Street Values

I find myself returning to the theme of "resourcefulness" in describing kids of the 1950s. We didn't have Toys 'R Us back then, and even if we did, our parents didn't have the money to spend on frivolous things. Every once in a while an exception was made, but as a rule we had to find ways to amuse ourselves that didn't involve store-bought toys or games. Bikes were handed down, baseball bats and gloves often contained more tape than wood or leather, and so many games were played with nothing more than a pink Spaldeen ball. We also used discarded materials like fruit crates. old clotheslines and empty refrigerator boxes to create "toys" that were as much fun as anything that Fisher-Price ever dreamed of.

A few years ago these Razor Scooters were all the rage for around 80 bucks. We built ours for free with an orange crate, a board and one old roller skate. You had to take the skate apart to separate the front wheels from the back, then remove a piece of rubber from inside the skate which allowed the wheels to swivel freely, making turning the scooter easier. The wheels were then attached to either side of a four-foot board to fashion what looked like a modern-day skate board. The crate was liberated from the loading dock of Spinners Supermarket and nailed to the board to complete the scooter. Some kids decorated the front of the crate with bottle caps, and added V-shaped wooden handles to make steering easier. Old roller skate, $0; four-foot board, $0; orange crate, $0; cruising down the street on your homemade scooter, priceless.

Westerns were the rage on television with Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers starring in tales of the old west. This made guns a regular part of our play, but not being able to tote real six-shooters, we made our own. The side rails from the same orange crates used for scooters were fashioned into carpet guns. It would take too long to describe how this was accomplished here...suffice to say that the wooden guns used thick rubber bands to propel cut-up one-inch squares of linoleum at our intended targets (each other) at an alarming speed. Accuracy was tough since the squares sailed wildly after being fired. Parents today would have apoplexy if they found their precious child playing with one of these, but we had fun and sustained just the occasional gash.

Spaldeen-based games are many as you know if you were lucky enough to grow up in the fifties. Stickball, punchball, stoop ball, off-the point, box ball, Ace-King Queen, dodge ball, triangle, hit the penny and plain old catch. Girls used Spaldeens to play a game where they bounced the ball, sometimes looping one leg over the ball while they chanted rhythmically: "A" my name is Alice and my husband's name is Al, we come from Alabama and we sell apples. The idea was to chant your way through the alphabet from A-Z, as far as you could go without missing a beat or losing control of the ball. We played these games for hours on end, never feeling for a minute that the fun we could have was in any way limited by the 15 cents we had invested in the equipment.

"Five-ten-fifteen-twenty..." was how the guy who was "it" would count up to one hundred while everyone ran and hid. Hide-and-go-seek might seem like a baby game, but not the way we played it. Guys would hide under cars, in empty garbage cans, on rooftops, maybe even sneak home for a "sangwich" while the poor guy who was it spent a very long time seeking. There were variations on the game like ring-a-leevio or kick the can, where whoever was it had to be careful not to stray too far from "home" where a tin can was placed, because if one of the hidden players could sneak up and kick the can off home base, the game started all over again. Not complicated, but it helped pass the time for the 12 hours a day we were on the streets. Remember Red Light Green Light, Statues, Johnny on the Pony, Double Dutch Jump Rope, King of the Hill, playing cards on the stoop...all great games with one thing in common, they cost nothing.

When all a kid has to say is "I want", and the checkbook fairy delivers, that child is being robbed. Robbed of the chance to exercise imagination, creativity, inventiveness and yes, resourcefulness. Learning how to use things that are at hand, devising rules, developing a sense of fair play, learning to use your hands, and interacting with other children are things paranoid parents pay a shrink small fortunes to help their children develop. We learned them for free on the streets of Brooklyn.

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A Dream Comes True

When you're poor, sometimes even relatively simple things seem almost unattainable. This is especially true for kids. Don't get me wrong, as a kid I didn't mope around feeling sorry for myself, but instinctively you felt that if something cost more than you could ever save up, it wasn't meant to be. Looking back, there were times when that pattern was broken...those magical moments when the planets and stars aligned, and suddenly the unattainable was yours. When these treasures came into your possession, it made a real impression, more so than for those who take them for granted. Here is a special one that I remember most fondly.

