it's been so long, I have no idea what i'm gonna write about. Probably something I already wrote , but who cares.
We used to play Skelly, or in the Bronx they called it Skully. I guess the both names make sense, since there were skulls or skeleton heads in the center of the chalk drawn court.
A big square was drawn on the Ground. I forget what you would call the ground, it wasn't a sidewalk. It was a wide path, paved with gravel. No cracks like sidewalks have. We would take chalk, everyone always had chalk available. Draw the big square and then 8 numbered boxes on the corners and sides.
in the middle was the 9 box , surrounded by 3 skeleton boxes. The idea was to shoot your checker into the 9 boxes in consecutive order. Then into all the skull boxes and then you shoot for killer onesy. Once you were a killer, you would try to hit the other players' checkers and they would be knocked out of the game.
You could always tell who was a skelly player , because they usually had holes in the knees of their jeans. Mothers kept busy sewing patches on jeans They even had iron on denim patches for lazy mothers who couldn't sew. My mom was a great sewer and had a Singer sewing machine.
Nowadays, they sell jeans with premade holes in the, we worked for our holy pants.
The checkers, they were soda bottle caps. They weren't like the new kind, they were like beer tops, the ones we use a bottle opener to get them off. However, you didn't want to use those caps because the opener would bend them. We would go to the coke machine where people would buy a bottle and open it right there. Those were called "smoothies". Some people had beer key openers and those made smoothies also. Now back in the day, bottle caps were lined with corks. An excellent checker was made by taking the cork out of one and doubling up another one , hence "double corker".
Triple corker was the most you could do. You would then stick thumb tacks in them , for color, design, weight and to hold the corks down. Do people still know what thumbtacks are?
My favorite checkers were crayon or wax checkers. We we would melt different color crayons into the caps. THey looked the coolest. Finally there were clay checkers. Clay was a household item back then, we took clay and filled the checker. It was heavy and could blast someone far. Or if someone was ready to blast you , you could switch checkers, put the clay side down, now you were pretty hard to move if hit.
It was a great game, and I fondly remember my ripped knee Wrangler jeans. Btw, wranglers were the best. they faded just right. Lee was popular but stayed dark blue, kinda sucked. Then there were no name brands, those weren't cool at all.
Oh yeah, we wore black leather belts, maybe 2/12 inches wide, with square brass buckles. They called them Garrison belts. Some of us used to try to sharpen the corners of the buckle, in case of a belt fight, you could do more harm. If you were "cool" you wore the buckle on the side, never right in front. Sometimes we would hang rabbits feet from the loops, or some kind of puzzle.
Motorcycle jackets were in fashion, and they had a lot of zippers to hang rabits feet from.
To get even more fashionable, we would go over to Carl's Motorcycle Shop and buy studs. We would put studs on our jackets and belts. Star shaped studs were common and round pointed ones.
We wore cuffs on our jeans back then too.
Depending on what age group, styles changed. Around age 11 we would hang at Lou's stable, We wore cowboy boots there, with our Wranglers. We would walk the horses to cool them off and get free riding time. We'd have to shovel horseshit also. My favorite horse then was Blackie, that horse would move without even kicking it. The horse I felt bad for was Rosie Buckin'. The horse was more like a pony, and she hated to run. But she would buck. Sometimes some mean older guys would ride her and hit her with sticks or pipes to make her run.. That sucked. Ayrab was another slow one but a big reddish horse. We would ride them out into the lots, the weeds the swamps. Down to the beach along Jamaica Bay. It was a lot of fun.
So , i'll end here, for now and hopefully get back into the swing of bloggin' again.
Friday, January 6, 2017
Thursday, May 7, 2015
New Film out The Seven Five ( 75th precinct)
I have to see this film about the 75th precinct in ENY. About corrupt cops there. The 75th precinct moved their station house from Miller Ave in the 70s.. The reason was because the neighborhood was too bad, even for the cops.
