I was around 11 years old, growing up in East New York ,Brooklyn. I lived in the Boulevard Projects which were built on garbage. It was built on a swamp, the mosquitoes were many and huge. The planes would pass overhead, so low and so loud and always during the ending line of a TV show. You'd say , "what did he say" and have no idea what happened. Behind the projects was several important geographical locations. There was Sherwood Forest, which were woods. They caught some guy growing pot there back in the 50s when most people never heard of pot. Then there was the barracks, these were quansett huts that the government put up for veterans that stretched from East New York to Canarsie. There were a few farms, horse stables, and people had goats. Can you imagine goats in Brooklyn. Then there was Volcano Mountain, it was a big hill, all the way in back through the weeds, and there was a big crack in it with steam coming out. Some say there were blue rats living in it. Some kids would tie long strings on a branch and put gum on the end to catch a blue rat. I never saw one , but i heard they were big. I'm also not sure if I was 9, 11, or 12. There was a pond there, and we'd burn tires and float on wood pallets that we called rafts. Behind the school PS 273 was a sewage plant. The principal of the school's son, fell into that sewage pool and drown. We were very careful after we heard about that .
We used to play behind the sewage plant. we'd walk past Flatlands Ave. toward the Belt Parkway, and under the overpass, hmmm under the overpass , that doesnt sound right. Ok under the viaduct. We would pass Shitz Creek. that's where we would play. On the way we also passed sand hills with tons of dead cats. Years later I figured the ASPCA must dump them there. Anyway back to Shitz Creek. me and my best friend Sandy would play there. There were big mounds with red flags on them, that was our safety zones. Because the stream that went between the hills was water from the sewage plant. and by no means did we want to step in that sewage water.We thought if we stepped in it we would get Polio. Polio was a big deal back then. So we jumped from mound to mound, never landing in the pee-poop water. We were so proud. Eventually we headed home. Told our tale of mound jumping. Then the older kids killed our joy, destroyed our moment of proudness. They told us the red flags marked a "do not go near it" area, because those big brown safety mounds were mound of human shit. We were jumping from shit hill to shithill to avoid the pee water. YUCK!!!!!!
After we found out about that , we stuck to our usual, setting the weeds on fire. We played in what we called the "lots'. Many were adjacent to farms. Our favorite one was near the stables. To be more exact "Rockin Horse Ranch". The owner , Lou, I believe went to jail for murder. I used to walk the sweaty horses and get free riding time. My favorite horse was Blackie. some horses they treated badly. Too slow horses were Ayrab and another wads Rosie Buckin'. I've seen them hit those two with pipes , and boards to make them run,, really sad. I love horses. Blackie you would just make a clicking sound and he would take off .Anyway, i also shoveled alot of horse manure. Basically I had a shitty childhood. Back to the fires. We would usually stop by the glass factory ,, i dont really know if it was a glass factory but they had these half cylinders of glass they would throw away,,, and we used them as magnifying glasses. There were a whole bunch of factories and still are, around Elton St and Stanley Ave. We would take the magnifying glasses and burn each others arms with it. But the best would be to burn a twig and start to blow on it , then a fire would start, we would make the fires so big that the lots would catch fire, we would ring the fire alarm on those red things on the corner and wait for the fire engines to come and put it out ,,, Pyromaniacs! that's what we were. But it was fun. We didnt have video games to shoot video guns and kill villains. We made fires. Yes of course we did other things between age 7 and 12.We would catch grasshoppers, butterflies and bees. My mother used to freak out when i would come home with a jar of bees. Oh when it rained, tons of worms would come out. So cool. In the projects they had huge lawns, so fun to play in, but they would give fines if they saw you on the grass. It was keep off the grass. And we would always be playin in the grass. We would run from the "maintenance men" who gave us fines. We had nick names for them,, the most famous was Googoo eyes, he knew our names and would fine us even though we ran away. It was $5 and would go on the rent bill. we would play games in the grass, like 3 feet over the boundary line, ring-a-leev-io,, chicken fights (you go on someones back and bump into other people on backs and knock them over),, or poison ball was popular, kinda like dodge ball but with a pink rubber ball, you would get the ball and fire it at someone, if they caught it you were out , if you hit them with it , they were out. Lots of good games. Punch ball, Johnny on a poney. I may as well mention, in the middle of the grass, under a big tree, there was a manhole cover. In there, rumor had it, that there was a kid named Billy. He wore a yellow t-shirt and was 50 feet down in the manhole. I swear i've seen him down there. Everyone swore they saw him. Speaking of seeing crazy things. In