As a ball player, you made the occasional splash with a big hit...maybe drove in the winning run late in the game, but you made your reputation with your glove. A good defensive player was greatly valued by coaches and never sat on the bench. As an outfielder I was solid defensively. I had a strong arm, got a good jump on fly balls off the bat, and I was fast enough to run them down. Unfortunately the glove I used was a badly worn hand-me-down. The pocket was too small for an outfielder, not like the newer model gloves that were in the windows of the Davega sporting goods store on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.

Davega's sold uniforms and equipment for most sports, and its windows were a powerful lure for kids. We would walk down Rockaway Avenue to Pitkin and stare at the magnificent array of satin team jackets, colorful uniforms, footballs, basketballs, hockey sticks, and especially the baseball gloves. Gloves for infielders, first baseman's mitts with those two big fingers, catcher's mitts with perfectly padded pockets for handling blazing fastballs, and there, on a plastic display stand, was the glove I craved with all my being, the Rawlings Don Larsen model glove. It was a thing of beauty, all soft, buttery leather and rawhide stitching, with the red Rawlings label on the outside. It was huge, made for leaping, acrobatic catches that turned sure home runs into routine outs. I could almost feel my teammates pounding me on the back as I trotted back to our bench...great catch Jim, and coach Bryan muttering: Good 'D' kid!

Who was I kidding, the glove cost around sixty bucks, serious money in the Fifties. I wanted to go into the store to ask the man if I could try it on, you know, just to see how it felt. I changed my mind when I realized how much worse I would feel if I actually touched the glove, smelled its pungent leather, and pounded the pocket with my fist. I decided against it, and made up my mind not to look in that store window so much because the sheer longing for that glove was making me crazy. I'd do the best I could with my old glove and the hell with it.

That Christmas I was excited since even poor kids get stuff under the tree. As my sister and I opened gifts, I spotted a box shaped like it contained a pair of shoes. (Hey, it may have been Christmas, but it wasn't uncommon for parents to slip in a few practical things you needed anyhow in the guise of a present.) As I took off the paper, my eyes widened and my jaw dropped. There it was, nestled in red tissue paper, my Rawlings Joe Dimaggio model outfielder's glove! I couldn't speak. If the box had contained a million dollars in cash I couldn't have been more surprised. I saw the smile on my father's face...I can only imagine how hard he must have worked to persuade my mother to make such an extravagant purchase.

It was months until baseball season but that glove never left my sight. I rubbed it with linseed oil and, after placing a baseball in the pocket to help shape it, wrapped it with rubber bands until it was moulded to the perfect fit. I used that glove until the leather was nearly worn away, and I'll say with some modesty that over the years I took my share of extra base hits away from disappointed hitters. We tried not to spoil our kids as they grew up, but sometimes, when you knew how badly they wanted something that cost a lot of money, you caved in and bought it. Seeing the looks on their faces was worth it. I just hope my Dad got his sixty bucks worth from the look on my face that Christmas morning so long ago.

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Momma's Boys

I saw a poster at the mall featuring a famous athlete urging kids to "...play outside at least one hour a day". Are you kidding me? Pleading with kids to go outside and play is a modern-day phenomenon in an age when they'd rather sit around on their asses playing video games, texting and watching that 52-inch TV. (Oh, oh, here he goes again.) It's no wonder obesity, diabetes and even hypertension are very real health problems for the young. When I was a kid, the poster at the mall might have read "...please remember to come inside once in a while for meals and sleep". We lived in the streets, constantly playing ball, riding home-made skate scooters, shooting marbles or just sitting quietly on the stoop for a few hands of Gin Rummy or the Italian card game called Brisk.

Even when kids do play today, there is a supporting cast of adults that boggles my mind. Kids are driven everywhere, fitted out with pro-style uniforms, and provided with the best sporting equipment money can buy. Then there are the manicured ball fields, gleaming gymnasiums, indoor pools and ice hockey rinks, all featuring neat bleacher seats, clean rest rooms and fully stocked refreshment stands. Play is supervised by coaches, assistant coaches, equipment managers, paid referees and umpires, and of course doting parents hollering rude things at the opposing teams and game officials. You wonder if left to their own devices whether these kids could ever get a game off the ground.

