War is Hell

When I wake in the morning, it takes me a few minutes to mentally catalog the aches and pains I'm feeling. I'm reminded of my younger days when nothing hurt except maybe my head from a hangover. From childhood I was an active, athletic kid. When I joined the U.S. Army reserve at age 18, I was still in great shape. Along with my buddy Joe (Lefty) Fierro from Hull Street, I got sent to Fort Dix in New Jersey for basic training. The minute we arrived the brainwashing began. The main objective of military training is to condition young soldiers to obey orders without question. First they dehumanize you by herding you together while some redneck Sargent screams that for the next 8 weeks, your ass is his. 


They shear your hair like a sheep and send you through a series of lines to pick up your uniforms and other gear such as backpacks, canteens and mess kits. By the time you stuff everything into a giant duffel bag and get assigned to a bunk bed, you're beginning to wonder if this was such a great idea...thrown together with a bunch of strangers and at the mercy of Drill Sargents who, every time they appear you expect to hear the banjo music from Deliverance. The Corporal in charge of our barracks is a tall, skinny Southerner named Lance Livesay. (He later becomes a great protector of mine after tasting the pepperoni my mother used to send in her care packages.) It was like I removed a thorn from his paw and he left me alone while he tortured non-pepperoni owners.


For seven weeks they pushed us. Daily close order drill, calisthenics in the hot sun, rifle practice at the firing range, twenty-mile night hikes with full back packs in the rain...I was in pretty good shape when I joined up, but after all this I was lean and mean with a 33 inch waist; I could take anything they threw at me. Some of the older, more out-of-shape guys didn't have it so easy. Most of them had joined the reserves to avoid the draft, thinking it would be an easier gig. Wrong. Basic training was the same grind for everybody, whether reservist or regular army. Unlike joining a gym where you can go or not at will, basic training is not optional. 


The whole time we went through our training, the rednecks kept threatening us with the 'final exam' we would have to pass at the end of our 8 weeks. They painted a nightmare picture of the physical trials they would put us through, and then dropped the ultimate threat: those who failed would be 'recycled' or doomed to repeat the 8 weeks of basic training instead of going on to their next assignments. This hung over our heads like a black cloud. Who could stand to do this again without jumping off a building! Some guys who struggled with the physical challenges of the training spent many a sleepless night until the fateful day finally came. We were broken up into small groups and put through a series of obstacles to test our readiness.

The first scary stop was to put on our gas masks and run into a building where a tear gas canister was exploded. We then had to remove our masks and scream out our names and army serial numbers before we were allowed to put the masks back on and exit the building. Next, while carrying our rifles,  we had to get down on our bellies and shimmy under a canopy of barbed wire that was maybe 18 inches above our heads. To make this little game even more fun, they fired live ammunition over our heads to simulate combat conditions! And on it went...scaling a 30 foot wall with full backpacks, attacking straw-filled sacks with fixed bayonets, swinging on a rope across open trenches...you began to wonder if war could be that much worse. 


The relief we all felt was immense when we found out we had passed. Even the guys who failed were allowed to try again until they did what was required, so that whole recycle business turned out to be an empty threat to motivate us. I must confess looking back that as harrowing as it was, I think all young men could benefit from a year in the military, if for no other reason than as an incentive to stay in school or learn a useful trade. 

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

Uncle Pete

When I was a kid we lived at 77A Somers Street in Brooklyn. The house was typical for the neighborhood; three stories, a basement and back yard. Our family lived on the first two floors. The "parlor" floor had a kitchen, large living room, a walk-in pantry and bathroom, while the second floor consisted of three railroad-style bedrooms separated by sliding pocket doors. On the third floor was a rental apartment that was occupied by my father's nephew Pete, who I always called Uncle Pete. He was the son of my father's sister Mary, who died at a young age. Lea was Pete's pretty wife, and they had a son, Peter, who lived with them. They also had a daughter, Mary Ellen, who I'm not sure was born to them while they lived with us, or whether she came later after they moved to Ozone Park in Queens.


