I Grew Up In A Briar Patch!
Binghamton, New York in the 40’s & 50’s
The view into the Briar Patch from my backyard
by, Merlin William Lessler
I Grew Up In A Briar Patch!
(Binghamton, New York in the 40’s & 50’s)
A recollection by the author of
“The Old Coot Essays”
Owego, New York
mlessler@stny.rr.com
Copyright Ó October 21, 2002, Merlin William Lessler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author. Printed in the United States of America. For information address: Front Street Press, 351 Front St., Owego, New York 13827.
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
I Grew Up In A Briar Patch by
Lessler, Merlin William
FIRST EDITION
May, 2005
I GREW UP IN A BRIAR PATCH
Copyrighted 10-21-2002 (TXU-1-069-951)
Edited by Lauren Massey
Printed by Carr Printing
Written for those who traveled through the Briar Patch with me, the ones I knew and the ones I never met. We were a lucky generation.
Section one – Early lessons
Page 1 - Origins
Page 2 - Cowboys & Indians
Page 5 - School in the Briar Patch
Page 6 - The Bully
Page 6 - Wet paint; do not touch
Page 7 – Be careful when (and who) you double dare
Page 8 – A patrol-boy’s day in court
Page 9 – Apple time
Page 11 – Separation of church & state
Page 14 – What’s in a name
Page 16 – Valentine’s Day massacre
Page 17 – Freaks, geeks & anatomical abnormalities, or don’t put a bead up your nose
Page 20 – Tools of the trade
Page 22 – Boys & Girls
Section two – Life in the neighborhood and on the block
Page 26 - A bird’s eye view of the Briar Patch
Page 26 – Chicken heads
Page 27 – Dinosaur bones
Page 30 – The dead finger
Page 32 – The Deer skull
Page 34 – Blackberry jam
Page 35 – The powder-house
Page 36 – Ross Creek – gateway to hell
Page 37 – We enter the portal
Page 39 – The Brady tunnel
Page 40 – Who’s afraid of a moose
Page 40 - The great swamp war
Page 44 – The ice cave
Page 44 – The uninvited guests
Page 46 – Free baby sitter
Page 47 – Shave & a haircut, two bits + a dime
Page 47 – Where’s there’s smoke, there’s boys
Page 47 – The winter Olympics
Page 48 – Man’s best friend
Page 50 – The Indy 500
Page 52 – Tennis anyone?
Page 52 – The Mayo Clinic
Page 53 – The original National Inquirer
Page 54 – There’s nothing to do
Page 55 – Penny candy
Page 55 - “F” Commerce
Page 57 – Bicycle built for two
Page 58 - A dilemma at the store
Section three – Law of the jungle
Page 59 – How things are decided
Page 60 – Call it rules
Page 62 – Rules of honor
Page 63 – Sunday – “The day the earth stood still”
Section four – Junior high school
Page 65 - Greenhorns
Page 66 - A hard course in fraternity pledging 101
Page 66 - Banana day
Page 67 – Fraternity pledging, again
Page 68 – Clothes make the man
Page 68 – We all failed Sex-Ed
Page 69 – When you come to a fork in the road, take it
Page 70 – Tone deaf
Page 71 – Wheels, the root of all evil
Page 72 – Hard time in the slammer
Page 73 – Not all bad
Section five – A high school vocabulary list
Page 75 thru 93
Section six – The final days, the end of the Briar Patch
Page 94 thru 95
1 - Origins
I grew up in a briar patch. When I was three, my mother lured me to dreamland with bedside stories – every single night. She was more dependable than Maytag. I’d lie under the covers and snuggle while she sat in an old rocker next to the bed breathing life into Uncle Wiggley, Pokey the Puppy, and eventually, every fairy tale character captured in print by the brothers Grimm. When I was five she switched to “Uncle Remus” and his delightful trio of forest creatures: Brer Fox, Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit was my hero. In every episode he succeeded in convincing Brer Fox and Brer Bear not to, “Skin him alive,” or “Knock his head clean off,” but rather, “ To throw him into the briar patch.”
They fell for it every single time. Brer Bear, the bigger and more brawny of the two would toss Brer Rabbit high in the air, into the center of the thickest, meanest tangle of pricker bushes this side of the Mississippi River. He’d land with a thud; dead silence would follow. Then a meek “Ha” would rise above the tangle, and then a “Ha-ha,” and finally a whole stream of laughter. Brer Fox and Brer Bear would look at each other dumbfounded. What had they done? How could Brer Rabbit have survived such an awful fate? Easy, the briar patch was Brer Rabbit’s laughing place. “Born and raised in a briar patch,” he’d sing, and then laugh and dance to safety on the other side of the brambles, far out of reach of the deflated duo who’d been duped, yet again.
My twelve-year-old son is aghast when I tell him about life without TV, computers, the Internet, SUVs, video games, jet planes, roller blades, and Mac Donald’s. He believes I really did grow up in a briar patch, an era he wants nothing to do with, but he’s wrong, so wrong. The fifties were good years, maybe the best years of the century, of all centuries. Joseph C. Goulden conceived and penned an excellent and comprehensive study on the subject and published The Best Years - 1945-1950, a testament to the idyllic five year period that began at the end of World War II and ended with the onset of the Korean conflict. This truly was a magical slice of time and he does a masterful job describing it, as well as the forces behind the scene that made it that way. I was three when this unique era began, and eight when it ended, a youngster to be sure, but old enough to remember and bear witness to the truth of Goulden's supposition. I only disagree with his claim that the “best years” ended when North Korean soldiers swept across the thirty-eighth parallel on June 25, 1950. I believe they continued an additional 13 years, coming to a close with the assassination of John Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
My unsolicited extension of Goulden's "Best Years" comes with some baggage, like - kids sitting under their desks in school, with their hands over their eyes, practicing for the inevitability of a nuclear attack and polio outbreaks that closed down public swimming holes in the middle of summer, but even with the baggage, it’s still the longest stretch in modern history, free of major war and widespread economic misery. People were happy and life was positive in my briar patch. The nation was filled with optimism and growth. It was a time when the American Dream was there for the taking and when the average kid truly believed anyone could grow up to be president. It was a time when our society had little trouble distinguishing between right and wrong, when social norms were believed in and adhered to. Even the bad guys followed a code of conduct.
I was nearly four when the war ended, the big one, WW-2 according to “Archie Bunker.” I didn’t hear the starting gun for the best years of the century, I just knew I suddenly acquired four new uncles: uniformed, rough talking, whiskey drinking, half men - half boys, who couldn't get enough of throwing me in the air and rubbing my head. I had no idea they were celebrating victory through me, that my well-being was a living symbol of the "freedom" for which they had so willingly marched off to Europe, the Aleutians and the far Pacific. They, and their fellow Vets didn't just win safety and prosperity for the country; they also created an era of innocence and social serenity, that never was before, and may never be again, a briar patch of the highest order. To me it was: Cub Scouts, paper routes, cowboy & Indian wars in the back yard, cold winter nights at Woody's house listening to Sergeant Preston on the radio, flat-top haircuts, soaping windows on Halloween, light weight English bikes with hand brakes replacing big heavy, balloon tire Schwinns, Little League baseball without the pressure of parents in the stands, pegged pants, duck-tail haircuts, the first awkward notes of rock & roll, Elvis, and most of all, FREEDOM, freedom to be a kid. Soccer moms never made it into the briar patch. In fact, very few of our activities were organized by, or involved adults. We were privileged; we were the last generation of kids allowed to be kids.