In 1950s Brooklyn we had the bare essentials. For baseball we used taped up balls, dinged bats and cardboard boxes for bases. The "field" we played on was a vacant lot that had to be cleared of stones, broken bottles and assorted debris so we could round the base paths without risking a trip to the hospital. For basketball we played in a public park. The baskets were metal rims with no nets. You got into a game by challenging whoever had the court. If you beat them, you played on. If you lost, you waited your turn to challenge again. Uniforms were inelegant; shirts vs. skins (kids who played bare chested). There were no umpires or referees, but there were unwritten street and playground codes that kids respected and abided by.

Sides were chosen simply. Two captains, usually the most dominant players or kids who emerged as natural leaders, picked their teams. A coin flip or bat toss determined who chose first. Unlike today's politically correct rules, developed by well-meaning but wrong-headed adults, every captain back then wanted the best players on his team since the object of the game was winning. Not every kid always got to play the way they do in Little League games today where the object is building self-esteem and having fun. In today's system even the worst kids get into the game, even though they clearly have no interest. Mom and Dad want them to play so they fumble their way around while the other kids groan and tease them unmercifully every time they strike out or make an error. There is no incentive to get better because their playing time is guaranteed. They never learn to compete on a level playing field, and Mommy and Daddy tend to run interference for them their entire lives.

Any disputes that arose in our street games were resolved on the spot by agreed-to means devised by the kids themselves. If some outside factor disrupted the normal flow of the game, someone called "hindu" which was the term all kids understood to mean a do-over. To get around the lack of baseball umpires, there were no balls and strikes...batters got two swings to put the ball in play. If they hit two foul balls, they were out, period. In basketball, if someone felt they were fouled, they called it themselves on the honor system. Only egregious fouls were ever called; incidental contact was part of the game and we all were OK with that. Any disagreements were handled by saying" "I'll choose you for it". Once, twice three, SHOOT! You called odds or evens in advance and the winner got the disputed decision.

I've said before that I think the lessons and values kids learn in the streets are as valuable as those in the classroom. Modern-day adults feel the need to schedule and manage every moment of their child's life, maybe because they were bullied as children and don't want to see their kids go through that. The funny thing is they are actually hurting their child's chances for acceptance by peer groups. Kids are very perceptive, and will immediately label any kid who is being overprotected by parents as a "momma's boy". Better if the kid can find his own way of being accepted by the group. Even if he can't hit a baseball or make tackles in football, there are other skills that kids value. Let the kid find out what those skills are and develop them to earn the respect of the group. Don't underestimate your child; coping with challenges and overcoming adversity really do build character.

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Things Italian Mothers Say

Back in the Fifties, before an Italian woman was permitted to become a mother, she was required to attend Mamma Mia Boot Camp and memorize a set of sayings that she would use to guide the development of her children for the rest of her life. Every kid raised in an Italian home heard these sayings at some time growing up. It wasn't just the words...they had to be said in a special way so that they bored right through your thin outer layer of bravado and struck you deep in that guilt-ridden place in your heart. It didn't matter either if you were five or fifty, living at home or on your own, you were always fair game. Here are some of my favorites.

Finish your dinner...kids in Europe are starving. Now I was a pretty good eater so I didn't hear this one that much, but there were certain foods I just would not touch. Boiled fish, lamb, lima beans, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, anything that looked slimy. I would push them around my plate or try to hide them, and when Mom reminded me about the starving children I wanted to say: "Here's an idea, why not just wrap up those sprouts and mail them back to Brussels". I knew that if I ever wised-off like this it would bring a sharp rap to the head with the dreaded wooden spoon, so I just shut up. I always wondered if there was some kind of bizarre guilt-exchange deal made whereby European mothers used starving children in America to get kids to eat their pierogis.

