pee dance

Happy Holidays to all my readers and fans.  I just looked at my post last year about Christmas tipping, check it out if you didn't see it.
     My new year resolution for this year , is not to make fun of old guys dancing on the Men's room line, waiting to pee. It is amusing watching  a bunch of guys over  50 doing the "pee dance".  All sorts of creative steps, but they all keep to the basic move, of a hand in their pocket holding themselves. I think in crowded places like stadiums,  theatres etc, there should be a special line for senior citizen men.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

When I was  a kid growing up in E.N.Y.  I went to elementary school P.S. 273 aka the Wortman School, we had a lot of fun.  Kindergarten all I remember were 2 pretty teachers and making sand castles in the sand box.  First grade got better, I had my first crush on Sue Ellen. I'm not sure if it was the cool red pencils she used to bring to school that got my attention. I got everyone's attention in 1st grade as i started my carreer in comedy, yes,  I was the class clown. My report card confirmed that I was the  "class clown". What an achievement. But Miss Glaser loved me anyway. 2nd grade the Ms Levinson was a little stricter and called my mother in to talk to her about my not paying attention in class.  I was pretty funny though.
Third grade was a nightmare,  Miss Bauman was  a  short, blonde, nervous woman who had the loudest screams ever.  Half of the time she was screaming at me. Even though I was  innocent.  There was a song on the radio sometime around then, called Charlie Brown, he said in the song " why is everyone pickin' on me"?  My good friend Sandy used to throw paper airplanes at Ms. Bauman when her back was turned. Immediately she would turn , yell at me,  make me stay after class and write on the board 100 times," i will not throw things in class". Sandy was a good looking kid, great athlete, romeo, and charmed the teachers and everyone else. We hung around together , but somehow I always got into trouble,, one way or another.
One time we were playing with an old garden hose.  He tells me put the hose to my ear and listen to him talk thru it.  So I do, and  I thought that was  a cool echo sounding voice. He then tells me to say something to him. I put the hose to my mouth and get ready to say hello, and Sandy blows hard through the other end. The result was  my getting a mouth full of spiders and dirt, and trench mouth.  I was tricked, DANG!
Another time we were playing , throwing rocks. Wouldn't ya know it,  sandy threw a rock and it cracked my head open. I had to get to the hospital for  stitches. I got a  "hole in the head".  Anyway, 4th grade i had Miss Kessock, she was my favorite teacher of all time. She used to read to us. I remember her reading Mary Poppins and  Pippi Long Stocking.  I used to  look at the shortest books, that mostly had horses or cowboys, like  Cowboy Sam,  the Black Stalliion, etc.  Miss Kessock used to give us a choice of writing a book report or drawing a picture about the book.  Did I mention I was the slowest reader ever, and i hated to read.  However, I was a great artist. I used to take a book from the back of the room. Usually birds, reptiles, dinosaurs, were the titles and I would draw one. I always had a crowd of kids around me when i drew these pictures. I was  really good at that. Also, being the class clown, Miss kessock actually liked my sense of humor.  She was the best. But, not learning to read or not reading kind of effected my schooling later on , and hatred for  term papers and reading assignments.
     We normally went home for lunch.  There were 4 of us in a contest of who ate the fastest. We used to run home, eat a sandwich and run back to school. All within a  half hour.  This guy David was usually the winner.  I used to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich most days. i think David didnt eat and just lied to us. But who knew, I would  shove that sandwich down my throat so fast, almost choke in order to win. i think i won once. Maybe David actually ate that day.
      Lateness was a big problem for me. I  was late for school everyday.  I still have a lateness problem. It must be a disease, late-itis, and it is incurable. When I got to school , i had to wait on the lateline, then  write my name and a report would go to the principal's office.  In the  5th grade, I figured out the cure for my lateness.  I became the  lateline monitor.  There was no more latelines. Since I was the monitor, and was the last to arrive, no one was ever late again. Including me. It was genius.
      My teacher  Mr. Rosansky used to walk around the room and firmly push his middle finger back with his thumb, and flick it hard at my head , after every wise crack I would make in class. He did that to all the  clowns in the class.  It was kind of fun to get  popped in the head.  It made you feel "special".
Me and a few of my classmates started the song writing society. Since we had to sing the Star Bangled Banner,  My country Tis  of Thee., etc  we wrote our own words. 3 of us collaborated on the lyrics, and sang them loud in the  auditorium during assembly . Also during practice in the classroom. Words such as the Star Strangled Banana,  Jose can  you see instead of  oh say can you see. etc etc. good clean fun.
We also had a group named after a pickpocket on the TV show Yancy Derringer. The Jody Society. We used to walk around and pick pocket peoples things, usually it was  pens. At the end of the day we showed how good we were, and emptied our pockets.  Somedays  I had 10 pens. I was  such a good pickpocket. I made my mother proud.  NOT!
      6th Grade was Mr. Kerr, a good guy, there was also a real tall teacher, who had a TV show called Mr. Wizard. The guy was a Science whiz.  My class clownmanship excelled in 6th grade.  Mr Kerr even came to my house to brag to my parents what a clown I was. Well he didn't exactly brag. He wanted to know how to shut me up in class.
       Roller skating was a  big thing from  kindergarten to   6th grade. We used to skate great. Wearing  Union Hardware no. 9  skates.  Big clamps,  always  had a skatekey, and wore it around my neck.  The leather  strap would get tucked in a cool way. The metal wheels against the concrete, would make a sound that let you know spring was here. Everyone would be skating. I could skate backwards, frontwards and pretty fast. I had a cool hockey stick, that said Rangers on it, and  i taped it up really cool.  We used to play roller hockey in the PS 273 park. We also played roller derby.  I was even blood brothers with  Sandy,  Bernie, and  Moony. We cut each others wrists with our pocket knives and held it together, vowing the blood brother oath.  It was pretty cool , we thought back then. And I am still in touch with my  blood bro Moony.  Sandy, died  in the  70s.  Bernie I imagine is off in some far off land. He a very political 6th grader.  Well those were the good ol' days.
         Yep,  I'm still late.  I'm late right now for an appointment.  OUCH!

health food

They say certain chocolate is good for you. The more cacao the better.  I tasted a chocolate bar
that had 85% cacao. It was terrible.  So now instead of eating 85% Cacao
I prefer 100% Ppig

at a sushi bar

I was at my local sushi bar the other night. They had 3 sushi chefs working most people assume chefs in sushi restaurants are Japanese, but that is not the case. Also a common assumption is that all sushi chefs are trained sushi chefs. In fact, most sushi chefs in the U.S. are sushi chefs that have done their apprenticeship in Japan, under a master for  7 years.  O.K. back to my story.
     This place I have been to many times, so I do know the ethnicity of the chefs. One guy, a short, stocky guy with huge hands is from Burma, the guy in the middle who wears a black hat is from Mexico and a very funny guy, the third has a very zen-like, focused appearance and looks very Japanese.
      A woman is sitting next to me at the sushi bar. I engaged in a conversation with her and she is Chinese and has just come back from Hong Kong. She has a heavy Chinese accent and loves to eat.  As I was pigging-out on an extraordinary quantity of Japanese food, this woman was outdoing me on the quantity she was  eating.  She had a  huge bowl of  yosanabi ( japanese noodle,seafood soup) in front of her, plus various other dishes she had already finished. Now she tries to order some  sushi directly from the sushi chef. This is from the  zen-like sushi chef.  She says in a thick Chinese accent, " I would rike some sushi, same rike rast time. I want a rot"   The sushi chef, replies in his heavy accent, back to her " zushi?  you want zushi"?  She says "  zushi? what that?  I want sushi."  He says  "  zushi, with Lice"? she says  "SUSHI"  .   I feel I must help them.  You see the  zen- like chef, although appearing to look very Japanese, and he even speaks Japanese, is Chinese and speaks Chinese.  I know this for a fact, as a good friend of mine is Chinese and has spoken to this chef in Chinese.  So I say to the woman"  you are Chinese. He is Chinese.  If you speak in Chinese , you will get what you want!"  She asked him in Chinese, he smiled, and answered in Chinese. They began conversing at rapid speed.  She got tons of sushi. She was  very happy. The sushi chef was  very happy.  I was very happy

blueberries and hunting

I was 12 years old,  in Swan Lake, NY after a long day of blueberry picking. Making sure not to pick the green ones, or even the  reddish blue ones.  The big plump blue ones were what we wanted. everyone had a big pot to fill.  The end result was the best, that was the  warm blueberry pie my mom would bake.  The sun was strong in the blueberry patch, occasionally you would hear of an old person  passing  out from sun stroke. Occasionally you would hear about  a young person who stepped in a fresh pile of cow poop.
Well , more than occasionally, and  more than occasionally that person was  ME.   Blueberry picking  was  fun, you would encounter, bees,  wasps, and maybe even see a butterfly. I used to like wiping the frosty thin coating from the blueberry and make it look shiny. I also like to throw a few at someone's head and watch it  Splat.  We used to pick blueberries  often, when they were ready to pick.
        In the same area people would  hunt, that was  later on in the year.  I remember  in Ronnie's garage in Swan lake they had a huge deer head on the  wall. I think it was a  12 point buck.  Someone would say when looking at the head on the wall, " boy he must've been runnin' pretty fast".  Took me years to finally get that joke.  Anyway, there was no hunting in the  summer, but we heard about it.  My father,  one day did some hunting in the summer though. He was a great shot. He took out his  7 shot 38 revolver , or it may have been a  32 calibre, i forgot.  It was a collector's item, having that  7th shot to fool someone who was  counting shots. Well, that is if you were in a shoot out. Not something that occurs too often.  So back to the shooting,  my father draws the gun, and shoots 3 shots in the sky and  2 ducks fall to the ground.  Unbelievable!, the man was a great shot. He scored "expert" in the  police shooting test, and had a medal to  prove it.  He was a police officer. His son, on the other hand, always managed to do illegal or semi-illegal things.  My dad, also was hired one summer to shoot a  giant turtle, that was in Dixie Lake and turning  boats over. So we went out turtle hunting, of course I put a red devil lure on my fishing line and was trolling for some perch or pickerel, while we were scouting  big turtles.  he saw a head bob up. It was the turtle, dad shot at it,  missed.  He had one more chance but missed again.
      Speaking of hunting, and we weren't allowed to in the summer. Also, a 12 year old, I don't believe is allowed to hunt. Speaking of  illegal.  We got David Gorilitzky's big brother's  22 calibre rifle and  set out to the blueberry patch to  hunt.  We figured, if the grownups can hunt deer, and talk about how good it was to eat,  we could hunt better eating   game.  We tracked down  our prey,  it was  huge. It was  right there, maybe 10 of them, big black and white cows.  Yeah, what could be better eating than a cow.
I had the first  shot,  BOOM,  i hit the cow in the stomach,  she started running.  they all kind of scattered.  We heard some old guy with a hat, yelling at us.  "are you kids crazy?  I'm gonna kill yas"  " my cows won't give milk for  a  week now."  We ran so fast.  Got back, hid the rifle, and  prayed no one would find out.  Somehow, we did get caught.  I wonder how  that happened. A pissed off farmer, some amazed parents.  And two kids, who were in deep trouble for  shooting  a  cow. It's sad that we didn't get to eat that cow.  We got yelled at, a little punished, but  it was a fun day hunting. We were kinda  proud.