WARNING - THIS BOOK IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT
2 - Cowboys & Indians
The last cowboy and Indian battle wasn't fought in the west and it wasn't fought in the 1800's. It took place in an overgrown pasture in suburban New York in the summer of 1951. "Give-em-Hell” Harry Truman was president, but neither he, nor his Joint Chiefs of Staff were aware of the skirmish, or the fact that it brought closure to an era. Not one word was printed in a major newspaper, but a short article did appear in the pages of "Tom Thumb," a small weekly paper with a circulation of forty-three. I know, because I was in the battle and I also was one of the two, nine year old, co-publishers of the paper.
The reason for the battle is unclear, and like many skirmishes of this nature it can't be said for certain who came out the victor. It is known that the battle was hard fought and that it brought an end to the war (at least in my neighborhood). This "last" cowboy and Indian battle was not fought with rifles, six shooters and tomahawks, but with BB guns, cap pistols and homemade bows with rubber tipped arrows. It wasn't fought by the United States Calvary, but rather by a handful of neighborhood kids who were oblivious that they were ushering out an era, an end that was assured by the installation of TV antennas on rooftops across the countryside.
The cowboy life started for me on my third birthday. Mom and dad gave me a cowboy suit, a complete outfit: chaps, boots, fringed shirt, Stetson, kerchief and a cap-firing six shooter with a leather holster and tie down strap. Mom suited me up, and with my faithful dog at my side, I mounted my wooden rocking horse and was off to a career as an outlaw and Indian fighter that ended in 1951 in that fateful battle in the back pasture of the "Hazard-Hill" farm.
(me, ready for the bad guys)
Our fascination with cowboys & Indians was especially strong because it struck a harmonic cord in our psyche. It activated a primary element of human nature in our brain, the need to distinguish good from evil, and to make sure good prevailed. Cowboy & Indian movies strictly adhered to this principal. There was no "gray area" in the morality portrayed in those films, just black and white, good & evil. Some social scientists assert that “Oaters” presented a racist view, not just of Indians, but of Afro-Americans as well, because good guys wore white, and bad guys wore black. If these sociologists had faithfully absorbed the movies like we did they would have discovered: #1 - that the only colors available for movies were black and white, #2 - the good guys didn't always wear white. Hop-a-long Cassidy's entire outfit was black and he was one of the most popular cowboy heroes of all time. I know for a fact, since I received a complete Hoppy outfit for my seventh birthday: a pair of autographed six shooters, studded leather wristbands, a black shirt and black hat. I still have the gun & holster set, but only one pistol survived the 1951 Battle on Hazard Hill in working condition.
Learning to distinguish good from evil is a critical life skill. Most kids don't have enough mental capacity to develop this skill when confronted with moral examples that are fuzzy (gray), which is why the unsophisticated themes of cowboy movies were so popular and of such importance in our upbringing. The images portrayed were black and white. All our heroes shared the exact same behavior characteristics. The bad guys shared characteristics as well, exactly opposite those of the good guys.
Good guys didn't start fights; they had to be pushed pretty far to even raise a hand in defense. They never bragged, were always polite, practically "ma'aming" themselves to death around women. They never kicked dogs, hit women or failed to take care of their horses, which they loved. They always told the truth and didn't hide behind a beard or a mask, except for the Lone Ranger, who wore a mask to protect his family from retaliation. Good guys never expected a thank you, in fact, were embarrassed when they got one, usually turning away, kicking at the dust and uttering "Ah shucks ma'am, it was nothing".
The bad guys were the exact opposite. Bad guys hit and shoved women & kids, lied, cheated, stole, & murdered. They bragged about everything, were loud and obnoxious, had no concern for others, picked on the little guy, kicked dogs and abused their horses, riding them till they dropped.
We watched the movies, and then replayed the script in the woods and fields behind our houses, assimilating the clear distinction between good and evil that we had witnessed in the theater. To this day, that clear perspective of right and wrong is the way my generation views the world.
Enough social commentary. The essays that follow are about the Briar Patch, the wonderful fifties, a time when we had the freedom and opportunity to fantasize and role-play as cowboys and Indians. My boyhood was spent in the woods and fields surrounding our small neighborhood of 35 homes on the outskirts of town, attacking and repelling a never-ending stream of bad guys. Some days we were cowboys, sporting six shooters worn low and tied to our legs to facilitate a fast draw. Other days we were Indians, costumed in feathered headdresses and fringed shirts, fully armed with homemade bows & arrows. We varied from the western theme from time to time to enact a bloody pirate battle in a pile of deadfall at the edge of the woods. The deadfall provided a perfect substitute for a three mast sailing ship. We even, on occasion, could be seen sporting swords, lances and English bows, as we spent the day saving the kingdom from the evil "Sheriff of Nottingham." The good guy characteristics in these other venues were exactly the same as in our cowboy & Indian games. Good guys were good, and bad guys were bad. Different themes, same morality.
Cowboy & Indian play was guided by rules that went into effect as soon as someone yelled, "Let's play cowboys & Indians." A few OK's established the venue for the day. It was essential to "call" the hero you wanted to be, and quickly. I became a pro at being the first to yell, "I'm Roy Rogers." I loved being Roy; he was my favorite until I received the Hop-a-long Cassidy outfit for my 7th birthday. The 2nd rule of cowboy & Indian games mandated consistent behavior. If you were a good guy you had to act like a good guy all through the game, and bad if you got stuck being a bad guy. Lastly, you were required to die when you were fatally wounded.
When a shooter fired a cap pistol in your direction and then "called it" by shouting, "You're dead, I call it," you had to drop. Dying was a practiced art. The younger and inexperienced kids simply dropped to the ground, rolled on their backs and feigned death by lying spread eagle with their eyes closed. It was unthinkable that your eyes be open in death. We older kids mastered a dying technique that was quite protracted, taking several minutes to complete. We let out a shocked gasp when we realized we were mortally wounded. This was followed by several minutes of staggered and erratic walking. A few backward somersaults were incorporated into the act by advanced dyers, such as myself. Eventually we dropped to our knees, executed a series of full body spasms and then landed on our backs for a final death throe. The climax included a spread eagle body twitch, a loud convulsive gasp and then a motionless freeze. The freeze was critical. A really good dyer would lie still until one of the younger kids came over and pleaded for the "victim" to get up. It was crucial not to respond to this distraction. The object was to make the kid think you really were dead. It took intense self-control to lie there unresponsive while a frightened five year-old shook and pulled your arm and shouted to the rest of the gang, "I think he really is dead."