If (insert name here) jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge would you do it too? This one came out when you wanted to do something your mother opposed, and you set her up by foolishly saying: "Well Vinnie Accola gets to do it". (Buzzer sound, Sorry, wrong answer but we have some lovely parting gifts for you. Thanks for playing.) And then Mom says, wait for it now, "If Vinnie Accola jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?" I don't think it ever occurred to Vinnie to jump off any bridge, and if he was crazy enough to try it, I certainly wouldn't follow. There was no kid comeback however that would counter this bridge argument. The Mother's Handbook said that this saying, when uttered with sarcastic contempt, would quell any foolish thing your child wanted to do, and by God it did.

Wait till your father gets home. This was the Italian mother's last resort after she had tried every trick she knew to get you to stop behaving like a jerk. Mothers were smart enough to use it sparingly to avoid diluting the ominous threat these words carried. When you had pushed your poor mother to the brink she took a deep breath and let it fly. The words were spoken slowly and deliberately, as if blows were being delivered. "Wait (smack) until (smack) your (smack) father (smack) gets (smack) home." I always felt bad for my father. He wasn't mad at me, and usually too tired from work to chase me around the kitchen table, but he had to make an effort. If Dad hit me I tried hard to pretend it really hurt because I knew his performance in carrying out my sentence was being judged by Mom, and God help him if I didn't suffer enough.

I only pray that someday you have a kid like you. This was my introduction to the concept of Karma...what goes around comes around. The Italians probably have a more sinister term for it since we have sinister terms for everything. I thought at the time that they needed to pull this one out of the Mothers Handbook because it had absolutely no effect on me. I wanted to say: "That's it? That's all you got? That someday if I get married I might have a kid like me? I'll take my chances". Little did I know that this was an Italian "time-release" curse that always came true...genetics guarantees it. I'm extremely proud of my children, but there were times when they were growing up that my mother's words came back to haunt me.

I'm not mad at you, just disappointed. Bullseye. This was the dum-dum bullet that mothers loaded in the guilt gun when regular bullets were not having the desired effect. They usually played this card when you were too old to hit, and smart enough to realize that the impact of these words hurt more than any hairbrush across your butt. I could withstand any corporal punishment my parents could dish out, but no kid wanted to be a disappointment to his mother. The phrase stopped you in your tracks, and no matter how argumentative you were feeling, you usually stared down at your shoes and mumbled something like: "Aw I'm sorry Mom, please forgive me". Score one for mamma. Hey, even Superman feared Kryptonite.

Mother's Day is coming up and it makes me think about how I could have been a better son. There are small and big things I would do differently if I had the chance, but there are no do-overs in life. I am the son of an Italian mother, and any good in me comes mostly from her. While it may be true that I could have been a better son, she could not have been a better mother. Happy Mother's Day mom.

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Sauce or Gravy?

My daughter-in-law is Alicia Vitarelli Pantaleno, the morning news anchor on New Jersey's channel 12. YouTube - Alicia Vitarelli, Anchor/Reporter, 2010 She has been honored by several New Jersey organizations as the "Italian-American Woman of the Year". Alicia is beautiful and smart...we are very proud and happy to have her in the family. Anyhow, at a recent dinner in her honor, Alicia kidded an audience made up mostly of Italian-Americans that she had taken a survey of her New Jersey viewers to determine whether Italians refer to the red stuff they put on their Sunday pasta (Macaroni to Italian-Americans) as gravy or sauce, and that the winning term was "sauce". The crowd erupted..."No, no, it's gravy" they hollered.

Alicia correctly pointed out that if you went into any restaurant in Italy and asked for gravy on your pasta, they'd look at you funny. True Italians call it sauce...marinara sauce, putanesca sauce, Bolognaise sauce, but NEVER gravy. It started me thinking about what we called it growing up Italian in Brooklyn, and I remember my mother and aunts referring to it as gravy. My theory is that the term originated with Italian-Americans whose ancestors came from Southern Italy where cooking is in the peasant-style and more down-to-earth. Subtle and complex tomato sauces came from places like Rome and other cities in Northern Italy who use different ingredients to flavor them. Immigrant Italians from Southern Italy made thick, rich, flavorful Sunday gravy, period.

