I also grew up in the Glenwood projects, 1952-1962 and I remember the “big kids” running around all night playing ringaleavio but I never knew what the hell they were doing. They were all over the place. I guess there was a jail somewhere. We moved before I became “old enough” to play, tho it seems to me it was all boys playing. What ARE the rules???
( grew up in Bluebird holler ,, knott,co. S.E. Kentucky,, with a lot of cousins uncles and aunts ,, oh yes there was seven of us children our dad was a coal mine, That was when they had to dig for the coal with pickaxes the roads were to bumpy (countryroads) to skate on and we only had one pair of skates so when one of the old coal camp houses got empty we used it to roller skate in two of us would each put on a skate and go round and round in the four room house,, with one foott up in the air. In the winter time when it snowed we didnt have ice skates, or a place for them living in the hills of Kentucky so we would get a wash tub lid the old ringer kind and slide off the hill we also got a few scrapes,brusies and broken arms, We had a feast of fun everyday ,,, And DEPRESSION,,, was the word for what the poor people were going through,,, like we had no money for fancy grocerys we grew everything in the garden and canned it in the fall so we always had plenty to eat in the winter,,, we tapped the maple trees for syrup , spring time we had the hills full of fresh greens we would go with our granny and pick a bag full for supper , in the summer time we also liked to catch june bugs and tie thier legs to a long string to let them fly way up into the air Gee what Memories having fun remembering thanks for the space,, COUNTRY WOMAN Kathleen (Turner) Mchugh
Marble season was big in the Sedgwick projects (West Bronx) –usually late summer. Each kid set up his own “carnival-type” game to try to win more marbles. For example, “one-plus-your-own” was typical in which you had to hit a valuable marble like a “beauty” to win it and your own back. I used to go through a whole pack in 2 hours. Not good.
Anybody out there remember your favorite penny candy, candy bars, ice cream bars, sodas, cookies and 4″ pies? A kid with a sweet tooth and no flouride in the water, what chance did my teeth have to last me this long? Blue Bird pies – cherry – oh how it hurts to dredge up this memory. Nehi Grape soda – with a Blue Bird pie – now that is a complete food group! Moon Pies – gourmet food for a kid. Bottle Cap candy – with those little tin spoons that cut your lip. Wax coke bottles – chew the wax til the flavor is gone. Write on the store windows with the ABC wax (Aready Been Chewed wax). Any of this sound familiar? Your phone number started with a word – Juniper 5868 The smell of a rainy after noon in the 50’s The smell of Ivory soap on the nuns as the hustled you off to mass. These are a few of my favorite things, add yours.
How about going to the movies on Saturday morning for 15 cents and spending a dime on JuJuBees. We spent the entire day in the movies, double features then and sat in the balcony and chucked wet JuJuBees at girls. A kid I new when I was ten went to a pet shop and bought 4 feeder mice and snuck them into the movies and let them loose. The mice had a field day as they ate dropped popcorn, candy and God knows whatever else was on the floor. Sometimes you could hear people scream as the mice crawled over a person’s shoes. It was great fun, at least for us.
I grew up in the Cincy area and would often go to Woolworth’s and Kresge’s and let all of the parakeets out. What a hoot! You could hear the old ladies (they were in they 30’s) screaming as we ran out the doors. I still have to resist the urge to free the parakeets whenever I see them in the malls and I’m over 50.
Rain Races/Trolley Car Races – Cincinnati, Ohio/ Northern Kentucky area Just prior to a rain storm we would collect ice cream sticks, decorate them with a ball point pen or india ink to make them distinctive. A nickel would buy a Popscile and you could race your friend. I scrounged my mother’s friend’s bar for nickels, sometimes washing all the glasses if necessary just to get the cash to keep up my habit of a popscile a day. We would stash our cache of popscile sticks until that rainy day. When there was sufficient rain and it would be flowing down 12th Street’s trolley tracks (they were concave tracks) we would place our racers into the left or right track and let them go down the track the first racer to get to 13th street “won” and would take the other track and the person who had the most “wins” that day was declared “King Neptune Of 12th Street”. Hey give us a break, we only raced until we were about 10-11 and then we went to “work” collecting old newspapers, scrap metal, bottles or whatever to buy 10 cent balls to play “Strike Out” with. Racers were sometimes decorated and “shaped” by rubbing the ice cream stick on the pavement which usually had a sandpaper effect. The better races had flat tails to catch as much surface area as possible so the water would push them down the trolley track faster and the faster racers had very pointy noses to cut through the water better. Usually there was a safety lookout, who would yell “cars” or “trolley.” On some days there were enough kids available to use the east and west tracks (a two way street)and we’d call it a regatta (I had no idea what it meant until I was 9) Some of us little kids parent’s would let us play in the rain in our underwear and forgo a bath that night. Oh how I prayed for rain! Fun times on 12th Street. Today I can’t even imagine kids 5-6 years old playing in the street or even enjoying a rainy day splashing in the puddles. That was in 1950-1958, the tracks are gone, torn-up and recycled, traffic has increased by at least 50 times and children are watching South Park. But life is still wonderful in our memories and if God takes me tomorrow, I can say it was FUN!
Good games, Red Light Green Light and Red Rover. And I was a hopscotch expert. Remember kickball? We played it at school, especially the girls, who were not as good as the boys at softball. Then when we were at home, in the absence of a team for kickball, my brother and I used to play “Kick the Ball Over the House”. I’m not sure how many windows we broke (at least one, I’m sure), and it was murder on the roof shingles and yard plants. What fun memories.