Category Archives: Johnny on the Pony
Manhattan upper east side…
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Manhattan upper east side on 80th street we played Johnny on the Pony in the street from one side of the street to the other (sidewalk to sidewalk) and closed off the street so no cars could come down and stop our fun….Only the cops made us stop…LOL…What happen to the good old days being a kid in the streets…
Slattery Park,Summer of Love…
While we all played and…
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While we all played and had fun all year long, the Summer months usually brought special memeories. What are some of yours? I remember the distinct smell when it rained on a hot summers day – rain, and concrete and asphalt was a unique experience of the senses that one couldn’t experience anywhere else but in NYC. Remember the steam coming up from the streets? I also remember going to Yankee and Met games with the local PAL…I think we had to pay a buck which included transportation, lunch, and the ticket! I also remember the moths and bugs swirling around the street lights on a steamy, hot, Summer’s night…and Mr. Softee music and the light from its truck in the background. Banana boats were under a buck…wow! I also remember making genies by emptying the gunpowder from leftover firecrackers from the night before on the 4th of July…we called it the 4th. I also remember eating those freeze pops in the plasic sleeves…may favorite was blue ice, what was yours?….not to mention the chocolate eclair or creamsicles from the Good Humor man or Bungalow Bar. And what about jamming ourselves in the boys and girls entrances in the schoolyard until the rain was over….one last powerful Queens memory….going to Weiss’s and Lenny’s clam bar on the way back from Rockaway beach. Oh, Summer in NYC, I wish I could have just one day back again!
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my…
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Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my brother, Johnny, and I, would play Buck-Buck with the other 20 kids our age who lived on the block–but we weren’t allowed to play–cause as our Dad would say, “You know how Uncle Gerard hurt in his arm–he was playing Buck-Buck and landed wrong!!” He was my Dad’s uncle –our great-uncle, and I can remember his arm hanging uselessly on his side. Sorry to say–it never stopped us, and I just found out–it never stopped my Dad from playing when he was a kid.
I started on the Grand Concourse…
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I started on the Grand Concourse in the early 60’s and never stopped having fun after that. Stickball, Skellies, Johnny on the Pony, Kick the can, watching the greasers and the new hippies stare each other down. My twin brother and I were nice Puerto Rican boys in an Irish / Jewish neighborhood. All my friends were Shemtobs, McNallens, ORielly, Buffa, Mehan, Schwartz. It was great, I learned a whole bunch of different cuss words. We had fake wars with sling shots and bottle caps. We would explore boiler rooms and roof tops and would make flashlights out of Bean cans with a lit candle burning the tin till it was too hot to hold. We could watch the parades on the Grand Concourse from any stoop on the street, All the US flags would wave from the windows. We had about 30 kids playing stickball on Marcy place and many of us would roof spaldings atop PS 88 on Sheridan. It was the perfect Stickball Street. We could also open Johnny pumps with a stickball bat and a coat hanger and spend hours grinding bean cans on the concrete to get the tops off.(boy were we dumb) We also built scooters with old metal skates and old milk boxes. Build tunnels in the mountains of snow that was built up by sanitation. We would sing Beatles tunes to our 3rd grade girlfriends and run like heck when they tried to kiss us. We all formed the Bronx Super Heroes club. I was 007 – James Bond and my brother Karl was Robin “The boy blunder” Between all the Bronx buildings were miles and miles of alleys and basements were we all would explore. We also would walk on Jerome Ave. to go Ice-skating or go to the Concourse hotel to see Mickey Mantle as well as the Original NY Giants in the winter. Then one summer every one moved to co-op City and from that time on it was never the same. That was until I discovered Handball and life in the Bronx was good again 🙂 I live in Dallas now and doing well. My kids are popular here because they are from the Bronx. It’s cool here. People don’t know whether to love us or hate us. In any event, when we have to be heard, no one stands in our way. Thank you my Bronx. I could not imagine my life without you in it. You are now in me and I will share you with all. We miss you all! Schools: PS, 44, 88, 90, 67, Catholic: Christ the King, Sacred Heart HS (Don
Bill, Check out
I grew up on Ely Ave off…
Hey Big Daddy, I…
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Hey Big Daddy, I absolutely remember triangle baseball. I lived in the bed-stuy section of Brooklyn. We used to play on Pulaski St. Between Stuyvesant Ave and Willoughby. It was a one-way street where we played most of our neighborhood games and we played them all. Stickball, chinese handball, fast pitch stickball with automatics, off-the-point, stoopball, boxball, ringalievio, hide-and-seek, kick-the-can, johnny on the pony, skelleys, marbles. All these games were great but I haven’t heard anybody mention – Spinning Tops – a wooden top (shaped like a hot air ballon) with a metal point on the bottom and we would wrap a string around the it then throw the top on the asphalt making it spin. We would play games like crack-the-top. This game was played by two or more players and the object was to shoot your top at the top on the ground in an attempt to crack it.You would choose to see whose top would be layed on the ground. Then taking one turn at a time each player would spin his top attempting to hit the top on the ground. If you didn’t hit it in one shot you could pick up the top in your hand while it was spinning and throw against the top on the ground then you would get another chance.If in your turn, you couldn’t hit the object top then you would have to lay your top down to be the target top. –Making wooden carpet guns–. The easy way to make one was with a piece of 1×4 or anything similar about three feet in length. Then we would attach a thick rubber band to the front with a nail. Toward the back part of the gun on the top edge, we would then attach a clothes pin with one leg cut off using a few rubber bands to hold it in place.This would act as the trigger. We would then cut little squares from a section of linoleoum flooring to use as ammo. We would then pull back the front rubber band holding it in place under the clothes pin. We would insert a piece of ammo between the the two legs of the rubber band and to shoot the ammo we would press down on the leg of the clothes pin thereby releasing the ammo. How about –Scooters–, made out of a wooden box a two by four and a one skate. We would decorate the box with bottle caps, paint and anything we could think of. I live in Florida now and we have a group of about 20 to 30 ex New Yorkers. Every year we have an annual xmas picnic. At the picnic we have a fathers against sons stickball game and we play a serious game of skelleys. Those were the best days of my life and if had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t change one thing from my childhood days growing up on the streets of the big city. By the way if someone knows where I can find some Spalding HI-Bouncers if they still exist please post the info on this site.
In Brooklyn we used to play…
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In Brooklyn we used to play Johnny on the Pony in the street from one side of the street to the other (sidewalk to sidewalk). The objective was to make the pony cave-in before the pillar could say ‘Johnny on the Pony 1-2-3’ three times. So naturally when you would choose sides you’d want the fattest kid on your side. One drawback of picking the fattest kid was that he could hardly jump.The jumpers once on top were not supposed to move or rock back and forth but they did it anyway. If the pony caved in before the three count, the jumpers would get another turn to jump. If the pony did not cave or one of the jumpers touched the ground with their foot or fell off, then the rolls would reverse and the jumpers would then become the pony.