholic Church for Mass, like most of the neighborhood. In the afternoon, before Sunday dinner, the Finnegans, the Bidens, and assorted friends would gather at Grandpop Finnegan’s house. The men sat at the kitchen table, talking sports and politics. As Joey grew older, he started to hang around the kitchen and listen, fascinated.

Grandpop and his relatives and friends argued about President Truman, a Democrat, and whether he’d been right to fire General MacArthur. They argued about General Eisenhower, a hero of World War II but unfortunately a Republican, who ran for president in 1950. They argued about how the government treated workers who were striking. They argued about local politicians, especially which ones you could trust and which ones you couldn’t.

Joey didn’t always understand the fine points of the men’s discussion, but he did take in some key ideas. First, that politics was important. There weren’t any politicians in the family, except for a former Pennsylvania state senator on Geraldine Finnegan’s side. But what happened in politics had the power to change people’s lives, for the better—or for the worse.

And second, Joey learned that politics could be—should be—a noble calling. In politics, as in the rest of life, your word should be your bond.

In those years, the Bidens and the Finnegans didn’t know any big-time politicians. The closest Joey got to a national politician, when he was growing up, was at a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Former president Harry Truman was grand marshal of that parade, and he rode through Scranton in a convertible with the top down. The Scranton Tribune printed a photo of the parade showing both Truman and—in the crowd on the sidelines, fuzzy but recognizable—young Joey Biden.

Growing up, Joey learned certain values: tell the truth, say your prayers, keep your promises, be loyal to family and friends. He did not learn to be careful, or to stay out of trouble. One winter day, Joey and his friend Larry stood outside the Finnegan house, throwing snowballs at passing cars.

Joey was a natural athlete, with a good throwing arm. One of his snowballs went right through a truck’s open window, smacking the driver in the head. When the man jumped out, furious, the boys scurried up the steps of Joey’s house and in the door.

The driver ran up the steps after the boys, but Aunt Gertie fended him off. Without waiting to find out what had happened or whose fault it was, she swung her broom at the man. “Get out of here!”

Joey knew that his family would always stick by him, even when he was wrong. And he understood that he, in turn, needed to take care of his family.

Besides being small for his age, Joey had a stutter, like his uncle Boo-Boo. When he was in kindergarten, his parents sent him to a speech pathologist, but that didn’t seem to help. However, the stutter didn’t bother Joey when he was with friends, especially playing sports. It didn’t bother his friends, either. It was just part of Joey, like his blue eyes.

Saturday afternoons, Joey and his Green Ridge pals would often go to the movies at the Roosevelt Theater, usually Westerns or Tarzan movies. Inspired by the adventures on the screen, Joey and his friend Tommy would climb onto the roof of a neighborhood garage. They’d leap from that roof to the next garage, and the next, and so on until some adult yelled at them.

Another daredevil game was running on the big pipes across the Lackawanna River. The river in those days was filthy with sewage and coal-mining waste, and the boys’ parents had told them to stay away from it. “But as long as we didn’t fall