4th of July in the projects

Let's start out by letting you all know that the Boulevard Projects in  East New York, were built  in a swamp land. That swamp was filled with garbage and then they built about  26 buildings on top of the garbage or landfill.  There was still the  stream of water from the sewage plant, that we called  Shitz Creek. There were rows and rows of quansett huts or we called them the barracks.  These were  inhabited by veterans of  World War II .  Some of these people  had goats. There were 2 cow farms, several vegetable farms and two riding stables.  There were woods that we called Sherwood Forest, where the police found a huge crop of marijuana  back in the late 50's  when not many people even knew what it was.  We had names for every landmark, from Dry Gulch, to "the lots" , to the circle, The Pond, Volcano Mountain, and of course the  witch's  house.   

     I'm not sure where this story is going, but  at least you know the lay of the land. These projects were located right on the  Idlewild Airport plane route  , later known as Kennedy Airport. The planes would come so low and so loud the buildings  seemed to shake.  If you were home watching Rin Tin Tin on TV, or something the planes would come over and make you miss the whole end of the show.

     So  July 4th is summer, it is so hot , and so humid.  Most of the people in the building would  come out front and sit on the benches outside.  If it was  around  dusk,  the kids would be playing  3 feet over the boundary line or  ringaleevio or hide and seek.  When evening came, Someone would have a  portable radio and  playing either  1010 WINS  Alan Freed Show, or maybe it was a few years later and they had  Murray the K and his Swingin Suaree on WMCA, or the Good Guys.  Perhaps  it was the  Jocko Radio Show,,,or even Latin music hosted by Dick Ricardo Sugar on WEVD  playing  Charlie Pamieri or Pacheco y su charanaga... I was in a Latin band, playing the keyboards.  Our leader was fluent in Spanish and played Timbolis.  ( I'm not checking spelling on any of this,,,sorry),.  

        So its hot it's humid,, people sitting outside  and the  mosquitoes were like  B-52's attacking everyone. They seemed to like my taste the best.  I'd love to smack a mosquito when he ws drilling his stinger into my arm and  "splat"  blood would  splash al over my arm,if i got  a good one  and had perfect timing.  That is, after he filled his tank.

    Leading up to the  4th, we would try to secure fireworks.  A few of the parents would buy Roman Candles or some kind of  rockets.... Cracker Balls we always had,, and would throw them not he ground and scare the crap out of  old ladies and  others.  Sometimes we would arm ourselves with  cherry bombs or M80's.  They say an M80 equals a quarter stick of  dynamite  maybe an  1/8. There was  something  called  aerial bombs that were  more powerful ,In any case, we would  walk around with our  brown paper bags filled with these ash cans aka  M80's  and throw them at people.    During the day if we went fishing on the  Cross Bay Bridge,    we would throw them lit into the water,,,they had  water proof stuff around the  fuse,,  We'd get a big  splash,,,The best  was catching a  giant  pre-historic looking  horseshoe crab.. taking that crab and shoving a  cherry bomb into it and  blowing it to smithereens.   

        Now  we are back in the projects and  it is kind of dangerous on the  4th or around that date, because  people  would throw explosives at you ,,, Yes even if they knew you , we would  often have  cherry bomb fights. Scary stuff.    Someoen would always  buy a "mat " of firecrackers  , i think it was  80 packs..  I seem to recall Tiger  Brand, made in Macau.   i used to collect labels of different brands of firecrackers.   We would like to light a whole  pack at a time. You would  hear  20 simultaneous explosions.  Sometimes we would light them off in the hallways,,,, oh the parents hated that  ,and we would get yelled at ,,but it was really loud in the hallways.  One time this guy Eugene jackson, he ws  really tall,  I remember.. He threw a firecracker  at me and it blew up in my ear.  Two of my neighbors,,"the big kids"  Mal Capone and  Arnie ran after him and  kicked his  butt.  Hey good to have peeps.   Anyway,,,,  we would like to go up to the roof tops and  look out about  15 blocks to  Blake Ave, and watch the tenement  fires.There were so many fires around that time of year.. And those  old  houses  would burn easily,,,  There had to be  3 or 4 fires a night up on  Blake or Sutter Ave.

The firemen had their work cut out for them.  

      Sometimes people   were stupid and  held a cherry bomb  or even a fire cracker too long.   It would blow up in your hand,, It happened to me with a firecracker,, My hand  blistered up pretty bad... One guy, named Fly Away  held  a M80 too long and lost  2 fingers.  They didn't call him Fly Away because his fingers flew away,,He got the name because he was like  6 ft 5in and  skinny as a rail . If a wind  blew he might fly away.   

    So that was the   firework fun in the Projects,,,  the little kids had sparklers and  well, because  we also didn't have much money, we used to make  our own fireworks but tying  steel wool  to a  string, lighting it and  spinning it around like a  sparkler.. That's ghetto fireworks.   As young kids we had this things called punks.They were skinny brown  things with a thin wood stem.  They would burn like a cigarette. We would burn holes in papers and leaves with the hot tip.  Or wave it around in the dark watching the   orange designs it made...It was also good , supposedly , for keeping the mosquitoes away.  On the hot days we would  go to the  Super Market ,, either Speedway or  The Market Place to cool off. Maybe go to the movies. Those were the only places with air-conditioning.  We  had fans.  Some people  talked about having blocks of  ice and a fan to blow the coolness.  We had  2 fans,,  the good fan and the bad fan.  The good fan had lots of colored buttons,  Green was high speed.. my father always seemed to get that one pointed at him.  Now we can't survive without  A/C.   Our cars didn't have  A/C either ,,we had the triangular  "fly windows" in the front that you could direct the air with. I don't think air-conditioning got into cars until maybe  1959.  It was only in some cars,  probably Cadillacs..  We had used  old cars.    If we were lucky someone would drive us to  Coney Island and we would  watch the real fireworks,,but mostly we watched the  tenements burn down and  watch a few Roman Candles and  bottle rockets.  Oh yeah,  and  matches would light by striking it on the  ground,,or on a window,,or with your nail you could  flick the  tip off and it would ignite,,,I think they used to say it had phosphorus  in the tip.. They were Ohio Blue Tip matches i think ,,they were wooden.  They became  illegal I think ,,but they were cool.   you could even throw them on the ground and watch them light.  

    Those were the good old days.