"Hey Joey, hey Tommy"

I had some great buddies in Roosevelt. There was Tommy Gallo who lived across the street and went to Catholic school and there was Joey Tascarella who went to public school with me. Joey was this freckled faced cherry cheeked kid who had a constant smile on his face. A raspy voice and a baseball cap. His parents ran a coffee shop with a soda fountain and everything. That was an amazing place for a kid to hang out. We got free cokes, wowee! Joey and I would spend a great deal of time together at and around school, walking to the five and dime or just goofing around.
Tommy Gallo was one year younger than myself and had a younger brother 'Freddy' and an older sister 'Roberta.' The Gallos lived diagonally across the street from us and Tommy and I were friends from the time we first learned to talk.
Occasionally on a calm summer evening, the scent of Terry Gallo's meatballs (Tommy's mother) would hook me by the nostrils and pull me towards her kitchen. I would pull every stunt you could think of just to get one of those meatballs in my mouth. I should've seen the warning signs of addiction back then. Terry's meatballs were made with such flavor, that I thought putting them in a sauce was a total waste and I couldn't understand why anyone would do that. I'd get a meatball wrapped in a napkin and then proceed to eat it as if it were my last meal. As soon as I had finished a meatball, I'd be back over their house trying to figure out another way of getting one. Years later when I was in my fourties, Terry Gallo, once again, cooked a pile of meatballs. This time though, they were cooked specifically for me. My eyes rolled back into my head upon my first bite. Terry told me that she hadn't fried a meatball in years but did so for me on this occasion. All those early memories came flooding back with a wallop, just from a meatball!
When I moved away from Roosevelt I missed Tommy and Joey terribly and have never really had such a dear friends as good as that ever again. I could definately relate to the movie "Stand By Me."