Tag Archives: Summer

I grew up playing in St….

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I grew up playing in St. Mary’s Park on St. Ann’s Avenue. There was a high hill right at the front of the park. The lucky ones got to be the Indians who ran down the hill and attacked the “settlers” at the bottom. Nobody wanted to be a settler. Everybody wanted to run. They used to show movies from a truck at the back of the park in the summertime. People would bring out their Sunday papers and sit on them watching the movies. Can’t remember what the movies were. We were too busy running around. During the summer there was aman who used to bring around a pony and children whose parents could afford it would have their pictures taken on the pony. I never had my picture taken but that’s okay. My uncle Jimmy had a camera and he used to take our pictures up on the roof. I think his camera needed a lot of sunlight. All our pictures show us squinting at the camera and trying to smile. Wow, how I am going on. Anyone remember St. Mary’s Park?

How ironic to see these…

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How ironic to see these posts…I was born in 1940 and grew up in Conn. As a kid I remember being called from the back porch for dinner or whatever. After getting married and living in Va in the early 70’s we lived on a cul-de-sac and remember calling my kids for dinner…knowing they were within ear shot of my calls and being summertime, the kids were always outside playing…not like kids today who stay inside too much during summer….Thanks for the wonderful posts as it brought back fond memories of my childhood and growing up.

I’m back again. I can’t…

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I’m back again. I can’t seem to stay away from this site. The one place that comes to mind when I think of the Lower East Side is Mott Street. Little Italy to most of you. We had a large group of kids that hung around together. At most we were around 15 boys and girls who ‘stayed together’. In the summer months we could be found at the corner of Mott and Broome Streets. Just hanging out on the front stoop.That’s what we called it. Just hanging around. We sat around and talked and there was always singing and dancing to someone’s radio. This was way before hand held recorders for tapes. CD’s weren’t even invented yet. (Gee, how old am I?) On Sunday we attended church and then later on took in a movie. Always a group of us went. Maybe a local movie house (Delancy or Canal Theaters) or if there was something good happening uptown – either at Radio City Music Hall or any of the other big theaters. Does anyone remember ‘The Dumps’. Also known as the Universal Theater. It was a little movie house at the corner of the Bowery and Hester Street. In the later years, it always smelled like the inside of a liquor bottle. That’s where the homeless (to be politically correct) hung out and kept warm. But I remember it when we could spend an entire Saturday there for 15 cents. We would get 20 cartoons and two full length features. Plus the Newsreel. My father would drop me off in the morning with a friend or two and then pick us up in the late afternoon. Can you imagine we were entertained for several hours for 15 cents! Try and get this now. Well, I think I’ve rambled on and on for long enough. It would be soo nice to see some replies on my posting. If you remember some of these places, maybe you were one of those kids. Take care…Jeanne from Forsythe Street

The best place to play and…

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The best place to play and grow up and everybody had a nickname from Nuggie to Espo to Cooch Big and Little, also Big and Little Bud, Juggie just to name a few. Dont forget Brunos Candy Store and the Summer Center. Games of stickball, softball, football, basketball, asses up, ringalevio, 3 feet over germany (an original), hot peas and butter etc……..

The BRC (Brownsville Recreation…

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The BRC (Brownsville Recreation Center) late 1970’s Located on Linden Blvd. in Brownsville Brooklyn, the BRC was the coolest place to swim in the summer. Betsey Head was too crowded and scorching hot. Red Hook’s pool was full of gang violence. We lived six blocks from the indoor pool at the BRC, and the lifeguards knew us well. The place had serious ambiance that is only available in a NY neighborhood pool. Music was played, mandatory WBLS. All of our swimming lessons were executed to top-40 R&B. Our lifeguards were all fit men in their mid 30’s. All races; who though they were the center of the sexual universe. They didn’t wear swim trunks back in those days, men wore those little things that Olympic divers wear. Many a hardheaded kid broke teeth running on the wet tile floors to get to the pool bleachers. You had to swim 10 laps every day to qualify to swim in the deep water (8 ft?). The pool was mid length. Everyone else had to sit in the bleachers until we were finished with our qualification laps. I was one of those kids that became a swimming fanatic, and went on to swim camps upstate and in New Hampshire. It was a serious sport for me. Irish Brian was my instructor at the BRC. He was super strict about lessons. We called him the swim Nazi. He was full of himself, as were the other lifeguards. I miss those guys. The BRC kept so many kids out of trouble. Even the plain bologna sandwiches with school milk cartons kept many kids from starving. We used to keep a stash of rocks and broken glass to throw at the pedophiles that would occasionally drive up to the BRC fenced playground to entice kids with candy and money.

