Category Archives: Toys
Cary .. that’s a good one…
I am trying to find a manufacturer…
Growing up at Inwood Hill…
Growing up at Inwood Hill Park, at 204th and Vermylea, the king of all bikes was the Ross Apollo 3 speed; courtesy of Wonderama. We had our share of Stingrays and Crates, but the Ross Apollo had the neat frame, the 3 speed shifter, the slick tires, it was the bike with the mean looks! Add baseball cards to the spokes, the high sissy bar with leather tool pouch, a dogbone wrench,and a Screecher( that thing on the handlebar post with the crank that made that screeching noise;;see Pee Wee’s Big adventure, the bike used there has one!)and you were king of the block!
Picture a shallow wooden…
Picture a shallow wooden box sitting on the floor, say three feet wide by six feet long, with a slot carved out at either short end. In front of each slot is a wooden block which does just that, serves as a goalie of sorts to block the puck from coming through the slot (goal). The two players sit on the floor at either end, behind each goal. In their hand they hold a knock hockey stick, which looks like a miniature of the real thing. The players vie for possession of the puck to start. Whoever has control of the puck uses the hockey stick to hit the puck at strategic angles against the sides of the board, the object of course being to get the puck through the slot (goal) with one whack. If the player doesn’t succeed, the other player gets a turn, hitting the puck from wherever it landed last turn. If you keep hitting it in the goal, you keep going. The amount of points to win is determined at the outset of the game, usually 25.
I can definitely relate…
I can definitely relate to the “search for the roller skate key” scenario! There were five of us at home (not counting my mother), so we never knew who had it last or where they put it. I loved skating so much on the Lower East Side that I did it well into my adult years when I moved to Brooklyn at the Empire Roller Skating Rink and the Park Circle Roller Skating Rink, dancing to the music on my skates! I think I stopped going when I was around 35. Don’t ask me about roller blades — I put those things on once a few years ago — one ankle went in, the other went out — I took them off and haven’t been skating since. – webdiva
In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we…
In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we used to play a sadistic top game we called “crack-top”. A circle would be drawn on a smooth surface, like a shuffleboard court. Each player would place a top in the circle. The tops in the circle would have the standard ball-bearing type tip. The playing tops, however, would have a sharpened, spear-like tip. Sometimes the playing tops would be regular tops with the ball bearing removed and a nail placed point out in its place. The idea of the game was to knock tops out of the circle with the player knocking the top out, keeping the top. Of course, the real goal of the game was to split someones top wide open.
Tiny Tears, Chatty Cathy,…
The search for the roller-skate…
The search for the roller-skate key was always a rite of spring at our house. If I was lucky, it had been carefully placed in my dad’s tool/ hardware cubby-hole. With growing feet, those expandable roller-skates sure were practical. Many knees were skinned, though, when the front clasps slipped off and I tumbled forward. I think that the skating season probably only lasted for me until I had scabs on both my knees.