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Skitching

Back in the late 1950s and early 60s, there were many toys available that could put a pre-teen in the hospital. I had most of them including a BBgun (rifle actually) which, when I was tired of hitting tin cans from the garbage, took aim at alley rats and squirrels, never hitting one. It was another toy that one day disappeared from my inventory. My father had a rule about toys and if they were left lying around, they were confiscated forever. The most dangerous, however, was not a toy but an automobile which was the main ingredient to a pastime we called skitching., which was a word, I believe, constructed from ski-hitching, and that is a fairly good definition of what we did.

Back then, skitching only took place in the winter after a good snow. Nowadays, it is a little different and can involve skateboards and bicycles, but in my day, it was wrapping your gloved hands around the rear bumper of a moving car and hanging on as long as you could.

Cars were built different then and the bumpers were chrome plated steel which extended out from the front and rear of the vehicle. There was room to place your gloved hand over the bumper and hang on for dear life. All went well unless you hit a drypatch and then you immediately were disengaged, usually tumbling or being dragged along the street until you let go.

Skitching was only good if the snow was packed down on the residential streets. Salt trucks hardly ever came down, spending most of the time on the busier main streets. As cars went along the snow laden streets, they would leave a rut and, after several cars, a nice snow packed rut was in place, ideal for your feet. Icy streets afforded one the option of any location along the rear bumper and could accommodate at least four kids. Most of the time, it was two, one on each side riding the ruts.

We were not informed too well of the dangers of skitching. Most of the time, since the street was icy or snow packed, drivers would be going fairly slow. Some were not aware of our clinging to the rear bumper (one objective of skitching was to accomplish your attachment to the vehicle without the driver’s knowledge), others would stop the car and yell out the window at us, while others, usually younger drivers, would sometimes swerve or speed up a little to give us a thrill (or perhaps it was a move to eject us from the bumper). No one I knew every got hurt skitching, but there were problems.

At times, your gloves would stick to the bumper and as you let go, your gloves would ride off into the sunset alone. I always wondered what the driver (or other drivers) thought when they saw the gloves dangling from the bumper! You could also lose a shoe if you hit the feared dry spot and, if you were fated to be dragged along the street, you might have to explain how you got so snow-laden and disheveled to your parents.

You could not skitch wearing rubber boots or galoshes so, at times, it was difficult to leave the house without getting stopped and be told to put on your boots. Sometimes, you would wear the galoshes and take them off once outside, and retrieve them later. It was difficult to explain how your shoes and socks got so wet under the galoshes, but we managed to elude the facts, when explaining – “I stepped into a puddle.”

I don’t think anyone of our parents found out we were skitching. I am certain if they did, the punishment would have been more painful then getting tossed into the curb or lamp post. Skitching only took place a few times during the winter and our involvement only around an hour as we look for a car to latch on to, making sure there wasn’t another one too close behind. We weren’t that stupid.

Or were we.

Back to the Table

 

Back to the Table

In an earlier post, I spoke about how we would use Freddie’s picnic table as a winter fort, covering it with discarded Christmas trees until the needles fell off. This unlocked other memories of that old wood table and how it became a staple in our back yard playing.

Many times, when we gathered after school to play, or in the summer when there was a lot more time to develop our imaginations, we used that table as the main prop in whatever genre of fantasy we were going to engage, which was usually based on some tv program or movie one of us saw recently.

If it was a western, the table became a stagecoach, or a bunkhouse for ranch hands. If we played army, then it became a bunker or a tank and maybe a B-29 bomber. It served as a spaceship, battleship, life raft (if you flipped it over), fort and pirate ship. About the only thing it was not used for was its intended purpose.

Those were the days before cell phones and text messages. If you called someone (and you needed parental permission to use the phone), you hoped they were home when the phone rang. There was no caller ID, so someone had to pick up the phone if they were home. Most of the time, however, we just ran up and down the block and hollered for our friends outside the windows. No one ever knocked on the door.

Of course, we had pre-set times to gather like after school (we put homework off until it got too dark for us to be outside), or, during the summer months, after lunch (lunch was always at noon) and after supper (promptly at six). We never ate lunch together at the outside table as each one of us were responsible for checking in at home for vittles and a trip to the bathroom before returning.