There are many ways to make gravy, even within our family, where my Mom and her two sisters learned how to cook from their mother, their recipes varied. My Aunt Anna was the purist, often making her own pasta from scratch early on Sunday mornings. We lived across the hall from her, and sometimes I would wander in and see her standing behind a large kitchen table where she had laid out pasta dough cut into shapes like little hats, bows or noodles. She would then dust these with flour before cooking them for Sunday dinner. Her gravy was delicious and was often one of the courses at our holiday dinners. Her husband, my Uncle Jim, came from Italy and, like most Italians, loved his macaroni. He would sit at the table with a small pen knife cutting up yard-grown, red hot peppers onto his pasta. He would wash it all down with harsh homemade red wine sipped from a pint-sized flagon with a metal spout.

My mother made the best meatballs and braccioles. Her secret was fennel seeds in the meatballs, and raisins and pignoli nuts rolled into the braccioles. Her cooking was plain in the Southern Italian style, but hearty and delicious. My Aunt Mary (I hope she will forgive me for saying this) was probably the least gifted of the three sisters in the kitchen. Her gifts lay elsewhere, mainly in starting and operating small businesses in a day when women in business were not all that common. Aunt Mary was the Ralph Kramden of the family, who always had an idea for making money. She also had a patient, understanding husband, my Uncle Nick, who encouraged and helped her. The difference between her and Ralph was that many of her ideas actually worked.

Italians will usually swear that nobody cooked like their mothers. All Italian women had their little tricks for making the best Sunday gravy...some insisted that meatballs only be made from a mixture of ground up beef, veal and pork; others added ingredients like red wine, pork skin, ribs, or even hard-boiled eggs to liven up their gravy. (I love eggs almost any way you can cook them, but I draw the line at putting them in Sunday gravy.) Great scenes on the big screen featuring "gravy tips" include Clemenza in "The Godfather" teaching the "made" guys who were in the middle of a shooting war how to make three-meat meatballs and to always add a little red wine, and Paul Sorvino in "Goodfellas" showing Mafia guys in jail how to use a razor to slice garlic paper-thin so that it dissolved in the gravy.

In our family we are not as unwavering as the old timers who made it a non-negotiable rule that Sundays and Wednesdays were strictly macaroni days. I will say that when we do sit down to an old fashioned, noisy Italian Sunday dinner, with plates flying all over the place and aunts, uncles. cousins and friends talking over each other, it still gives me a feeling I can't quite put into words. It's almost like the spirits of those aunts, uncles, cousins and friends long gone are somehow still with us. I feel blessed having been born and raised Italian, proud to be part of a people who may be imperfect, but who know how to eat, drink. laugh and love with the best of them. A la famiglia!

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The Solution is Simple

I read today where Our Lady of Lourdes School in Massapequa Park on Long Island is closing in June because of low enrollment. Since Our Lady of Lourdes was the name of my old grammar school in Brooklyn, it saddened me to read this news. Many Catholic grade schools are closing all across the country because they are simply becoming too expensive to operate. That wasn't always the case, in fact, when I attended Lourdes in the 1950s, the average student came from what we would call today a "poor" family. It's funny but nobody ever told us we were poor. All our neighbors were in the same boat...poor maybe in liquid assets, but rich in values like love of family, reverence for God, and a thirst for education.

Catholic Schools were bursting at the seams in the 1950's. There was a nominal tuition fee, but every family found a way to do without something else so that tuition could be paid. Why did people sacrifice to send their children to these schools? Results. Many of the immigrant families who came to America at the turn of the 20th century understood too well that the way to a better life for their children lay in education. It's not that the public schools were bad at the time, in fact, back then New York City had one of the finest public school systems in the country. What the Catholic Schools offered that made them so popular was not only a first class education, but also religious instruction and character building that synched perfectly with the values of first generation Americans.