I grew up in downtown Jersey…

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I grew up in downtown Jersey City in the late 50’s around Montgomery and Varick Streets, a block away from Van Vorst Park. This was my favorite game growing up! We called the game “street checkers.” We either used checkers from a checker set, or screw top bottle caps filled with tar that had softened up in the hot summer sun. We didn’t flick the top with a finger, but squeezed it out between the thumb and index finger like a marble. We had a 15 number board, with odd numbers from 1-9 up one side, even numbers from 2-10 down the other, 11 and 13 on top opposite 12-14 at bottom. 15 was a small box in a larger box with four lines connecting the corners of the small box with the corners of the large box. The spaces within were poison but the lines were safe. If you landed in a poison area, you lost a turn. While playing, if you hit an opponent’s cap, you advanced a number. You had to go from 1 to 15, then back down to 1. After that you shot into one of the poison spaces, became “poison,” and could kill off any remaining players. I still have one of my tar filled caps on a little knick knack shelf in my apartment.

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 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.

From: Marvin Lerman. My…

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From: Marvin Lerman. My memories of stickball go back to Flatbush, Brooklyn from the 40’s to mid 50’s. The playing fields were on East 4th St., East 5th St, both narrow and one way and on the wider two way Ditmas Ave. We used a spalline and improvised bats: broom handle, sawed off handle of an old, or not so old rake, hoe or shovel and once a thichish wooden rod that one of us found in a clothes closet, it was the best but he got into much trouble at home. The rules of play were as follows: …………. I had just completed E 4and 5 Street and was about to go on to Ditmas Ave. stickball which was much different but seem to run out of space and lost all of E 4th and E5th. Can someone please help. Reminiscing about my boys of summer was comforting,making me feel warmer and less gloomy while sitting out the Massachuttes Blizzard of 2003. Learned of the streetgames websight in William Safire’s On Language collumn in the NT Times 2/16/03 mag. section. Can’t find on the screen much of my earlier stuff. HELP!!! I East 4th St.: Home plate was painted on the road next to a friend’s house, as was a line designating the pitcher’s rubber. 2-3 players on each side. The ball was pitched on one bounce hard and with possible spin. 3 strikes, 4balls. No ump to call the balls and strikes, but we usually managed to agree. Singles were based on whether a ground ball hit within the curbs was cleanly fielded. 2,3 or 4 base hits depended on how far we’d hit the ball on the fly, under, over or through the branches of trees that overhung the road and where it would land, near a parked car or other designated landmark. A batted ball that hit on the fly a parked car or a house was an out. We’d often start on summer mornings, break for lunch and resume until suppertime. Sewers never came in to play. East 5th Street: Same rules as E 4th, except that there were 4-5 players per side, we ran ’em out, there were no automatic designated extra base hits and there were hardly any trees within 150 feet. Those games were usually played in in the early summer evenings.

From: Marvin Lerman. My…

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From: Marvin Lerman. My memories of stickball go back to Flatbush, Brooklyn from the 40’s to mid 50’s. The playing fields were on East 4th St., East 5th St, both narrow and one way and on the wider two way Ditmas Ave. We used a spalldeen and improvised bats: broom handle, sawed off handle of an old, or not so old rake, hoe or shovel and once a thichish wooden rod that one of us found in a clothes closet, it was the best but he got into much trouble at home. The rules of play were as follows: …………. I had just completed 4and 5 Street and was about to go on to Ditmas Ave. stickball which was much different but seem to run out of space and lost all of E 4th and E5th. Can someone please help. Reminiscing about my boys of summer was comforting,making me feel warmer and less gloomy while sitting out the Massachuttes Blizzard of 2003. Learned of the streetgames websight in William Safire’s On Language collumn in the NT Times 2/16/03 mag. section. Can’t find on the screen much of my earlier stuff. HELP!!! I East 4th St.: Home plate was painted on the road next to a friend’s house, as was a line designating the pitcher’s rubber. 2-3 players on each side. The ball was pitched on one bounce hard and with possible spin. 3 strikes, 4balls. No ump to call the balls and strikes, but we usually managed to agree. Singles were based on whether a ground ball hit within the curbs was cleanly fielded. 2,3 or 4 base hits depended on how far we’d hit the ball on the fly, under, over or through the branches of trees that overhung the road and where it would land, near a parked car or other designated landmark. A batted ball that hit on the fly a parked car or a house was an out. We’d often start on summer mornings, break for lunch and resume until suppertime. Sewers never came in to play. East 5th Street: Same rules as E 4th, except that there were 4-5 players per side, we ran ’em out, there were no automatic designated extra base hits and there were hardly any trees within 150 feet. Those games were usually played in in the early summer evenings.