insects, reptiles and stuff

As a kid growing up in East New York and spending summers in the Catskill Mountains playing with insects and reptiles was a big thing.  My brother used to play with ants and would stick his face to the ground watching them. He had a  big sore on his nose from age 2 to 3. That's how close he would get to those ants.  We used to  feed ants sugar, thinking they would grow to be giant ants like in the movie "Them".  There were a lot of bushes and big lawns in the projects. The bushes always had bees flying around the  flowering plants, mostly the white flowers.  I used to grab a bee by the wings and put them in a jar. The  cover of the jars always had a few holes punched in them.  I thought I was being kind to the bees, but they didn't last too long in the jars. I guess they need more than air to live.   Butterflies were fun to catch. The swallowtails were really hard to  catch. Those were  too fast. I think  maybe I only caught two of those in my life. Mostly it was the  yellow or white  smaller  butterflies or moths that we caught.  The wings would leave this magic powder on your fingers. I figured if I got enough of this stuff , maybe I could fly.  I never could get enough of it.
     Grasshoppers were pretty cool and really easy to catch. The big locusts were more difficult but we got those too. Lightning bugs or fireflies always amazed me.  I still can't figure out how they did that glow thing.  Centipedes were ok to catch and so were caterpillars.  Worms we would  catch just to fish with.  Daddy long legs for some reason were just there for us to pull their legs off.
     In the mountains, we used to walk through the woods and  hunt for salamanders. They were orange and  had some  spots on them. They looked like little dragons. I would get a big pickle jar, line it with ferns and  moss and rocks. It was  like  salamander world. We would probably catch  20 in a day. While hunting salamanders we would  catch toads and  wood frogs ( that's what we called them). I would  but those in the  pickle jar too. I was always afraid that  the toads would give me warts.  They said  if a frog peed on you , you would get warts. But the toads looked like they had warts all over them.  Bull frogs were  so hard to catch.  I did catch one  probably more than once. They were huge. I fell into the lake one time  trying to grab a  bull frog.
    Hornets I hated, i once was in a chicken coup and got a hornets nest down my back . OUCH. So wasps and hornets were mean , and I tried to avoid them. Ants were fascinating . How they all worked together  , always busy , always carrying things.   Garden Snakes or were they Garter Snakes,,they were harmless slithering things. We would catch these a lot and they were great for scaring  sisters, moms and girls in general.
     Nature is really fun.  Walking into a spider web is still pretty  messed up .  Yuck.

Fright at night

I was a frightened kid. All these  children's stories and my own imagination scared the heck out of me.
The scariest for years , and now that i think about it, i'm scared.  Hansel and Gretel is the story that was so frightening  for me. There was one witch in that story that I pictured with a dark cape like thing over her head.  Her big nose and her cackle scared me so much. I used to see her in my parent's bedroom window.  I would hear that cackle and  i'd be so frightened and run out of the room.  I'm getting the chills as i write this.  In the other window were little pumpkins with witch hats laughing and rocking back and forth ,, Scary stuff,  for years and years. Then I'd always worry about  the door falling off its hinges as murderers tried to get into the house.  I'd sleep with my plastic sword and a  sledge hammer for protection. I probably weighed 50lbs  and yet I was gonna kill these monsters with my weapons.
        I still sleep with my weapons.  Ya never know