The methods used in running a Catholic School were harsh by today's ridiculously lenient standards, but man did they work. The business of those schools was learning, and honestly, by that measure they did a hell of a job. I would equate the educational value of my eighth grade diploma to that of almost any NYC high school diploma in 2010. We were drilled in the fundamentals of writing and grammar, knew math up to elementary algebra, were taught geography (I'd bet some high school kids today couldn't find the United States on a map) and real history, not the revisionist crap they peddle these days. We learned art, music, civics...how government operated, we were even schooled in etiquette, something that we could badly use in 2010.

There were no discipline problems; if you stepped over the line you got whacked upside the head. That simple but effective prescription usually discouraged repeat offenses, and teachers were free to teach. I don't think my parents set foot inside the school until the day I graduated. They were perfectly content to give the teachers leave to discipline me when required, knowing perfectly well that I probably deserved it. If any kid's parent was summoned to school, it was serious. Parents didn't go with the attitude that their kid was right and the teacher wrong, quite the opposite. They went to listen, and to do what the teacher suggested to remedy any "problem" that came up. The kid was almost sure to get whacked by his parents for causing them the embarrassment of a visit to school.

I'm sure the methods used in Catholic Schools in my day have been toned down, but even so, any student, even in a modern Catholic classroom, knows they are there to learn. The nuns and brothers may have put away the rulers and the thumb screws, but the air of discipline is still there. They simply do not put up with the crap they tolerate in public schools. Little thugs who should be in jail are given "time outs" to think about their transgressions. When a kid is suspended from school, they don't get sent home because their parents are both out working to make those Lexus payments, no, they receive "in school" suspensions where they sit in an empty room next to a pretty young teacher to "punish" them. Insane.

Mayor Bloomberg should get rid of that Muppet of a Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and bring Brother Jude of the Franciscans out of retirement to reorganize the system. Parents should be banned from school unless summoned. Teachers who fail should not be protected by unions and sent to "rubber rooms" to collect paychecks for doing nothing, they should be sent packing. Kids who are chronically troublesome should get to spend two minutes in the hall with the biggest, meanest teacher who has the authority to talk some sense into them, capisce. I guarantee in five years the United States would regain its pre-eminent position in education, and not have to take a back seat to the Russians, Indians or Chinese.

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Toast on a Stick Anyone?

Remember the Carousel of Progress at Disneyworld? I loved that attraction because it reminds us of how far human ingenuity has taken us. It's fun watching how things have changed over time. Some products we take for granted today like computers and cell phones, were just dreams on a drawing board back in the Fifties. Other everyday conveniences, like televisions and small appliances were around, but bore little resemblance to what we use today. Human creativity has improved our lives enormously, but that fact is hard to appreciate unless you remember where we came from. Let's board the Carousel and take a little ride back in time.

Let me illustrate. Making toast for breakfast is routine, right... just drop in your bread, select your darkness setting, and read the paper until it pops up, perfectly done. We thought our first toaster was a marvel. It had little doors that opened out, and you placed one slice of bread on either side. The bread was exposed to a heating element, but had no settings. It you didn't watch it, the signal that it was done was a kitchen full of smoke. I remember my grandmother, who lived with us, wanted no part of our new-fangled toaster. She made toast cave man style, using a long pronged fork to spear the bread and then holding it over the stove-top gas burner until it was done.

I saw a great old Honeymooners episode recently where Ralph Kramden took all his calls upstairs at the Nortons because he and Alice didn't have a phone. Believe it or not, the telephone was considered a luxury for many working families in the Fifties. When we finally got ours, it was a big deal. There it sat, big, black and ugly, with a rotary dial. I think for a month we loitered around hoping it would ring so we could answer it. There was no touch tone dialing, call-waiting, call forwarding or voicemail, but then again there were no telemarketing calls at dinner time either. We had seven digit alpha-numeric phone numbers in the dark days before area codes, and every neighborhood had a special "exchange" designation such as Murray Hill (MU), Melrose (ME), and Butterfield (BU) as in the movie "Butterfield 8".

