Category Archives: Locales

I used to hang out with…

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I used to hang out with these kids in Woodside. When it was snowy and icy, we wore special clothes for one of our favorite activities “Skitching.” You had to have boots with substantial soles. We had rubberized fabric gloves and glove liners and the gloves were typically bright colors. Kids even had rubber pants. After a really severe snowstorm the cars would have to slow down, and only go at about 20 miles an hour down Queens Blvd. You could hide between parked cars, sneak out in a crouch behind a car when it stopped at a light. Grabbing the bumper, you’d lean back and let the car pull you down the street. We called it skitching because it was a cross between hitching and skiing. Most times the drivers didn’t see you. You could go for blocks. What a ride!

I lived in Fresh Meadows…

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I lived in Fresh Meadows Queens and we had an enormous group of boys and girls who would play together after school for hours and hours. We created an elaborate ongoing saga based on the TV show Lost in Space. We each had steady roles (I was Penny), a boy named Steven was my space monkey. Our game wasn’t based on the episodes, but our characters were from the show. We’d create our own experiences. The guy who played Don the pilot and the girl playing the older sister (what was her name?) absolutely had a relationship going, but we were kids so, what would you call it? Whatever it was, the roles gave us the freedom to play out what we wanted to do and say in real life.

Results of the San Diego…

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Results of the San Diego “Champions of the West” Labor Day weekend tournament held in San Diego’s Little Italy: 7-inning games, 8 players per team, fungo hitting Round Robin: 1. Bronx Knights 6-0 2. San Diego Knights 4-2 3. Barrio Gentlemen (NYC) 4-2 4. Florida Kings (Miami) 3-3 5. North Park Trophy (San Diego) 2-4 6. Minotaurs (NYC) 2-4 7. San Diego Police Dept. 0-6 Playoffs: Quarterfinals: #4 Florida Kings def. #5 North Park Trophy #3 Barrio Gents def. #6 Minotaurs #2 San Diego Knights def. #7 San Diego Police (#1 Bronx Knights drew a bye) Semis: #3 Barrios Gents def. #2 San Diego Knights #1 Bronx Knights def. #4 Florida Kings Finals: #3 Barrio Gents def. #1 Bronx Knights (2 to 1, 8 innings) Congrats to the Barrio Gents!

I grew up in the western…

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I grew up in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. There were lots of kids hanging out, as we’d all get kicked out of the house all day. We’d usually play baseball all day in the brief summers, but the rest of the year offered other playtime activities. In the winter could have as many as 30 kids in a giant snowball fight. We’d be running from one block to the other, and build big snowball forts and you’d try to capture from the other gang. There were always these forts in different stagers of repair When we were young teenagers, 13-15, during the warmer weather, we could steal lumber from these new housing construction sites and build tree houses. Sometimes there would be 10 kids involved (there’s nothing you couldn’t do with a critical mass of kids). We would get these big sheets of plywood and cut them around the branches, creating these elaborate multi-storied houses. We wouldn’t have ‘official clubs” and didn’t really hang out as much as just build the things. Still no girls were allowed. The houses would last a couple of years although they might get taken over by gangs from another neighborhood or vandalized by kids who might be mad at you. One time a contractor who got mad at us for stealing the wood sent a bulldozer over. They wrapped a big chain around the house and pulled it right our of the tree. This was the biggest one we had ever created literally 5 stories high, skewed all around the tree to fit in. That house was the culmination of our architectural endeavors. When it was pulled down, we were ready to move on.

For my tenth birthday, in…

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For my tenth birthday, in 1946, my parents surprised me with the best gift of my life, a second-hand bicycle which my older brother had painted bright yellow with red racing stripes. It enabled me to graduate from my well-worn roller skates and to travel beyond the sidewalks. My world had expanded! This priceless bike had no gears or manual brakes, but, with that bike I could join the older kids who would gather at dusk and play hide and go seek …in and out of the alleys that cut through our neighborhood, behind Wilson High in Washington, DC. Open garages were safe spots to hide back then. One summer we made the game a bit more interesting by taking a piece of chalk along and leaving a trail of arrows on sidewalks, trees, and telephone poles… as clues to be followed. An “X” marked the final hiding area, and the game was over when it was too dark to play. A few years later my bike was stolen one night from our garage, and it wasn’t until I bought myself another bike after many years had passed, that I realized once again the joy a bicycle can be….and still is.

His name was Ira Stevens….

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His name was Ira Stevens. He was tall and shy, towering over me, and it was the 50’s. I lived on Montgomery Street and then on East 18th in Flatbush – a Brooklynite. His only problem was that he had a stutter, but I never viewed that as a problem. Perhaps my mother did, and he went off to the Korean war – and I waited for letters from him, which never arrived. Then my mother told me years later that he had written, but she’d destroyed the letter. I think it was the most hurtful thing she ever did to me, if not to him.

We had a creek at the end…

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We had a creek at the end of our yard, beyond it was farmland. We’d go down and try to follow it and downstream to see where it went. We’d always be building dams trying to stop it or flood some area. When it rained, the creek would come up the yard. Then we’d have a little lake that we could wade in with our boots and our bathing suits.