The picnic table was also used for playing board games which we did usually after some adult’s complaint about us being too loud and boisterous. Cootie was the favorite – constructing a bug based on the roll of the die. Sadly, the small pieces sometimes fell through the cracks in the table and landed in the grass underneath which prompted a search party lasting several minutes (the little black eyes were the hardest to find).

For me, nowadays, a picnic table is a picnic table and usually found out back of the local tavern in the patio area, topped with french fries or chips and beer. But there are times while sipping my brew sitting at the table with friends, that I imagine for a few minutes that I’m on a pirate ship quaffing brew with me mateys. They’ll never know.

But then, maybe they could be thinking the same thing. Arrrh.

John L

 

My dad was a warehouse-man and mover and it was one of his jobs to clean out discarded and unclaimed storage lockers. This was a cool thing because he would be bringing home, every now and then, old newspapers (which he would sell to a local comic and magazine shop, among other vintage items for the house.

When I was twelve, my father brought home a box of 28 cast metal small statues of John L. Sullivan, bare chested and in trunks, in the traditional bare fist boxing pose. Mom asked him what was he going to do with them and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Something.” Little did I know at the time those statues would lead to my musical career in a high school band.

I was in the Boy Scouts and wanted to be a bugler but I didnt have a bugle. No one did. Then, one afternoon, my cousin and I were roaming the neighborhood and I saw a used trumpet in the window of a resale shop.

We went inside and I asked to see the instrument. I couldn’t play it yet, but the valves worked okay so I asked how much. He wanted thirty dollars for it. I had two. As I was slowly walking out the door, I remembered the statuettes, turned and asked him if he would be interested in 28 statues of John L Sullivan and two dollars.

To my surprise, he told me to bring them in so he could see them. We ran home and I asked my father (it was a Saturday and he was in the basement working on something) if I could trade the statues for a trumpet. He told me if the guy would take them it would be okay.

I cannot remember exactly what they looked like. I do remember they were hollow and the greyish casting was sprayed with a gilt paint. Perhaps they may have been made for an award or presentation but there were no bases for the little guys. My cousin and I placed the box in my wagon and off we went, excited and hoping we could make the trade.

The owner looked through the box, satisfied that they were undamaged, told me they were pretty neat and made the trade. He let me keep my two dollars.

I wonder now and then what happened to those 28 statues. I have never seen one since. As I think about it, they may be worth some money nowadays. My trumpet was in sad shape I soon discovered and, even after a cleaning, didn’t sound that good. It was, however, good enough to take on scout outings and camping trips and I got pretty good at playing it by ear, listening to bugle calls on a record I had gotten.

My father saw my interest in playing bugle and other songs so two years later, when I entered high school and began playing in the band, he bought me a new Silvertone trumpet from Sears for my birthday.

Thinking back, I not only owe my musical career but also my interest in trading and selling collectibles, which I am still doing today, to John L Sullivan. As far as trumpet playing, I gave that up some time ago.

I could never hit the high notes.

In The Pines

The holiday season holds a special nostalgia for me. The neighborhood kids would build our winter fort.

Back in those days, before aluminum trees and realistic plastic, everyone had real pine trees of various sizes and type. After Christmas, after New Years, around the end of the first week in January, the alley would be filled with discarded trees. This was the time we waited for.

Freddie, Jose, Rich and I would drag tree after tree from the alley into Freddie’s yard because he was the only one whose family had a wooden picnic table. We would then proceed to toss the trees on top of each other, around and over the seats, until the table was hidden by pine branches on the sides and top. We would then go inside through an opening at one end of the table and hold our meetings.

It was neat. The scent of the trees surrounded us in the interior and sheltered us somewhat from any wind (as long as it wasn’t too strong). What was even better, was if it snowed and covered the trees. Then it was more like an igloo and better insulated. Most trees still had some tinsel or a few overlooked ornaments on them and we would re-hang the ornaments on the inside of the fort to give it some décor.