Uncle Pete came from the large Caruso family that lived a few blocks away on Dean Street. He was the youngest of five brothers including Mike, Johnny, Mario and Jimmy, He also had two sisters, Lucy and Angie. Pete's sisters were two sweethearts who I remember very fondly. His brothers (except for Mike who was quiet and institutionalized for a time), were loud and scary. They drank more than they should, and every time one of them visited, there was usually a squabble. I don't know how he managed it growing up in that house with those brothers, but Uncle Pete turned out to have the sweetest disposition; there was always a smile on his face. He served in the Navy, and after the war got a job as a cook in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn where his brothers also worked.


I saw a lot of Uncle Pete because he lived right above us. He was always willing to have a catch with me on the sidewalk in front of our house. He also encouraged me to draw. We would sit at my kitchen table and he would sketch pictures of some of the Navy ships on which he served. He was easy to talk to, and not being all that much older than me, felt more like an older brother than an Uncle. His wife Lea had blond hair and movie star good looks. She always had time for me and would ask how things were going at school. I think she might have been my first boyhood crush. Their son Peter was a happy, roly-poly baby who was the apple of their eye. I was sad when Pete and his family moved into their own home because we didn't see as much of them afterward.


After a time, Pete moved his family to Arizona. He had a job opportunity out there, and by then Ozone Park was already changing in terms of the character of the neighborhood. Knowing how much Pete loved his family, I'm sure their safety was a consideration in his decision. For a family of Brooklyn Italians to move to Ozone Park was already a big deal; you can imagine how the move to Arizona must have felt. Ironically, Pete's son Peter, by then a grown young man, was killed tragically in a motorcycle accident not long after the move. His death must have devastated their family, but somehow they picked up the pieces and kept going.

Some years ago, I took a trip to the Grand Canyon with my two sons, and thought I'd pay Uncle Pete a visit. A mutual friend who used to live next door to us on Somers Street had also moved to Arizona, and he arranged for all of us to meet at Pete's daughter's home. I was a little apprehensive when we arrived since it had been so many years that we had seen each other. When we walked in, I saw that familiar smile on Uncle Pete's face and the years just fell away. He gave me a big bear hug and we had a good cry. We went out to dinner, and all night Pete peppered my sons with questions as if he knew he had only one night to learn all he could about them. Lea was as pretty as ever, and we met Mary Ellen's husband and sons.


I found out not too long ago that Uncle Pete had to be placed in a nursing home to be treated for Alzheimer's disease. I'm sure this is very hard on his family, but I hope that somewhere deep down inside him, he recalls drawing with me at the kitchen table, and that this memory brings that familiar and beautiful smile to his face.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

And the Winner Is....

So I watched the Oscars last night, or I should say I recorded them so I could fast-foward through the commercials and the boring acceptance speeches. The older I get the less I recognize any of the so-called celebrities walking the red carpet. This year I actually saw a couple of the films in contention for Oscars. "The Help" was a wonderful story about the struggles of African-American maids working for white folks in the deep South during the 1960s. I also enjoyed Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", a thinly disguised, autobiographical fantasy about Woody's admiration for the artists who gathered in Paris during the 1920's.

Oh how the Oscars have changed since the 1950s when we all gathered around our black and white console TV sets busting with curiosity over who the big winners would be. It was a time when Hollywood was a fairy-tale place filled with real movies stars whose careers spanned decades, not months. Stardom was earned by staying power; it was not uncommon for actors and actresses (yes, women were called actresses then unlike today when they all refer to themselves as actors) to make two or three films a year under the old "studio" system. Major studios like MGM, Warner Brothers and RKO placed promising newcomers under contract and worked them like mules. They were told what films they had to appear in, and could not work for another studio unless they were "loaned out" like property, with the approval of the tyrannical studio heads.

Real movie stars didn't make a film or two and then disappear. They didn't come and go at the whim of audiences. They were established performers who paid their dues and were there year after year on the big screen. Not all their movies were blockbusters, but they always worked. In-between clunkers they turned out some of the most memorable films ever made. James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck...marquis names whose faces were known to movie fans around the world. And the talented, glamorous actresses who played opposite them...Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Liz Taylor, Katharyn Hepburn, Lauren Bacall; those gals had star power.

