IT’S BROOKLYN TIME!

I’ve been seeing a lot of nostalgia lately as people use the Internet to reminisce about the simpler times in our lives, the fifties. If you lived through the fifties in Brooklyn, you know how wonderfully simple life was.  There were things that could not translate in other parts of the world, and so I will lend you these.

The ‘Stoop.’

The word has finality to it. It was where three to four steps led up to the entrance to the apartment house. It was the place where you conducted Stoop Ball: a game where a Spaldeen (http://spaldeendreams.blogspot.com) ball was used.  Unlike the official sports of today, stoopball players have no ‘Hall of Fame’ just a lot of memories. The game was simple; you tossed it against the steps and caught it on a bounce, for 5 points. If you hit the corner, and it flew back to you on the fly, 100 points! The beauty of this game was you could play against yourself.

SKELZIES

Skelzies was a simple game where you kept all your bottle caps and used them in a game that required you to go through a series of chalk boxes drawn on a sidewalk. With your middle finger, you shot the soda or beer cap toward the boxes, before your opponent did. You worked the board until you reached the center squares. As many players as were available would play.

PUNCH BALL

Every kid played punch ball. Boy or girl, you were equal, no strength was required, just the ability to punch the ball and run to a base. No uniforms were required, no electronics, no uniforms, just a Spaldeen ball. http://spaldeendreams.blogspot.com

STICK BALL

Look out Mamma, there goes your broom! Taking an old broomstick your mom had, sans the bristles, you taped one end with electrical tape and went to play. A simple Spaldeen ball http://spaldeendreams.blogspot.com was put into play, and two sewers fly ball meant you were the next Duke Snider. First and third base were parked cars, as home plate and second were sewers. Most spaldeens were hit onto the roofs, and climbing those roofs and finding an old Spaldeen that had hardened from age saved many a game.

ROLLER SKATES

Not every kid owned a bike in Brooklyn, but most of us owned a pair of skates. Not the fancy leather laced tie on boot types, but the kid that fitted your shoes with a skate key. The sissies would wear the skate key on a string around their neck, but us real men about 6 to 13 years old kept it in his pocket. You would skate until the metal wheels wore out from the concrete.

Sometimes you needed comfort. So, instead of skates on shoes, we built skooters made from 2x4 and vegetable or fruit crates. Decorated with bottle caps, drawings and using skates, to move it along, we put one leg on the 2x4 and with the other foot we pushed on the ground to give us speed and motion.

HAND BALL

Find a wall tall enough free of obstructions and you had a game, mano a mano. You challenged your friend and it became a quasi tennis match, no racket, no net, just a wall, an opponent and a (you guessed it) Spaldeen Ball. http://spaldeendreams.blogspot.com

KITES

Kites were special. We bought them from the candy or toy store for a quarter or less, and went out to either Callahan, Kelly Park or Highland Park and flew them in the early spring. Stealing rags or pillowcases, we attached tails to the end of the kit and flew till our hearts were contented. The kites came in thin envelopes that accommodated the two balsa wood sticks and the paper kite itself, or sail. A college graduate told this 7 year-old boy that the paper was not a kite, the whole assembled stick, and paper and tail was the kite.

THE HALLWAY

If it rained or was too cold, kids in Brooklyn hung around in the hallways and stairways of apartment houses. This was a legitimate playground since the rain and cold kept us inside. Kids in Brooklyn never took comfort unless they were with their friends and playmates. There was no such thing as a play date, and if you didn’t go out and play, your parents would kick you out, or send you to bed because they thought you were sick!

JUMP ROPE

A girl’s sport, you either jumped by yourself, or you jumped from a line of girls, you recited a chant and counted the number of times before you missed. You could do this better than any boy could, unless he was a boxer.

THE BEST THING OUT OF BROOKLYN

since the 50’s; http://spaldeendreams.blogspot.com

Read it you’ll like it! Also read: http://jpantaleno.blogspot.com/ both are written by a grumpy old guy that I love to read and try: http://lbeeler.blogspot.com/, by the Grumpy old man’s beautiful daughter who will make you laugh, but doesn’t write nearly enough for my taste.