http://nypost.com/2015/05/06/corrupt-cop-doc-the-seven-five-is-a-must-see/
http://nypost.com/2015/05/06/corrupt-cop-doc-the-seven-five-is-a-must-see/
Monday, January 12, 2015
Pot Smoking in East New York
Back in the 50's in East New York there was a marijuana bust. Most people didn't even know what that stuff was. Some guy was growing pot back in the woods behind the Projects. We called the woods Sherwood Forest. There were quanset huts or we called them Barracks, that went from East New York to Canarsie. There were goats, and farms. Starrett City now is where Sherwood Forest once was. So they burnt the guys pot field. Years later when we knew what pot was we would be amazed that this stuff was growing in our neighborhood. Around 1963 or 1964 pot started in East New York. It didn't really start but it became popular amongst "cool" people, so to speak. There was one known ex-junkie in the neighborhood. He was a graduate of Synonon, the heroin rehab center. Perhaps the only in the US ( maybe). I don't want to divulge names on that, but he was famous for starting people smoking pot. His name started with a D, that 's all i'm saying. So this pot smoking started before Hippies started. What was funny , it was "tough guys" that were smoking the stuff. Not all of them. It started a division between the ones that did and the ones that didn't. In those days they didn't sell rolling papers.
You had to buy a bag of tobacco and it came with rolling papers inside. There were two brands that had papers. Bugler was one, that you settled for if you couldn't get the main brand. The main brand was Top. It took no time to figure out that Top spelled Pot backwards. Bambu and EZ Wide and Rizla didn't come for years later. The joints people rolled were like toothpicks. People would buy nickel bags ( $5), I think it got 20 of those skinny joints. It also had seeds in it. Since it was a new thing people would smoke in the streets, in parents houses, anywhere and non-smokers wouldn't have any idea what was going on. Yes, they heard a lot of giggles. Some scoundrels would rip off people and sell them lipton tea or oregano and tell them it was pot. Remember this was early on, and people were new to it. By late 1964-65 we were moving from DooWop to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The best pot that you either could get or heard about was Panama Red, Acapulco Gold. There was Black Pot, and Chiba Chiba that was supposedly from Africa. There was a Black guy named Kelly, that had pot named after him "Kelly Red". People would call pot Tea ( because it looked or smelled like tea burning), or Boo. The Rolling Stones mention the word Boo in their song 19th Nervous Breakdown."when you were in school and you had that boo it really messed your mind,,,", many songs had hidden meanings about pot. Tambourine Man by Dylan was a favorite. Puff the Magic Dragon was another. It was days of censorship. The Rolling Stones were on Ed Sullivan show and had to change the words in a song "Let's spend a night together" to Let's spend some time together" ,,, It was hard to mention pot in the songs. It wasn't until a couple of years later, like 1967 when Beatles and Joe Cocker did " I get high with a little help from my friends"... Yeah yeah I know pot smoking was going on in Harlem. In the 40's and 50's, ,it didn't all start in East New York in the 60's. But it became popular then. Then California hippie migration started. People learned to roll huge "Cali joints" They stopped putting "roaches" in cigarettes after emptying out the tobacco, and created "roach clips" I knew a guy Davey who started a business making soapstone carved roach holders. Great carvings. I carved a few too . i still have one or two i think carved into heads. What's interesting is the early days of pot, brought people together , like a clan or family. You would say " are you a head". It was like a clandestine group. Of course then by 1967, the world went wild with drugs in general. East New York was loaded with junkies and pill heads. People you knew who were great athletes would be found in alleys dead. The gangs fights between Black and Whites kind of ended when the junkies started. What happened was the Blacks and Whites started to do heroin together. It was probably one of the only good things heroin did , was bring people together ...Of course eventually they would rob each other and kill each other or themselves. Bad stuff. Anyway, there was also the other crowd that did LSD, and those that did Speed, which the motto Speed Kills was very popular. As it really did kill people. So, anyway, by 1965 ( going back) Hashish started to be known. It was much stronger than pot. They had many kinds. Red Lebanese, Black Pakistan Slabs, Red Afghani, and the best was Black Nepalese with white mold on it, also their Nepalese temple balls. Some guys in college smuggled a lot of Kif, back from Morocco stashed in a VW van. These days, and i don't indulge, just for the record. Pot is much stronger than back in the day. Its hard to imagine that it is stronger than nepalese hash, and I still have my doubts. But it became more sophisticated. And now its' not the "cool" people who smoke the stuff. It's the people who were called the "straight" people, the suit people, doctors, soldiers, murderers, artists, all sorts.