Deaf people in the restaurant

I was eating in a restaurant and across from me were two women who were deaf.
They were conversing away, using sign language and then also text messaging each other .
I thought that was pretty cool that they were texting.  After they left, I notice 2 other women
conversing away, hand signs flying.  I say to myself, what's going on here? I've eaten here 100s of times
and never saw so many people  who were deaf.  On my way out, I got closer to the second pair of women, who were still waving their hands in deep discussion.  But I was wrong, they weren't deaf.  They were
Italians, just being expressive.

the tailor

There was a really good clothing sale at Barney's warehouse.  I bought a sport jacket that normally costs
$2500 for  $280, and  a suit that  was  $3400 for  about  $300. I felt proud of myself, since there werent that many really high quality jackets and suits, I picked through 100's and found these. The sizing was a little off, so I need to get them altered.  I decide to go to a tailor I used to frequent, who knows how to make suits from scratch. I figured, even though his prices  are way high, he would do a good job and it would  be worth it, since i saved so much already.  So, I hadn't been to this tailor  for  some years, the minute i walked him , he greeted me by name.  Wow, I mustve been a really good customer.  So I try on the clothes , he marks them, and  pins them.  I come back  in a week to pick it up. I try on the suit.  the chest is too big, the back is saggy, the shoulder is big. I try on the  sports jacket, the shoulders are too big.
Meanwhile he wants  $100s of dollars for the work he has done.  I say " this suit and jacket do not fit right"
He says, " yes the  chest , shoulder and back are not a perfect  fit".  So I say, " well you are a great tailor, these should fit much better".  He says "  you want it to fit perfect?  Now that's a big job! that costs a lot"
 I'm like, WTF.  You mean I come here an pay you to fix my clothes so they don't fit right, because  if I want them to fit right,  THAT"S A BIG JOB,,,,,, I"m still shaking my head.

gang war and a broken toe

It was 1965, a restless time in East New York.  We were hanging out at Murray's Pool Room on
New Lots Ave. and we got word that there was going to be a massive "gang war".  I rounded up a few of my friends. Sandy Sick had told me  everyone from New Lots Boys and  S & V ( Stanley and Van Siclen), were going to meet at the  Library Park on New Lots Ave by the old  Dutch Church.
It was expected that about  200 tough kids from  George Gershwin Junior High School were going to
come to fight. So  me Fuzzy,Mooney, Eric, Mousey, and  Ronnie went to the park.  Gershwin let out at 3, and we were at the park. The four of us with sticks , pipes, and knives.   Only 4 of us, where were the New Lots Boys?  New Lots Boys were tough.   A couple of them were portrayed in the movie Goodfellas.  Joe Pesci played  Tommy D,  and  Tommy Stabile was mentioned. NLB  were tough and crazy, and we were waiting for them to join us. The 200 or so guys from Gershwin ( actually from Brownsville) were going to kill us 4 skinny kids.  I was getting  nervous, but ready .. We were all ready.  we all had  "heart'". A term used to describe the stupidity of  ready to fight  or maybe die for a  "cause" or a "group" or a neighborhood.  You knew your boys, had your back.  But  where were these guys who  we were joining.
we began to see in the distance , huge numbers of these Gershwin people.  They were already  near Hegeman Ave.  we were ready with our weapons. No NLB to be found. All of a sudden a cop car with blazing siren pulls up. it was from the  75th precinct. They screech to a halt. Two cops get out with guns drawn, and tell us drop our weapons.  They  tell us , "hands on the fence", and they search us. throwing our switchblades, pipes and sticks on the ground.  One cop says to me, "what are you doing here", I say  " i'm doing nothing".  He takes his  huge foot with hard shoes on and  slams it down on my foot. My big toe I was sure was broken.  The cop then  had a backup vehicle arrive, and they cuffed us and threw us in the cars. They took us to the  precinct house.  We were  pissed off. I told them my father was a Detective, and Eric told them his father worked for  Hogan's office ( the  District Attorney at that time).  The cop called me a Philadelphia Lawyer. I didn't know what that meant , but it was probably something to do with not answering his questions.  Eric's father  got us off without getting  a  criminal record for weapons, malicious mischief, who knows what else.
     The reality of the situation was, if the cops showed up  5 minutes later, we probably would have been killed or  hurt beyond belief.  They saved our lives.  5 dumb kids, ready to fight 200.  We were brave and stupid.  Thanks to the  75th  precinct  I am still alive to tell the story. Fuzzy and Eric have since died, but that's a whole nuther  story.  Also the 75th precinct, which was located on  Miller Ave near Blake Ave. had to move because the neighborhood got so bad.  They used to steal police cars that were parked right in front of the station.  They moved to a better area, i think in 1966.

football is rough

I went to a football game last night. It was pouring. I had a  thin plastic poncho on and sat through the whole game.  The cheerleaders were out there getting drenched. The players were all drenched.  Why is it that football is played in rain, snow, hail sleet?  Are these guys mailmen?
     How come I cant think of any other  sport that is played in bad weather.  When I say football i will include soccer, and rugby in that.  I don;t think alligator wrestling is done in  snow. Anyway,  How come baseball is not played in the rain.  Golf is a little bit.  Basketball is played indoors, hockey is indoors,  Football is  definitely the machoist.  Although  horseracing gets a jockey pretty muddy sometimes.
    I hurt my back sitting in the rain in the same  position,  just watching football. I didn't even play and my back muscles are all hurting.  I must be getting old

ENY nick names

Funny how so many people in  East New York had nicknames. Here are some of the names, and these are for real.

Big Wick, Lil' Wick, Tony Cheyenne, Jimmy Bighead, Tank, Fuzzy Mann, Bandit, Sick, Chops,
Charlie Wig-out, Mousey, Mike Droopy, Lil' Droopy, Flip, Big Little Flip, Little Big Flip, Robby the Rogue, Robbie Boy aka The Boy
Gary Crutch,  Static, Crazy Cuccio, Richie Q, Pie Face, Lap, Sal the Sailor, Babes Costanza, Bobby Bear, Brian Taxi, Richie Texas, Thin Man, Flash Gordon, Jay Worm, Dufus Schneider, Mooney, Jungle Judy, Super Sibley, Lil' Joe, Joey Jet, Tony Shark, Brandy Bottle Bates, Mitty, Aggie, Guppy, Giff, Dave the Rave, Dopey Dollar, Harsh Marsh, Deech, AB, Woody Wein,  Anthony Blue Eyes,  Johnny Reb, Geebi Monk, Tommy D, Crazy Laser, Izzy Knish, Johnny Ices, Patsy Pizza, Animal, Eddie Fish, Billy the Greek, Joey Feet, Mel the Windowwasher, Watusi, Ducky, Sonny, Fly Away, Rich the Stitch,  Denny Dink, Frankie Pots, Frankie Borgi, The Mick, Jabo, Jello, Klot, Fatsy,
    

Sushi etiiquette and tips

Sushi bar etiquette is important.
-Do not take shoes off at sushi bar, even though Japanese custom is to take shoes off before entering home.
      your feet do not smell good
-Always bow or nod head and smile, even when you have no idea what the waitperson or sushi chef said.
-Never point chopsticks at the sushi chef. If you do you may find his knife pointed at you.
-When eating a bad piece of fish, never  blurt out "EWW".  just  casually spit it into  a napkin. Do not spit it out onto the floor.
- Do not eat sushi with a knife and fork.  It is OK to use chopsticks but it is traditional to use your hands to eat it.
-Please wash your hands before using your hands to eat sushi, especially if you just returned from the toilet.
-Never order your sushi  "well done"
- Never ask waitperson for bread with your meal ( like in italian restaurants)
-it is good manners to slurp hot soup
- it is bad manners to feed someone sushi from your chopsticks
- it is good to pour soy sauce or sake for  the person you are with
-it is retarded to pour it for the stranger next to you that you haven't spoken to at all yet
-never eat a piece of sushi from an order that is going to the people at a table. That is stealing.
- Buying sushi chef a beer or sake is very good to do. It will get you better service.
-Buying many alcoholic beverages for a sushi chef, can get you a finger in your tekkamaki
-Never text while eating sushi, rice makes the keys sticky
-After eating a piece of good sushi, smile bow and say OISHI to the sushi chef. ( it means it was good)
-Try not to eat sushi on  a Sunday or Monday, it's not as fresh
-Eat sushi at least once a week
-If you took your shoes off at the sushi bar, make sure you remember to put them back on before you leave

sayin hello

HELLO HELLO
So many different "hello" situations.
You go see an old friend, approaches with arms open ,looks like a hug is coming.
Yep , there's the  hug, whoa, the italian cheek kiss. I forgot about  that one.

Now ya see a younger guy you know  ,  you hadnt seen him in a few weeks, ,,, here we go, is it a handshake,  a high five,  a hug?  nope here we go the old shoulder bump hug type thing.