The Oscars were broadcast in April during the 1950s; for some reason having to do with money I'm sure, they moved up the broadcast to February a few years ago. The venue was different too. Grauman's Chinese Theater hosted the Oscars for so many years until they were moved to several different locations, the latest being the Kodak Theater, until recently when Kodak went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I miss the old Graumann's venue since it had been so closely tied to the Oscars for so many years. The other constant was the wisecracking Bob Hope acting as Master of Ceremonies for the event. Bob made it look so easy; it was only after he was gone that the Academy learned how hard it would be to fill his shoes. Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal have done credible jobs, but nobody will ever be as good as Bob Hope.

Yes, the old Oscar telecasts went on forever and I'm glad they've taken measures to shorten the evening. The speeches used to drone on, as winners thanked everyone they'd ever met in the business. There were some unpredictable and fun moments too, like when Marlon Brando had a lovely young Native-American woman named Sacheen Littlefeather take the stage to refuse his best actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather. There was also the time when a slim young man "streaked" buck naked past the suave British actor David Niven who was onstage to make a presentation. The ever-poised Niven deadpanned, “The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping ... and showing his shortcomings.”

The famous catch phrase of the Academy Awards show used to be: "And the winner is...." Now, because we can't have people's self-esteem bruised by the idea that they are losers, the presenters say instead: "And the Oscar goes to...." If truth be told, I'd rather look at Cary Grant and Myrna Loy than Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez. But hey, that's me.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

It Was the Fifties, Man

Harry Truman is out and everybody likes Ike,

The Dodgers pull out a miraculous Series win.

I trick out my black, red and chrome Shelby bike,

People are still judged by the color of their skin.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Sitting in school, first row, sixth desk back,

Forty naughty boys in white shirts and blue ties,

Step out of line, Miss Langin gives your face a smack,

Poor old lady doesn’t know, in a year, she dies.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Lying in bed dreaming young boy dreams,

Flipping baseball cards, a hundred at a time,

Block-long Cadillacs, chocolate egg creams,

Superman comics still cost only a dime.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Watch American Bandstand on black and white TV,

Justine and Bob dancing around so slow,

The Salk vaccine makes polio a bad memory

Senator McCarthy proves how low a man can go.

It was the Fifties, Man.

At Cape Canaveral we shoot ‘Explorer’ into space,

In Korea, 33,000 men die for freedom in the snow,

Rosa Parks sits down and stands up for her race,

Elvis shakes it up on the Ed Sullivan show.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Castro rules in Cuba, the Cold War rages,

Watson and Crick describe double-helix DNA,

Blondie and Dagwood rule the funny pages,

We had fags, homos and queers, but nobody was gay.

It was the Fifties, Man. 

It was good and it was bad, right and yet so wrong,

Two cars in every garage, but hatreds barely contained,

What ever it was, it was my childhood song,

And I will sing it, with joy unrestrained.

It was the Fifties, Man.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

It's Magic

Ed Sullivan used to have a guest on once in a while called The Great Ballantine. He was a comic magician who always cracked me up...kind of like a Henny Youngman who did corny tricks. Some dormant part of my brain kicked in this morning to remind me of how, as a kid growing up, I was fascinated with magic. Every comic book had ads in the back pages for sure fire magic tricks guaranteed to mystify your friends. Some Fifties kids (like Johnny Carson who rode this interest to a successful career) really got hooked on magic. For me it was enough to mystify my friends, who were easily mystified by the way. Here are a few favorites I remember.

Guess the Card - For novice magicians, this was a simple trick involving nothing more than a deck of cards. You would ask a friend to pick a card from the deck, look at it, and replace it face down back in the deck. Of course every magician worth his
abracadabra had a little snappy patter to distract the mark so that he would not realize you had cut the deck and looked at the card that would now be on top of his card. You then shuffled the deck and, sifting through it, told your incredulous friend that his card was the ace of spades. The trick was easy to do, and the gimmack not immediately apparent to gullible nine year-olds.