So there ya go, what was once a cult thing is now mainstream, and is legal in so many states. As the world turns . I guess my generation is finally running the world. it was bound to happen. And Its a good thing. I'm not advocating pot, but if cigarettes and alcohol are legal, why shouldn't pot be.
It keeps a lot of people happy.
You had to buy a bag of tobacco and it came with rolling papers inside. There were two brands that had papers. Bugler was one, that you settled for if you couldn't get the main brand. The main brand was Top. It took no time to figure out that Top spelled Pot backwards. Bambu and EZ Wide and Rizla didn't come for years later. The joints people rolled were like toothpicks. People would buy nickel bags ( $5), I think it got 20 of those skinny joints. It also had seeds in it. Since it was a new thing people would smoke in the streets, in parents houses, anywhere and non-smokers wouldn't have any idea what was going on. Yes, they heard a lot of giggles. Some scoundrels would rip off people and sell them lipton tea or oregano and tell them it was pot. Remember this was early on, and people were new to it. By late 1964-65 we were moving from DooWop to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The best pot that you either could get or heard about was Panama Red, Acapulco Gold. There was Black Pot, and Chiba Chiba that was supposedly from Africa. There was a Black guy named Kelly, that had pot named after him "Kelly Red". People would call pot Tea ( because it looked or smelled like tea burning), or Boo. The Rolling Stones mention the word Boo in their song 19th Nervous Breakdown."when you were in school and you had that boo it really messed your mind,,,", many songs had hidden meanings about pot. Tambourine Man by Dylan was a favorite. Puff the Magic Dragon was another. It was days of censorship. The Rolling Stones were on Ed Sullivan show and had to change the words in a song "Let's spend a night together" to Let's spend some time together" ,,, It was hard to mention pot in the songs. It wasn't until a couple of years later, like 1967 when Beatles and Joe Cocker did " I get high with a little help from my friends"... Yeah yeah I know pot smoking was going on in Harlem. In the 40's and 50's, ,it didn't all start in East New York in the 60's. But it became popular then. Then California hippie migration started. People learned to roll huge "Cali joints" They stopped putting "roaches" in cigarettes after emptying out the tobacco, and created "roach clips" I knew a guy Davey who started a business making soapstone carved roach holders. Great carvings. I carved a few too . i still have one or two i think carved into heads. What's interesting is the early days of pot, brought people together , like a clan or family. You would say " are you a head". It was like a clandestine group. Of course then by 1967, the world went wild with drugs in general. East New York was loaded with junkies and pill heads. People you knew who were great athletes would be found in alleys dead. The gangs fights between Black and Whites kind of ended when the junkies started. What happened was the Blacks and Whites started to do heroin together. It was probably one of the only good things heroin did , was bring people together ...Of course eventually they would rob each other and kill each other or themselves. Bad stuff. Anyway, there was also the other crowd that did LSD, and those that did Speed, which the motto Speed Kills was very popular. As it really did kill people. So, anyway, by 1965 ( going back) Hashish started to be known. It was much stronger than pot. They had many kinds. Red Lebanese, Black Pakistan Slabs, Red Afghani, and the best was Black Nepalese with white mold on it, also their Nepalese temple balls. Some guys in college smuggled a lot of Kif, back from Morocco stashed in a VW van. These days, and i don't indulge, just for the record. Pot is much stronger than back in the day. Its hard to imagine that it is stronger than nepalese hash, and I still have my doubts. But it became more sophisticated. And now its' not the "cool" people who smoke the stuff. It's the people who were called the "straight" people, the suit people, doctors, soldiers, murderers, artists, all sorts.
So there ya go, what was once a cult thing is now mainstream, and is legal in so many states. As the world turns . I guess my generation is finally running the world. it was bound to happen. And Its a good thing. I'm not advocating pot, but if cigarettes and alcohol are legal, why shouldn't pot be.
It keeps a lot of people happy.
Monday, December 22, 2014
College Days
It was a crazy day at Stony Brook University, in G dorm. I had just bought a new Czechoslovakian Motorcycle, a Jawa. It was a big engine, but the frame was big , so you felt like you were riding a heavy duty bike. A few of us had bikes, and we rode thru the woods and along the railroad tracks and ended up inside of Nuclear Power Plant property. Trespassers I think they shoot them.
