Summertime, Summertime, Sum Sum Summertime

The end of the grammar school year for us came gradually and not all at once. There were tests to be taken to determine whether we moved on to the next grade. I never felt pressured taking tests in grammar school. My brain functioned pretty well then and the work came easily to me. Once this hurdle was behind us, a change came over the teachers and students alike, a sense of relief that the worst was behind us and there was only clear sailing ahead. Our teachers assigned filler work to keep us busy, and sometimes even let their guard down a bit and spoke of their personal lives. The students were fascinated by these revelations, and enjoyed them immensely. I guess we never thought of them having private lives and that they probably just slept in the coat closet waiting for us to come to school every day.

When I see how casually (and inappropriately) kids dress for school these days, it reminds me of the uncomfortable clothes we wore...white shirts and blue ties for boys, and navy blue jumpers and white blouses for girls who were consigned to the other side of our school building. As the June heat began to suffocate our classrooms, we were allowed (Lord please forgive us) to loosen, but not remove, our ties. The windows were opened with the long wooden pole used to pull them down, and the outside air carrying the promise of summer wafted in. At this point in the school year, teachers knew that mentally, kids were already done with school and eased up a bit on the gas pedal.

At lunchtime the seventh and eighth grade boys would head up Aberdeen Street to the playground to play basketball. Under the blazing sun we would remove our white shirts and ties and break into teams, one team being Shirts (keeping their undershirts on) and the other, Skins, playing bare-chested. We went at it  for nearly an hour, wolfed down our lunches, and returned to class sweaty but not tired. What I wouldn't give for some of that youthful energy now. Once in a while one of the Franciscan Brothers who taught us would join the game. They always played on the Shirts side, but just seeing them remove their heavy woolen habits and strip down to their t-shirts made them somehow more human.

On the last day of school report cards were given out with instructions to have our parents sign the back and return them in September. I always got good grades in grammar school and, along with maybe two other students, was a solid candidate for the "General Excellence" medal awarded at graduation to the best overall student. Then a boy named Anthony Dana transferred to our school in seventh grade and eclipsed us all. Anthony was a tall, gangly kid who was extremely bright. He also claimed to want to enter the priesthood, and I'm sure that helped him beat all of us out for the General Excellence medal. I had to settle for the medal in English which, despite its lesser academic significance, seemed to make my parents proud.

With school behind us, that seemingly endless summer beckoned. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks. We donned our uniforms of dungarees (what jeans were called before they changed the name and tripled the price), Keds sneakers and white t-shirts. Thus attired, we awoke each day to the promise of adventure. We left the house after a breakfast of Cheerios and milk, raced home for lunch when we thought about it, and reluctantly trudged home for dinner the third time our Moms screamed for us to "get in the house this minute." Those Brooklyn summers were enchanted, much the same as those remembered in his books by Mark Twain, an author who really understood boys.

We will probably not perfect time travel in my lifetime, but if I could go back for a day, it would be for one of those basketball games in the park and the sheer exuberance of being that young again.

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Look At Me Ma!

Throughout grammar school and high school I played on various organized teams including baseball, basketball, swimming, bowling and track. I was in the church choir and I played trumpet in a drum and bugle corps. Except for an occasional midnight mass around Christmas at which the choir was featured, my parents never witnessed me in action in any of these activities. They never even transported me there, mainly because they didn't have a car. We traveled with our coach on public buses or subways, and almost nobody's parents came to the games unless they were coach's assistants. In fact, we might have even been embarrassed to see our parents in the stands; it just wasn't done.

It's not that my parents weren't interested. They encouraged me to participate in any activity I wanted, and not just to get me out of their hair for a few hours. They knew I enjoyed them, that they helped build me up physically, and that I would learn first hand about sportsmanship and to be part of a team. They were proud of my medals and trophies and displayed them around the house for our relatives and friends to see. They paid for my uniforms and equipment, even though money was always tight. The fact that they never attended my sporting events never really bothered me; I took part for my own satisfaction and to help my teams win. By the time I became a parent, all this changed.

My daughter and sons were involved in many activities. They played on sports teams, took part in Scouting, and joined social and academic clubs in school. For most of the 1970s and 1980s my wife and I lived in the car, driving the kids to wherever they had an activity scheduled. Often one or both of us would stay for the event to cheer our kids on. We sat in the gym, in the bleachers, and in wind-whipped outdoor soccer fields supporting our kids. My wife was severely traumatized on opening day of Little League when she was working the snack bar and was nearly stampeded when they opened the gates to let in the crazed parents and kids. The parents were actually worse than the kids.