the back by volcano mountain, there was a witch. One day she chased us for about half a mile,.that old witch and her broom , it was so scary. we ran into a building and hid. I guess thinking back, it must have been just some old ugly lady ,,, well on second thought , it was definitely a witch and it was unforgettable. So we'd be back home, around say 4 or 5 in the summer. Stinking from fire, after setting those lots on fire, My mom would say in a scolding voice, "where were you!?" Sandy and me would stink from the smoke, and we'd say ummmm nowhere. Sometimes, we'd stop before the fires, and one of us would hold the door open at Pete and Marty's candy store ,the other would grab candy and we'd run so fast. I guess we were 10 in the candy stealing days, 11 tops. So obvious, but we always got away with it. I'd go for the Clark Bar, or Necco Sky Bar, and Chuckles for Sandy. My other best friend Gregory would be a door holder but he ran so slow, it was a problem ,we would have to drag him. Gregory was Black, and his family was from the South , I think South Carolina. That was my first exposure to rock candy, and to milk that was flavored with just sugar. We used U Bet chocolate syrup in my house. But down in apt 1C , we had rock candy and sugar milk.Gregory's brother was in the Roman Lords a big street gang at the time, so we looked up to him. We looked up to alot of tough guys. We also dressed tough, even at 10. We had thick black garrison belts, we wore it with the buckle to the side. we wore Wrangler jeans. we called them dungarees. Sometimes we would sharpen the buckle. We bought studs at Carl's Motorcycle shot and put them on our jackets. We wore rabbit feet on the zippers of our motorcycle jackets or on our loops. Our bicycles had streamers in the hand grips. baseball cards in the spokes to make a cool sound. handle bars up in the air i.e "monkey bars". We also had scooters made of a milk crate a two by four and roller skates. Our roller skates were Union Hardware number 9 or 5 , i forgot. You knew it was Spring when you started hearing the metal skate wheels in the street. Oh i forgot to mention the smoke truck.
The neighborhood had tons of mosquitoes.. so this orange truck, more like a jeep, would come around. It emitted this huge cloud of smoke. It smelled so good., we would put bandanas over our faces . maybe 10 of us, and run behind the truck in the cloud of smoke. As we found out later on, the smoke truck was spraying DDT,, a poisonous insecticide that has been made illegal for decades. No wonder i'm nuts.
Around 7 pm in the summer , the ice cream truck would ring his bell ,, there were 4, good humor, bungalo bar, hiya Al and Johnny. Hi ya Al came all the way from Delancey St. to ENY. he gave us prizes with the ice cream. Mostly we would get Marino's ices , eat it with a spoon and dig a hole in it , until there would be a hole all the way through it. We called it making a donut. Good Humor was good for the chocolate eclair bar,and when we were done we would sharpen the sticks. Yeah, we'd make weapons. Johnny had bootleg ice cream and was some kind of criminal. His father Rocky had great italian ices. There was also a knish man who had a metal salt shaker on the wagon, the salt was chained to the wagon. Who in the world would want to steal his salt shaker. Cherry bombs and caps were big,,, sometimes we would bang the caps with a rock. The knees on our pants were always ripped. Either from caps bangin, or from playing a game named Skelly. It was a game where you shoot a bottle cap into numbered boxes. The caps were filled with corks from other caps or wax, or clay . It was a great game. The girls mostly played Potsy, we would play occasionally and a key was the best thing to use to throw in a potsy numbered box. Pea shooters were the rage, but pretty dangerous. Speaking of dangerous. There was a school play, A Christmas Carol. I played a wooden soldier. my mother made a nice old time toy soldier hat for me.But to make it more real , I took my father's japanese rifle with me to the play. It was a bolt action rifle, bayonet, that took 7.7 mm huge copper head bullets. yeah I had bullets with me too. And a samarai sword. i was the "realest" soldier around. When i was on stage during the rehearsal with the rifle and pointed it after pulling the bolt. A teacher screamed, a male teacher I think it was Mr. Rosansky, grabbed me. Disarmed me. called my parents. Boy was I in trouble. I always seemed to get in trouble. My friend Sandy , somehow always talked his way out of trouble.
Oh did I mention I was always late for school. To this day, i'm still always late. In Junior high school it said in my graduate album, "better late than never'. So when you would get to school late , you would have to wait on the "late line" and you would get a demerit. So I had a plan. I became the lateline monitor. I even had a badge.It was a yellow round metal pin that said Marshal. anyway, after i became late line monitor , i was never late. As a matter of fact, noone in the school was late, because i was the last one to show up. What a great plan.
Well that's enough for now on growing up in East New York, It was alot of fun. Home-made fun, everyone knew each other , the doors stayed unlocked. Always something to do. next time i'll talk about Tiger Lady, and sharing veal cutlet sandwich at Nino's. So bye for now.
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