Let me tell you about Duane Petkos. The grandson of a Hungarian Freedom Fighter, Frigyes Petkos, Duane was about as easy going as any guy in the crowd. He had a resemblance to Joe Namath with a smaller shnoz and he was good at every game he ever tried. We used to play stick ball and handball and wiffle ball on the street, pausing for the passing cars that we occasionally fingered and Duane was the best player all the time. We played wire ball which is simply throwing a pimpleball at the overhead phone/electric wires and if you hit the wires and the ball wasn't caught it was a run. Duane hit the wires every time and did it in a way that the ball ricocheted at a goofy angle and was hardly ever caught. Duane was the first guy in the gang to bowl a 250, the first to bowl a 700 series and once threw 13 straight strikes (across two games). We used to tease Duane about his monster - he was the first to have a voice change and his shlong was the first in the crowd to go mansize. Charlie would say "Duane, you put the hung in Hungarian". Duane was close to his grandpop and they had many talks about the revolution in '56 and how much they hated the Russians. But you couldn't get Duane to talk about any of that because he swore to secrecy with his grandpop because the stories were so disgusting. Duane, of course, was the first one of us to get a job in high school. He would sweep up and pile boxes at Ralph's which turned into a full time job after graduation. All these years later, Duane still treats those fruits and vegetables that he stacks with loving care like they're his kids. We always wondered why he didn't pursue sports maybe to get a scholarship or even play semi-pro ball, he was that good. But Duane was content with life maybe more so than any of us. He never married but don't get any ideas about him playing on the same team. He had stories about hitting on the honeys at the store, with more than one story about taking a shopper to the back dock under the guise of checking uncrated apples and sticking her with the crippler right there in the store. Didn't matter if he was bullshitting or not, it made a great tale to swill beer to. There's so much more that could be said about Duane, but maybe later.