Well we were certainly trespassers. Riding thru these woods i hit a few trees and knocked by foot pedal off, but it didn't serve much of a purpose anyway. We were amazed that we fell upon such a hidden secret area. It was not more than 10 minutes that all sorts of government vehicles pulled up and made us get off the bikes, line up against the fence and question us. I guess we kind of looked Russian. And at that time, Russians could have been spies. Eventually they let us go with a warning. Meanwhile my bike didn't even have license plates on it. But managed to get away with that violation.
So we ride back to the college. Oh , I forgot to mention our bikes were loud. We took the baffles out of the muffler , and my friends Ducati had what they call a megaphone, making it growl even louder. We started riding around campus . Our dorm room was on the 2nd floor. We thought it would be cool to ride through the dorm halls with 4 loud bikes. So we did. It was surely loud. It was hilarious, scaring people just getting out of the shower , walking down the hall with a towel around them and a roaring motorcycle shoots by them. In the safety of their dorm. The guy in charge of the floor, the RA, chased us back outside. He was a good guy , so no worry there. Then it happened , a glorified Barney Fife or Wyatt Earp campus cop pulled us over , out in front of the dorms. He swaggered up to us with his leather jacket and boots., hands on his hips, sunglasses. You get the idea. Then he gives me the weirdest traffic ticket. It said " No License, No insurance, No muffler, No NOTHING!". Now that's a bizarre ticket.
Other bike antics were riding with 6 of us on one bike. pretty nuts. Or the time me and Marshall were riding to FIT( College in NYC), after we flunked out of Stoney Brook. There we were going down Flatbush Ave. They had just passed helmut laws , and we didn't have real helmets. we were wearing football helmets. We looked kind of funny. As we are riding, a big tractor trailer was crossing the intersection. We had recently seen Abbott and Costello ride under a truck with their motorcycle in some old movie. They were fine afterwards. So I look back at him, he was behind me, He looks at me. We both knew I was thinking of going under the truck. He taps me and says NO! So I listen, figuring he was a smart guy. And we stopped. We see under the trailer there is a bunch of metal stuff that would have stopped us. We would have been dead.
Then back in East New York, I'm riding the bike, me and my friends had bikes and we were doing that Marlon Brando circle thing. Just going round and round in little circles. Well, wouldn't ya know it, my bike slid out from under me, and got stuck under a car. Talk about embarrassing. And how the heck do you explain to anyone that your motorcycle is stuck under a car.
We used to sit up nights and talk about our motorcycle "gang" taking over Rhode Island, we didn't think that would be too difficult. Then we thought Grande Mesa Colorado, population 9 would be an easier task. We never made it there. We had dreams of buying a penguin, and training him. We were kind of weird kids and thought the penguin could hang with us and tell us what to do and stuff. And he'd be smoking cigars , His name was Max. Ok, it would have been Max, if we actually bought him.
We went down to a store on Wall St. called Treflich's Exotic Animals. We walked in and a dozen apes were going wild, They were shaking their cages, just going bizerk. We asked the guy, where's the penguins. So he showed us the only one he had. He said he didn't get much calls for penguins. The penguin was a big Emperor Penguin. It looked pretty cool. The manager guy said to us, ' you have to wash him down twice a day and fee him fish". "Watch your fingers because he will snap them off." Then he gave us the price , $275. We thought that was a bit steep for a penguin. And where will we keep him. So we left the place penguin less, but it did seem like a good idea.
I still love Penguins.
Well we were certainly trespassers. Riding thru these woods i hit a few trees and knocked by foot pedal off, but it didn't serve much of a purpose anyway. We were amazed that we fell upon such a hidden secret area. It was not more than 10 minutes that all sorts of government vehicles pulled up and made us get off the bikes, line up against the fence and question us. I guess we kind of looked Russian. And at that time, Russians could have been spies. Eventually they let us go with a warning. Meanwhile my bike didn't even have license plates on it. But managed to get away with that violation.
So we ride back to the college. Oh , I forgot to mention our bikes were loud. We took the baffles out of the muffler , and my friends Ducati had what they call a megaphone, making it growl even louder. We started riding around campus . Our dorm room was on the 2nd floor. We thought it would be cool to ride through the dorm halls with 4 loud bikes. So we did. It was surely loud. It was hilarious, scaring people just getting out of the shower , walking down the hall with a towel around them and a roaring motorcycle shoots by them. In the safety of their dorm. The guy in charge of the floor, the RA, chased us back outside. He was a good guy , so no worry there. Then it happened , a glorified Barney Fife or Wyatt Earp campus cop pulled us over , out in front of the dorms. He swaggered up to us with his leather jacket and boots., hands on his hips, sunglasses. You get the idea. Then he gives me the weirdest traffic ticket. It said " No License, No insurance, No muffler, No NOTHING!". Now that's a bizarre ticket.