Now you see your cousin,  hug and a kiss,  that was easy.

Your walking down your street and  your neighbor says  hi, and  calls you buy name. You have no idea what her name is.  So  you give a big  " Hi, how you doin"

Then you got the same situation but your with a friend.  The neighbor says hi to you by name,  and your praying  you don't have to introduce your friend to your neighbor.. Hey,  how you doin , have a  great day, and you  push your friend to keep movin , fast.

Sometimes you see the maintenance  guys or the  mailman, or some neighbor you barely know.  you  look, you  say good morning . Maybe,, or you  just nod.

Sometimes your not sure if the person about to walk by you is gonna say hello. So you give the half nod, the one that  almost says hello, but you don't want to look stupid saying hello, so  you  give the half nod half smile, that can count as a hello.  You don't want to walk  by them ignoring them, so just in case they actually know you , you  give that half  nod smile.

The distance wave, and duck into your  house is  a good one, it's quick it's easy,

Usually i just do a few cartwheels , and  say hi, and make people really fell that i'm so happy to see them.

I was the counselor who got fired

It was 1967 I think, and I got a summer job as a camp counselor in a sleep away camp from the  "Y".
It was located  on Lake Stahahe .  Some nice counselors, I remember Rochelle, Ann and  JB from Grand St. who played guitar and  sang Spider and  the Fly. I was  a great  counselor, i could relate  well to  7 year olds.  I told them my turtle story ( see other my past blogs).  One kid saved his poop in a trunk the whole summer. It turns out he was afraid to go out to the latrine at night.  I knew something smelled funny in our cabin.  In general the kids were fun and  we  laughed and joked alot. Even went on salamander hunts.
      We did arts and crafts, and  I made a mosaic of an archer.  It was the first mosaic i ever made , and the last.  Another counselor and myself worked on it.  We had to  break  our own tiles with a hammer, to get  different shapes , and  we painted the tiles so we had different colors.  The mosaic came out  so good.  It was put up for auction and the camp kept the money, they claimed it was camp property.  Oh well.
   Anyway,  all counselors were directed to  play sports with the kids..  The kids watched  the counselor softball game,  and  me with real long hair  didn't appear to be an athlete.  I was  playing second base. In those days most  athletes had short hair.  I made the most incredible diving  catch   and  got a nice round of applause.  Now it was time to get the kids to play something.  So I figured, some kids are great at sports and others  aren't. The ones that aren't will be  made fun of or picked on.  So inspired by the  film "Blow Up"  and  Antonioni film, and  a fantastic film that  everyone should see,  I got an idea.  In Blow Up there is a scene of a tennis match and  there is no ball, you just hear it.  In my camp volley ball game, I decided not to have a volley ball.  The kids  lined up on both sides of the  net.  I showed them the  ball hitting technique, and  how to  jump and slam the ball. These kids were great at  my version of volleyball.  No ball, great shots, all the kids were stars.  We were having the greatest time.  That is, until the camp director, walked by and  stopped in his tracks.  The  "hippie' counselor has all these kids waving their hands  and hitting imaginary volley ball. The director  shook his head in disbelief..  He made us stop , and  then said to me,  " you are trouble, you are fired".   Gee,  the day before  "tip day", when the parents tipped the counselors. That really sucked.   So, I left, but I knew I was the coolest counselor they ever had.

no tomatoes please

I created this joke in a dream:

what do you call Pamela Anderson's cleavage??

Silicon Valley

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Hey!  stop throwing tomatoes at me

pool rooms of ENY

Back in the day,you had to be 16 years old to play pool aka pocket billiards in a pool room.  The majority of pool rooms only allowed men to enter. The exception was  Playboy Billiards located Downtown Brooklyn, and they had different colored pool tables. They say, women weren't allowed because there was only a men's toilet. In the pool room we frequented most, there were a couple of girls that did enter, no one seemed to mind. At 15 yrs old we had our fake ID's so we became regulars at Murray's pool room. Murray was located above the Biltmore Movie theater on New Lots Ave and Wyona St. There's a grocery store there now. The owner Murray aka Bilty would give us a free half hour to play if we brought the block of ice upstairs for the ice box that kept the soda cold. Murray was  the Jefferson HS  football coaches father by the way.  The pool room was always packed, with 2 billiard tables in the front.  There were a few great players there , Giff, Shotsy, Big Mel the Window Washer, Dave the Rave, and Manny.  Each had their own style, Some played amazing  position and never had to make a tough shot. Others made the most incredible shots.  I was  just an average player. The most balls i ever ran was like 14 balls.  Murrays was narrow and  if you had some shots where your cue would hit the wall , you had to use a  short cue stick They were old Atlantic tables and we kept with beads on an overhead wire.  The sound of balls cracking against each other and people yelling  "time off Bilty"  "time on Bilty"  was constant.  If we weren't playing straight pool, a 50 point game, we would play rotation.  In that game you had to hit the one ball first before you hit another ball. If the one was  sunk, then it would be the  2 ball that had to get hit first  or just sink the  2 if you had a clear shot.  The  5,8,10, and 15 balls were money balls.  You got  extra money if you sunk those. You needed  60 points to win the game and you got money for that. If you were 4 people, the players who made the  1 and  the  5 balls were on the same team. It was  a fun game.  There was  a guy who hung out there that  served 20 years in  Danamura prison for  murder, his name was Crazy Laser.  Their was  a  kinda retarded guy named  Izzy Knish who hung outside and sang and danced for  quarters.  Alot of wild people there.  Sometimes there were fights and the cue stick handle was  a  very good weapon.  Other neighborhood pool rooms were Joe's on New Lots  where mostly  New Lots Boys  hung out.  Then there was  Curly's on  Livonia and Alabama Ave.  The tables were filthy. Whenever we saw our friends with really dirty hands we knew they were at Curly's.  Curly's was  10 cents an hour cheaper than Murray's. It was  70 cents for an hour for the table.  In the back of Curly's was  a  Boxing ring and they would have amateur boxing matches that  people would bet on.  They had some long pool tables, called Snooker tables. A popular game  in Curly's was 9 ball. 9 ball had a diamond shaped rack. I don't remember the rules. Curly's was a more integrated crowd, White, Black, Asian and Hispanics.  Some friends of mine from the Puerto Rican Eltone gang and  from the  singing group johnny and the monnlights would hang out there.
  On occasion we would travel to Flatbush and play pool at  Joe Spinelli's, or we would go to Marian's on Eastern Parkway around Nostrand Ave.   That was a pretty tough neighborhood, I think it was  Bedford Stuyvesant,  right across from Crown Heights.  Pool was  the #1 past time, especially in the winter when it was too cold to play basketball.   Alot of people would steal the cue balls from the pool room because I think originally they  were made of ivory.  Now I want to shoot some pool.  "Time on Bilty"  

I hate the boy scouts

When I was a kid, I joined the Cub Scouts. It was pretty cool. We made alot of stuff. The one thing we made that I remember was a beaded belt. We bought a loom , and had to put beads on it. I drew the coolest "indian" aka native american designs. Then figured out how many beads of each color in each row to get that design on the belt.  It came out awesome. I remember the patterns clearly. I happened to also be a really good artist  in my youth. Somehow I lost that ability over the years. Morty Stumacher was our cubmaster, it was  Troop 576 East New York. and  Normal Keller was our Den mother , den 2. As a cubscout we got arrow points that our moms  sewed onto our uniforms, and then progressed from  bobcat to weblow.  No it's not  We BLOW,  it was  weblow.    Every  year they had the  Cub-a ral, it was a citywide  sports competition for cubscouts.  It was held in prospect park.  Me and this guy Mark practiced and practiced  for the 3-legged race. We tied our legs together  and  got the timing down and ran. We were good. The day of the race came,  we were ready. The gun fired and  we were off.  We were winning the race. There were 12 entries,and we were winning against some really fast runners.  We could see the  finish line, we were right there,  and  these two guys running next to us, dove for the finish line, breaking the ribbon and they won.  Who knew about  diving?  Well we did a good job and got silver medals.  I was a proud cubscout.
         The next year, I joined the boyscouts, that may have been Troop 576, and the hats were like army hats, not like the dorky cubscout hats. I was a Tenderfoot, the lowest rank. We had our  Camporee.  It was held in Alpine,NJ.  We had to get ready for this campout.  We had to buy backacks, canteen, waterproof match holder, compass, boyscout knife, mess kit and  eating utensils, and more stuff. The pack weighed more than I did.  We hiked I think 10 miles with the packs on our backs, I thought I was going to die. but we all made it.  Our patrol was called the  Hawk Patrol.  Jerry Mazzerella was  our  Scout Master.  I forgot who else was in charge of our group.  The guys in our tent were, Sandy Schmidt, Freddie Hodges, David Robinson, Gipson Talbert, Teddy"thinman"Fields,and Norman Rappaport.  I forget if anyone else was in our Patrol. All I remember is these guys were farting all night. It stunk in that tent. I don't know what these guys ate, but  they could have been  the secret weapon our country was looking  for back then. Finally, I fell asleep, or  was knocked out by the gas. The next day we had to  wash in the coldest stream. It was freezing. The day went on, and  I took out my switchblade. We werent allowed to have switchblades. They were against the law. But my father was a  policeman and he confiscated illegal weapons from people and brought them home. Most of the time he broke the points off knives, so I would stab my brothers or sisters. But the switchblade  still had the point. It was  sharp and the handle was white mother of pearl. It was really cool .  So I figured I have to carve my initials  in a tree. Afterall, I was somewhere I;d never been,  and what if someone else showed up next year and they knew me, it would be really cool if they saw my initials.  There I was , carving very stylish initials in this tree.  All of a sudden, a huge hand grabs my shoulder  and turns me and takes the knife away. It was one of the guys in charge.  Boyscout law says you can't cut live wood. I was carving  not cutting. I didn;t use my axe.  I carved one and a half initials.  I didn't even get a chance to finish them. They confiscated my switchblade, and  then punished me. They made me stand outside that night, barefoot, holding  two big rocks in  each hand.  It was hard to keep the rocks at shoulder level. They were heavy and everytime  my arms dropped, the guy watching me would say "up with the hands".  What a horrible night.  I hated the boyscouts of America.  That was my last weekend as a member, I quit, and was so happy about it.  When I got home, I took some paint and reached outside my bedroom window on Stanley Ave. and painted my initials outside my window.  Both initials, not one and a half.   Many many years later, I went  by that building on Stanley Ave., those initials are still there.  I took a picture and if i knew how to post pictures I would show you all.