I watched my son "die" in the neighbor’s driveway the other day while he and his friend played "car wreck". I'm truly proud; he is a skilled master in the art of extended and complicated death simulation. At least one cowboy & Indian skill made it from the Briar Patch to today’s generation of kids.
3 – SCHOOL IN THE BRIAR PATCH
Playing cowboys and Indians taught us of life by contrasting the characteristics of good and evil in clear-cut black & white imagery. In school we became exposed to the "gray area." We learned of the subtle land between good & evil, right & wrong, truth & lie. We did NOT learn this from the teachers. The school curriculum in the Briar Patch followed the pattern of cowboy & Indian movies, that of absolutes. Education officials in those days had common sense. They knew we were too immature to handle "gray area" in our formal school lessons. We learned it from the bullies; we learned it from our classmates.
I started my “life” education in kindergarten where Robert Fulghum learned all he needed to know (Please read his book “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten,” it’s great). I was a slow learner. It took me all seven years of elementary school to learn what I needed to know. The process started in kindergarten. Nursery schools did not exist. Are you kidding? Mom was home; why would anyone need a nursery school? Kindergarten was a twelve-letter word in those days. Now it’s been shortened to one, “K,” (as in, "the public school system is responsible for children's' education in grades "K" through 12, or, head start is a pre-"K" learning program"). In the Briar Patch, the K had no meaning by itself. Kindergarten, on the other hand, was the most beautiful and alluring word ever spoken. It was the gateway to a new world, entry to which, my friend Woody and I eagerly awaited.
Woody and I eagerly awaited our turn to attend kindergarten. We watched his brother Stewey and my sister Madeline go off to the "magic place.” Finally it was our turn. We enrolled at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Elementary School, one of three public schools on the south side of Binghamton. Longfellow's name graced
4 – THE BULLY
I can still remember my first day in kindergarten; I can still remember Mrs. Schoper, my teacher. Her image is embedded, hard wired in my mind as a woman akin to a fairy godmother. Does anyone forget his or her kindergarten teacher? Kids today, who have three pre-school teachers before they set foot in “K” might. I also vividly remember Peter Lidaka, well known on the south side of town as "Butchy the Bully." Butchy, who of course was called Peter in school, introduced Woody and me to the pecking order. When we played in the sand box, Butchy came and claimed it for himself. When we built houses with blocks, Butchy walked over and destroyed them. It was Butchy! Butchy! Butchy! First in line, first to the toy cupboard, first out the door, but also first to be sent to the cloak room, made to stand in the corner, and escorted to the principles office. We learned fast; huge pushy kids who hit and carry baseball bats on their shoulder get what they want, at least from a couple of cowards like Woody and me. It didn't take too many slugs from this giant, or more than a few threats with his bat to convince us to be on "his team." Whatever Butchy wanted, Butchy got. The experience was in stark contrast to what we’d learned from the cowboy & Indian movies. It was our first lessen in the gray area.
School Lesson #1 – If someone is big, physical and bad, and the teacher doesn’t see him, then might wins out over right.
Aside - I've watched dozens of movies and TV shows and have read a like number of books where a kid confronts a Bully and wins out. I watched Butchy Lidaka massacre these ill-advised kids for the entire seven years I attended PS-13. He was still there (left behind of course) reigning supreme when Woody and I moved on to Junior High. It's a lie when adults advise that if you confront a bully he will back down.
5 – WET PAINT, DO NOT TOUCH
A "Wet Paint, do not touch" sign strikes a primeval cord; nine times out of ten we DO touch, we have to touch! Tell us we can't do something and we become obsessed to do it. This trait was developed and forever sustained in our genes from the very beginning, the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The teachers at PS-13 understood this human frailty all too well, and used it, causing us to fall all over each other for a chance to perform even the most mundane classroom chore. They kicked off their clever scheme with the “great black board hoax.” We didn’t have a blackboard in kindergarten, so "gray area” lesson #2" unfolded in first grade; it was worked into the curriculum between the ABC's and adding 2+2.
As I recall, this is how it unfolded. In the first two weeks of first grade, Mrs. Badger carefully erased the blackboard after each lesson. We sat gawking while she slowly and deliberately moved the eraser back and forth on the slate, magically removing all her carefully scripted letters. The phenomena enthralled and mesmerized us. In the third week of the semester she turned from the board after finishing a lesson and asked Delbert Geragosian (the tallest kid in class) to come to the board, to erase the lesson. We were stunned, but not Delbert. He never had a problem answering the door when opportunity knocked. Flying to the task, he aped her methodology, carefully and slowly removing all traces of the morning’s lesson from the board. He proudly strutted back to his desk, indifferent to the 18 jealous, yet secretly thrilled classmates who surrounded him. Jealous, because he was the one who had been selected, but thrilled because we had been in school long enough to know the ropes. Our turn would come soon enough, probably in alphabetical order.
The trap had been set and sprung. For the rest of my confinement at PS-13 I never saw a teacher erase a blackboard. As predicted, the tradition of picking a student at random was short lived. After a month of this process, which gave an edge to the teacher's pets, it was replaced with an alphabetical assignment list, posted off to the side of the blackboard. The list not only designated the "chosen one" for blackboard erasure duties, but also named "disciples," who were picked for other classroom chores: leading the pledge to the flag, starting the morning prayer, cleaning erasers and washing the board. The latter two were performed after school let out, which showed how well we’d been hoodwinked.
Now I understand how easy it was for Tom Sawyer to get all his friends to whitewash his fence. We chomped at the bit all day, waiting for the 3 o’clock bell to sound so we could bolt to freedom, yet if we were assigned one of the after-school chores we were eager to stay. Erasers were cleaned on a special device in the school basement. It was a homemade contraption bolted to a bench with a crank attached to a rotating brush. When you turned the crank the brush swept across the eraser, agitated the chalk dust and blew it into a covered bin. Washing the board also entailed a trip to the mysterious school basement, this time, to "fetch a pail of water” and a sponge. Washing restored the original black luster to the board that simple erasing didn’t. Mark Twain's con job in “Tom Sawyer” had nothing on the "unpainted fence routine" pulled off by the all-female staff at PS-13. For my entire six years in grades one through six, I waited like a cat watching a mouse, for any and every opportunity to erase or wash the blackboard, or any of the other special chores that was revealed like forbidden fruit over the years. In the process I learned, oh so well,
School Lesson #2 – “Don't touch - wet paint” signs are a waste of money. (We’re going to touch, anyhow)
6 – BE CAREFULL WHEN (AND WHO) YOU DOUBLE-DARE
PS -13 was a two-story brick structure with a dormered attic and a full basement. The attic housed a cramped, combination library/music room. The basement housed kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades, the furnace room and the janitor’s workroom. The library-music room was often unattended, since music class and library were held on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays and staffed by roving instructors who handled these duties at several schools in the district. Unsupervised free time in school was extremely rare for kids in the Briar Patch. When we got it, we used it to explore places that were off limits. The school attic was one of those places. We snuck up there to "hang out", though nobody called it that, then. "Hanging-out" is a term developed by sociologists in the 60's, to distinguish child loitering, from just plain being a bum.
