The Kennedy Men [antikvár]

Twelve-year-old Joseph Patrick Kennedy may have been dressed like a young gentleman, but he walked with the bold strut of an Irish tough full of the lore of the streets. As he hurried down Webster Street, his blue eyes exuded a hungry intensity 'for whatever life might offer. He was talier than most boys his age and had reddish hair and an abruptness to his features that left him just short of handsome. His strong, willful face had already lost whatever boyish innocence it once held.Joe had been brought up on the island enclave of East Boston and knew the streets and byways with perfect acumen. Today, for the first time, he would be traveling without his family to the proud city across the bay. He would be passing through streets full of uncertainty, confronting strange new people. It was a prospect that would have filled many youths with apprehen-sion, but nothing in Joe's demeanor suggested that he was worried about the adventure.Joe's mother, Mary Augusta Hickey Kennedy, had arranged for her only son to deliver hats from a prestigious shop to the great ladies of Boston. Before Joe < set ofF on his delivery in the summer in 1901, Mary Augusta looked at her son with what the family called "Hickey eyes." They were piercing, dismissive eyes that with a mere glance could stop a vulgarity in midsentence or send a supplicant reeling backward in shame. Joe's mother admonished him to behave impeccably and to refer to himself as the proper "Joseph," not the vulgar "Joe."Joe rushed off down the street from the Kennedys' two-story home located in the best residential area. From up here on the highest elevation on the island, Joe could look down far below where passenger ships glided into the harbor packed with immigrants. Driven from their land by the great