Disappearing Coin Box - This trick involved a wooden box with a pull-out tray containing a cut-out circle where a coin would fit. You would bet your mark that you could make his coin disappear and then reappear. He would put his coin into the slot and then, with a flourish, you would slide the tray back into its recess. After uttering a few magic words, you would slide the tray back out to reveal an empty space where the coin had been. Finally, to allay the look of panic on your friend's face as he saw his nickel disappear, you would slide the empty tray back in, say the magic words, and pull it out again with the precious nickel back in its place. The trick of course was that the box had two trays, but a good magician never gave away his secrets.

The Chinese Handcuffs - Of course everyone today knows the secret of this trick, but back then it was fun to watch a kid struggling to get his fingers out of what looked like an innocent little tube made of straw. The harder they pulled, the tighter the cuffs became. The beauty of this device was its brilliant assumption that when people's fingers are stuck in something, they tend to try to pull them apart to get free. Chinese handcuffs were specifically designed to get tighter the harder one tried to pull free. The trick to escape was to push the fingers together, at which point the cuffs would give and release the trapped fingers. This was an especially satisfying trick to pull on bigger, stronger kids whose solution to everything was brute force.

The Money Maker - An ingenious contraption that made it appear that the magician could spin straw into gold, or to put it more mundanely, turn blank pieces of paper into money. You would ask the mark if he could use some extra money; the answer was always yes. You would then taks a pre-cut piece of white paper, feed it through the rollers of the Money Maker, and voilà, out came crisp, dollar bills. A variation on this miracle was to feed one dollar bills into the rollers and have five dollar bills come out. The trick was to pre-load the miracle money into the Money Maker so that it was not visible until the crank was turned. The rollers carried the blank paper to an unseen compartment as it rolled out the pre-loaded currency. This trick was always a show stopper.

Magic has come a long way. I get e-mails today showing magic tricks that dazzle and baffle me, but then like my gullible friends of yesteryear, I'm pretty easy to baffle these days.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

You Can Never Go Home Again

Moving from the East New York section of Brooklyn to the Ozone Park section of Queens, approximately six miles, was a lot more traumatic than the distance might indicate. Geographically, socially and culturally, Brooklyn and Queens were as different as London and Paris. I was in my late teens when my father decided to sell our house on Somers Street (making sure it had already lost most of its value) and relocate the family to a nicer neighborhood. We moved to a small home on 109th Street off 107th Avenue. That we were just a short walk to Aqueduct Racetrack may have had some influence on my father's decision in this matter. "Tony Boots", you may remember, had a penchant for slow horses and investment stocks that were about to collapse.

I was already familiar with the new neighborhood, having spent the last year of high school at John Adams H.S. just down the block from our new house. Since we were still living in Brooklyn, I had to take the 'A' train to my new school. I would get off at the elevated Liberty Avenue - 104th Street stop and walk the few blocks to John Adams. Compared to my old High School, Brooklyn Tech, a huge, squat, inner-city brick building that housed 6,000 boys and no girls, John Adams looked like Beverly Hills High. The campus, off Rockaway Boulevard, looked park-like, with its grassy lawns and tree-lined entryway. The building itself was in the architectural style known as 'Public School Ugly', but they had something that made it beautiful to me...girls!

I knew a few students who attended Adams; they had already made the move from our old block to the suburban streets of Queens. This helped some, but I still felt like an outsider since by senior year all the cliques had been formed and transfer students were eyed suspiciously. I had played varsity baseball at Tech, but never thought of trying out for the John Adams team. I was bitter about being booted out of Tech (entirely my fault) and not really anxious to start over again in a new school. I was down on school in general; I just wanted to get my diploma and get out. It didn't help that I adopted the sulky persona of a rebel who didn't quite fit in with the preppy types at Adams. See link below for details.  