One afternoon, Billy Wilson and I managed to escape supervision and squandered our "in-building" freedom in the secluded library-music room. Billy had a pack of matches and like any normal kid, was eager to show off his forbidden contraband. He pulled out a match, lit it, and then blew it out. Not to be outdone, and in spite of the fact that nobody was there to witness it, I DARED him to toss a lit match into the waste basket. He refused, and simply continued his "light & blow-out" routine. Then I DOUBLE DARED him. He looked around to see if a schoolmate had observed the double-dare. We were still alone, just the two of us, so he could have ignored the challenge. Instead, he opted to do the honorable thing; he accepted the double dare, lit a match and threw it into the wastebasket. Whoosh! Some scrap paper in the basket ignited and in just seconds a flame shot above the rim. I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what happened after that. All I remember, is Billy and I sitting in the principal’s office while the janitor, Mr. Vanick, set up a huge fan in the main doorway of the school to clear the building of smoke. Fortunately, the fire had not escaped the metal wastebasket, but boy, the smoke sure did.
"Who started the fire," screeched Miss Lennox, the school principal. "I did,” yelled a frightened Billy Wilson, while I simultaneously yelled, pointing to Billy, "He did." "That wasn't so bad, I thought to myself. I'm off the hook. He told the truth.” Then Miss Lennox asked the question which forever changed my life and introduced a new gray area to me, "Why did you do it?” Billy jumped out of his chair and pointed his finger at me and exclaimed, "Because he DOUBLE DARED me." I was unconcerned. Anytime I’d ever used this weak excuse I was disarmed by the standard adult comeback, "If he dared you to jump off the Empire State Building would you do it?" Even when Miss Lennox turned to me with a scowl, demanding I respond to his accusation, I felt safe and secure. I replied to her query with a haughty, “It’s not my fault. A dare is no excuse.” They called that "sassing back," a serious breech in the rules in the Briar Patch. Miss Lennox turned a deaf ear to the logic of my assertion and delivered an immediate and effective paddling to my backside.
Billy and I were both assigned punishment for the fire, a writing assignment that would keep us out of class until we finished it. We had to copy everything on fire prevention that was contained in the library's two sets of encyclopedias. A week later we were still at it. Finally, my mother felt compelled to take action to get me back in the classroom. She went to the school to have it out with Miss Lennox; I wasn't a good enough student to miss this much class time. I remember this debacle as clearly as if it happened yesterday because, as my mother left the house to walk to school with me, she threatened, "This better not take too long, I have a cake in the oven, and I'm not wearing any underwear." I’ve never been able to figure out why she told me that, but it made a big impression on me. I was filled be with dread as I watched her walk into the principal's office and shut the door. I was sure Miss Lennox would give her a paddling, and from first hand experience, I knew it really stung on bare skin. To my surprise she emerged a few minutes later smiling and chatting with Miss “L.” To this day I can only guess at the twists and turns their discussion must have taken, but it ended with my sentence commuted, and an official release to the 4th grade classroom. It taught me yet another life lessen:
School Lesson #3 - Even if you don't commit the crime, you're “gunna” do the time (if you dare, double-dare, or otherwise abet the perpetrator)
7 – A PATROL BOY’S DAY IN COURT
Longfellow Elementary was a neighborhood school. With the exception of a handful of kids who lived in an isolated area at the edge of the city proper, everyone walked to school. The building was located in the middle of a large residential section of town, fronting on a well-traveled road, which was the primary north-south route through Binghamton. Officer Perry, a man with the same shape and friendly demeanor as Santa Claus, was assigned to the primary crossing point to assure our safety. Patrol boys handled other, less active, road crossings near the school. The squad was made up of 4th, 5th and 6th grade boys, who were hand picked by the teacher/supervisor. The official uniform was a white belt that crossed from left shoulder to right hip and girded the waist. It was topped off with a silver badge worn over the heart. High-ranking squad members, lieutenants and captains, sported red or blue badges depending on their rank. I never figured out if it was the uniform or the authority that attracted me to this elite troupe of Special Forces; I knew I wanted both, real bad. Only a few kids from each class were assigned to this quasi-adult responsibility. It was a chore that required participants to stay after school, and even worse, to arrive early, losing both play time, and mattress time in the process. There wasn't a kid in my class who wouldn't have gladly made the sacrifice, even if it meant selling a brother or sister down the river, to get the job.
I wasn't selected for the squad in the first draft. Maybe the "fire in the library" had a bearing on the selection process. I did make the cut in the second semester of fourth grade; I got the teacher’s OK to become a patrol boy. I found out real quick that there was a down side to the job. They didn’t just give us a “uniform” and send us off to an assigned corner. I was forced to read, and worse yet, to learn the contents of a 20-page patrol-boy manual. I had to attend six after school instruction sessions with Miss Wood, a stern, unmarried science teacher, who handled her position as the head of the patrol boy squad, in "Barney Fife" style. I eventually completed the training and was assigned a corner, a remote location where only 6 kids crossed the street. Adding to my disappointment was the fact that my first stint would not start for another four weeks, the standard rotation between assignments. I can still remember how slow the twenty eight days dragged, while I eagerly waited to don the uniform and exercise my new power, to "boss & cross".
Finally the day came; I patrolled the intersection of Ross and Park. It was the most boring thing I ever did. I stood on the corner, suited up in my gleaming white patrol boy strap with a silver badge, doing nothing. A kid or two dribbled by every ten minutes during my thirty-minute stint. I never saw a single car go by. I couldn’t even hold back a kid till a car came, like on some corners where the traffic was heavier. I put in my time that first week and encountered yet another negative aspect of this school chore. Miss Wood told us on Friday afternoon, as she sent us off to our final shift of the week, that we were required to scrub the belt; when we passed it on to the next rotation Monday morning it had to be dazzling white. Mom let me know the minute I told her about the requirement that she wasn't about to relieve me of this chore, she handed me a bar of yellow Octagon soap and pointed to the scrub board and stationary tub in the basement. At least I had one thing to be thankful for; I didn't have to go on duty for another four weeks. I sensed that this time, the twenty-eight days would fly by.
The whole affair came to a nasty conclusion after my third month on the job. A brother and sister passed by my corner four times each day: to school in the morning, home for lunch, back for the afternoon session, and then home again at the end of the day. They were constantly fighting and pushing each other. The brother was two years older and somewhat of a bully. I weakly "ordered" them to stop fighting, warning that they could get hit by a car if they weren't paying attention to where they walked (section 6.b. in the patrol boy manual). This only stopped them long enough to gawk at me like I was from another planet; then they walked to the edge of my policing area and started up again. After several days of this I put them on report; I wrote their names on my "arrest sheet" and instructed them to appear in patrol boy court. Court was held on the first Thursday of the month, immediately after school let out. Miss Wood presided at these sessions, acting as both judge and jury.
