Brooklyn Kids By, Jim Pantaleno
Sometimes when I think back on my 1950’s childhood in Brooklyn, I wonder if I’m looking in a rose-colored rear-view mirror. Was it really so great?
We had few material things and the great age of electronics had yet to dawn. If I had to pinpoint the one thing that made it so memorable, it would be the freedom. Sure, we had school, but our free time was our own. At the beginning of each summer, my mother bought me a pair of dungarees (the price went up when they started calling them jeans), a pair of black and white U.S. Keds hi-top sneakers, and 6 white t-shirts… this was my uniform from June to September.
We hit the streets at 8 am and “called for” our friends. We had the whole day before us. Our games were seasonal and dependent on the weather. Outdoor activities included stickball and 20 other games that used a pink “Spaldeen” ball. (Really Spalding, but that’s how we pronounced it.) We also roller skated, built and rode homemade scooters, played with spinning wooden tops, yo-yos, pea shooters, water pistols, and carpet guns. We flipped and traded baseball cards and cut “shimmys” into the street asphalt for games of marbles.
Rainy days were a challenge, but we were up to it. We crowded into someone’s hallway and swapped comics, played checkers, cards and sneaked cigarettes. Some boys were lucky enough to have “the dream toys” like Erector Sets, Chemistry Sets or Lionel Trains. When the sun came out, we were off to the candy store where a quarter bought a new comic with that wonderful smell, a full-sized candy bar, and a cold soda out of the red ice chest.
When we came home exhausted from 8 hours of play, we turned on the radio and listened to Superman, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Gunsmoke and all the great shows that relied on your imagination to enjoy. When TV finally hit big, we watched The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy… cowboys ruled in the 1950s.
The years when I grew up were unique. The streets were relatively safe for kids: mothers and grandmothers were posted like sentries on every stoop down the block to watch out for you, and also report back any bad behavior to your mother. Cops walked a beat and kids knew and respected them. Before computers, cell phones and video games, we had something better to amuse us: our imaginations.
Kids played unsupervised, shared equipment if there wasn’t enough to go around, made up their own games and enforced the rules, guided by a sense of street-fairness. We were rarely bored, even at night while the adults sat outside to wait for the ice cream truck and listen to the Dodgers on their transistor radios, we played under the streetlights… Kick the
Can, Hide and Seek, Johnny on the Pony and Ring-a Levio.
I’m guessing that kids today might read this and yawn… too bad for them…they’ll never know what they missed! I suggest that you do some research because there's a lot of people, like me who people like Frank Cornacchiulo, who, published their life experiences growing up as a child in aplacecalledbrooklyn.com We are determined to keep our stories alive for future generations to understand and enjoy our life long experiences.
Meanwhile, As a boy in Brooklyn, you knew you had arrived when you rode a Schwinn.
In the Fifties, this was a kid's two-wheeled equivalent of a Corvette. It was red, black and gold, with tons of chrome. Kids would fasten playing cards with a clothespin to the bike's frame so that they hit the spokes as the wheels turned, making a loud noise that was supposed to sound like a motorcycle…. too cool for words. We also attached streamers to the handle bars, extra lights and chrome crossbars to really pimp that ride.
Most of us couldn’t afford the dream bike. I learned to ride on an old girl’s bike handed down from my cousin Joan. Training wheels hadn’t been invented yet, and skinned shins were the badge of honor for learning to ride a two-wheeler.
I can remember my father "Tony Boots" teaching me to ride... we would go to the playground and he would run alongside me in his ever present suit, tie and snappy fedora, usually with a Lucky Strike in his mouth. In reality, I was happy to have any bike at all since money was tight and we could never afford anything close to the Schwinn dream bike. Then Fate intervened. There was an old TV show called “Junior Champions”, hosted by the great broadcaster, Marty Glickman. I was lucky enough to be chosen to represent my day camp, JHS 73, and competed in a contest to see who could shoot and hit the most layups in one minute. I won, and with a hard cast on my broken left wrist. (Thank you, thank you very much.) The winner's prize was a new Shelby bike. Now Shelby was to Schwinn what Timex was to Rolex, but what the hell, I had a brand new bike. Except for my pal Johnny, who rode a Schwinn thanks to his father who ran the local barber shop and bookie joint, I had the best bike in the neighborhood. Sweet.
PS I now ride a new Schwinn bike, but it's like running into an old girlfriend after 50 years.... just not the same.
PPS In the Marty Glickman pic, that's me on the left with the wavy hair (long gone) and the big nose (still here).
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