View	The Preppies vs. the Hoods

The new neighborhood was so different from where I had grown up. The streets were lined on both sides with neat, single-family houses fronted by postage stamp-sized lawns. There was also a shared driveway leading to garages at the rear of the yard. It was this shared driveway that drove my poor mother nuts. The neighbors we shared it with were low-lifes, commonly known in Italian as 'cavones' or cafones...rude, ill-mannered peasants. They had a dog that pooped all over the driveway, and no amount of pleading by Mom could get them to control their mutt. Dad was not a confrontational man, and so we endured the mounds. This situation figured prominently in the family's decision to move back to Brooklyn at a time when everyone else was moving out, another of Dad's bad real estate calls. 

Also, unlike our old block where every kind of store imaginable was a short walk away, Queens was different. Most people used their cars to run errands. My Dad never got his driver's license, so it was left to Mom to get around as best she could, taking buses and trains when necessary to do her shopping. Dad left for work every day, but Mom felt cut off, not just because she couldn't walk to get what she needed, but her friends were gone. The women she met on the street and talked to every day weren't there for her. She felt alone and isolated, but not being a complainer, I don't think my father ever fully understood how she detested that house and how badly she wanted to leave it.

Thomas Wolfe is remembered for the quote: "You can never go home again.' That's because 'home' is not so much a place as it is a place in time. Only a few years after we left Somers Street in Brooklyn, it ceased to be what it had been for us...the place where we grew up and where our hearts were. I once made the mistake of driving down my old street to see the house where I spent my childhood. It was a mistake. I barely recognized the old place. The stores were all gone. Tacky aluminum siding covered the elegant brick row houses. No kids played in the street. It was truly a sad experience. Lucky for me, despite Wolfe's assertion, I can go home again, if only in my mind.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

 

Open Sesame

Partly because I'm running out of new topics, and partly because I have more to say on an old one, this blog is about a magic carpet ride that only cost a dime: the comic book. In the dark days before television, computers and video games, kids had few options outside their own imaginations, to help them fantasize. I'm not saying that was a bad thing, quite the contrary, a fertile imagination can open the door to new worlds for young and curious minds. Maybe that's why comic books were so popular with children of my generation. They gave us new doors and new worlds to peek behind, allowing our imaginations to do the rest.

If you didn't grow up loving comic books, as I did, it will be hard for you to understand what they meant to me. The first level of appreciation came from my physical senses. The candy stores where they were sold displayed comic books arranged neatly on shelves so that the titles could be read. They had glossy, brilliantly illustrated covers that shouted their titles: Archie and Veronica, Little Lulu, Red Ryder, Superman, Batman, Lash Larue, Donald Duck...all familiar characters to comic lovers. We stood mesmerized, shiny dime clutched in sweaty palms, eyeballing the new arrivals to see which would come home with us. It took a while.

Once we got our treasure home, the sense of smell kicked in. Nothing smelled like a newly opened comic book. Whether it was the paper, the ink or both, we inhaled that smell like older guys who experience the rapture of that first new car smell. Maybe there a connection. Since new comics were always read in private, we could enjoy the smell without people looking funny at us. Once a new comic had been read, it was as if something went out of it. It sat there begging to be read again, but it wasn't the same comic anymore. The only analogy that comes to mind is from the great Dom DeLouise movie 'Fatso" when he asks Candy Azzara if she's a virgin and she replies: 'almost.'

Other than stimulating the senses, comics took you away. They made you laugh, sucked you into great adventures, and generally stretched the limits of 'the possible.' We knew they weren't real, but for fifteen minutes or so, we allowed ourselves to go along. We shook our heads at Uncle Scrooge's miserly ways, marveled at Lash Larue's skill with a bullwhip, and worried ourselves sick as Superman unwittingly exposed himself to Lex Luthor's kryptonite trap. Today, preserving comics in plastic sleeves and hoarding them as collectibles is in fashion. We put them to better use, sitting on the stoop and trading them among ourselves to get comics you wanted to read, but not badly enough to part with a dime.

Comics were also the gateway to miracle products that would change your life. Charles Atlas invented the dynamic tension system to help build up muscles on skinny guys so they wouldn't get sand kicked in their faces at the beach while their girlfriends laughed. How about the pet monkey that was almost human and, for the paltry price of $18.99, would be mailed to you from the Animal Farm in Miami, live delivery guaranteed. All boys, if they had two dollars, would send away for the amazing X-ray vision glasses that allowed you to see through anything. The leer on the face of the kid wearing them in the ad told us all we needed to know.