Three weeks later their court appearance took place. By that time I had all but forgotten the specific details of the particular fight that caused me to turn them in. When I was asked to recite the safety code section they violated, I simply related how they always fought and walked in an unsafe manner. Then I found out how close they really were. They both jumped to their feet and shouted to Miss Wood that they never fought, that I was the one who should be on trial for picking on them and saying mean things when they passed by my corner. Miss Wood looked over to me and asked if this was true. I was dumb founded, totally unprepared to deal with these well-told lies. I thought for sure the girl would speak up, so that the constant taunting by her brother might come to an end, but she didn’t. All I could manage was a feeble sputter, "They're lying!" But, it was two against one, and I was a rookie cop, not a seasoned lieutenant or captain with a red or blue badge. My status was low in the eyes of the court. They were cleared of the charges and allowed to leave; no punishment was warranted according to Miss Wood. I was scolded and told to shape up or I'd lose my slot on the squad. I left in amazement, but with the conviction that I definitely would not “re-up” for a second tour of duty in the fall. The lure of the uniform and power of the position were strong attractions, but I had tasted the fruit and found it bitter. The job just plain sucked.
I learned two school lessons in the process:
#4 - Two lies always win out over one truth.
#4-a, - Blood is thicker than honesty.
8 – APPLE TIME
It was “apple time” every afternoon at two o'clock in Mrs. Daniels fourth grade class. She read aloud for twenty minutes while we gnawed, chomped and slurped over our favorite snack. Approved school food in the Briar Patch was limited to apples, oranges and bananas. Peaches and plums were too juicy, and watermelon was considered an outdoor fruit. Apple time was tricky. The object was to make your snack last as long as possible, at the very least, longer than that of the kid at the desk next to you. Some kids never did get it. They munched as though they hadn’t eaten in weeks and found themselves empty handed before Mrs. Daniels finished the first page. It took super human self-control to nibble on a “Northern Delicious,” at a time of day when we were famished, half way between lunch and supper.
We had limited access to snacks in the Briar Patch; hunger was a familiar companion, which explains why a simple meat & potato dinner was like the holy grail, it’s aroma beckoning to us as five o’clock approached. Patient eaters could make an apple last through most of the reading session, but “master-snackers,” like Woody and me, could make ours last to the final page. We accomplished this by eating the skin first, a laborious and not-so-tasty process, and then the sweet, juicy, white pulp. We dragged this step out as long as possible by carving lines with our teeth, not taking an actual bite. The last step was to eat the apple core: seeds, stem and all. I can still remember how those little cardboard seed pockets felt when they stuck in my throat. No matter, we were last! We had achieved victory in one of the few contests where last was best! In fact, the only time I ever lost at this contest was when I paired off against my sister, eating ice cream cones. I always ordered vanilla and she chocolate. I never won. She was the ultimate master of finishing last and I’ll never know if it was the chocolate or her skill that did it.
When "apple time" ended we were told to close our eyes, lay our heads on our desk and take a rest. Miss Daniels didn't care if we slept or not, she just wanted us to be quiet and immobile so she could have ten minutes of peace in her busy day. There was no chance that any of us would fall asleep anyhow. Sleep was our enemy. We fought it, always. In the morning we couldn't wait to get up and get going and afternoon naps were for babies; heck, we were full of energy and had too much to do to waste time on sleep. At bedtime we campaigned to stay up, "just a few minutes longer". Sleep was Briar Patch enemy #1, followed closely by enemy #2 - being forced to fake it, to close our eyes and thus be denied knowledge of what was going on around us.
We never fully closed our eyes during the ten-minute rest break that followed apple time, but we were sneaky and clever about it. We knew how to peek through a narrow slit in our eyelids, so we could see, but have it look as though we were asleep. There wasn't much to look at with our heads down on the desk, so we generally looked at each other to see how good or bad the competition was faking it. Diane Stack was the prettiest girl in class; we all had a crush on her, but also were repulsed because she was the teacher’s pet with an extensive record of "ratting us out." Woody and I were two of her favorite victims. She never was caught doing anything wrong herself, but was something of a master at spotting the sins of the rest of us. She also was one of the few kids who actually kept her eyes closed during "apple time."
One afternoon she opened her eyes and was so startled by Woody, who was gawking around (he never was as sneaky as me), that she burst out, "Miss Daniels! Woody has his eyes open; He's peeking!" Woody thought he was dead and so did the rest of us. Miss Daniels showed me something that day. She remained seated at her imposing desk in the front of the class, and calmly, with a smug tone in her voice, turned to Diane and said, "How could you know that unless you peeked as well?"
Diane looked like she had the wind knocked out of her. I knew the feeling. The look of surprise on Diane's face was so profound that I was sure she felt just like I did the day I was swinging in my back yard when the rope to the swing broke, tossing me to the ground with a thud. I was shocked and speechless. Really, I could not talk. The wind had been knocked out of me. I ran into the house and managed to force out a whisper to my father, not having enough air to actually talk, "Dad, I fell off the swing, I think I'm dead!" Diane had that same "no air" look. Not only had the tables turned on her for the first time in her school life, her guilt was public, and on stage. Oh, the humiliation! Now I finally understood what my mother meant when she admonish me for repeatedly telling on my sister, Madeline.
It became School Lessen #5 - People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
9 - SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE
Every Wednesday afternoon at 2:15, thirty students lined up in pairs at the side door of PS-13 in preparation for a two mile, unsupervised march to Saint Johns Church. Sixth graders led the entourage; fifth graders held up the rear. Younger kids were cradled in the middle. Separation of Church and State was maintained, yet the objectives of both institutions were accommodated. A forty-five minute early dismissal let church officials achieve their goal, to provide religious instruction in the middle of the week, to supplement Sunday lessons, and it facilitated the State’s goal to maintain separation between the teachings of Jesus and the ABC's.
Letting a troop of kids walk unsupervised through a mix of residential and commercial neighborhoods on a 30 minute trek would not even be considered today, but the Briar Patch was a place of freedom, trust, social values and consequences. Neither the school administration, nor the parents, had the least concern for our safety on the walk to Saint Johns, nor did they fret over the possibility that we would misbehave along the way. Bad behavior was controlled by a well-oiled social pecking order, supported by the application of immediate consequences to unacceptable behavior. (It also was a time when parents didn't sue for every misfortune suffered by their "darlings"). If we acted up in front of adults, strangers or not, we expected a reprimand, a slap on the "bottom" or a cuff to the side of the head, depending on how obnoxious we’d been. Older kids simply creamed us, when we offended them.
Our journey to religious instructions was in reality, supervised by every adult along the route, by the older kids in the front and rear of the procession, and by the knowledge that there would be consequences if we got too far out of line. Consequences that included staying after school for a week and writing 500 times, “I will not misbehave, ever again on the walk to Saint Johns Church for religious instructions." The certainty of school discipline kept us in line. I was a kid who spent my share of time confined in the cloak room, in the principal's office, and writing on the board or on paper at my desk, "I will never again do bla bla bla," so you can bet if anyone might get out of line on the Wednesday afternoon march, I was a prime candidate. But I never did, nor did anyone else.