We would play in the yard and under the table until finally, after about another week or so, the place was littered with pine needles and Freddie’s parents informed us to remove the trees. With all the needles laying around, Freddie had the only green yard on the block!

The removal and relocation of the trees took place the day before the garbage truck came. We carted the trees and placed them along back fences in the alley, not certain which tree belonged where. Apparently it didn’t matter because no one on the street ever complained about our activities.

I don’t see things like that nowadays. Sometimes a beat up aluminum tree is placed in our alley and that’s about it. My childhood memories of the Christmas holidays are no longer seen. Like certain streets where the neighbors each year had the same decorations and dad would take us kids in the car (or we would sometimes walk if the weather permitted, to see Candy Cane Lane, or Santa Claus Street or Reindeer avenue. It was a community street decoration project and, as people moved or died off, there were less and less Santas and candy canes.

But the pine tree fort will always hold a special place in my memories, especially the scent of 10 to 15 trees surrounding a weather warped old picnic table in my playmate’s yard as we sat inside pretending we were wilderness explorers.

And, of course, Freddie’s green yard.

Secret Place

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Elementary School was not an enjoyable experience for me. Besides the nuns meting out physical pain for infractions, there were the class bullies. And there were a few of them.

In the classroom there was no problem, but at recess they plied their trade of picking on anyone they thought would not stand up to them. I was one of the unfortunate victims of peer abuse.

One year in particular it was difficult to avoid confrontation. I was in fifth grade when the bully group decided it would play Civil War after reading about it in history class. Their idea was very simple. They would come up to you and ask if you were North or South. It didn’t matter which side you declared since they would automatically be on the opposing side, declare you the enemy and pummel you around a bit before confronting another unfortunate straggler.. It didn’t take long to realize you couldn’t win.

One day, when I saw them approaching, I ran off around the side of the school, past the rectory and into the alley in the hopes of eluding the enemy. As I rounded the corner into the alley, I saw the news cart used by one of the parishioners on Sunday to house and sell newspapers to people leaving the church.

It was up against the rear of the school and as I pulled it slightly away from the wall, opened the doors at the bottom where newspapers were stored, found that it was empty and would house a kid my size. I crawled inside and shut the door.

The cart was perhaps five feet long and five feet high and was on rollers. It had the storage area below and an upper part which the newspapers could be displayed and an awning above to keep our rain or sun. And it all folded up into a compact unit when closed. I declared it my secret place and retired there often during recess and lunch period in order to avoid the roving bands of Civil War enthusiasts in the playground (which was actually a parking lot and the street in front of the school).

When necessary (like getting back from lunch too early and wanting to avoid confrontation in the playground), I would sneak around to the back of the school and climb into my little fortress where I would munch some penny candy and read a comic book until I heard the warning buzzer sound for the resumption of classes.

This went on for several weeks, maybe a few months, until one day I arrived to find the doors padlocked. My secret place had been discovered, no doubt because I had left telltale candy wrappings and/or comic books within. It was okay, however, because the Civil War was winding down and things would be quiet until a different method of bullying was employed. I would just have to make sure that I didn’t return to school after lunch all too early.

Perhaps I could watch a little more of Lunchtime Little Theater or Uncle Johnny Coons and eat a bit slower from now on.

Dog’s Life

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Part of growing up in the 1950’s was living vicariously through the television characters we admired. Every kid emulates his role models and we played, acting out our kid heroes in the back yard with their lives of adventure and mystery. One problem was that most of them had intelligent pets which guided and helped them, and if not the animals themselves, save the day.

It never occurred to me that most all the kid heroes of my day were orphans. There was Rusty on Rin-Tin-Tin, who was taken in by the kindly soldiers of Fort Apache. He had a captain-father figure, a bumbling sergeant uncle and a canine German shepherd brother who was more intelligent than the troopers. When we played, my friend Jose would give the famous call, “Yo, Rinty” hoping his dog Sandy would rush to his aid and attack us, but instead she just went off somewhere in the yard to poop.

I used to watch You Asked for It on Sunday evenings until one episode scared me (I think it was the one on the haunted Winchester mansion in California) so I switched channels to Lassie. There was Jeff who lived on a farm with his mom and a chronically exhausted grandfather and, of course, Lassie, the family collie, who just happened to be smarter than all of them.