They still sell comics today, but they can't compete with Wii or X-Box for kids' attention. For me, that shoe box full of comics under my bed was my 'open sesame' to escape the streets of Brooklyn for a little while. Here's my first blog on comics in case you missed it.

View	Ten Cent Fantasy

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

 LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

Don't Throw That Away!

I can still hear my mother say, on those rare occasions when there was food still on my plate, 'Don't throw that away.' In our house, nothing edible ever went to waste. Italian mothers were in the forefront of the recycling movement. Stale bread with a little parsley and garlic powder added became bread crumbs, soon to make a comeback as the coating on fried veal cutlets. Leftover vegetables of any kind found their way into dinner omelets, a nice dish in the days of meatless Fridays. My father-in-law, Ray, used to talk about local bakeries making something called Washington Cake by crumbling together old, stale cakes, moistening the mixture, and selling it at a reduced price. The link below references something called Washington Pie that sounds similar.
http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/20080125/how-can-i-reuse-or-recycle-old-cake/comment-page-1#comment-1061961

Interestingly enough, some of the most delicious dishes I ever ate came from salvaged food. The most amazing homemade soups often started out as poultry carcasses.  Stale Italian bread cut into large cubes, toasted and served with cooked escarole will take the chill out of any winter day. And if there are any leftovers from that dish, the escarole can be mixed with garlic cloves, olive oil and calamata olives and baked in a pie. Someone told me that their grandmother used leftover Sunday spaghetti to bake into a pie. Never had it but it sure sounds good. Linda's Spaghetti Pie Recipe - Food.com - 254585  My mother-in-law, Belle, was known to make a sandwich out of anything on its last legs.

The culture of poverty raises culinary creativity to new heights. In the nineteenth century, Italy, like other countries, consisted of the haves and the have nots. The aristocratic haves dined lavishly on food and wine grown mainly by the have nots. Poor peasants could not afford to eat meat or even some of the more commonly available vegetables. They relied on fish and eggs for protein, and found ways to make some less expensive vegetables edible. The more adventurous ones took the parts of animals that nobody else wanted and put them to use. Dishes like tripe, now served in trendy restaurants, were born from the desperation of poor people to feed their families. One of my Aunt Anna's specialties was a dish called Sanguinaccio, a chocolate pudding made with pig's blood as a thickener. I'm surprised Jello never latched on to that one. 

Dandelions are a nuisance to gardeners. Italians took the yellow flowers, battered and fried them, and viola, a tasty appetizer. Lambs' heads, lambs' heads for God's sake, are cooked, brains, eyes and all, and served on a big platter. Don't believe me...here's the recipe for this traditional Italian Easter dish. Buon appetito. Capuzzelle di Agnello (Lamb's Head) Maybe Old Buttercup is slowing down, not able to pull that plow as easily as he used to. Does Giuseppi send him to the glue factory? Not on your life...into the pot! We ate some salami made with horse meat in Venice, and it was quite delicious. If salami's not your thang, how about a nice horse stew. horse meat recipes - The Italian Taste

In old Italy, and in old Brooklyn for that matter, being poor didn't equate to being a victim, dependent on the government for everything. You found a way, and that process made you stronger. You didn't whine about it, join in protest marches, or vote only for politicians who promised you a free lunch. You tightened your belt, made the best of what you had, and worked hard so your kids would have more. We as a people are losing that willingness to fight our way out of poverty, and do what it takes to better ourselves. That, my friends, does not bode well for the future.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

The Funnies

As a kid I was a big fan of the Sunday comics in the newspaper. Many of them like Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley and Blondie are still around. Looking at them today, they seem to belong to another age and I can't believe they still run them. My father read the New York Journal-American during the week, but on weekends for some reason, he switched to the Daily News. I remember waiting for him to come home from church with the fat Sunday edition of the News under his arm. Before television was part of our lives, the comics section of the newspaper was so popular that New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia used to read them aloud on the radio to kids glued to their Emerson consoles.