The only disruption to the orderly march to religious instructions occurred when the group came to a sidewalk square imprinted with the logo of the mason who had poured that particular section of walkway. Most of us, the boys anyhow, felt compelled to leap over this section of the walk. This "long-jump" was dictated by "sidewalk regulations" which were in effect in the Briar Patch. We were not allowed to step on the squares with the mason's logo. The other "sidewalk law” forbade us to step on a crack, “It would break our mothers back!" Sometimes, two sidewalk squares with the mason’s logo would abut each other. When we encountered this "double,” we backed up a few paces to get a running start, and then tried to clear the eight-foot section in a single bound. It was at these locations that our religious parade usually got a little out of whack. Otherwise, our pilgrimage was orderly. I never successfully made it over a double square, even though I attempted it hundreds of times in my years at PS-13, walking to and from school, and to and from religious instructions.
The actual instruction we received on Wednesday afternoon was anticlimactic compared to the journey to get there, at least in first and second grade. The nuns were kind and gentle during my first two years of instruction, taking my group up to and through "First Communion." But, after that, the gloves came off. We had reached our seventh birthday, the so-called "age of reason," capable of distinguishing right from wrong, and thus responsible for "our sins". All I know is, things changed after First Communion. The lessons got harder and the nuns got meaner.
Teachers at PS-13 were masters of discipline. They had many punishment options, which they skillfully employed, forcing us to behave. The options ranged from making us stand in the corner, on the low end of the scale, to a smack across the face on the high end. The latter rarely happened, but knowing it was an option helped keep us in line. I experienced the full range. I faced solitary confinement in the cloakroom; an adjunct to the classroom where coats were hung and miscellaneous supplies were stored. I faced public isolation in the corner, at the front of the class. I fretted for endless hours in class after the dismissal bell, sitting at attention with my hands folded on my lap, or laboriously writing, "I'll never again do bla bla,” dozens, and sometimes, hundreds of times on the board or in a notebook. I also was very familiar with the outer office of the school principal, and to some degree her inner office, which by the way was a second home for Butchy the Bully. And, I wasn't unusual. There were ALWAYS consequences for misbehavior; most kids had a similar criminal record.
Our fear of public school discipline, though profound, did not hold a candle to our fear of nuns. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the "nun" method, I can to this day recite my catechism. The answers to their questions of fifty years ago just roll off my tongue. Go ahead, ask me!
Question: "What is man"? Answer - "Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made to the image and likeness of God".
Question: "What is a sin"? Answer: "Sin is any offense against God or God's laws".
I could go on like this for hours. I learned my Catholic lessons through fear. The nuns at Saint Johns were experts at painful and immediate consequence. They didn't bother with the gentler options. They never said, "Go stand in the cloak room," or "write 100 times I will not bla bla.." No siree! In a Saint Johns classroom, it was either a whack across the knuckles with a ruler in front of the class, a quiet and deadly pinch on the sensitive flab of skin on the under side of the arm, or a hair pull that brought tears to one’s eyes. I experienced all three, but I was a quick learner, and like the rest of the class, towed the line 99% of the time.
You met Woody, my best friend in the Briar Patch; now meet Warren. Warren Brooks moved to a new house in our neighborhood when he was five. His father was a dentist, his mother a classical pianist. They came to our suburban upstate neighborhood from the big city, only 200 miles to the east, but a cultural world away. Woody and I spotted the "new kid" amongst the furniture going into the house on moving day. We knocked on their door at seven in the evening, after the moving van departed, in hopes of meeting him. He looked to be about our age. Warren was in his pajamas when he came to the door with his mother and father. After a minute or so of introductions, Woody and I asked the question that covered most of our conversations with adults, "Can Warren come out to play?" To our surprise, considering he was already dressed for bed, and after only a few "Can I, please," from Warren, his mother said, "OK, but just for a little while." He quickly slapped on his shoes, strapped a two-gun holster to his waist and bolted out the door. From that moment on, Warren was one of us.
Warren was Jewish, Woody Methodist and I Catholic. We each thought each other's religious practices were odd, yet fascinating. It wasn't a big topic with us, but the peculiar differences of our religions were bantered around from time to time. On a few occasions our curiosity moved us to sneak around in each other’s place of worship, just to see what it was like. One Saturday afternoon, on a trip home from the movie theater, we stopped at Saint Johns to "explore," and to look for loose change in the pews. This was a lucrative source of income for me, second only to collecting returnable soda bottles. We didn’t confine our exploration to the church proper. We surveyed the entire facility: the choir loft, the forbidden area behind the altar, the meeting rooms in the basement and even the furnace and storage rooms in the sub-basement. The church was never locked, and generally was unattended, though a crotchety old janitor occasionally lurked in the shadows, protecting "his" church from the likes of us.
On this particular Saturday he caught us red handed in the choir loft and chased us from the building. We ran down the block and hid behind the school. We wanted to return because we hadn't searched the pew area for nickels and dimes. We cleverly devised a plan. Woody had on a blue coat and a yellow hat; I had on a leather jacket and a red hat, Warren a green coat and a green hat. We switched hats and coats so that the combinations were all mixed up. We were positive the janitor would not recognize us now because the kid with the blue coat had on a red hat, on so on. With our identity disguised we confidently sashayed into the church to sit in the pews, as though praying, while in reality we scoured the seats and floor for cash. No sooner had we started on the first row, when in charged the "old grouch." He not only chased us out of the church, but down the street and out of the neighborhood. When devising our plan, it never dawned on us that all he would remember was three kids messing around in church, not a kid in a blue coat with a yellow hat and so forth. We had just learned another school lesson.
School Lesson #6 - When you get too close to things, too focused on the details, you "can’t see the forest for the trees."
Ah ha, another epiphany in our young lives, as the real meaning of yet another adage we’d considered stupid, clicked in all three of our heads at once! On the way home we laughed at how dumb we had been to think we could have fooled the janitor with our complicated attempt to disguise our identity.
10 - What's in a Name?
Merlin, that's the best name Lewis and Kathleen Lessler could come up with for their new son, born on a snowy November Sunday in 1942. For years, (hell, decades) I cursed their choice. I always suspected it was my father's selection. He couldn't bring himself to name me Sue, like the “Boy Named Sue,” in Johnny Cash’s hit song, so he did the next best thing, "Merlin." Odd names run in his family, which is why I think he was the culprit, not my mother. His father was Conrad, his sister Arletta, while on my mother’s side of the tree, were: Ernest, Elizabeth, Francis, John, Paul, Norman, etc. As a result of my Fathers decision, I ended up as Jim Steele in some circles, Nick in others, and at various times: as "Elmira", "Brewster" and "Captain," all attempts to shed my given name, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Those are names and stories that come after I left the Briar Patch.
