Baby boomers remember when kids used to go outside and play instead of sit in front of a computer or electronic games device. In the mid 1950’s, playing outside on Jackson Boulevard in Chicago’s West Garfield Park area meant either doing pretty much the same stuff that my year older sister did. This included hopscotch, hula hoop, jump rope and a great game for whiplash called “Red Rover”. This involved, if memory serves me right, having two rows of kids stand a few feet apart facing each other. The captain of one row instructs his or her line mate to shout out “Red Rover, Red Rover- let Tommy come over”. Then, it would be Tommy’s job to earnestly try to break through the human wall opposite him. Being the boy in this group and one of the younger ones- guess who was most often the sacrificial lamb?
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Tag: growing up in the 60s
Baseball Cards
If you were born before the 1970’s then you most likely remember going into a small grocery store usually at the corner on the block where you lived or otherwise pretty close by. Such a store was an old-fashioned, claustrophobic emporium where in order to get something off a very high shelf the clerk used a long stick with a hook at the end. It acted like an artificial hand that magically grabbed a carton or jar without crashing or crushing it. There was also a ladder on rollers which the braver employee used to slide over from one part of an aisle to another to re-stock merchandise.
The Chicago West Garfield Park neighborhood grocery store I went to in the late 1950’s was on Kostner in the middle of the block south from the corner at Jackson. This was where I bought penny candy and fed my growing baseball card habit. My favorite sweet junk was little waxed bottles with a sliver of colored water inside that was good for one quick slurp as well as rolls of paper with sugary dots on them. I ended up eating more paper than candy.
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Dog Gone It
Like all doting mothers, Ma has pictures of my childhood hidden away somewhere in the storage area of her basement. Years ago, I vaguely remember seeing one of me either sitting on or trying to stand next to a Great Dane dog in the empty lot next to the building we lived in on Independence Boulevard. This event probably takes place around 1954 or ’55 when I am about two years old and soon before we move further west and slightly north to the West Garfield Park area of Chicago.
As I recall, at the time I have a look on my face that does not reveal whether the dog and I are buddies. I do know that today I have mixed feelings about these four-legged creatures. It seems that whenever I am within smelling distance of one (notice I didn’t say who does the sniffing) the animal barks in a language they expect me to understand. It as if they are communicating and do not understand why I don’t respond in kind. Are we brothers of a certain band from a previous life?
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Bicycle of Life
The 1950s had our family living on Chicago’s West Side on a street with apartment buildings and two-flat brownstones. When I outgrew a tricycle, dad bought me a 20 inch red colored bike with training wheels. The wheels were a crutch to give me the confidence to race up and down the sidewalk on the 4400 block of Jackson Boulevard. My first taste of freedom- moving about on my block without a parent or responsible older person by my side.
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Cheater’s Proof
It was tough being a kid. I was taught a whole litany of golden rules such as: don’t lie, cheat or steal. Along with that came a caveat: “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm meâ€. This was told to impress on me to be a good person but if provoked to avoid fisticuffs and just go about calling each other names. I guess this way you could go home to fight another day.
Of course, being a kid, I hardly paid attention. I considered it a challenge to figure out a way to cheat in playing a board game and not get caught. After all, the purpose was to win, right? And I was going up quite often against a couple of siblings- fair game- who should be held nameless when it came time to playing Monopoly, Sorry and all the other ruthless challenges involving the roll of the dice.
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It Snow Good
Snow can be either good or bad depending on what you do for a living. If you run a ski slope, snow is fantastic. If you try to get around in your car in order to make a living or shop for food, snow stinks.
A few days ago, the Chicagoland area was inundated with allegedly its third highest snowfall ever recorded with more than 17 inches. Like all the local baby boomers, I think I was around for number one and two as well.
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Mob Action
Noticing that the movie “The Cotton Club” was broadcast on television a week or so ago brought back memories of watching it when it first came out in 1984. Those were the days I still went to the movies a handful of times a year. I especially liked it because it combined two of my favorite film genres- gangster and musical. Like most Americans, I find the so-called world of mafia more than interesting. Of course, I’d prefer it from the outside looking in.
I vaguely remember in the very early 1960’s the murder of Mr. Crispino. He owned a very popular as well as profitable Norge Village on Madison Street in Austin on the far west side of Chicago. Those were the days before fancy washer and dryers were common appliances in the basement of homes and apartment buildings. Norge was the brand name of his equipment. My parents would go there armed with coins to put in the coin-operated machines. They’d take me along either figuring I would help out or keep me out of trouble in fighting with my sisters who were being watched by our grandparents.
So, it was definitely what you would call a very cash oriented business. Apparently Mr. Crispino didn’t properly pass around the cash as one day he was gunned down and stuffed in one of the big dryers. I can’t tell you if the murderer put a quarter in the slot for the spin cycle. But it was the first experience in being made aware of a mob action close to home.
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Who Said Youth Must Be Served?
Go type into a search engine box “who said ‘youth must be served’?” You won’t get the answer you’d expect. Instead of showing you several links to the story behind the origin of this saying, you get various news articles about giving in to the young generation. It seems no one wants to take credit for such a remark.
Is there a court of law where you certify famous quotations and the objectivity to which they hold? If so, I’d like to object and offer my competing truth.
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Overtures
Funny how words in the English language take on a different purpose from generation to generation. Take, for instance, the word “overture”. It is used quite often as an expression to start the ball rolling in negotiations. Everyone seems to be chasing rainbows and looking to cut a deal. “Let’s make an overture” usually means “let’s indicate interest to the other party so that we can make an offer that they will not refuse.”
There was a time when “overture” served an entirely different purpose. It was mostly used to describe the beginning portion of a musical performance. It was intended to provide a nurturing effect in getting everyone to their seats, relaxed and prepared to watch a movie or concert. In the 1950’s and 60’s, when movie musicals were still very popular, a film would contain several songs that would be familiar to the audience before they even went to the theater. If you went to see a blockbuster film such as “Oklahoma”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “West Side Story”, “The Music Man” or even a drama with a moving score such as “Exodus”, you’d expect to be entertained with short segments from many of the popular musical numbers.
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Religious Atheists
The world is one big pyramid scheme. There has to have been one go-to guy who started this mess and delegated others to continue its supervision. That’s where we all get into fighting each other- trying to convince others that our go-to guy is THE guy. Or gal, excuse me. Religion is the set of rules by which we let others know that our god is better than some others.
Then again, it can be that we all actually believe in the same go-to guy, it’s just that we all look at him (or her) from different angles. Remember that game we played as a kid, “telephone”? The one where a bunch of us sat in a circle and one after another whispered into the next person’s ear a secret. By the time it got down to the last person, somehow the secret message was totally changed from its original. So, it is possible that the original message has become garbled through time and we are all chasing the same Biblical tale.
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