junior high school

George Gershwin Junior High School or  JHS 166, was on Stanley and Van Siclen Ave. It was the  newest of the schools in East New York. Before that was built kids usually went to schools that did kindergarten thru 8th grade, then to  high school.  So  Junior High was cooler, because you didn't have little kids running around, it was all teenagers.  Actually there were a couple of junior high school students that  were old.  One guy named Fibo had a goatee and  was married with a kid. There was someone else just as old.  A couple of girls had to drop out because they were pregnant, birth control wasn't known back then. Gershwin was a big beige building with a nice field and track.  I was on the  audio visual squad. I was the guy who ran the projector when they showed a movie or  brought the slide projector or film strip projector to show stills in class.  We also set up the audio.  The teacher in charge  of the AV squad was  Mr. Carron. He was a cool guy. He was also the ceramics teacher. He trusted the members of the AV squad, and he gave us a set of keys to the school.  That was a mistake.  Wouldn't ya know it? a few tape recorders, projectors, sound equipment was all missing.  Also, missing were chemicals and  beakers, and cool chemistry stuff.  Some chemicals they didn't sell in  hobby shops.  We needed these chemicals, like potassium nitrate,  magnesium ribbon, sulphuric and  hydrochloric acid.  You see, potassium nitrate is the key ingredient to making gun powder.  All you need to do is add sulphur and charcoal and there ya go.  The magnesium ribbon when placed in hydrochloric acid, displaces the hydrogen and if you light it , makes a boom. Like a little hydrogen bomb.  Pretty cool. The magnesium ribbon also lights on fire and  creates a great bright light.  Pure potassium I believe you cant get, because it ignites just by hitting air or moisture in the air.  Anyway, we cleaned out the school, also got a hold of some final exams with the answers.    A few days later, we got called into the Dean;s office. That was  Dutch Garfinkle.  He had  a  flat top crewcut and was  mean.  He played professional basketball for the Celtics under the name "flying Dutchman".  We got suspended, and our parents got called  to the school.  We were in deep doo doo.
      My science teacher, later  signed my graduation album,  "good luck in Sing Sing".(that's a prison).

Sugar

Sugar, so crystally, so sweet, so good. When I was a kid, we loved sugar. Today, they have sugar substitutes.  These substitutes  cause cancer, they do not taste good. Some of them like sweet and low, the  main ingredient is sucrose (which is sugar), that's just weird. We used to eat "rock candy"  pure giant crystals of sugar on a string. It tasted awesome.  We ate flavored sugar, called Lik-m-Aid, like Kool -Aid powder, but we would  just pour it on our hands and lick it up. Tasted so good. Cotton Candy lots of sugar and air but tastes great. I used to eat Beechnut Instant Mixed Cereal for babies, until i was  12.  I would   put enough sugar in it, until there were swirls of sugar making a pattern in the bowl. That was about  18 tsp of sugar.  A lot by modern standards. My mother  would  yell at me , saying "you'll get  Diabetes".  I don't think you could get diabetes from eating sugar.  I used to think you could get worms from eating sugar, that doesn't seem too logical, now that I think about it.   We used to like the powdered sugar on  italian pastries,  I still like that. Can you imagine asking the  Italian baker to put Equal or Splenda  sprinkled on top of your cannoli,  YUCK. We even fed horses sugar cubes. In the  60's some people even put LSD on sugar cubes.
   We sure did eat a lot of sugar back in the day.  There was a movie called "Them" about  giant ants.  For some reason my friends and I thought if we fed ants sugar they would  grow to be   giant ants like in "Them".  We would feed them for days and watch to see if they grew.  To our disappointment  they didn't grow in size  , just in numbers. There were thousands of ants where we fed them.  Sugar is underrated.
    Support sugar, go to your local Starbucks and steal a few of the  brown packages.  I do that several times a week.

A CHILDREN"S FUN TURTLE STORY

There were 3 turtles, Mama turtle, Papa turtle and  Baby turtle.  Every 100 years they go on a picnic to a special picnic ground that takes many years to get there. So they pack   the picnic basket with all the good stuff that  turtles eat.  Some M&Ms,Kit Kats, atomic fireballs, and gum,  some cans of soup, some cans of fruit, jello, spaghetti , some cans of tomato sauce, some hot dogs,bananas, some Skittles, cans of beer and cans of soda, some cans of  tuna, and cans of sardines, some potato chips, pork rinds and cans of beans.  Wow, they could  hardly wait to start their journey.  It was a long and dangerous journey. They started out swimming across the ocean and along the way a scary shark came  right in front of them,  he opened his mouth wide and  showed his  giant sharp teeth.  Papa turtle  thought  fast and  threw some atomic fireballs in the shark's mouth while mama turtle and baby turtle swam so so so fast, and  papa turtle swam faster than any of them and they got away safe.  Finally they crossed the  ocean  and  got to the jungle.  When in the  jungle they had to walk  quietly  so the  vicious animals didn't eat them.  Several years went by, you know  turtles walk so slowly, it takes a long time to get anywhere.  They walk passed a Mr. and Mrs. Monkey,  and the monkeys smiled at them, and they  smiled back.  Then they saw Mr. snail, and Mr. snail asked for  a  ride on Papa turtle's back.  The  snail  climbed up,  now you know snails are even slower than  turtles, maybe slower than anything,  so  the snail is on the turtle's back and  he  yells out in  joy ,"weeeeeeeee", he never been on such a  fast ride.  They dropped off Mr. Snail and  continued through the jungle.  All of a sudden a giant  Gorilla is in front of them. Mr. Gorilla  is pounding his chest and  making scary noise.  He wants to step on them and Papa turtle throws a banana to him and they run  deep in the jungle.  They hear  loud foot steps and  a roar of  a lion.  Behind them they see a big Lion coming at them.  Mama turtle thinks fast and  puts some banana peels on the  ground as they run.  The lion slips on the banana peels and  bumps into  a  big fat elephant and says  OUCH!  Finally a few years later they make it out of the jungle.  They swim across a river, chased by alligators, they make it to the other side safely. They walk for  many months until they reach the  desert.  So hot , they are very  thirsty,  but  they   made a rule to only eat and drink a little until they got to the picnic grounds.  It was so hot, they had to open a can of soda, and they all shared it.  Then they heard a snake rattling and  about to  attack, Baby turtle thought fast and  hit the  snake with the  soda can and  they  ran away, and left the snake  behind with a bump on his head.  They walked and walked, and crossed 7 mountains,  they had to hide from a pack a wolves they saw.  Years went by and they could finally see the   Picnic Grounds on the other  side of the Chocolate Mountains. There was a  rainbow around the  picnic grounds,  and  butterflies and   pretty birds and  colorful flowers.  They couldn't wait to get there , so they could start eating the great food they brought. Especially the  M&Ms,  Baby turtle loved the green ones.  So they walked over the  Chocolate Hills and  they entered the land of the  dragons. It was so scary, you could  hear the dragons  making their scary dragon  sound  AHHWHRRRAHHRRRR!  The  Turtle family was   shaking in fear.  they snuck by the turtles slowly and  emptied a pack of Skittles  as they walked.   The dragons were hungry that  day, and they began chasing the  turtles.  They saw the different color Skittles and stopped to look at the nice colors and  then the dragons began to eat the Skittles.  Papa Turtle had read in the   book of  Turtle Survival, that  the only way to kill a dragon was to  get him to eat Skittles.  Well , thank goodness he read that  , the dragons started to fall to the ground  and the Turtle family was  on their way,  almost to the picnic grounds.  Finally, yes  Finally they could smell the flowers,   they could  almost touch the  rainbow.  The butterflies  were  around them,  Finally they were there.  They made it after  soooo many   years.  They put their blanket down,  put the picnic basket  down.  They made the 100 year journey safe. They were so hungry.  They started to take out all the food the  turtles  love so much.  The Kit Kats,  the  spaghetti, the cans of tomato sauce, the cans of  tuna,  the Reese's Pieces of course, and some  cans of vegetables and  fruit.  But they realized, they forgot something. What could they have forgotten?  They had the food, the drinks, the blanket,   forks , spoons, chopsticks. What did they forget?   They couldn't open the cans.  They forgot the can opener.  They all looked at each other .  They needed that  can opener. They were hungry, and they had travelled so far.  Papa Turtle said, " I'm too old to go back for it",  Mama Turtle said"  I'm too weak to go back for it", the only one who could go back was  Baby Turtle.  Baby Turtle was a smart one, and  he could run and swim faster than most turtles can. So , Baby Turtle said,  "OK  I'll go back for the can opener,BUT you have to promise me something."  Mama and Papa Turtle both said " OK, what do we have to promise?"  Baby Turtle said ,  " you both have to promise that you wont eat any of the  food until  I get back with the can opener."  They agreed not to eat, even though they were  hungry. They knew it would take a while for Baby Turtle to get back, but they agreed not to eat.  They gave Baby Turtle a map and showed him a  short cut. Baby Turtle left, and  said  "remember , you cant eat or drink anything until i get back."  Five years went by and Mama and Papa Turtle were so hungry, but they had to keep their promise.   Ten years went by and they started to worry and hoped Baby Turtle was OK.  They were so hungry  but  kept their promise.  Now it's  20 years, and  they are starving and thirsty.  Now  50 years go by, Papa Turtle turns to Mama Turtle and says, "  I think maybe the sharks  ate Baby Turtle"  Mama Turtle says,  " maybe the  poisonous snakes or the gorillas got him". They both figured  he took the  short-cut and it's  been  50 years. They were so hungry.  They were sure Baby Turtle would never  make it back. After all it was so dangerous a trip, and i has been   over  50 years now.  So Papa Turtle said to Mama Turtle,  Ok  lets just  eat  a little bit  while we wait for Baby Turtle to get  back... They agree that they have to, and that maybe their baby will never come back. So they open the picnic basket to get out some M&Ms.  They were breaking their promise to Baby Turtle but they thought they had to.  Just as Papa Turtle  opens the picnic basket to get the M&Ms ,,,,  Out of the basket pops Baby Turtle and screams out " Just For That I'm Not Going!!!!!!!"