Childhood Weapons

When I think back  to  the childhood days of East New York, even as little kids we had weapons.
Of course, the popular shows on TV were all shows that had guns. There was Bat Masterson, Lone Ranger, Texas Rangers, Davey Crockett, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke( no action), Cheyenne, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cisco Kid, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Hotel de Paris, Yancy Derringer, Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickock ,Rifleman,and more. Then we moved on to the Untouchables , these guys had  machine guns.
     As kids we all had  cowboy type guns. I even had a  derringer that was built into a belt buckle.  You breath pushing stomach out,and the gun pops out and  fires. I had a Rifleman rifle. You could  pump and fire that one.  We always practiced drawing  our guns and  trying to be the fastest in the East.
Some lucky kids had  BBguns. Comic books always advertised  Daisy BB Rifles.
      Even as  little kids we used to take the wooden sticks from  Good Humor ice cream bars,  we would sharpen them to a very sharp point.  We would  scrape them back and forth on the  stoop outside our  house.  When they were nice and sharp, we would stab a friend.  So much fun ,,haha...
      Then of course  paper clips and rubber bands were a popular  weapon, trying to shoot at  birds, we never hit them though.  Pea shooter were really fun. We'd use whole dried peas as ammo, a wide plastic straw was the pea shooter. These were accurate and powerful.  I was  very  proficient at hitting people's heads with a pea.  Pocket knives were popular. We played Stretch or Land with them. Sometimes missing and hitting our feet , while trying to  stick it in the ground.  Occasionally someone would have a switch blade , that was really cool.  Or we would take a ride to  42nd street, where some novelty stores sold nice  knives.  My father who was a cop, would confiscate knives from kids and bring them home. The only problem was ,  he would  break off the  points. So , i had  about  20 knives with no points. I hated that. Occasionally he forgot to break the points. I had a nice yellow  switchblade, thanks to my dad and  a  white  ivory one.  Boy Scouts were cool , in that we were able to buy sheath knives. You know, the big hunting kind.
     We moved on to more sophisticated linoleum or oil cloth guns.  You would  use 2x4's , nail them together and have a trigger system with  clothes pins and   thick rubber bands, some bottle caps too.  Stick a  little square of linoleum between the bands and push the clothes pin and  FIRE.  they worked great.
We heard a lot about  zip guns.  These were made from  the  thicker tubular part of a car antenna usually.  Sometimes  a  pipe.. I never made one.  Not even sure  if i saw one. But we heard of them quite often. Car antennas were a good weapon.  We would  break off an antenna, and carry it around and  if we had to  use it as  whip type  weapon. They really hurt if you got hit with one.
     I already spoke about  our  pastel chalk socks  , that we used on Halloween, to bop people on the heads.  ( See my Zorro gang  post).
     One time I took a  real 7.7mm  Japanese rifle to school. I was a soldier in  the school play. The teachers freaked out.   Yelling ,  "the kid has a real gun" ,,,,wow  did i get in trouble.
    So  weapons were a part of  daily life.  Chains, guns, knives, sticks,  we loved the stuff.  Nowadays,
lots of real guns, people getting killed every day. Not a good thing.

Parents and the trouble we cause them aka buying horses, cars, and boats

 We were teenagers, we really needed to buy a horse. An Apaloosa was what we wanted.

we didn't know about  checking the horse's teeth, or health. We just liked that the spots turned blueish when the horse sweated. We found an Apalossa  at Henry Miller's stable on Wortman Ave near Cleveland St.  Three Hundred dollars for the horse what a deal.  I forget  how much the  boarding was ,but we didn't care.  Well, the good news hit home about the  horse purchase.  My father  for  some reason  was influenced by my mother yelling  " You bought a horse????"  " Are you out of your mind?"

 Well my father  stepped in, and   I had to tell my partners, 3 of us, that my father was going down to the stable and getting our  money back , for the old broken down Apaloosa.  

          It was spring,  it was  flounder season.  We needed a boat.  Me , Mooney, and Red went to Cross Bay Blvd  near the "first bridge".  We stopped at  the Big Bow Wow for  Hamburgers first.  Cross Bay had lots of good places , like  Pizza City,  Weiss's, even Nino's moved there. Well we saw a boat for sale. It was a blue boat with a canvas top , even had a windshield and steering wheel.  we knew very little about  bouts. Red was   a kid who looked old, so he was our lead man. We started the boat up  checked it out. We had  literally no idea  what we were checking out , but the boat was  not sinking, that was a good sign.  We put a down payment on the boat.  Yes,  the news got out ,  we bought a boat.

A good horsepower Evinrude motor,,  i think it was  18 feet, and perfect for  going into the jamaica Bay and catching  flounder , porgies,  and stripers.  My father   went nuts when he heard about the  boat. I know  secretly he really wanted a boat of his own, and was just jealous.. But  he went back to the guy   and  insisted on  giving our down payment back.  My father was a big guy ,and  probably would have hurt the guy really badly if he didn't give our money back.  So he was successful in getting the money back and  making us giving up our  awesome boat.

         So  now  me  Fuzzy and Red were walking down Flatlands Ave. just past the  Bat-A-Way,which was a batting range, next to a  golf driving range. We stopped at  Carvel  on  Pennsylvania Ave for  some  Flying Saucers and Brown Bonnets. Then as  we walked further we came  across the  junk yards.  We went into Pete's,  we really wanted a  car, and wanted to fix it up.  We saw a great  car.  A 1956 Olds  '88.  It was  red and white and  blue and white.... it had  3 and a half doors.  The blue and white was one of the  doors.  The red and white was the rest.   we say a half door because one door was from  a  smaller  car, like  a  Rambler.  It didn't actually fit too well.  We had to tie it shut.