Other bike antics were riding with 6 of us on one bike. pretty nuts. Or the time me and Marshall were riding to FIT( College in NYC), after we flunked out of Stoney Brook. There we were going down Flatbush Ave. They had just passed helmut laws , and we didn't have real helmets. we were wearing football helmets. We looked kind of funny. As we are riding, a big tractor trailer was crossing the intersection. We had recently seen Abbott and Costello ride under a truck with their motorcycle in some old movie. They were fine afterwards. So I look back at him, he was behind me, He looks at me. We both knew I was thinking of going under the truck. He taps me and says NO! So I listen, figuring he was a smart guy. And we stopped. We see under the trailer there is a bunch of metal stuff that would have stopped us. We would have been dead.
Then back in East New York, I'm riding the bike, me and my friends had bikes and we were doing that Marlon Brando circle thing. Just going round and round in little circles. Well, wouldn't ya know it, my bike slid out from under me, and got stuck under a car. Talk about embarrassing. And how the heck do you explain to anyone that your motorcycle is stuck under a car.
We used to sit up nights and talk about our motorcycle "gang" taking over Rhode Island, we didn't think that would be too difficult. Then we thought Grande Mesa Colorado, population 9 would be an easier task. We never made it there. We had dreams of buying a penguin, and training him. We were kind of weird kids and thought the penguin could hang with us and tell us what to do and stuff. And he'd be smoking cigars , His name was Max. Ok, it would have been Max, if we actually bought him.
We went down to a store on Wall St. called Treflich's Exotic Animals. We walked in and a dozen apes were going wild, They were shaking their cages, just going bizerk. We asked the guy, where's the penguins. So he showed us the only one he had. He said he didn't get much calls for penguins. The penguin was a big Emperor Penguin. It looked pretty cool. The manager guy said to us, ' you have to wash him down twice a day and fee him fish". "Watch your fingers because he will snap them off." Then he gave us the price , $275. We thought that was a bit steep for a penguin. And where will we keep him. So we left the place penguin less, but it did seem like a good idea.
I still love Penguins.
Happy Holidays
A Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year to you All.
The weirdest Christmas tree I ever had was decorated with motor oil cans and matchbooks.
The weirdest Christmas tree I ever had was decorated with motor oil cans and matchbooks.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Lots of murders lately
East New York has been in the news a lot lately. Especially the Boulevard Projects. Murder murder murder. Some lunatic stabbed two kids in an elevator in the next building from where I used to live on Schenck and Stanley. Two other murders on Wortman Ave. Things are out of control. I hear there are murders every week there. When we were growing up there were gang wars, there were switch blades, iron pipes, even zip guns. But you didn't hear about murder much. Fights, yes . Plenty of fights.
Some very tough guys in East New York. Arnie Mandel was very tough. One time he Buster Russo, and Jackie Maggot took on about ten guys at Boy's High at recess. They ended up in jail when one pressed charges. Arnie at one time was the best fighter in Sing Sing prison. He is dead now. He got hit by a truck and died. Maybe it wasn't an accident , who knows.
Johnny Reb once had a fight with Goody on Stanley and Van Siclen , Reb bit off Goody's ear. This was years before Mike Tyson did the ear thing. By the way, Mike Tyson was a member of the Brownsville Boys Club, where we used to be members as kids. I wonder if Mike ate hot dogs at Coney island Joe's.
Patsy Penna once stabbed a guy on Sutter Ave in the chest about 100 times with a little knife.
I cut Ikey's wrist because he dared me. He was gushing blood and we rushed him to Brookdale hospital. They said he could have died. Apparently I cut him pretty deep with my Jaguar knife.
Richie Texas and Big Mel had a brutal fight by Dry Gulch Park. Those were very tough guys.
Bobby Brown was the toughest kid in PS 273. I think he was like 3 years older than everybody, and he had many scars on his face. I had a fight with his brother Calvin, Sandy Schmidt jumped in and helped me out.