For adventure, The Phantom was my guy. He lived in the Skull Cave with a trained wolf and rode a big white horse names Hero. Created in 1938 by Lee Falk (who also gave us another fav of mine called Mandrake the Magician) the Phantom does not have any supernatural powers but instead relies on his strength, intelligence and fearsome reputation of being an immortal ghost to defeat his foes. The Phantom is the 21^st in a line of crime fighters that originated in 1536, when the father of British sailor Christopher Walker was killed during a pirate attack. Swearing an oath to fight evil on the skull of his father's murderer, Christopher started the legacy of the Phantom that would be passed from father to son. Cool.

When Charles Schulz sold his first comic strip to the United Feature Syndicate in 1950, it was the Syndicate that changed the name from Li'l Folks to Peanuts - a name that Schulz himself never liked. Hard to believe but Charlie Brown and company have been around for over 60 years. Unlike some of the older strips, Peanuts to me is as funny today as in was back then. The characters are timeless as are Schulz's observations about life. The thing that really put Peanuts over the top for me was the drawings. In a few simple panels, we saw Lucy, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty and all the gang teach us that the world can be cruel. Just as you are about to kick that football through the goalposts, someone just might pull it away.

Dick Tracy, a hard-hitting, fast-shooting and intelligent cop created by Chester Gould made its debut on October 4, 1931. The strip was so popular that it appeared on the front page of most newspaper comics sections. Gould did his best to keep up with the latest in crime fighting techniques; while Tracy's cases often ended in a shootout, he also used new technology and advanced gadgetry like the two-way wrist radio to track down the bad guy. The strip also introduced famous Tracy villains like Pruneface, Mumbles and hitman Flattop Jones. Aided by his partner Sam Ketchum and his sweetheart Tess Trueheart, Dick Tracy was the hero of every law-abiding American boy.

Finally, don't ask me why, I loved Popeye. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929.  The strip was created by Pete Segar and revolved around the main characters: Olive Oyl, Popeye's skinny girlfriend, Bluto, Popeye's  muscle-headed nemesis, and Popeye's pal Wimpy who would always promise to "...give you a quarter on Tuesday for a hamburger today." The plots were predictable: Olive Oyl flirting with Bluto, panicking when he took her up on it, and Popeye saving the day after eating a can of spinach for strength. Popeye ate spinach in order to encourage children to eat more vegetables; that sure as hell didn't work for me.

It seems like a million years ago when I sat at our kitchen table in Brooklyn, bowl of Cheerios and cup of coffee in front of me, (I didn't have a cigarette with my coffee until I was 12)  reading these great old comic strips. The world was simpler then, but life goes on. "Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories." ~From the movie An Affair to Remember

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

My Kingdom for a Horse

When I was a kid, cowboys were king. It's only natural that a few of them became my heroes. The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and Lash Larue were high on my list. They tore across the plains, ten-gallon hats jammed tight on their heads as their faithful steeds easily overtook the poor nags the bad guys always rode. When I reached my teens, it's only natural that my admiration for cowboys and their legendary horses like Silver, Trigger and Champ would cause me to forget my Brooklyn street upbringing and lead me to believe I could actually ride a horse.

My first equestrian adventure came in the wild western part of Forest Park in Queens where they had riding stables for many years. My friends and I must have been so bored one cold winter day that we decided horseback riding was a good idea. The poor horses they kept there were as tired and tame as any horses could be. They knew they would never be running in the Kentucky Derby, and had traded in their horsey dreams to carry city kids on their backs all day in exchange for a bag of oats and a place to sleep. We mounted up and rode single file into the woods. The horses knew the trail and the stable guy with us just said to give them their heads...they knew when to run and when to slow down.