Hi everyone

This blog site is cool in that it gives you stats of  how many people looked at the blog , and what country they were from .  Last month alot of people from  Canada, Australia, France, and Czech Republic, Russia, Denmark, Phillipines and of course US.  I used to get people in Mexico,  noone from South America and Great Britain   was a big group of  blog readers.
Lately these past few weeks it has been a couple from Russia ( home of my grandparents) but I don't punamaya ruski,    I 'd like to shout out to  my  Filipino friends  Kumustaka?  Mabuhay!!!!
 and  of course  Greetings  to my fellow Americans.
   Keep reading,  maybe i'll get some funny ideas.  Like tonite I was watching the  news on TV, and  the Mayor put  bicycle racks  in Staten Island for  $60,000, along  a  big street.  Not one bike has used it, not one bike was even seen in the area.  In Manhattan, Brookiyn and Queens they put  bicycle lanes, the most dangerous thing  yet, You get out of your car and  good chance of getting hit by a bike, especially in Manhattan.  In Queens   bikes are rare , and not too many do I see in Brooklyn, It causes alot of traffic, and probably alot of accidents,, At night you cant see the bikes or hear them, they need to get  lights and horns, and they also need to wear helmets,  Some of these bike riders are good actors and quite skilled. They see a taxi or car door open and they crash into it intentionally and fall down.  they are  really good at that.  I saw one take a picture  with his cell phone   right after he fell, apparently to  make a lawsuit out of it.  Crazy stuff.  Tonite  the  Chinese delivery guy almost  ran me over  , riding his bike on the sidewalk.. Hey that's illegal.     See you all later ,,bye for now

inventions

My daughter had this great idea for an invention. It was  a  "locator".  You just  stick on a  little chip and the  home station can locate that device. Much like the  cell phone handset locator but taken much further.
She never did get the patent for the invention but it was a great invention, much better than my dandruff repellent spray that you spray on a collar and if dandruff comes near it,, it gets repelled, never a worry about dandruff.  Another invention that  was rejected by my marketing committee was ear purses.  Little pouches you wear as earrings, they can even be  gold, if you like. They open and  you can put little things in them, like contact lenses, Maybe even an Indian Bindi.  Anyway, my son saw a rendition of the locator, and he bought it for me for my birthday. It was just what I needed , since I always lose my keys, my wallet, and more.  So I get my things all set up so that they can be located.  Today I lost my keys, so confidently I  go to the locator to locate the missing keys. I can't find the locator.  Dayummmmm, wouldnt ya know it. Now I need to buy another locator to locate the locator.   Life is hard.

The Easter Bunny

Happy Easter to All.
Now what about the Easter Bunny. Does the Easter Bunny only work on Easter?
What does he do the rest of the time?
I know  he hippity hoppity hops down the  Bunny Trail, where ever that  might lead to.but
Do I have this right? The Easter Bunny  lays Easter  Eggs?  What in the world,  how does that happen?
Is there a chicken involved here?  Somethin' strange is  going on  here.
There's an Easter Bunny layin '  Easter eggs and  no  Easter Rooster.  Or is the Easter Bunny a  guy and is layin' eggs?  Now I'm really confused. Not to mention, when will he or she become an Easter Rabbit?
It has been a long time being a Bunny.
   Maybe it is better not to ask these questions and just eat my chocolate Easter egg and go hunt for the colored real Easter eggs.

funeral flowers and rocks 1 and 2

1) I went to a friend's father's funeral, at a church in Staten Island. I got there a little late, which is not unusual for me.  I stopped to  buy some flowers on the way. The  mass already started. There was a big  picture of my friend's father  facing the people attending the service, a 2 flower arrangements. I guess all the flowers people send, were in the limos that will go to the cemetery  following the service.  So, what to do?  I'm late, I have flowers, it would be improper to bring the  flowers in. After all, no one  brought flowers, and they were in the middle of the service, so I left a pot of flowers in the lobby. After the service as everyone is leaving, I picked up the flowers I brought and  began walking out.  I spoke to a few people, while holding my flowers.  I could notice people looking at me, like  "hey, he's stealing the flowers".  This happened to  have followed  a similar "curb your enthusiasm" show where Larry actually stole flowers from a  memorial area.  So to  try to clear up the situation, I told my friend's wife, what happened and gave her the flowers, so t hey wouldn't go to waste.  She appreciated the thought. All in all, it was  an embarrassing but funny situation.

2) I go to a Jewish cemetery to pay my respects.  Jewish people  make their visit known by leaving a rock on top of the grave.  Rumor has it, that if flowers are left, they are stolen, so , rocks are left instead. The big problem is there aren't any decent size rocks available.  No one has  thought of the idea of selling rocks at  Jewish cemeteries.  Ahhh, my  next brilliant idea for a business !  Designer Rocks for graves. Anyway,  I had of relatives in this cemetery, even my great grandmother. I had no rocks.  So , I did what any rockless grave visitor would do, I stole them off the adjacent graves.  The  first visit went well, I put a  nice rock on my uncle's grave.  However, the third grave rock placement, I was  spotted by  some people as  I  lifted the rock, off the top of the  tombstone.  So I casually dusted it off and put it back. Then they stopped looking at me and  I walked off fast grabbing a  nice rock and  got the job done. It's so crazy having to steal rocks at the cemetery. It's crazier that people  give you dirty looks  for  robbing rocks.  Next time I'll bring rocks with me.

poop

what about  poop?
well, for one thing it stinks. At least it stinks to me. Sometimes our own poop doesn't smell so bad to ourselves but it could kill someone else. Dogs on the other hand love the smell of poop. If dogs had cologne their best seller  would be  L'Eau De Poop. Horses don't have any opinion, and to step in their poop is good luck. But it has to be dry poop if you step in it, otherwise I think it's pretty bad luck. Especially if you are wearing ripple soul shoes.  Q-tips are a great utility tool for cleaning stepped-in poop out of the grooves in the souls of your shoes and sneakers.  In any case, all of our poops vary. They vary from day to day, from person to person. In  Native Americans and Chinese Medicine the smell and color of one's urine is used to diagnose illness.  I'm not sure if the smell of poop can be used to diagnose illness, but based on the smell of today's poop, i'm a very very  sick person.  Moving right along here, Some of us poop twice a day, some once a day, some once every few days. The once every few day people  seem to fart alot. once or twice a day i think is a good thing. Get that stuff out of the system.  Sushi poop, especially when you eat alot of fatty fish , like tuna belly, or yellow tail belly, or salmon, that really stinks. Some say  if your  poop floats, it means your eating healthy. I think I eat a balanced diet, I have some sinkers and some floaters.  How about you? are you eating right?   Sometimes I eat corn just to see the  yellowy decorated poop.  Yes poop is like art.  It has it's own unique look and  smell.  No ,  I don't know about feel , except for  dog poop.  Dog poop is warm. I've picked up alot of that over the years.  So, whenever you eat , you might want to think about  how it will come out in the end. It's a fun thing to do.  Poop games.
    So, what about wiping?  I assume everyone wipes.  At times we may have to use big maple leaves or newspaper, or a T- shirt. Ordinarily we use TP  aka toilet paper. I grew up using Scott. The  cheapest stuff. I was a loyal Scott user. I hated the  knew  Charmin soft stuff.  It would shred and  you would lose some, with a good wipe. The aloe treated kind, will really mess up your  glasses lenses or sunglasses.  I discovered the  new  super strong Charmin and I like it.  It doesnt rip easily,  no shredding. You dont get much on a roll, but  I like it.  Some of us, use 2 sheets folded neatly. Others  8 sheets. I know a guy who uses one sheet, and says he gets the job done. Amazing.  I think he has a good diet. Supposedly, if you eat correctly, you  don't need too many sheets.  I switched from the semi neat fold to the crunched up method, better wiping power.    Do you look at the sheet after you  do a wipe?  Why?  do you think you missed?  or do you just check to see that your done wiping?  What about  colored toilet paper.  I like white. But  I've bought blue, pink and green.  It's bizarre that they  have colors.
     So, that's it for today, Happy Pooping!
    

Cowboys and our toy guns

In the 1950's and early 60's, Westerns were popular on TV. Actually they were my favorite shows. There was Wild Bill Hickock with his sidekick Jingles, there was Wyatt Earp and everyone knew the theme songs for each of these shows.  "wyatt earp , wyatt earp , brave courageous and bold...", There was Yancy Derringer, where my favorite character was a pick pocket named Jodie and an "indian" aka native american name Pahoo Katiwa (wolf who stands in water).  Have Gun Will Travel was  a pretty cool show and had some very interesting Zen stuff going on , which I noticed years later.  Maverick  was  a fun show where the main characters were always playing poker.  The Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto was popular , the theme was the famous trumpet  charge  from  William Tell overture. He used silver  bullets.  The Lone Ranger , Tonto referred to as  Qui no sabe  ( in spanish it means he who knows nothing), and Tonto , in spanish means  stupid,, Go figure!     Also , there was  Lawman, Hotel de Paris, Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid. Of course Roy Rogers and  Gene Autry, and Gabby Hayes. Alot of shootin' up and  killing. The bad guys usually wore black and the good guys always wore black. The crazy thing is all the kids watched all this killing.  That was OK with everyone.  But the  TV Gunsmoke,  was referred to as an "Adult Western", because there was never any killing or shooting in that show. James Arness was the  sheriff, Miss Kitty was the  bar hooker or something like that , but never any killing. That should have been the   Children's western not the Adult western. Crazy world we live in.
       As kids we had alot of  toy guns.  Kid guns in those days  actually shot   things. Today they just make sounds.  Except for  Paintball of course.  The   Mattel, Greenie Stickem cap guns were cool.  Caps are a paper thing that has gun powder and when you hit it with a rock or hammer or something they explode with a loud sound.  We used to buy rolls of caps and bang them with rocks. They had little  dots of gun powder  on this red paper. We also put them in "cherry bombs:, which were a rocket like plastic thing we threw up high and when they landed on the metal tip , it would explode a cap.  Well, Greenie stickem caps went on the back of a bullet, so that when you pulled the trigger the cap would explode, sounding like a gun shot, and  the  plastic bullet head with  fly out like a real bullet.  We'd be shootin' each other   all day long.  Seeing who was the quickest draw.  They had a cool  little deringer that was built into a belt buckle.  You breathe out hard and the  gun would  pop out and fire a bullet.  We had rifles that fired corks,  I had a machine gun that shot out wooden pellets.  The Rifleman gun, was a  rifle with a handle that you could  load and  shoot with one hand like a pistol.  Was very cool and a  cool TV show with Chuck Connors.  Some of us had BB guns which shot BB's , or little metal balls.  OUCH. Yeah later on , in junior high school , I mentioned in another post, we used to  play in this guy's basement on Newport St,  one of us had the BB gun the other two or 3 of us had ping pong rackets.  Imagine trying to block a tiny metal ball coming at you at  60 miles an hour.  The player who had the  BB gun was  definitely the winner. We would come home all dotted up with BB wounds.
 Yep , no wonder we grew up so  nuts.