Sandy was tough, fast and fought like an animal. Robbie Rogue was known to be the toughest , craziest guy on New Lots Ave. He hung with Arnie. Richie Q wrote a book about ENY recently , I read excerpts of it. He was a New Lots Member and had a reputation of being a very bad dude.
Danny Russo from Cleveland Street Boys, was known to sucker punch people . "hey gotta light" POW... He did have some boxing training at the Boys Club on New Lots Ave. This guy Leon in my building was a boxing instructor there. Buster Russo was a Golden Gloves boxer.
Crazy Rigat, was so strong and so tough. He went to Automotive high School , and He still lives in Boulevard Projects on Stanley Ave. He is the only White guy living in the projects.
The Albanese Brothers were all very tough. Lil' Joe's daughter happened to have married Gotti' Jr.
Just trivia. Lil Joe's brother Anthony was tougher than most. There was a story about how he flushed Junior Siricco's head in the toilet at Colony Bowl on Linden Blvd. Junior played Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. The story went, one day Junior was looking all mafia like, black shirt white tie , jitterbugging into ENY/Brownsville from Bensonhurt. He didn't know what he was in for.
Anyway, people didn't just go around murdering people like they do today. Yes, some people were murdered by accident like when Jay Worm stabbed this friend of his. Or when someone had a hit put on them, like when they found Johnny Reb in the trunk of a car on CrossBay Blvd in Howard Beach.
But these days too many people running around with guns.
Peace, my brothers and sisters.
Some very tough guys in East New York. Arnie Mandel was very tough. One time he Buster Russo, and Jackie Maggot took on about ten guys at Boy's High at recess. They ended up in jail when one pressed charges. Arnie at one time was the best fighter in Sing Sing prison. He is dead now. He got hit by a truck and died. Maybe it wasn't an accident , who knows.
Johnny Reb once had a fight with Goody on Stanley and Van Siclen , Reb bit off Goody's ear. This was years before Mike Tyson did the ear thing. By the way, Mike Tyson was a member of the Brownsville Boys Club, where we used to be members as kids. I wonder if Mike ate hot dogs at Coney island Joe's.
Patsy Penna once stabbed a guy on Sutter Ave in the chest about 100 times with a little knife.
I cut Ikey's wrist because he dared me. He was gushing blood and we rushed him to Brookdale hospital. They said he could have died. Apparently I cut him pretty deep with my Jaguar knife.
Richie Texas and Big Mel had a brutal fight by Dry Gulch Park. Those were very tough guys.
Bobby Brown was the toughest kid in PS 273. I think he was like 3 years older than everybody, and he had many scars on his face. I had a fight with his brother Calvin, Sandy Schmidt jumped in and helped me out.
Sandy was tough, fast and fought like an animal. Robbie Rogue was known to be the toughest , craziest guy on New Lots Ave. He hung with Arnie. Richie Q wrote a book about ENY recently , I read excerpts of it. He was a New Lots Member and had a reputation of being a very bad dude.
Danny Russo from Cleveland Street Boys, was known to sucker punch people . "hey gotta light" POW... He did have some boxing training at the Boys Club on New Lots Ave. This guy Leon in my building was a boxing instructor there. Buster Russo was a Golden Gloves boxer.
Crazy Rigat, was so strong and so tough. He went to Automotive high School , and He still lives in Boulevard Projects on Stanley Ave. He is the only White guy living in the projects.
The Albanese Brothers were all very tough. Lil' Joe's daughter happened to have married Gotti' Jr.
Just trivia. Lil Joe's brother Anthony was tougher than most. There was a story about how he flushed Junior Siricco's head in the toilet at Colony Bowl on Linden Blvd. Junior played Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. The story went, one day Junior was looking all mafia like, black shirt white tie , jitterbugging into ENY/Brownsville from Bensonhurt. He didn't know what he was in for.
Anyway, people didn't just go around murdering people like they do today. Yes, some people were murdered by accident like when Jay Worm stabbed this friend of his. Or when someone had a hit put on them, like when they found Johnny Reb in the trunk of a car on CrossBay Blvd in Howard Beach.
But these days too many people running around with guns.
Peace, my brothers and sisters.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Random childhood thoughts in the projects
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.
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.
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