I was called Merlin at home, "Butch," on the block. I'm not sure who dubbed me with the same nickname as the Southside bully, Butchy Lidaka, but it stuck, in fact I rarely heard "Merlin" outside the range of my parent or grandparent’s voices. In school, of course, "Butch" was not allowed. That seemed OK at first, after all "Woody" became Sherwood when he passed through the portals at PS-13, but I eventually discovered the peril of owning a name that caused gender confusion. From fifth grade on, I dreaded the first day of school. It wasn't quite as bad in elementary school, because we had one teacher for all subjects. It really became unpleasant in junior high where we had a different teacher for each subject, a minimum of six new teachers every semester, six new adults to call me Marilyn.
It started on the first day of fifth grade; I was assigned a seat on the "girls side" of the room, behind Suzanne (Suzy) Latonic and in front of Sally Night, in perfect "last name" alphabetic order. To my dismay, Mrs. White not only erred in concluding that "Merlin" was a girls name (God I thought everyone alive heard of "Merlin the Magician," the "Wizard of Camelot"), she even failed to notice, when she looked out into the class following the assignment of seats, the red faced boy on the girls side of the room.
"Mrs. White! Mrs. White! - Merlin's not a girl," shouted good old tattletale, Diane Stack, when she saw that Mrs. White hadn’t realized her mistake.
For once Diane did me a favor with her tattling; otherwise I might have been stuck on the girl’s side of the room for the rest of the school year. I have to admit, old White covered her tracks pretty well. Without missing a beat, she sputtered,
"Oh, I see what you mean, I thought Merlin was an alternate spelling of Marilyn.”
I made it to the boy’s side, but not in alphabetical order. I was assigned a seat directly behind Woody (Walls); some clouds really do have a silver lining. My assigned seat on the girl’s side of the room remained vacant for the entire term. I guess Mrs. White had done the chart in ink or was in hopes that a new girl would join the class with a last name that started with "L," but it never happened. This was an era when families seldom moved. Only two new kids joined our class in my seven years at PS-13.
After my seating assignment was corrected, Mrs. White continued to call me Marilyn. "Marilyn, would you please erase the board", "Marilyn, will you please stop talking to Woody." She was paying me back for screwing up her seating chart, and at the same time saving face with the class (Wouldn't any intelligent person think a name pronounced "Marilyn" was a girls name?). In her defense, she wasn't the last, or the only teacher to change my sex in the schoolroom. Every single teacher thereafter, sang out loud and clear, "Marilyn Lessler," at roll call, the first day of class.
I wasn't going to take Mrs. White's ridicule much longer. The seating error was bad enough; the constant need to respond to “Marilyn” was too much! I had to bring it to an end, but how? In the Briar Patch you didn't approach the "establishment" head on with your demands; you snuck in from an oblique position, from the blind side. Finally, an opportunity revealed itself. One afternoon, Mrs. White called each of us by name to come to her desk at the front of the room with money and a permission slip for a class trip. She came to my name, and sang out
"Marilyn Lessler, please come up."
I just sat. She called out again. I continued to sit; I could see she was getting irritated. She stood and glared at me, as I sat at my desk behind a snickering Woody.
"Marilyn Lessler, get up here this minute!"
I sat tight. I could see the faces of my classmates, as they turned to witness another "Merlin event." Most sported huge grins, others, especially Diane Stack, gawked with open mouths, disapproving looks and squinted eyes. One last, "Marilyn Lessler," from Mrs. White, and I played my hand.
"Marilyn, who's Marilyn," I asked looking back and forth to my classmates in innocent puzzlement. "Do you mean Merlin?"
All was quiet for the longest minute of that school year. I thought for sure I was in for another visit to the school principal. I'm sure White considered it, she was so mad she could spit (and no woman ever spat in the Briar Patch). I'm certain she figured the principal, Miss Lennox, would not be thrilled to learn that her fifth grade teacher didn't know how to pronounce a students name this far along in the semester, especially a student so well known in the school. So she "blinked."
"OK Master Merlin Lessler, please come to my desk with your money and permission slip; am I pronouncing that correctly?"
My face was red, but I had won! The class was all smiles, and all of us learned a new school lessen.
School Lesson #7 - You have to take the bull by the horns to get what you want, what you deserve, it just won't happen on its' own.
And School Lesson #7-A - sometimes an adult can be a bully too, even a teacher.
11 – VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE
Elementary schools celebrate all major, minor and even a few fabricated holidays. PS-13 was no exception. We dragged home odd shaped turkeys & pilgrims at Thanksgiving, jack-o-lanterns at Halloween, images of "George" with axe in hand on February 22nd, and a multitude of tributes to the day at hand, crudely put together with layers of colored construction paper and excessive blobs of white paste. Halloween was the most celebrated holiday at our school. The teachers didn’t just allow, but encouraged us to wear costumes to school. They organized a parade of goblins and gremlins, by grade, letting girls and boys march together for a change. Playground games, apple dunking and a feast of cider & donuts were the order of the day. The climax was a "best costume" contest, judged by a panel of teachers. Most outfits were home made. It's amazing what kids could do with cardboard, crepe paper, Popsicle sticks, crayons, glue and mom's discarded kitchen utensils. Today, at least in my son's school, the administration doesn't allow the celebration of Halloween. It's true, that on October 31st (or, as expressed in typical bureaucratic fashion, on the Friday proceeding the 31st if it falls on a Saturday or a Sunday) you can spot kids scurrying to school in what appears to be Halloween costumes. And yes, there is a parade, games, snacks and even a costume contest. But these events mark the celebration of the "Fall Harvest of Good Books", not Halloween. Halloween you see, has religious roots, and thus is no longer a politically correct public school activity.
Woody and I ranked Halloween, second only to Christmas, on our list of favorite holidays. Third, and moving up on the scale at the same pace that hormones were starting to circulate through our bodies, came Valentine's Day. My memories of Valentine's Day in the Briar Patch, come back to me, first as an aroma, a smell; the smell of a decorated valentine box. The smell came from the Otis family. Phyllis Otis eagerly volunteered, from 1st through 6th, to provide a Valentine's box for the class. Every year it smelled; I'm not sure why, and I’m not sure I ever want to know. The smell was bad! I can't describe it other than to say it was similar to the smell of the interior of used cars, which have been shampooed and fumigated by the dealer before being wheeled onto the sales lot. It’s a smell that gags. If you've ever purchased one of those "reconditioned" vehicles, then you know that the smell also lingers for a long time. That's exactly how a Phyllis Otis Valentine's box performed. Weeks after V-day the odor was still with us.
In spite of the smell, the box beckoned us, a pink, red and white two-foot square receptacle, decorated with hearts on the side and a mail slot on the top. It loomed on a perch at the front of the room in full view of the class, haunting us for days. "Will she put one in for me?" "Dare I get one for her?" Those were the questions that ran through our heads, as Woody and I sat there, as if in an armed camp, on the boy’s side of the room. We knew we'd put in silly ones for each other, and for some of the girls, but what about the one or two girls in our class whose affections just might be worth enduring the teasing of our peers, the girls we walked home from school on rare occasions, to the taunt of "Merlin has a girl friend,” or Wood’s in love!” Dare we buy, and sign, a mushy Valentine. The box, smell and all, challenged us to act!