We found a garage to put it in up on Hegeman Ave. for  $30 a month. We drove and pushed the car to the garage. We paid only about  $150 for the car, to the best of my recollection. What a deal.  So what if it didn't run  too well, we knew we could fix it .. Well, we thought we could..  We were so  happy , oh yeah,,I forgot to mention ,, I stole my father's  license plate so we could  move the car and not get arrested.  That''s  how  my dad found out about the car,  he questioned me about the license plate.  He was  a  cop, so he knew how to get the info out of me.  The man went  bizerk.  " how could  this  SOB sell a bunch of kids a  car." my  dad said.   He grabbed his  38 caliber  Smith and Wesson pistol ,  and  rounded up me and  Fuzzy and  Red .  We went  up Hegeman to Miller Ave and  opened the garage and he looked at this mess of  a 3 1/2 door car and said " what the heck is wrong  with you kids?".. Of course the  car wouldn't  start, just when we needed it to start.   we put it in neutral and  pushed it to the the junkyard.  My  father  drew his gun and  flashed his badge.. He said " You sell these kids this piece of junk car..... Now you;re going to give them their money back",,, the  guy says  , pointing to Red,  but that guy is an adult,,, my father  said  that adult is 15 years old!"    Well Pete gave the money back and took the  Olds '88 back.  We were heartbroken,,, but  hey,  parents are mean,,, right?

      So  that was  some  year,  almost a  horse,  a boat and  a car.  After we returned the car, we went to Bella Pizza and got a few slices of  Sicilian pizza,  and  tried to forget our misfortune.  Parents,, Parents Parents,,,,  gotta love 'em

Art in the 50's

I'm  9 years old, i wake up and  sit at the breakfast table. My mother serves me Beechnut Mixed Cereal. I love the stuff. Especially after adding enough sugar to make sugar swirls in it. Thats at least  12 tsp  of sugar. I have a  side order of  chocolate milk, with Fox's U Bet syrup of course. That was the best. My dad used to buy ugly cans of Hershey chocolate syrup sometimes. I don't know what the man was thinking.  UBet rocks, it's what the  candy stores used to make  egg creams and  ice cream sodas.

     We had a formica dining room table ,, the  perfect easel.  I pour out some  syrup on the table  and begin to do a magnificent  finger painting. I was  like the Salvador Dali or  maybe Jackson Pollock of  chocolate syrup painting. I covered about half of the table. If i felt in the mood, ketchup would be a good highlight effect.   Then it would dry, with a  wonderful shiny texture.  It had a peculiar affect on my mother ,,, when she would look at my paintings , her face would  turn the color of the ketchup.  Amazing,  I loved that color on her, but then she turned violent and  I had to run. 

    Now its already  10 AM and  one of my favorite shows  was on  TV. Winky Dink.  This show was great , because  at one point in the show, which was  a  cartoon character show.  The  human  host would  say, " ok , kids take out your  Winky Dink screens and put them on the TV" .  Ummm I didn't have a  Winky Dink Screen.  A WInky Dink screen is a clear greenish plastic screen that stuck to the  glass TV  screen when  laid across it.  The host  would slowly  have lines appear,  and  it would form  figures such as  the Winky Dink character, or  secret treasures.  We would have to trace the screen, and then you'd have a picture on the  plastic. It was really cool.  However,  when one didn't have the screen, but  one had  lipstick and  crayons, well,,,  it kind of looked  better  right on the glass of the  TV screen.   OMG   my mother     went  nuts.  Here I thought I did a good job with the drawing ,,, She called  my  dad in and  he  couldn't believe what he was seeing.   Him being a rational man, said to my mother ,, "i think we need to buy him the  Winky Dink screen",,   and they did.

smells

I was just thinking about  certain smells.
The smell of the subway ( especially when walking over the  metal grate on the sidewalk)
The smell of a butcher shop with sawdust on the floor
The smell of the ocean
The smell lilacs
The smell of chestnuts roasting on an open fire
The smell of horses
The smell of a  new car with leather seats
The  smell of fresh baked bread, cookies, pies, cakes
The smell of fish
The smell of burnt garlic
The smell of the forest floor
The smell of moth balls
The smell of skunk
The smell of DDT
The smell of punks burning
The smell of hair burning
the smell of rotten egg burps
The smell of wet nail polish
The smell of a dry cleaning store
The smell of truffles
The smell of fried pork rinds
The smell of bacon
The smell of exhaust fumes from motor vehicles
The smell of whiskey breath
The smell of a wet dog
The smell of ginkgo
The smell of Old Spice

Current Events

Will they change the name of Sandusky , Ohio?  considering several schools and  foundations have already done so, because of the terrible things Jerry Sandusky has been accused of.

Here's  my headline:  SANDUSKY GOES FROM PENN STATE TO STATE PENN!