Big advances have also been made in the last bastion of the suburban male, the barbecue pit. Modern grills look something like the Lunar Excursion Module, with multiple burners, storage shelves and instant-on ignition, all packaged in a shiny metal skin. The grills of the Fifties were much simpler, the barbecue equivalent of toasting bread on a stick. They were usually round, black affairs with a grill cover that you removed to pile on the charcoal briquettes. You then soaked the pile of charcoal with enough starter fluid to make a Molotov cocktail. After clearing out anyone in the immediate vicinity, you struck a wooden match and ran for the hills. The resulting whoosh and leaping flames left many a good man to finish cooking the burgers with no eyebrows.

Computers have undoubtedly changed our lives forever, whether for better or worse depends on who you talk to. The computer is a great tool, but it wouldn't be any fun without the doorway to the world it has opened for us...the Internet. Al Gore (a legend in his own mind) has tried to take credit for inventing the Internet, but in truth it was a number of much smarter people. I remember writing papers in college and spending days in the local library rummaging through yellowing card catalogs and dusty book shelves trying to do research. Today we just Google a subject and up comes all the research you could ever want. From the comfort of our homes we can shop, book vacations, listen to music, play games and a lot of other things thanks to the Internet. I guess the down side is that we become obsessed and spend hours in the house with the mouse instead of outside in the sunshine.

I wish I could be around long enough to see what the next 50 years will bring. Maybe someone will figure out that all this progress is really bad for us. We e-mail when a phone call is much more personal; we're getting fat because nobody walks anywhere any more, high school kids are committing suicide because of what cyber-bullies are saying about them on Facebook...when you think about it, progress has a price. I think I'll sign off and go for a walk. Then maybe toast some nice bread on a stick.

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Spring is Here

"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart." -- Victor Hugo. There is something about the coming of Spring that wakes up one's soul. It's like trudging over a cold road that feels like it will never end, and suddenly, over the next rise, the sun hits you full in the face and life is good again. I honestly believe that, just as Spring wakes up the flowers that sleep in the ground, it wakes something in ourselves as well. Spring has always been synonymous with hope, and it seems much easier to hope in April than it does in November. Remember when we were kids, and we caught that first whiff of warm breezes that promised wonderful things like picnics, the ice cream truck and trips to the beach.

For me as a kid, Spring meant one thing above all else...baseball. We played football and roller hockey in the streets in the winter, but to me that was like just killing time until it got warm enough to suit up and take the field. I remember playing for our grammar school team under the watchful eye of coach John Bryan. We practiced mostly in Highland Park on Jamaica Avenue, where left field sloped severely upward, and anything hit deep to left was tough for a fielder to run down because he was running uphill. Luckily I played center field where the ground was more level. We played some of our games there too, or at the Parade Grounds in beautiful Prospect Park. That's me top left with all the hair. Sigh.

Sometimes I'll be walking by a baseball field today and hear that unmistakable crack of the bat. The sound transports me back in time to hot, sunny days where you could literally smell Spring in the air. We'd stand around the enclosed chain link cage waiting our turn to take batting practice. While we waited it was customary to hurl brutal insults at whoever was unlucky enough to be at the plate. The hitter would glower at his tormentors, trying even harder to hit one over the fence to shut us up. This pressure to hit one hard usually led to strikeouts, prompting gales of laughter from the jeering chorus and much colorful swearing from the hapless batter.

When fielding practice came along, the infielders were drilled in scooping up ground balls and making that long throw to first base. Outfielders practiced shagging fly balls hit by the coach, and firing the ball in to home plate to simulate throwing out that runner who had the nerve to challenge your arm. Although a lifelong Yankee fan, I modeled myself after the great Dodger right fielder, Carl Furillo. Carl was renowned in the National League for having a "gun" for a throwing arm, and not many runners put his reputation to the test. For my entire baseball career, I always wore number 6 on my uniform as a tribute to Furillo.

When we weren't playing on a baseball field, it was stickball in the street. If you think it's easy having a ball game in the middle of a city street, try it sometime. There were mutually agreed upon rules about what happened if a car came down the block while play was in progress. It was the only way to manage, but we were resourceful city kids and we made it work. We'd saw off the handle from some poor family's broom to use for a bat until we found a broom factory that would sell us new broomsticks in bright red or blue for just ten cents. All we needed was a Spaldeen and the game was on. We used car fenders and manhole covers for bases, and after the game, no matter the outcome, it was ice cold sodas at the candy store for everybody.

