Author Archives: Streetplay Discussions

Sliding pond was the only…

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Sliding pond was the only name we used to called them in Da Bronx. The monkey bars were made of steel and anything else we used to climb on (like the big turtles,the cheese and all the benches) was made of concreat. There was no such thing as rubber mats,wood mulch or any type of padding on the playgrounds in any of the playgrounds I grew up in. It was all concreat or black top. If you fell and got hurt you would run upstairs to your mom. She would patch you up,and you would be back downstairs playing again. Now a days when kids get hurt in the playground, from playing too hard or from there own fault for doing something stupid, like we all used to do. Do you remember hearing this saying in the playground ” Go head I dare you, Chicken” Usually means somebody was going end up getting hurt. Now the kids run inside to there parents. Then the parents take them to the Lawyers office looking to sue somebody for there kids stupidity. Do you remember Johnny Pumps (Fire hydrants)? Thats what we used to call them in my neighbor hood………..

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anyone remember our dads blocking off the streets so we could play … boys and girls… high point of the after school day… unstructured and everyone’s parents were involved by sitting on the stoops and on the chairs in the street…. Knew we were part of a community… we belonged and because of that we learned to care about ourselves and other people…Lots of that is missing today for young people…. Our dads used to block off the street so we could play Stoop Ball and Ringalevio…. and yes, the lamp posts were the goals and some of the stoops were safe places… We all looked forward to coming home from school and “going out to play”…boys and girls together… first dating experiences came out of those games…. fun times

We had the “No Baby s#@*”…

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We had the “No Baby s#@*” rules too. There are alot of rules we used to call at the start of the game too depending on who was playing,it’s just hard trying to recall them. We used to call “no switchies or Changies” in reference to switching tops and a bunch of others I forgot. Untill I read your message I had forgotten all about becoming a killer and having to hit you opponents top 3 times in a row to knock him out of the game. I don’t remember the exact nbr’s in the skully boxes but the way you drew the board is how I remember it……….I guess I’ll have to play a few games to remember again….

Ding a ling!!! Ding a ling!!!…

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Ding a ling!!! Ding a ling!!! Ding!!!! Ding!!!!! That sound was music to our ears. Growing up in a Garden apartment complex near Queens College, that sound would cause every kid on the block to stop whatever game they were playing, and run home or call up to their window for money. I lived on the second floor and I preferred to call up for money… (no cel phones then!) “MO-OM”!!! “The icecream Man is here!!!” In gobs of white tissue, my mother would throw down the required 15 cents, and off I’d go to buy icecream from the Good Humor Man. Cola or Blue italian ices were the “hot” items of my day. Our neighborhood Good Humor man man was a tall, thin, silverhaired, mustached man named Jack, whom everyone loved. Dressed in sparkling whites, (shirt, slacks, shoes) “Jack the icecream man” would let neighborhood kids ring his bell, and ride his truck for a block or two. It was such fun, and the high point of a summer’s day! Back then, delivery men were on a first name basis with their customers …. We had Jack the icecream man, Louie the eggman, and Milt the Milkman …

I remember getting up at…

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I remember getting up at 5 or 6 in the morning and going down to Fulton Fish Market with my mother to buy fish and crabs. I remember my mother never let me stand near her when she bought shrimp because she said if I ever saw the head of a shrimp, I’d never eat them again. I finally saw a shrimp with its head intact when I was in my 20s — my mother was right! Well, I do eat shrimp now, but I wouldn’t have if I’d seen those ugly heads as a child! I have vague memories of pushcarts on Avenue B — I vaguely remember men with beards and big coats pushing enormous pushcarts full of I-don’t-remember what. I remember seeing live chickens in small cages at the Essex Street Market and swearing I’d never eat anything that I’d seen alive. 🙂

I remember the game, “Mother,…

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I remember the game, “Mother, May I?”, except I think we called it something else..hmmm..maybe “take a giant step” or something. I grew to hate that game eventually — the person who played “Mother” invariably let all her friends take GIANT steps while the rest of us had to take baby steps. I was NOT part of that “in crowd” at that time. 🙂

In Manayunk we used to play…

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In Manayunk we used to play wireball. There were 4 high wires we threw a pimple or tennis ball at. The lowest was a single, next a double, then a triple, top was a homer. If you missed the wires and it was caught by your opponents it was a strike, 3 strikes was an out, 3 outs per side of an inning just like baseball. If you hit the wire it didn’t matter if it was caught, you got whatever the hit was. This could be played individually or with teams. The hardest part, aside from hitting the wires which were fairly high, was keeping track of the men on base and the score which could get quite high. We also played the usual games like stickball,halfball,stepball, etc. but I think wireball was kind of unique.

When I was a kid in Houston,…

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When I was a kid in Houston, there was a vacant lot in the middle of the next street over. We used to play a game there we called “English Bulldog.” The sidewalk was one boundary and a pair of fig trees at the back of the lot marked the other boundary. One kid would be the “bulldog” and all the rest (there were usually quite a few) would get behind one of the boundaries. The kid that was the bulldog would call “BULLDOG!” and the rest would run from one boundary to the other while the “bulldog” tried to tackle them. Each time someone was tackled, they had to help the original bulldog tackle the others. Eventually the tacklers outnumbered the tackle-ees until there was one left and that was the winner. Then he or she was the bulldog and the game started again.