There were a few things I remember as a youth, i'm not sure if I already wrote about but I find them amusing.
We lived in the Projects in East New York. One Easter my father brought home baby chicks. We had them so long they became big chickens. Imagine 6 big chickens running around an apartment. Then to our surprise my father brought home an Irish setter named Lady. OMG the dog went nuts when she saw the chickens. We had no choice but to let the chickens free. We took them, in several trips to the "lots" behind the projects and set them loose. I thought we were doing a good thing. Now , looking back, those chickens maybe lasted a day in the wild.
Science was fun, especially making gun powder and bombs. A little potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur and there you have gunpowder. work that into a fuse to set off a magnesium ribbon in Hydrochloric acid and you have a little hydrogen bomb. Well, the result was a giant hole in my mother's formica counter top. My mom hated science.
Charcoal grilling at its finest. I loved charcoal grilled burgers. But we didn't have the luxury of a backyard in the projects. So what better place to grill. In the bathtub. I placed the charcoal grill in the tub, figuring nothing will catch fire. I was very smart about safety <cough>,, So i was grilling away, and choking away, and then my parents came home and they weren't thrilled with my cooking skills. They thought the place was burning down, it was just some hamburgers grilling and charcoal burning and smoke everywhere. Oh yeah, we didn't have a bathroom window,just a tiny vent.
Ball throwing, it was a big challenge at around age 11 to throw a Spalding rubber ball or Pensy Pinky ball on the roof of a 6 six story building. We would try and we would hit windows on the 5th floor. Finally one happy day we'd reach the roof. A real happy feeling. Throwing them on the roof of the 14 story building is something I was never able to do. But I loved going up on the roof of all the buildings. It could be dangerous. One kid convinced another that he could fly , like Superman, just using a 2 cent paper parachute the size of a handkerchief. The kid jumped , maybe pushed, and died.
A guy named Walter, used to throw cats off the roof, very mean and crazy dude.
Me and my buddy Sandy were the dumbest robbers around. We would go to Joe and Eddie's candy store, one of us would hold the door open the other would grab candy bars and , create a bit of a scene running out. We would alternate who held the door open and we would do this at least twice a week. The thing is, the owners knew us and our parents. Obviously they saw us. No one ever confronted us. I wonder if our parents paid them for the stolen goods.
The movie THEM , had giant ants. We thought feeding our tiny ants sugar would make them grow. We tried for about a week, nothing happened. What a disappointment. We moved on to catching bees , picking them up by the wings . Tricky business. Catching butterflies was fun too.
Why was there such temptation to pull the legs off of daddy longlegs spiders. Still a mystery to me.
I had a dog that could eat about 30 of them in a couple of minutes.
I was afraid of dogs, My father filmed me running from a tiny chihuahua type dog . Very funny.
But I always hung out with dogs and loved them. We had Laddy, a stray dog and member of a pack. he would come around everyday, and we would play with him. He was so smart, he would crawl like a soldier in combat. Laddy was part Collie and part shepherd and part other stuff. Great dog. Captured by the ASPCA several times. He escaped several times. At least that is what we believed. He hated people in uniform. He had nice white teeth , and would bark at uniformed people. We tried to take him into our house as a pet, but he preferred to run free. There was also Queenie, a favorite of ours. Spaghetti, not too many people knew. He was part great dane, and ended up having rabies and died.
The pack hung out by the flagpole in the projects. To get the bus on Linden Blvd, you had to venture by the pack. It was quite frightening. I had a dog Poncho that ran off with the pack for a couple of days. I was not going to go after him. I think he became a leader of the pack after beating the leader in a fight.
We used to eat lunch fast. Usually peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and race back to school. I think this kid David had the 7 minute record.
I was a toy soldier in the school play, Christmas Story. I brought my own props. This caused havoc. I found a Japanese WWII rifle, loaded with a 7.7mm bullet and a bayonnette. I brought it to school. I thought I looked so cool as a soldier, with a real gun. The teachers didn't think it was so cool. My father didn't think it was so cool. My butt after being whooped with a belt by my father didn't think it was so cool.
Well, those are some thoughts for now.
