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".
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