The great baseball player Rogers Hornsby said: "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." That's a little how I felt growing up. I remember laying down in the outfield smelling the new grown grass mingled with the smell of my oiled leather glove. It was an amazing time when nothing ached and my energy was boundless. When I get that first whiff of Spring, I am standing in shallow center field with the sun hot on my neck, just daring someone to hit one over my head. Of course all of this is in my mind. My body is worn down now, and I sympathize with comedian Ray Romano who recently commented that he's so out of shape that he pulls a muscle doing a Rubik's Cube.

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Coffee and Cake

The days when nearly all our relatives lived within walking distance are long gone. Growing up in Brooklyn, virtually three generations of our family lived in a one mile circle around the intersection of Rockaway Avenue and Fulton Street. The only ones who did not were my father's brother Joe and his family (View Buddy and May) and the family members still living in Grassano in southern Italy, with whom, sadly, we maintained no contact. My son and I are trying to track down long lost relatives on Facebook, but it's a tenuous process at best. The Italian branch goes by the name of "Pantaleo" as it appeared on their immigration records. Somehow in passing through Ellis Island, the name got changed to "Pantaleno" which is how we are known today. When I tracked down those immigration records, it was a shock to say the least to find out that indeed we have been living under a different name than our ancestors.

That one-mile circle in Brooklyn was pretty much our world. We saw our extended family frequently at holidays, birthday parties, weddings, christenings and funerals. We thought nothing of living in close proximity to each other; that's how everybody in the neighborhood lived. In between events we just dropped over for coffee and cake, a dying custom by the way now that everybody shudders at the mere mention of cake. We played outside with our cousins, literally growing up together. Clothes and toys were passed around until they wore out. If anybody was going through a tough patch, the family was there for support. People looked out for each other, and not just family members. The "mothers' miracle network" knew pretty much everything, and if you did something wrong, the news reached your Mom even before you got home.

And then all that began to change as Brooklyn changed. We were used to having people in the neighborhood who looked like us...white. As Blacks and Hispanics moved in, whites panicked and fled to the suburbs. My Aunt Mary moved to Selden, Long Island, a wilderness in the late fifties. My Aunt Anna moved to the edges of Brooklyn bordering Queens. Even my parents moved to Ozone Park, but not before our home in Brooklyn had lost nearly all its value. My Dad had maybe the worst instincts for real estate decisions ever; his motto might as well have been: "Buy High, Sell Low." The conveniences we were so used to having, like stores, schools, churches and great public transportation within walking distance were gone. Funny, I recently heard through a mutual acquaintance from a Trappist Monk named Father Augustine who was born on the same block as me, but is now stationed in Tennessee. He says one of the things he misses most is good Italian bread, apparently unknown in Tennessee.

Through the 1960s, our family continued to spread out, moving to far-flung places like Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey. We had a fairly large contingent in Long Island. Things were just not the same. We saw each other pretty much only at weddings and wakes. Cousins and their children grew up without ever seeing much of their extended family. We had a family reunion a few years back and it was a wonderful sight to see first and second cousins getting to know each other as if they were strangers, which in essence they were. I know things can never be the same for them, but I remember how it was for me growing up in Brooklyn surrounded by family, and I can't help being a little sad for my children and grandchildren that they will never know that feeling.

I had a Facebook contact recently from the daughter of one of my cousins who lives way out in Riverhead at the eastern tip of Long Island. Her Dad died tragically when she was still a baby, and her Mom and siblings all live out of state. She is very interested in stories and pictures from those long ago Brooklyn days, and I am happy to try to fill in any blanks I can. We'll be getting together for lunch to catch up, and happy as I will be to see her, I can't believe that she is now a grown woman, and we have had so little contact for so many years. I know, we have telephones and e-mail, and we can always jump on a plane to visit family once in a while, but its just not the same as regular sit-downs for coffee and cake at the kitchen table.

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