Although Jeff had a chum named Porky, his down-the-road neighbor, the story revolved around Lassie and her uncanny ability to sniff out bad guys or situations that would occur in a rural setting like falling down a well, getting lost, occasional wild animals or unscrupulous carnival barkers and escaped bank robbers.

Then there was Fury, the story of Joey who lived on a ranch with his uncle and an old bunkhouse occupant, Pete, and Fury, the horse no one could tame and ride except, of course, Joey. There was also Corkey the circus boy, another orphan who had the standard cast of uncles and such but lucked out with not just an elephant pal, but lions, tigers and bears, oh my!

There was Spin and Marty, a fifteen minute serial on the old Mickey Mouse Club show. We would tune in every afternoon to see what was happening to a group of summer camp boys (all 12-13 year old white kids as I remember), ranging from a precocious rich kid with a butler to the urban middle class kid who learned to get along with each other through riding the range and singing songs around the campfire which became another Disney hit song, “Way Out There on the Triple R.” I guess that’s what prompted me to join the Boy Scouts at age eleven.

I admired these TV kids because I, for one, had never been to a circus; never had a horse but, like Jeff and Rusty however, I did have a dog at one point who, unfortunately, did not save me from rustlers and thieves but mostly sat in the yard licking himself or dry humping the living room sofa.

These shows had conflict and resolution and a moral to the story as the characters dealt with family and social problems. Guidance was provided by the adults and companionship from the less brighter friends and the love and devotion from a super intelligent pet.

All these shows had an effect on my personality and it took a while to realize that their perfect lives were not be be jealous of since it was all entertainment and not all kids had pets, loving parents, perfect friends and middle class homes, nor did they go to summer camps or vacation spots. Later, the disappointment and sadness of learning how my childhood idols turned out in later life, made me realize how we can be influenced by television, believing our lives are less fulfilled or happy than our TV counterparts. Especially when they had a dog who could save them from disaster. Or a butler.

You Can’t Go Back

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A few years ago, on a lark, I decided to visit the old neighborhood where I spent the first eight years of my life. It turned out to be a bittersweet experience as places I remembered were no longer in existence and those that did remain had changed.

The old apartment building on the corner of Francisco and Diversey looked about the same although the old windows had long been replaced and there was an iron fence around it now. Many of the old buildings had survived and there were new ones (built after I had moved) dotting the street. The vacant lot where we used to gather and watch the fireworks now had a building and the big side yard by the alley where we used to play for hours on end was now a private parking lot for tenants and what remained of the back yard was fenced off so I could not see in.

I walked along the alleyway noticing the back yards where we played also were gone, replaced by garages. As I walked back up the alley to Francisco, I tried to peer between the wooden slats of the fence to see if the hole we began to dig back in 1950 to reach China was still there. It wasn’t.

Although the food store on the southeast corner was still there, it was no longer Edmund’s but changed to Logan Square Grocery. The tavern where my dad used to get his empty milk bottles filled with beer was still there but beer had now changed to cerveza.

Gone were the bakery, fish market, Johnny’s meat market and, sadly, Zappa’s Confectionery. Many of the businesses along my old childhood route were gone and the buildings rehabbed. Only the cleaners down the street and the grocery looked about the same.

I looked northward down Francisco and wondered if the path I took to school every weekday was still navigable. That street held both good and bad memories, like the time I bit into a rotten walnut, or my school chum who held me at knife point the day we played hookey. All stories I hope to eventually relate to you.

The path was blocked now by the Kennedy expressway so I had to turn down Richmond and head back to Diversey where I took it to Albany and headed north toward the steeple of the old church as a guide.

When I got to the church and school where I had graduated kindergarten and transferred out of the 3rd grade when we moved, I discovered that the old parish, St. Francis Xavier had, in 1991, combined with another and became known as Resurrection. The church itself was locked and I could not see in to determine if the interior was much like I had remembered, but on the outside it appeared the old stained glass windows were still there.

