Cypress Hills Projects,…
Cypress Hills Projects, East New York Brooklyn. Born there in ’60 and left for the Rockaways in ’82. Used to go to 214, then 260 in Canarsie due to my art talent. Then back again to 218 for JHS. Memories were bittersweet, like most here. The days of penny candy were soon replaced with gang fights, then social unrest, then the drug wars. My kudos to any and all who survived it to relate it here.
Jack’s on Sutter Avenue…
If anyone knows the whereabout…
If anyone knows the whereabout of my childhood and young adult friend Kelly Kevin Murphy, who used to live in the Cypress Hills projects of East New York Brooklyn, until a move to Drew St., his childhood best friend Eric Vaughan would love to hear from him before we all pass into shadows. I noticed at Classmates.com many of our small gang of friends have survived. I’d like to think he did as well.
What I miss is the old 1960’s…
What I miss is the old 1960’s and 1970’s “Block Party”. When you’d be able to get a few of the old blue Police blockade wooden horse, and from dusk to midnight, there would be music to dance to, plenty of food, plenty of soda, water, coffee, beer, and wine, and everyone spent a few hours in just getting along. There would be dancing in the streets, as well as the fire escapes. Nowadays, I can only get a brief touch of that feeling when I see the music video for Carlos Santana’s and Rob Thomas’ “Smooth”.
Never forget the first….
Never forget the first. As a kid, that peck that made your face so hot you could still feel it there when you close your eyes, and remember. Easy, Brooklyn/Queens New York City. 1967. PS214K school yard, first grade lunch recess. Donna Mantos. My cousin crystal had a huge overcoat and she made a cave. It was late fall, and I had the robber’s ski mask, like most kids pulled down so you looked like a 7 year old SWAT sniper. She pulled up the mask, and we’d exchange the pecks. The high lasted all day. Then she’d go back to her girlfriends, and I’d go back to my playing airplane. First heavy kiss was 1974, High School of Art and Design, from Evelyn. Wrigley’s gum and Kool cigarettes. What a memory.
We had several painted Skelly…
We had several painted Skelly squares in our Cypress Hills projects back in East New York Brooklyn. Skelly, Boxball, HopSkotch, seemed every ten feet. I remember generations of us playing it back in the sixties, and waiting our turn to. It was always the older teens first, then they’d leave to go the the basketball courts, or the top circle. Then we’d get the chance. My favorite cap of use was the coke top or wine cap with wax, but like many, I longed for the cool glass ring of the Coke, Tab, Fresca, or beer bottle ring. Seems I remember the older teens (back in the sixties) used to fish them out of the trash cans, and proceed to skim the necks on the asphalt or stoop until you got the perfect ring.
Oh yeah Frank. Two table…
Oh yeah Frank. Two table legs, drill out the narrow end(and by drill, I mean use our parents’ good steak knife to whittle away at the wood..), and use a screw or nail to hold in the 4″ of dog chain we’d use to make the nunchucks. Bruce Lee heaven, until you missed a spin and hit your chin or elbow. I loved the dirt bomb fight. Clumps of clod that when they hit the ground gave off the perfect “poof” of cloud to simulate a grenade hit.
Spaldeens. I was just telling…
Spaldeens. I was just telling my wife about Skelly, and how back in East New York Brooklyn Sutter Avenue projects we used to cram the everyday essentials into a pair of Lee or Wrangler jeans: Bazooka gum Baseball cards Wooden metal tipped top with string Skelly top (I preferred the wax filled cap, mostly due to the fact I could never skim the beer bottle neck just right to get the sweet glass cap.) Spaldeen Somewhere, back in NYC there has to be all the Spaldeens that were roofed, hit between building cracks, sewer bound, between the spokes of our old bikes, and those broken ones used by Mom and Dad to cover sharp objects and second as couch leg lifters. When I see a piece of Bazooka gum today, I think of how we used to break it in four, share the comic, chew up the gum, and place it on the end of a broken mop or broom handle and fish out the coins and subway tokens to buy penny candy. Fish enough coins, you got a new Spaldeen. Pensie-Pinkies were foamier, as I recall. When they got chipped, well, there went the homeruns of the punchball team.