We did OK for a while and I thought I was getting the hang of it. The stable guy had not given us much instruction in how to ride, so I just kind of bounced around in the saddle trying to look like I had done this before. All the while I was thinking, how the hell did anybody in the old west ever get anywhere on horseback. We reached a little valley in the park where all the horses stopped in unison for a break, just like union carpenters at coffee time. When it was time to start again, our stable hand said that we were about to ride up a steep hill, and that we really had to plant our heels in the horses' flanks to get them moving.

Now my mother didn't raise no fool, and kicking a thousand pound animal hard didn't seem like a good idea. My friends complied however and their horses were soon galloping up the hill. I gave my steed an apologetic kick and he didn't move. "Harder" stable guy said. I kicked harder and still nothing. "God damn it, kick the f**king horse" said our helpful guide. This time, embarrassed by now that my friends were nearly to the top of the hill, I whomped him good. (Did I mention before that it was a cold winter day, because that fact is about to grow in importance in this story.)

The poor horse took off up the hill like he had been shot, with me holding on for dear life. Just like nobody told me how to stop the first time I ever went skiing, nobody told me how to stop a horse in a full, furious gallop. As we raced to the top of the hill, the rest of the group was waiting with a look in their eyes that said: Is he going to stop? Now, in all-out panic mode, I did what I thought Hopalong would do and pulled back hard on the reins. The horse reared up (this is where the winter day comes into play) and slipped on a patch of ice at the top of the hill. Luckily horses don't have seat belts because I was thrown clear as the horse wound up flat on his ass.

By the grace of God, only my dignity was bruised that day, but from that point forward in my life, the closest I ever got to a horse was in the winner's circle at the track on those rare occasions when my horse won. I now smile knowingly when I hear that great Willie Nelson country song: " "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys."

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association

Go Fly a Kite

The cost of amusing kids has gone through the roof. Most are now into electronic or video games that run around forty bucks on average to buy, not to mention the "box" these games are played on. The cost is not measured in money alone; the real price we pay for kids' addiction to these games is that they rarely play outdoors any more. They become isolated from social interaction with other kids and spend way too many hours playing these games, the worst of which are violent and can desensitize a child to unacceptable behavior. Other games draw kids into fantasy adventures to the point where they develop unhealthy obsessions and blur the line between make-believe and reality.

Fifties kids in Brooklyn never saw forty dollar toys. Sure we had fantasy heroes like Flash Gordon and The Lone Ranger, but when play time was over, we hung up our ray guns and cowboy hats and played baseball, football, punch ball, stick ball and stoop ball. On any given day, we could entertain ourselves for under twenty-five cents. Pea shooters, spinning tops, yo-yos, pitching pennies...all activities that fell within this modest budget. One of my favorite 25-cent toys was a paper kite. We would buy them in Sam's or Louie's candy store for fifteen cents, and add two rolls of string for a nickel each. No kid would settle for flying his kite only as high as one roll would allow; we tied two rolls together to really get that baby up there.

The kites were brightly colored and came rolled around two balsa-wood sticks that needed to be assembled to form the cross-shaped frame of the kite. It took a bit of skill to get the kite together without tearing it. We learned little tricks to keep the kite from breaking apart while being buffeted by the winds at higher altitudes. One such trick was to tie the sticks that formed the frame together with a short piece of string at the point where they crossed. This strengthened the kite and gave it greater stability when aloft. We also experimented with different types of kite tails, an essential addition for ease of flying. Many a mother never learned that her missing pillow case had been torn into strips and was dangling at the end of a kite.

We preferred to fly our kites in places like Highland Park where there were no electrical wires to complicate safe landings. There were also different ways to rig the kite so that it could perform aerial maneuvers. Sometimes we would let two competing kites battle it out in the sky. One enterprising kid tried the James Bond-like trick of tying his fathers old double-edged razor blades to his kite's tail in the hope that it would shred his opponent's kite. (He probably grew up to work in government.) His shabby tactics backfired when he sustained a bad cut after absentmindedly grabbing his kite by the tail as he reeled it in for a landing.

And so for a measly quarter, we got practice assembling things with our hands, learned kite-building innovations (no matter how despicable) that would give us a competitive edge, and got all the fresh air and exercise we could stand. Take that, Nintendo.

  CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association