One of my favorite quotes from Damon Runyon is:

“Someday, somewhere … a man is going to come to you and show you a nice brand new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son … do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an earful of cider.”

The reason I like this quote is because it reminds me of a colorful character of my youth — Slick Nick Montague.

Nick was about as close to a con man as anyone I ever knew. In fact, he was so precocious, he could’ve been fairly labeled a con boy: He was well into hustling in his single digits and was running some game or other during lunchtime at the Petrova school. It may have started with tic tac toe or hangman something else as innocuous, but by seventh grade he’d found his milieu in betchas.

If you don’t know betchas, they’re a specific type of hustle. They appear to be a bet, but in reality are a sure thing. The problem is while the hustler knows it’s a sure thing, the sucker thinks it’s a bet. I remember three that Nick did.

One was punching a hole in a piece of paper, using a pencil. Then he’d say, “Now, who wants to bet I can’t push a quarter through this hole?’

That was of course followed by the obvious question : “You mean, you can push a quarter through that hole without breaking the paper?”

“Yep,” he’d say, “that’s exactly what I mean.”

There followed a silent pause full of head scratching and forehead wrinkling, till finally some brave soul would rise to the occasion. Then they’d settle on the terms – usually a nickel – and shake on it. Then Nick would put a quarter on the table and everyone would stare dumbfounded as he put the pencil through the hole and pushed the quarter around the desk.

Of course there’d be a shriek of outrage on the sucker’s behalf and accusations of cheating, lying, and God knows what else, but usually the kid paid up. After all, he’d agreed to the terms (as reinforced by the spectators), it was only a nickel, and the kid now could hustle another kid out of his nickel.

His second betcha was in music class. I can’t remember if we took music in seventh or eighth grade; I only remember it was a half-semester and we considered it not only a crashing bore, but a slight to our masculinity, since the music we were subjected to was classical, sometimes even opera, and never rock and roll. The nerve!

I also don’t remember the teacher’s name, since that class was my only contact with him. I only remember him as thin, dark and nervous, and as I recall, his career in Saranac Lake was blessedly brief.

Anyhow, in one class, Nick raised his hand and when the teacher called on him he announced he could sing America the Beautiful backwards.

Once again, there was that telltale silence.

“You can sing the entire song backwards?” said the teacher.

Nick nodded.

“The entire song?” repeated the teacher. “Backwards?”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “The entire song. Backwards.”

“I don’t believe it,” said the teacher.

“Wanna bet?” said Nick.

Now the teacher was not only only on the spot; he was also drawn into the hustle. Moreover, he was suffering from an extreme case of cognitive dissonance: On the one hand he knew this kid couldn’t possibly sing America the Beautiful backwards. On the other hand, there was the most remote possibility he could — a million-to-one shot. And who’s going to turn down odds like that?

“How much?” said the teacher.

“Fifty cents,” said Nick.

To us, 50 cents was a small fortune. And while the teacher wasn’t exactly rolling in the green, a half buck was affordable. Besides, he probably figured he’d win the bet and would take the moral high ground and let Nick get out of paying, especially since the kid didn’t have the money in the first place.

“OK,” sure, said the teacher.

Nick stood up and cleared his throat.

Then he turned around, his back to the teacher, and sang America the Beautiful. Or at least he started to sing it, since the entire class burst into laughter, including the teacher.

—

Major coup …

But those hustles paled into comparison to his major coup, which took place at the Winter Carnival parade of 1962, and was how he got his nickname.

By then, he was 16 and was well known for his cons. For example, one day I was in the Main Street barber shop and Nick walked by. And when he did, an old guy on the seat next to me said to another old guy on the seat next to him, “There goes that Montague kid. I tell ya, he can sell ice boxes to Eskimos.”

“Ice boxes?” said the other old guy. “Hell, he could probably sell ’em ice.”

—

Back to Carnival…

A few weeks before Carnival, Nick let it known around school that he’d be drinking beer on the streets during the parade, right in front of the cops.

To get some perspective: Back then, adults drank on the streets during the parade and as long as they behaved, no one particularly cared, especially the police. In fact, I remember in the parade of 1966, Chuck’s bar’s “float” was called The Chuckwagon. It was a Volkswagen van full of kegs and paper cups, and a few guys who were filling the aforementioned cups up from the aforementioned kegs and handing out free beer to one and all.

But be that as it may, underage kids were not allowed that privilege, and any kid who drank on the streets, especially in front of a cop, was going to get hauled away hasto-pronto. So for Nick to make such a claim was, in addition to being outlandish, self-destructive. It was such an impossibility that by parade day he’d collected a slew of one-dollar bets – all of them against him.

I didn’t bet because I remembered what he once told me about gambling. “I bet,” he said,“but I don’t gamble. Gambling’s for suckers.”

“So you only bet when you know you can win?” I said.

“No,” he said. “I only bet when I know I can’t lose.”

—

… and the ole switcheroo

Parade day, dawned as it always did back then –a beautiful blue sky, an intense blazing sun, and temperatures way below zero. A few hours before the parade, Nick was standing on Main Street, by the town hall, taking sips from a Budweiser can in his hand.

In no time, one of the cops stopped him.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” said the cop.

“Whattya mean?” said Nick, all wide-eyed and innocent.

“Drinking underage, and on the streets, in front of everyone, that’s what,” said the cop.

“Since when is it illegal to drink apple juice on the streets?” said Nick.

“Apple juice?” said the cop.

“Sure,” said Nick. “See for yourself.”

The cop checked it out, and sure enough, the can was full of apple juice.

Scowling, he let Nick go.

A while later, Nick was standing in Berkeley Square, drinking out of his beer can. And sure enough, another cop came over and repeated the previous conversation. After that, Nick moved up to the post office, where – yep, you guessed it — another cop confronted him. Then he went down Broadway, on the other side of the street, getting stopped by other cops.

By the time the parade had started the cops had had more than enough from Nick. Word went out to leave that damned Montague kid and his Bud-can-with-apple-juice alone.

After that, Nick tossed the can with apple juice, opened up a real can of Bud, and walked around taking obvious sips, under the gaze of the cops, who simply pretended he wasn’t there.

In school on Monday, everyone knew about Nick’s caper, and by Tuesday, everyone knew him as Slick Nick.

The name stuck – and for reasons far beyond its rhyme pattern.