With his trademark 16-ounce bottle of Pepsi and pillowcase-size bag of Wise Potato Chips, Bernie L. could predictably be spotted each afternoon in our Bronx neighborhood during the spring and summer of 1965.

Bernie was the tall, 14-year-old guy lounging on a stoop; back resting against an apartment house’s front door, gangly jean-clad legs hanging over the steps, revealing black socks and high-top Keds, while feasting on what he considered a lunch fit for a king.

And Bernie could indeed claim a royal title after my friend, Steve, crowned him “King of the Little Kids.”

“Every neighborhood has one,” Steve told me years later. “Bernie L. was ours.”

Bernie was skinny as a stickball bat with short black hair and freckles that betrayed his Irish heritage. His mom also betrayed his Irish heritage as she was actually born in County Cork and spoke with a thick brogue.

He was bestowed with the “King of the Little Kids” moniker because each afternoon Bernie would play “Army” with the much-younger kids in the neighborhood. Whether he did so because he aspired to be a Marine like his older brother is unknown – but Bernie’s participation in the games certainly gave the crumb-crunchers a kind of street cred.

Bernie was their Mr. Cool, and the youngsters sought him out whenever they hit the streets in the afternoon with their toy rifles and pistols. In short order, Bernie was transformed into a heavily armed hybrid Rambo-Gulliver in a land of aggressive Lilliputian-Axis forces.

Bernie threw himself into the war games with a robust, aggressive, unabashed enthusiasm that we, his peers, found absolutely hysterical and more than a bit ludicrous. But it was also absolutely clear that Bernie didn’t give a damn if he looked silly or not. He was having a blast.

During the spring and summer, my sports-enthusiast friends and I often played softball on the base-painted asphalt of the P.S. 11 schoolyard on Ogden Avenue. Bernie was never among the players in our games, obviously finding a more important calling in keeping the Bronx safe for democracy.

When we were finished playing softball for the day and walking to our apartments, we’d often turn the corner to the sights and sounds of an urban battlefield.

A platoon of little kids was dug in on the north side of Nelson Avenue, directly in front of the Christian Brothers house of Sacred Heart Grammar School. The little ones were taking cover behind parked cars with their toy guns.

High-pitched “pow-pow-pow” sound effects emanated from the kiddies’ mouths as they took aim at the long, lanky figure hiding behind the vehicles parked across the street.

Armed with a plastic weapon and buzzing from all the Pepsi he drank that afternoon, Bernie would appear from behind the vehicles as he scoped out the enemy. His mature voice boomed a “POW-POW-POW” while blasting the adversaries from above a car’s hood or roof or behind the “cover” offered by a fender or bumper. Sometimes he would go totally Audie Murphy, rolling and firing while lying on his stomach on the sidewalk and in the street. Bernie’s vocal automatic-gunfire sound effects could be heard throughout the block.

Every so often a Christian Brother would take a parting glance at the heavy fighting as he exited the house to run an errand.

One day after one of these fierce firefights we returned to class at Sacred Heart, where attention was called to a conspicuous absence during Brother Donald’s roll call.

“Brother,” one student said helpfully, pointing to an empty desk next to him. “Bernie L. isn’t here this morning.”

“I know,” Brother Donald deadpanned. “He got shot yesterday.”