The style in East New York, Brooklyn. 11207

It was 1961 and 1962, and George Gershwin Junior High School, decided that boy students must where ties.  Girl students had to wear their skirts below their knees.  NOno, i dont mean they had to pull their skirts down, i mean , NO MINI SKIRTS ALLOWED.  Now, we really didnt want to wear ties. In East New York, Brooklyn,  we were wearing our pants short and tight, kind of what is in style now for alot of people.  Our shoes were called cha cha boots, they were like short boots, about 2 inches above the ankle. They had horseshoe shaped heels and we got taps put on them.  The shirts that were in were poncho type shirts. The buttons came down to mid chest, you had to pull it over your head, but it was cotton and was a shirt. Orange was the big color, black was the other choice.  I think madras shirts were in style also. They called them bleeding madras, i think the colors ran  all over  everything when you washed them. Our sneakers were Converse.  Low black, or high white. Shoelaces were the color of your team.  A few years later when I went to Thomas Jefferson High School, orange shoe laces were the  school color.  Our socks, well we wore two pairs of socks.  the outer sock was  long. It came almost to the knee.  we then folded it down.   I think the two pairs of socks made us jump higher.  We used to go to Downtown Brooklyn, im not sure what it's called now, probably Cobble Hill north, or something. It was  Flatbush near Atlantic, the store was Davega,,  and possibly Modells, where you could buy Cons for half price. I think the price at the time was  $35.  When Keds were about  $8.  Pro Keds didnt exist yet.  We used to make rings out of the links on dog chains, actually , that would be a good style now. Kinda  Hardcore.  Ok back to the ties.
Skinny ties were in, but we didnt want to wear them at school. So some of us revolted by wearing  our father's hand painted, super wide silk ties.  We thought we were being  funny.  Those ties would be worth some good bucks now. Then to satisfy the rule we wore  a tie that was the least possible  tie.  Not a bowtie, although I have a 4th grade picture of me with a bowtie.  We decided, and when i say we, it was most of the school. We wore cowboy string ties.   String ties were  pretty cool, I thought at the time, but the thing we needed was a different  clasp that the tie went through. We found the perfect clasps.  A new little car, started to get popular in  1959, and was real popular  in  1961 and  1962.  It was the Volkswagen Beetle. The car had a great emblem  on the front  hood. here's a link to it,
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Volkswagen_emblem.jpg
it was kind of similar to the Porsche. We didnt have a stinkin Porsches in East New York.
Someone figured out that with a screw driver  you could easily pop off that emblem and  the little clamps on the back  fit the string tie perfectly.  Now I say these cars were popular but there werent really that many of them.  Not enough of them for all of the people who had string ties.  It got to be  the "cool" thing if you  were wearing a  VW  emblem on your tie. After a short time we had to go to Canarsie, Flatbush, Mill Basin, and Coney Island to steal emblems off of the Volkswagens.  They had a little castle on them with a wolf, really nice.  We hit every volkswagen we could find, in the summer we would  get every VW in Rockaway Beach.  The early ones if I remember correctly had torquoise like  castle, and the color changed in  1962.  Well it was in that year, I think1963 that Volkswagen stopped making emblems for the front hood. What a drag that was.  I truly believe that it was because of  the crazy East New York Style, that  the company got letters, complaining about the emblems being stolen. And they replaced it with NOTHING. The Volkswagen people  decided it was  better not to put any emblem.  Amazing that a little neighborhood, although we thought we were the greatest neighborhood anywhere, and cooler than anywhere.,we created a change in car design.  Well we were so used to stealing emblems, we notices some other  nice ones out there.  The second choice of emblem had nothing to do with ties.  It was the  Ford Thunderbird emblem. I'm not sure  what years had the best emblems, but there were two round plastic emblems on the  front fenders. No screwdriver was necessary, you just  pop them out with your thumb. There weren't many T Birds around but enough to get a few emblems. I think it was the  1959 T-bird that we got most of them from.  We them would  drill a hole in the  black plastic, and wear it on a chain, like a medallion.  Then we expanded, I was obsessed with getting every emblem.
A Chrysler Lion,  a "C"  from a  B-U-I-C-k, it was my initial.  and of course the beautiflul Chevy Impala flags on the sides .  Ford Galaxy had clear and gold plastic, located in same place on the car as the  Thunderbird, but werent as nice.   I had a nice collection of emblems. Too bad  my neighborhood didnt have any Ferrari's.  I still look at these emblems on cars and think of stealing them. But that would be  NUTS ,   right?
       A few years later, I started collecting  signs.  Stop signs, Street signs, subway posters, fallout shelter signs,Any sign that  seemed hard to get , or looked cool we took.  One day almost got caught on Broadway in Manhattan, by Rector St. Stealing a big old  wooden sign , in front of a restaurant, it said  "Ye Olde Chop House".  My nickname at the time was  Chops. So that sign had to go,  It was huge. I took it off the hooks on the stand in front of the restaurant, and lifted it off. I knocked the stand over , and someone heard it and yelled out to me. They started chasing me, I dropped the sign and  got away.But no sign. I'll always remember that sign.  "The one that got away".

