Category Archives: Brooklyn

My name is Don Whelan I…

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My name is Don Whelan I lived at 1419 New York Ave until 1969 when I was 13 years old. I also attended St. Jeromes up until the sixth grade in 1969. I was younger then Bobby Lacourte and Charlie Ambruso but I use to tag along with them and play sports with them. They nicknamed me Quack because Donald Duck had the same first name as me and that’s the noise he makes. We use to play the following sports in the center court of Vanderveer slap and punch ball, hockey, softball. We also use to play stoop ball, scully, johnny on the pony, ring a leaveo, put a coin on the ground and try and hit the coin with a spalding ball and get points. We use to create All Star Baseball leagues from a board game that had a spinner on it. You would place the baseball players round card on the spinner and spin it, I remember a 1 was a home run. I remember during the summer nights our parents sitting in lawn chairs all over the Vanderveer. I remember making go carts out of baby carriage wheels or roller skate wheels and wooden milk cartons. I remember seeing the biggest water bugs walking thru the basements of Vanderveer. Finally when the neighborhood was going bad I remember the cops walking around with german shepards and driving around in scooters. I am now living in N.J. since 1969. These are great memories and a great website. Don Whelan

I grew up in Brooklyn New…

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I grew up in Brooklyn New York and all we did, for the most part, was play handball. Whether it was the wall at P.S.290, I.S.302, Franklyn K. Lane or High Land Park, We were handball players! I have 5 sisters and we all played and some of us STILL play! It was always the best to step on the court and the guys feel obligated to hit the ball easy because we were females,and when we would swing and slam a roller it was like “Dang”! Handball, WE LOVE IT! Girls can play handball too!

I grew up in Hicksville,…

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I grew up in Hicksville, out on Long Island. We had a serious stickball league, stats and all, sometimes announcers throughout the sixties and seventies. I can remember both the Spaldings and the Pencie Pinkies, and somewhere in the seventies, the Pencie Pinkies that came out were almost like superballs by comparison. They were more solid, weighed more, and went further, and as someone said, they probably lasted longer. We used to fantasize that our street field was Yankee Stadium. We had an upperdeck of tall maples, a short right field fence, a deep, deep centerfield fence, and three trees out there which we referred to as the monuments. I’m looking for stickballs and stickball bats for my kids and the neighborhood kids to get something going this summer. If anyone knows where I can order them online, contact me at stevenmfarrell [at] lvcm [dot] com Hopefully, I’ll find them at the store listed above. See ya.

I grew up in the Sunset…

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I grew up in the Sunset Park area during the 50’s too, and we always put “fluke” on the ball as well. I also remenber trying to get the ball out of the sewer on occasion by taking apart a wire hanger and forming a loop on the end to fish out a known good spaldeen. It was like a giant easter egg dipper. Dirty work, you had to be really hard up.

The museums were a mecca…

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The museums were a mecca for truants. It was the only place where you wouldn’t get questioned by security. they always thought you were with a class trip. Meet up with your crew on a cold day, when your funds were low. Truant officers were waiting for you at the cheap action movie theaters on 42nd. Spoof on the art pieces, imagine yourself from far away places. Good fun. The museum of natural history, art, in Manhattan and the one in Brooklyn. Guggenheim (if you could afford it) horticulture gardens, whatever (I can’t remember them all), people always seemed to smile at you when they saw you in those places. I guess they thought it was great that you took an interest in the “finer things in life”. Actually, in spite of myself, I did take a liking to museums for the rest of my life.

I played for hours on the…

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I played for hours on the corner of 85th St and 21st Ave in Brooklyn, with the rumble of the B train as background music. We had our court on the sidewalk, because there was just too much traffic from 86th Street… there was no way to play a game on the asphalt. We played 13-box, in two versions. If there were a lot of players it was 1-13, for a more leisurely game it was 1-13,13-1 before you could start knocking other players out of the game. In the dark ages before twist off caps, the most prized cap was one with only a slight indentation from a bottle opener. We would rub the caps back and forth, back and forth on the sidewalk to get a smooth silver matte look on the bottom. Pop in a penny over the cork, and melt a candle (“wasting” a crayon that way would have made my mother berserk, “Whaddya think, we get them free from somewhere?”). When the wax was just about firm, if you pulled a piece of paper towel over the cap it put a pattern in the top of the wax. With box ball, tops, yo-yo, skelly, and chinese handball, who needed camp?