Well, this isn’t exactly someone who was a friend, but my brother went to high school with Chris O Donnell, who played Robin in the movie Batman and Robin and Batman Forever. He said he didn’t know him that well, but he did sorta know him. I think he was one grade above or below my brother.
My first pet was our family’s dog. She was actually a part of the family before me- my parents got her as a young puppy, and she was a year older than me. She passed away when she was nearly 17 (RIP Tansy). I always had some kind of little animals, starting when I was pretty young… Started with some goldfish, which I’d usually win at carnivals. Later I got some frogs/toads, a couple newts (not all at once) Finally in 5th grade or so, my science teacher’s hamster had babies, so I brought one home. He was a great pet, never bit… I named him Hambrain. Pretty soon after, a friend’s hamster had babies, and I brought 3 home. I caged all 4 together, and you can imagine what happened next… I ended up with generations and generations of hamsters, I think the most I ever had at once was 20 (about 12 were babies). Between me and the friend I got them from, we supplied the whole neighborhood with pets! It was pretty cool, all the hamsters were so friendly and most never bit, I guess they had good genes. I think I had about 6-8 generations of hamsters. The friend and I tried to make a hamster family tree of all our related hamsters. It was pretty complicated- there were great-uncles and nieces that had offspring, etc… I guess inbreeding isn’t really a problem with hamsters, we never had any bad health problems. These were Golden hamsters, the odd thing is everyone keeps telling me now that you should NEVER house Golden hamsters together, because they’ll kill each other. Most of mine lived with other hamsters, I had up to 5 or so in one cage at a time, never hurt each other. When I had the original 4 hamsters, I also bought 2 mice who lived with and got along with the hamsters. I ‘co-owned’ the mice with another friend, and when they would stay at her house, they would be caged with her 2 hamsters (who were related to mine) and they always got along too… We even had sleepovers where we would bring our hamsters and the mice and they’d all sleep in the same cage, and they seemed to enjoy it.
Did anyone here play two-square or four-square? My friends and I loved it… There were TONS of special moves like Rocket, where you bounce the ball a certain way, and before each game we would pick who’s ‘King’ (if it’s four-square) and then they’d make up the rules- which moves you can and can’t do, etc… My friends and I made up some moves that would get people out for sure, so they were always ‘outlawed’, we could only do them if they didn’t count in the game- like Skyscraper- you shout out SKYSCRAPER! and WHACK the ball at the ground as hard as you could, so it’d bounce up 10 ft. And whiplash or something, where you’d whip the ball out so it’d land right at the far end of the other person’s square.
Every year or so since I was 7, My aunt shipped as many of us as she could to relatives or summer camp. I’ve been through some interesting summer camps in my lifetime. I thought it cool to reminisce about parent-paid, state-funded, obligatory, or otherwise summer camp fiascos or great times spent away from your city. Because as you know,wherever you go, you take a little piece of Brooklyn with you. My very first summer camp experience was spending an entire summer (which started out as only two weeks) with a family of Quakers in Pennsylvania, through Fresh Air Fund. My mom became very ill and the family offered to keep me longer. I was the oldest of their children(two daughters) and had to do the more serious work. Being from Brooklyn, waking up at 5:00 in the morning to board a tractor with the father and cruise along much more than 75 acres of land, stopping along the way to milk cows, get eggs from their huge poultry farm, pick strawberrys for our excellent crepe and fresh milk with fresh honey breakfasts, was an amazing experience. I was in pain for the first few weeks. Although I could play any kid under the table, this was work, and it felt totally different. By all standards this family wasn’t poor land-wise. This was kind of like the “South Fork” of Quarker-owned land where all work was peformed through hand-labor. Many of their ways were exactly the same as my family’s. Like once, we were riding in the horse-drawn buggy and the little girl was nagging her mom trying to climb into the front seat, when her mom back-slapped her to the back. It reminded me of my grandmother and her nervous lightning speed back-slaps…. kind of made me feel right at home. We went to sunday school every day. Sang “Yes Jesus Loves Me” constantly, were very hard working and mindful of one another. I stuck out like a sore thumb, yet the kids hung with me and we had a great time. The family bought me my first brand new bike, and we all cried profusely when parting. That summer my mom and the young father of that family passed and we had each other to lean on. There’s so many summers to talk about, let’s start a summer camp discussion, let each other know what unsuspecting societies Brooklyn unleashed it’s children on, back “in the day”.
Most people don’t realize that all the pigeons in New York City are feral (gone wild) descendants of domesticated pigeons kept on the rooftops as pets, for sport, for show and for food earlier in the century. (Pigeons of the type we know are not native to the U.S.) When you see a flock of wild pigeons spontaneously leap into the air and fly around in circles in a tight group, you are seeing the behavior their ancestors were bred to perform by rooftop pigeon fanciers. The breeders selectively intensified the natural behavior of the birds to fly out from the nest, forage for food, and return to the nest, resulting in specialized strains that can find their home lofts from long distances, covering 500 miles a day (homers), birds that can fly above their loft in circles continuously for 15-20 hours (tipplers, or as they are called only in New York, “tiplets”), aerial acrobats that spin backwards in a series of multiple somersaults (rollers), as well as the garden variety of New York flyers that circle above their rooftops in tight groups, trying to get the neighbor’s birds to defect to them. As a resident of suburban Bayside, Queens in the ’60’s and ’70’s, I kept pigeons, which I was first exposed to by “urban flight” neighbors, who came out of the inner boroughs, bringing their tradition of rooftop pigeon keeping with them. Pigeons, of course, are much maligned, especially for their dirtiness. All I can say is that domesticated pigeons, when fed dry grain and clean water, are clean animals. If you put a pan of water out on a sunny day they will even take a bath. It’s like the difference between an observer’s perception of a homeless person and one who has shelter, clean clothes, and eats good food. My Web site about Bayside in those times is: http://www.covername.net/bayside Dave T.
How about Johnny the Ice Cream Man and Charlie the Knish Man from the Sheepshead Bay area? Man, were those Knishes good with the all the salt Charlie put into those waxy bags. And Johnny, if he caught you buying ice cream from Good Humor or Bungalow Bar, he’d give you a good scoulding about only buying from him with his unitelligable chatter. Anyone remember these guys?
i grewup in queens rochdale village i remember many friday and sat.nites going downtown to the fillmoure east and seeing some of the best music of our times at the late show ill allso never forget comming home at 4 or 5;00 in the morning and waiting for the bus at parsons blvd.and having the best pizza i ever had.these were the best days of my life and i woulding change them for anything.i just want to thank all my freinds for making this possible.love wayne