DOO WOP

I guess I started liking rock n roll around 1955 , when Alan Freed was on the radio.. It was 1010 WINS on  AM radio. It was on in the evening. Bill Haley and the Comets were rockin' with Rock Around the Clock. They say that song was the start of Rock and Roll.  1955 had a weird mix of music, Bill Haley, then non- rock and roll like the Four Aces singing Love is a Many Splendid Thing. A favorite of my parents. The Penguins doing the classic Oldie called Earth Angel. Chuck Berry doing Maybelline. Then Johnny Desmond doing a weird song like Yellow Rose of Texas.  I would take my portable radio, a big Emerson and blast it. I remember that radio, it was light and dark brown plastic, it took flashlight batteries, and it had a plug that hid away inside it , when you wanted to go portable.  We would  carry these fairly big portables to school to listen to the World Series. I remember listening to the 1956 World Series when Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. I think it was the only post season no- hitter EVER until  2010 when Roy Halladay did it. Back to  radios and music. These radios were smaller than boom boxes, and they had tubes inside them. Then in 1959, my Uncle Jack bought me the most awesome radio. It was Japanese. It was a SONY.  This was an unheard of company. All radios were American or German before Sony came along.This radio did not have tubes, it was an 8 transistor radio. It was  so thin. Thinner than a pack of cigarettes About 5inches long, 1/2 inch thick maybe  3.5 inches high.  That's about how I remember it, I could probably look it up and get the exact specs but  basically this thing was small and cool.
It started the trend of  tiny radios.It was  an AM radio,  FM existed but mostly for  classical music.  In 1956 Rock and Roll was really going strong, now most of the records playing were more to my liking. You had Little Richard singin Long Tall Sally, and  Elvis Presley doing Hound Dog.  The Dells singing O What a Night,  the great Doo Wop tune  In the Still of the Night by the  5 Satins. Frankie Lymon with  Why Do Fools Fall in Love and  I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent.Elvis had about  6 hits maybe more in 1956. Alan Freed was going strong. I'd keep a radio under my pillow, listening to Come Go With Me by the Del Vikings or Over the Mountain by Johnny and Joe.  My mom would think i was sleeping but I'd be rockin' out.  There were great Doo Wop type tunes before  1955, but I didnt know  about them until the  early 60s, songs like The Wind by the Diablos (1954), Goodnite Sweetheart by the Spaniels (1954) Sincerely by the Moonglows (1954).  The 50s had the great DOO WOP hits.  a few of my favorites were Could This Be Magic by the Dubs (1957), Tonite Tonite by MelloKings (1957), I'm so Young by the Students (1958), There Goes My Baby by the Drifters(1958), Teardrops by Lee Andrews and the Hearts (1957) Dedicated to the one I Love by the Shirelles (1959), 1000 Miles Away by the Heartbeats(1956) and Teenager in Love by Dion and the Belmonts (1959) .
    OK , yeah I know I can  go on and on with great songs.  Time went on and  from  1963- 1965  me and  my friends discovered great  echos in the hallways of the projects.  There was a song i think by Billy Joel  about "lookin for an echo". That was so true.  All we wanted to do was  hit harmony. 3 guys was good for  harmony. You had a baritone and 2nd tenor and a 1st tenor. If we had a few more singers we had a bass, a falsetto, and a lead singer.  The harmony was what counted. It was  kind of strange but for our purposes we didnt need a lead singer with a great voice, we just needed him to lead us so we could do the background.   The first songs  most of us would do,  were songs that  we all sang the words to  like  Fine Little Girl by the Arcades,  or  You Baby You by the Excellents.  We also liked to  do songs like Roaches. " Roaches crawlin over  my motherf'n walls tryin to get to my mother fn balls,etc
We used to hear some of the groups that made it , when we went to  35th St. beach in Rockaway and hear the  Shangra La's ( leader of the pack) singing.  Or around Manhattan Beach  the Emotions singing Echo.  Vito and the Salutations  were real good and they sang Unchained Melody. There was a guy named Speedo from  Canarsie who was the lead of the Impalas ( Sorry , I Ran All The Way Home) he started a group called The Caravelles, they were amazing.  I went to see them in Bushwick at the 7 Martyrs Church. Me and  my friends stood out in the crowd, since we were the  only white folk there. But hey , it was  harmony and we loved harmony.  Joey and the Excitements were a fantastic ENY group. Nino and the Ebbtides were from ENY and had a hit called Jukebox Saturday Nite.  Mike and the Holidays who were friends of mine had an album out.  Mike had an amazingly great voice. One nite me, Elk, Moony, Woody, and Mike were singing in Elk's house. It was being recorded, we did When We Got Married by the Dreamlovers, it was absolutely amazing. That was the best harmony I was ever part of.  My regular group was the Escapades formally Al and the Candlelites. I sang bass for that group. Did a thing like Bom Bom Dip Di Dip di Dip BoDoDDo Bom,  that was my part when we did My Girl by the Eternals a fast version of it.  That was  me Fuzzy, Mass, Big Wick and Lil Wick.  we had good harmony, but low harmony. When Me Mass and Woody hit harmony it was higher notes and  really good.  Me and a guy named Chup had good harmony together and  with  Woody hittin the high notes it was all good.  We liked singing,  " just to kinds of people in the world( by Little Anthony),  Your Way ( Camelots).   My group Johnny and the Pumps, well we did Sunday Kind of Love (DelVikings)  one guy in the group had a heavy Brooklyn accent and   the first line of the song said  THROUGH with my old love and  he would  say  TROO with my old love,  if we didnt laugh we got through the song.  That group was discoverd by this guy Frank , he became our manager and we recorded a few demos. We had high hopes of becoming famous.   We sang and sang.   Our friends  Johnny and the Moonlites a  Puerto Rican group was really good, we used to  hear them sing at concerts in Bklyn and they got an album made.  Most of the time  we would meet up, and just sing backgrounds like  bom bo bom shoobee doo wah, bom bo bom shoobee doo wah,,, we didnt need  words,  just  notes.  The  song Bells of Rosa Rita by the Admirations was a good Doo Wop song because they would  chime off "ring out , ring out ring out"  several times in the song. When  groups did that you could really hear the harmony.  Cleveland Street Boys sang well, they used to do a song about Reindeers drinking from a  crystal stream, was real nice. They were a neighborhood gang, and  4 or 5 of them used to sing. I sang with them a few times.
If we got some wine, aka  "singin juice"  oh it helped us hit the high notes, and it sounded better.
     Singing was  one of the main things we did. We loved it. And those of us who were into  the singin, or the listening to  the Doo Wop sounds, still love it.  We used to go to Times Square record store in Manhattan to buy what they called  "credit records". These were hard to get records, and  they would put a price on  them. Stormy Weather by the  5 sharps was  worth $500. If you had it youd get that much credit in the  store.  Slim , Anita,  and  Harold  worked there. It was famous for  Doo Wop.
     We used to steal alot of 45's from parties, and from  record stores.  My friend Crutch  taught me that you  dont steal one record, you should pile up a bunch and take  20 at a time.  we had record stealing jackets, with big slits in the lining to just throw them in.  Crutch was never suspected, because he was on crutches. That's the  Polio dude I've talked about. He was the best. Anyway, we all had huge record collections. The singing Doo Wop even continued into the college days at  LIU singing with a few of the guys "People Get Ready" by the Chambers brothers. And Super Bowl Sundays I still get together with  Mooney , Woody and Chup and  hit some harmony.
       The Doo Wop lead singers had great voices. Then in the  60s, aside from Soul Music and Blues, the  rock singers like  Beatles, Stones ( who I love), etc, didnt have good voices, and couldnt hit harmony.  They sang alot in unison , which is soooo not harmony.  50's groups all wore the same thing.  All the bands  dressed alike. That's why the movie "Up in Smoke" cracked me up when they needed outfits to play and they got waiter  outfits , it was hilarious to me.  The Stones were the first group I know of that went on TV, "the Clay Cole Show" and all wore different clothes, sweatshirts, jeans, t shirts, all wore different things.  I really thought that was  so great. Eric Burden and The Animals were the next ones to  wear what they wanted ( House of the Rising Sun). Rock and Roll took a turn from Doo Wop, but it was a great turn.
    The Danny and the Juniors song says it all " Rock and Roll is here to stay , it will never die"
  

ESPERANTO

I'd like to give a shout out to my readers in Czech Republic, Spain, Ukraine, Cambodia, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Holland, Italy Spain,Russia, Ukraine(my ancestors country) , Morocco, Israel, Japan and of course the U.S.
WIth such a diverse population reading the madness that comes out of me. I probably should be
writing in the language of Esperanto.  The basic idea of Esperanto was to have a language spoken all
over the world.  No political attachment, in the name of peace. It is an interesting language, and I might add
it to my list of languages that I speak a little of. Esperanto is spoken in 115 countries around the globe
and it is spoken by anywhere from 10,000 to  2,000,000 people actively or fluently. George Soros speaks Esperanto. There are many who speak it as their native language i.e. the language spoken at home.
     ADIAUX POR NU KAJ DANKON

Airport Security

Did you ever notice how white the teeth of airline security people are? It's from all the toothpaste they confiscate. Some probably even open toothpaste stores or sell it on ebay. There does not seem to be anything logical about the confiscation of toothpaste and other liquids over 4 oz.  They let people through with no problem if they have 50 packages of a 2 oz liquid. A friend of mine had cleaning fluid samples, a whole bagful, all of the packages were about  an ounce or two each, and they let him through no problem. I got no hassle with 4 oz of cough medicine.  But the toothpaste they took away. Sealed , unopened, in the box. Into the confiscation or should I say gift pile. They make you take your shoes off, don't they know  that some people's feet stink?  meanwhile, you can bring a computer on board. A computer can surely be a deadly weapon in the hands of a skilled martial arts person, so can the cans of soda or juice they give you .
None of it makes sense. My solution, everyone flies naked. I guess if that plan happens, Virgin airlines will soon change their name

BLACKSMITHS

Blacksmiths forge iron into weapons, utensils and horseshoes.
Who thought of this horseshoe thing. Someone decided to take this custom made iron shoe and nail it into a horses foot (hoof). That is  sick.  Can you imagine going to buy a pair of shoes and when you find a pair that fits you , the salesman  grabs your leg ,,then grabs a sledge hammer and big nails. Hammers the nails through the shoe into your foot.OUCH!    ever hear a horse scream OUCH!! Why is finding a  horseshoe  a lucky thing?  I think the horse was the lucky one to get it out of his foot.
     Why aren't there little horse shoes for  goats, sheep, hmm,... dogs.