Their behavior at baseball and soccer games was shameful. My old coaches would never have tolerated any parents who conducted themselves the way these maniacs did. We were taught to be gracious losers, to always shake hands with the other team after the game, and to not hassle the referees who back then were mostly unpaid volunteers. The parents on my kids' teams were just the opposite. They screamed at the coach if he or she didn't play their child. They berated the poor referees, the other team, sometimes even their own kids if they played badly. One year in the Little League playoffs, there was nearly a bench and bleachers clearing brawl! My wife and I attended as many games as we could, but were mortified at the way these adults set such a horrible example for their kids. 

It's nice that parents want to see their kids at play and show up for the games, but after seeing the way they behaved, we were actually happy when my sons decided not to move up to the next level in Little League. Maybe Mom and Dad had the right idea.

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Using Your Imagination: Priceless

I try putting these little notes about growing up in the 1950's out there in the hope that one day some bored kid will read them and marvel at what it was like to grow up in a time when sometimes, all we had to play with came straight from our imaginations. There were no acre-sized Toys 'R Us stores where every conceivable toy was on the shelves, complete with instructions, and safety warnings not to ingest small plastic parts. Fifties kids may have been short on cash, but they had this amazing ability to make games out of nothing. City neighborhoods offered no trees to climb, no streams to fish in and no caves to explore. It took the ingenuity of generations of street kids to invent games that could be played anywhere for free. 

I have returned to this idea often in this blog because it occurs to me that we are depriving modern children from ever having to stretch their brains to create ways to amuse themselves that don't involve televisions, computers, video games and smart phones. It would be interesting to me to fill a room with today's ten-year-olds and give them things like a length of rope, a rubber ball, a stick or an empty cardboard box just to see what games they can improvise. Their lives are so structured and supervised, I wonder if they could do it. Do they ever have time, between organized activities, play dates and incessant homework, to just lay down in the grass and try to see shapes in the fleecy white clouds hanging up in the sky?             

I won't repeat what I've said before about how many games we played using only a rubber ball...known colloquially as a Spal-deen in the hood. Suffice to say there were at least 25 games to amuse us. We spent hours playing games like Hide and Seek, Johnny on the Pony, Red Light-Green Light, Kick the Can, Giant Steps, and Ring-a-levio. Total cost to play: zero. On rainy days we would have Popsicle stick races in the fast-flowing streams of water that raced along the curb in the street. If somebody on the block got a new refrigerator or washing machine, the empty box put out in the trash became a castle or a rocket ship. On snowy days we would "borrow" the sturdy metal garbage can covers from unsuspecting neighbors and use them as sleds.

We would roll an old tire down the hill, sometimes riding in it and staggering around dizzy afterward. Any fence, no matter how high, even those topped with barbed wire, became our Matterhorn. On really slow days we would sneak on the elevated trains that ran out to Jamaica in Queens. Some enterprising soul had pried open the heavy black bars that protected the unattended Fulton Street station just wide enough for skinny kids to fit through. First the crew-cut head, then the torso, and finally the legs passed through the opening. One day, a chubbier kid got his head through, but couldn't fit the rest of himself. The cops were called to get him out, and we all received a stern lecture, but the spectacle entertained the rest of us for a couple of hours. Total cost: free.

The stoop (a flight of steps outside a house) was our permanent hangout. We played cards, sneaked cigarettes, girl-watched, and yelled derogatory remarks at passers-by...all free. As lame as it may sound today, we played a game called "movie star initials" that involved taking turns giving the initials of an unnamed screen star, and having to guess the identity of the actor/actress. We would make small bets on the make or color of the next car to turn the corner. Sometimes in desperation we would join the girls' jump-rope games. They were usually happy to have us thinking we were finally showing some interest in them until we started horsing around and were sent packing with slaps and giggles.

As I read this I shake my head realizing how awful these silly games must sound to today's kids who seem to enjoy themselves only when there is a joystick in hand. My childhood was a delight because everything we needed for a good time we carried around in our heads. Here's to the vanishing power of imagination.

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“SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

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LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: 

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