I walked down the side and behind the school, rectory and convent where I took a few months piano lessons, and into the playground. Indistinct shadows and voices surrounded me as the memories of the past became more vivid in my imagination. As I walked back down the street to my car, I noticed the building which housed the old penny candy store where I hoped to one day get a pink peppermint (another story), was still standing, looking the same except it was shuttered and boarded.

As I got into my car, a young Hispanic women exited the church rectory and, as she turned onto the sidewalk, she caught sight of me and smiled. I smiled back. It was her neighborhood now and I was merely the past, but I felt, in that instant, the generations had been bridged and it felt satisfying.

I headed back to Francisco for one more quick look hoping to gain entry to the rear of my old apartment building to see if the book of matches me and my buddy Johnnie hid under the porch stairs was still there. The gates were locked and the porch appeared repainted several times. The matches were well hidden, tucked between the risers and maybe one day they will be discovered and someone will wonder what the heck they were doing there. Or maybe Johnnie went back later and recovered them.

Come to think of it, I dont remember why we hid them in the first place (I was only six). But I do remember what they were used for. I had a toy steam shovel and we could stuff paper and twigs in the rear boiler section and watch the smoke come out as we pretended to excavate the dirt in the front of the building and maybe, if there was time, dig a hole to China.

Toy Soldiers

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Freddie, Jose, Rich and I would play “war” at least twice a week after school. We played war in two different ways and the question we asked before starting was, “Do you want to play little or big?”

If we played “little,” the rubber toy soldiers were gathered out of their bag or box and assembled in the battlefield of dirt, rocks and popsicle stick fences near the old apple tree in my back yard. Back then, we could buy assorted soldiers in various poses in a bag of 50 for around a dollar. You could buy them in green or grey and sometimes other colors so you could tell which soldiers belonged to whom. They were the same soldiers and the only difference were their color, and we had hundreds of them ready to engage in battle in a designated area along the fence line where there was more dirt than grass.

There were rules when playing “little.” As we tossed small clumps of dirt or pebbles at each others forces, they toppled over when hit. If the soldiers landed face up, they were only wounded and could engage in the next battle. If they landed face down, they were out of the action and laid there until one or the other army was still standing. There is a toy cemetery in the backyard near the tree which still contain the rubber bodies of scores of rubber soldiers who no longer could stand on their own and were given burial.

When we played “big,” the yard became “no man’s land.” We used our cap pistols or Mattel tommy-burp weapons to dispatch each other. Our parents preferred our playing “little” instead of “big” because of the running and shouting and noise we would make as we yelled, “I got you!” and “No ya didn’t!” and, of course, the verbal and guttural attempted sounds of the weapons we were firing.

Getting shot and having to fall down in Jose’s yard was difficult because he had an old dog named Sandy whose only outdoor activity was crapping anywhere in the yard she felt like. Many a time a truce was called while one or more of us went home to wash the dog poop off our arms and hands. We died in battle many times over and, in the end, when our mothers called us in for supper, we would resurrect ourselves from the battlefield, prepared to fight another day. After all, it was pretend.

Ten years later I was in Viet Nam. A real soldier in a real war.

We had uniforms, helmets, flak-jackets and weapons. I carried and fired a single barrel double-aught buck shotgun, an M-79 grenade launcher, an automatic M-14, several hand grenades and a boot knife. My playmates would have been impressed. I could cause some serious damage!

This was real war. Dog poop was replaced with feces covered punji sticks, soda pop cans we used as kids for grenades were replaced with cans filled with explosives for booby-traps. Tommy-burp guns were replaced with 7.62mm rounds of ammunition, AK-47s and M-16s. And when people got shot it hurt. When people died, they stayed dead. No one’s mother yelled out a window telling them to stop and come home for supper.

I wondered if any of my fellow soldiers, and even the enemy, played with toy guns and rubber soldiers when they were 10 years old. Were they the backyard heroes and platoon leaders who led their men to victory with water balloons, wooden swords and clumps of dirt?

Today, you don’t see kids playing war in the neighborhood. They can’t. People would be calling the police if they saw half a dozen kids chasing each other with (toy) weapons. And there is always the fear that someone would shoot back, only it would not be playing around.

Maybe it’s time we stopped playing war altogether.