Kids working in East New York

The way I saw it, East New York  had alot of opportunities for a kid to make some extra spending money.
Of course, most of us got a few bucks a week allowance money from our parents. Obviously that wasn't enough, a kid has gotta  have his candy, his ice cream and his baseball cards. The candy's of choice, that is, my choice back in 1959 were Hollywood ( kind of like a 3 musketeer with nuts), 5th ave ( a clark bar with 2 almonds on top), Clark bar ( maybe a Reese,s cup spread out into the consistency of a kit kat), mallow mars ( they came with a coupon to get prizes, it was a marshmallow cup), Lik-m-aid(koolaid but you just ate the powder), Payday (covered with peanuts no chocolate), wax lips ( they were wax lips that you chew very sick thing), fudgethingie with a spoon( tiny spoon you eat the fudge, i have no idea what the name was),
chunkie(raisins nuts whatta chunk of chocolate),chuckles ( hated the red and the black ones, loved the  yellow and  orange, my friend always took the green one from me), red hots ( hot hot hot),frozen milky ways bars( yep we would freeze them), bon bons ( only available at the movies, filled with ice cream chocolate coated), malted balls ( only a few of us liked these),non pareils ( white sprinkles on chocolate disk) one time i had white bugs on my non pareils grossed me out and i never bought them again, Bonomo's turkish taffee ( you smack it and crack it), junior mints ( soft chocolate coated mints, i still buy them), and  thickly salted pumpkin seeds ( so salty), red pistachio nuts ( why red, our fingers got red, our mouths got red), then we didnt like the bad breath fixer stuff but  bought them occasionally black jack gum ( licorice tasting), violets (gross), sen sen ( teeny weeny little flat things a mixture of soap and  licorice) ,,, and  oh  I forgot  an old favorite PEZ,  gotta love pez,,amazing  alot of these are still around today. Today I buy Hershey with almonds, M&M peanut, and Kit Kat mostly.
          OK, back to making money.The first money maker was  making pitchers of lemonade and selling  little paper cups of it for 5 cents a cup. That was a young kid job.  When we  reached  10 years old we became  prostitutes  ( haha nonono  just  kidding).   We used to go behind the projects to the factories and find stuff they threw away. The glass factory had these semi-circular pieces of glass that worked as magnifying glasses.  We would burn our arms with them, as the sun got really hot you could burn other people's arms too, we would sell them to people who didnt want to go look for them. Then one day we found cans of cleaning fluid. A big score. When I look back on it, they were garbage, useless rejected cans. We sold these for a dollar each. We had about  30 of them, that was a huge score. I don't know if we lived in a dumb neighborhood, so people bought them, or maybe they just felt sorry for us poor kids trying to earn a living. Some of us became  newspaper delivery boys.  we wore a sack with papers and dropped them off at people's doors in the projects. We didn't do the bike thing and throw it in front of houses like in the movies. We were in the projects, it was  up and down the staircases. We made two cents a paper. I delivered the New York Daily Mirror.  Then  we went on to be delivery boys.  Mind you , no girls did this stuff, It wasn't chauvinism , Girls were just smarter than us.  The first delivery job was a Speedway on Stanley Ave, Henry was the owner, he gave us 10 cents per carton delivered.  Can you imagine how heavy that was, a  full carton of canned goods, and you had to walk about   2 blocks to deliver it, no bike , no wagon, carry it. A 60 lb  10 year old skinny kid that I was lugging these cartons for  10 cents.  I did like riding down to the basement on the conveyor. I think we werent supposed to do that.  Then   i moved up in the world and  delivered for the drug store. There were two on Stanley Ave. Alben, and  Good Ray, they both paid  25cents a delivery.  more than twice as much money and  a little bag to carry. And the people appreciated getting their drugs, so you got a much bigger tip too. Drug store tips were  a quarter to a half dollar.  Supermarket tips were about a dime.   When there were no deliveries, we would fill cough syrup bottles, and  coke syrup bottles. Coke syrup was a big drug store item back then, it stopped  nausea. Why did they stop selling that, it tasted great.
As we got older we got more industrious.  Me,  Richie and Red, came up with a great idea. Everyone seemed to like bagel or bialy with cream cheese and  lox ( smoked salmon).  Kids hated the stuff, we liked hot  bagels and bialys  but hated the stink of the fish. I love it now by the way. So , the idea was to go to every apartment in  2 projects.over 1000 of them.  Well, we couldnt do all of them but we went to quite a few. We took orders for Sunday breakfast deliveries. The usual order was  6 bagels, 6 bialys, 1 lb of cream cheese, 1/2 lb of lox,we may have had some other fish too. like herring or smoked whitefish.  We got the money in advance. Our prices were half of what it was in the stores.   They were low prices because we just made the price up.  We thought it was a great idea, and  by the response it was  HUGE.
I forget how much money we collected, and we figured on making  a ton of profit.  So we got close to $400 on our first  run.  The sad part is , there was never a second run, we didn't want to rip anyone off. We just  got  too busy, playing punchball, or skelly, or I dunno, we just forgot.  We kept the money and  enjoyed it. Noone ever came looking for us. I don't think we told our parents. My father was a cop, so he probably would have thrown us in jail. Instead it was our secret little  one day business adventure, that had great potential, but turned out to be a one day  HUGELY profitable day.  Then , I got a steady job on Sundays. I worked at the chicken market on New Lots Ave. near Ashford St.. In the morning the chickens would be loose, running around, keeping in shape.  This was a kosher chicken market.  My job was to catch the chickens. There were two ways to catch a chicken. One was  grab them by the  wings from behind. Be careful they scream and can peck you. The other was with this long metal hook. You scooped the legs out from under them.  Then I'd carry them by the legs and put them in a cage.  When a customer came in, I'd have to grab them a  live chicken. Take them in back, to the "kosher neck cutter" theres a name in Yiddish for it, something like  Sheichel, i tried googling   kosher neck cutter but nothing came up.This guy wore a cap, he would slash the chicken's neck in one svelte swoop, then stuff the birds head in this can, and the blood would drain. Then pluck the feathers in the machine. It was a very busy place with fresh chickens. The chickens didnt get the antibiotics and hormones that  today's chickens get. They  were tough, fresh city chickens, eating corn and  worms, and  who knows what. If you were lucky you got them with an unborn egg ( no shell on it) it was inside them. Great in chicken soup. That was an intersting job.  Another was  shoveling manure and walking horses to cool them off at the riding academy. Lots of  good employment for  very little pay, but lots of fun.
    One day, it came to us, in a dream. Let's start a business. So what better business than a Radio Repair Shop.  We got a free room at the Community Center to start our shop.  We would go to the junk yards on Flatlands Ave. and take car radios out of cars. That part was fun. Take the knobs off first, then juggle it around and  pull it out, the speakers were usually right on top of the radio. We would take a bunch back to the shop. We would  get one working so we would have music. The rest would get stripped for  parts. We had lots of tubes.  There were 4 partners in this business. Yep, it was big business. A couple of us would go to the drug store and test the tubes in the tube tester. We had capacitors, resisters, tubes, speakers, a soldering iron, screwdrivers, wire cutters. We were very professional. We put our sign up and business started coming. Transister radios were making an appearance on the scene, and the big Emerson's that were portables with a plug, and RCA's were fading out, as  Sony came out with an 8 transistor radio, small compact and totally cool. Many years later  boom boxes came about. Strange how things go in the opposite direction after a while. Business was booming, we had a  big backlog of radios to fix.  Our major problem was, we had no idea  how to fix radios.  If it had tubes we would test them all and hope we would find a burnt out one and we were successful at fixing it. Others, we would check things with this ohm meter or something, and occasionally we found a broken wire.  I had my first soldering job on a nice  little portable. The wires were so small, the solder was so big. I liked the way solder  bubbles and melts. So I splash some on the  broken wires i twisted together. I gotta say it held really strongly. But the whole radio was covered with  melted solder and melted black tape. It was a mess. Good thing the radio had a cover. Who cares how messy it looked inside. Look inside a mouth with tons of fillings, disgusting, but it works. So it was the same attitude, our work wasnt pretty but  at least 10% of the time  we fixed your radio. Some we couldnt fix. In a month or so, the shop closed down due to  lack of satisfied customers. But we learned alot about  different colored wires, and  how hot solder is. We learned how easily plastic melts, speakers puncture. It was definitely a learning experience.
    When I hit 7th or 8th grade, I got a really important job, working in the  dry cleaners. I was the  bagger. I did some miscellaneous work there also, like  spraying the   soapy stuff on stains, or soaking badly stained clothes in the  'perc". Perc was short for a long chemical name, that i'm too lazy to look up right now. It was deadly stuff. It came out of the "cooker".  It certainly took stains out of clothes. Someone had to shovel out the perc  from the cooker everyday. It was like shoveling pounds of ash, like they do on the coal engine trains.  The thing is, the fumes were hazardous to your health. But in 1962 nothing was  hazardous to your health.  So  I shoveled. It made me so high , that when i was done shovelling , I'd bump into racks of clothing , knocking some on the floor. What a great job. I also got free dry cleaning as a benefit. The owner didnt know we had 6 people in our family and alot of clothes to clean. When he saw the piles of clothing I brought in to clean, I thought he was having a heart attack.
And then there was  Big Bill. Bill was   a big black guy with slick hair and sometimes a bandana. He was the  presser. Bill got paid by the  piece. Some articles of clothing worth more than others.  I was the guy who counted the pieces and  wrote down how many Bill pressed.  if the total came to  120 I would  round it up, to  maybe 374.  Bill loved me.  The owners caught a few of my accidently on purpose mistakes and  I no longer  did that. It was back to  bagging the clothes.  I would hang some clothes on this metal stand, roll down a  bag, rip the bag off the roll, shake it a few times to puff it up and get it right over the clothes, then twist tie it and staple the ticket on the plastic.  Of course if it was an opposing Little League uniform, a few extra things took place. Like, stapling the legs together , spitting on the clothes, putting  pins in so they'd get stuck.  nice things like that.  I was the fastest bagger known East of the Mississippi.   I got paid $1 an hour , off the books. The job got passed down to my friend Johnny, the Richie, and a few others. I would pass the Cozy Bar ( which was next door to the cleaners) with my  mother and  Big Bill would say hello, my mom would  say " you know people from that  dirty bar?"  I'd say  oh mom that's Big Bill. She would just roll her eyes.
     There were other jobs later on, although not boring, sometimes interesting , like working in Pitkin Pawn Brokers ( i said  pawn not porn ).  The owner would give people money for anything they brought in. One time he gave a guy $5 for a suit with poop in the pants. GROSSSS.  Another guy bought a watch that stopped every two hours. The guy refused to go get it fixed. Repair was free. He would come into the store and set his watch every two hours.  The weirdest people came into that shop on  Pitkin between Osborn and Thatford.  Brownsville, USA.
        It was fun growing up in East New York, establishing a work ethic.  Ahh yes, kids today, have video games much better idea.

Chew Your Food

Thinking back a few years, i was at a business meeting in Jacksonville, Florida.  I was talking up a storm to everyone trying to get more  business.  A lot of talking was done at the bar and between the bar and buffet.
 The buffet was  pretty good, as far as buffets go.  I'm not a big fan but these were dishes served by people, so no dirty hands, or feet for that matter were going into the food.  They had  steak shish-kebabs, spaghetti, shrimp, chicken on skewers, etc etc.  There I was  talking and talking eating my kebabs,  suckin' down my spaghetti. As i'm talking my voice changes and  it's harder to  push out the words.  It gets even more difficult but I keep on giving my sales pitch to a couple of guys.  My big eating problem has always been , I don't chew. Not a good thing.  I look at the plate and do not notice the 5 inch stick from the shish-kebab on my plate.  I think "holy shish-kebab sticks!"  I sucked the damn stick down with the spaghetti.  One of the guys I was talking to said , you better get to a hospital. So, i'm waiting  in the lobby,and  trying to talk to this young woman there, who it turn out was the granddaughter of the best Lemon Ices in East New York. What a small world. She was  Willy's granddaughter from Willy's Ices on Atlantic Avenue, right near the White Castle.  I was amazed. She was even more amazed, 1) that I knew of Willy's Ices 2) that i swallowed a  5 inch shish-kebab stick and  am  still talking
   So I get to an Emergency Medical Trailer, they take an x ray, and they tell me, They can't believe I actually swallowed that. I told them it slid down like stiff spaghetti.  They told me  if i'm in severe pain to come back right away.  As it turned out, I wasn't in severe pain, and about  3 days later, I called my whole family in to  see the sight of a big ol' shish-kebab stick floating in my toilet bowl.
      From then on I chewed my food. And it is a good thing I did, because  a week later, I was playing golf, and went to eat at the  restaurant at the golf course. I ordered a triple decker sandwich that is held together by toothpicks. Wouldnt ya know it? I'm eating and chewing , and i bite into something hard. It's a toothpick.  Apparently when the chef stuck the toothpick in( the ones with the colored frizzly stuff on the end)  it broke off so you couldn't see it. So what does he do, he doesn't remove the broken one and just sticks another one in.  So it's a good thing I started chewing.  Scarey stuff.