Day after day, the love box grew heavier. Each morning, en-route to our desks, we were allowed to make a deposit. I, like the rest of the "chickens," would drop in a handful of joke cards every day or so. A special card for a heartthrob like Nancy Stevenson or Diane Stack never made it until the very last day, if it made it at all. A few times in my years at PS-13, I mustered enough courage to buy a card, sign it, and bring it to class, only to answer the dismissal bell with it safely hidden in my pocket.
Finally, after a week of anxiety, Valentine's Day came to PS-13, a very long day. The box seemed to glow as it loomed before us, holding its' secrets in silence. At two in the afternoon, the teacher called a halt to formal classroom activity, homemade cookies were exchanged, glasses of juice were distributed. Then the box was moved to her desk, the lid opened, the distribution ritual begun. One by one, valentines were pulled from the box, securely sealed in red and pink envelopes. She called out the name written on the front of the envelope, and when summoned, we made our way to the front of the room, grabbed the treasure with a sweaty hand, and sheepishly returned to our seats, depositing the card on the top of our desk, unopened. After fetching our "first" card of the day, we breathed a sigh of relief, knowing we would not suffer the humiliation of "getting stiffed" by the entire class. The respite was brief, and the tension soon returned, as we remembered the sentimental mushy card we had signed, sealed and deposited in the box.
Valentine's Day was a day of atonement in the Briar patch. If you'd been a jerk, teased the girls and overdid the "double-dares" to the boys, then it was likely you would sit through the entire valentine distribution ritual, never hearing your name. You would then learn a tough school lesson, and become the victim of a Saint Valentine’s Day massacre, as you finally understood what adults meant when they preached:
School Lesson #8 - "Ye shall reap what ye sow".
Afterward: My son is required to bring a valentine for every kid in his class. Educators think it is a kinder way of doing things, but I think being denied the "input" of Valentine's day, cruel and hurtful as it may be, robs kids of valuable peer feedback. They miss the powerful message, to "shape up." Getting a valentine from everyone in class has absolutely no meaning. I bet the box doesn't smell anymore either.
12 – Freaks, Geeks & anatomical abnormalities,
or "don't put a bead up your nose"!
There were four fat kids in PS-13: Duane Drum, Nancy Drum, Pearl Horowitch and Peter Lidaka. Everyone else was skinny. If you visited PS-13 today, which you can't, because it's been torn down to make way for a supermarket, you wouldn’t find a single skinny kid. The fat-skinny ratio has reversed itself since I left the Briar Patch; it changed because kids today have a different lifestyle. We were out of the house as soon as we could wolf down breakfast, to engage in physical activity. We reluctantly returned home for lunch and supper, the only breaks in our aerobic existence. We ate three meals a day; snacks were few and far between, and generally were limited to whatever fruit was in season. (Foods had seasons in those days; you could only buy apples in the fall, strawberries in the spring and raspberries in mid-summer. You were stuck with canned fruit the rest of the time, which most often was put up by thoughtful mothers and grandmothers. Candy, soda, chips and the like were not readily available at home. We purchased this junk, and gobbled it down on the front stoop at one of the numerous Mom & Pop grocery stores that peppered the landscape in the Briar Patch. Nobody thought of these places as Mom & Pop Stores. That's a designation crafted by social scientists in the sixties, to describe the small neighborhood stores that were disappearing as the mammoth supermarket chains marched across America, gobbling up the grocery business. The term was developed in ignorance. In the real world, Pop ran the store. Mom was home running the house.
It's my guess that the Drum family and the Horowitch family could legitimately blame their excess poundage on genetics. In both families, everyone was fat. I'm not being purposefully cruel by referring to their condition as "fat". That's the only term that was available to us in the Briar Patch. Overweight, heavy, husky, big boned, large framed and pleasantly plump were descriptions not yet concocted, nor mandated by the "politically correct set." Nancy, Duane, Pearl and Butchy were fat, pure and simple. That’s just the way it was. It had no effect on how we felt about the "person," in fact, Pearl was a good friend. She lived a few doors down the street from us, and we played together a lot.
One of my most memorable days with Pearl took place one afternoon when we were six. We were playing around in a mud puddle and decided to convert ourselves from white kids to colored kids. (I'm sorry if that offends you. If it does, please reread page #3. "Colored" is what we were trying to be, not black or Afro-American). We smeared ourselves from head to foot with mud, and then paraded around the neighborhood to see what we could stir up. We didn't get very far; one of the neighbors called my mother to report the latest “Merlin” escapade. She dragged us home and hosed us off in the back yard. I don't know about Pearl, but I enjoyed the experiment.
Pearl's mom and dad were fat, I mean huge. They slept naked, sans covers, something I attributed at the time to their thick layer of fat (reasoning that they didn't need covers to stay warm). Woody, Warren and I often started our Saturdays by stopping in at the Horowitchs. We’d sneak up the stairs to the master bedroom with Pearl and her younger brother, Bunny, for a peak at the beached whales basking in slumber on their backs, fat, happy and naked. They were very sound sleepers because they never caught us. This wasn't an erotic sighting, just another of many indulgences in our compulsion to see the unusual. After all, we lived in an era where the most popular attraction around was the freak show at the circus.
We were all "freaks," to some degree, in the Briar patch; it explains why we were so driven to examine everyone else's abnormalities. We instinctively sensed that by finding people odder than ourselves, the stigma of our own abnormality would be reduced. All us boys had big ears in the Briar patch, especially in summer, when we opted for "Teddy Bear" haircuts. The theory was, that this near bald hairstyle would keep us cool on the dog days of summer. Our parents allowed us this indulgence because it saved them money. One haircut lasted all summer.
We had a lot more time on our hands in those days, which kids today spend in front of the TV. We used it to explore and develop our individual physical oddities. Woody was double jointed, a term we later learned was medically incorrect, but when we were kids, that's what Woody was, "Double Jointed." He could magically move his thumb in a certain way, which would cause a huge bulge to appear in the palm of his hand. Double-joints were a much admired and envied oddity, as was body flexibility. Some "freak" kids were able to demonstrate unusual flexibility; they could stretch their legs far enough to hook both feet behind their head. Kids with these kinds of “talents” were famous at PS-13. The great mass of us, after proper training and hours of practice, learned to cross our eyes, stretch far enough to bite our toenails, and burp at will. Some of us learned the tricky hand cupping method that produced a low train whistle when we blew between the crack where our thumbs came together. A few kids learned the secret of producing a high shrill whistle that carried for blocks by sticking two fingers in their mouth and blowing hard. I strived for years, but never mastered this skill. A penny candy store near our school stocked a five-cent metal device that produced the same effect. I purchased one and dropped out of "whistle" training camp".
Armpit farting was also a universal skill at PS-13. The fart sound was produced by cupping a hand across the "pit" and bringing the arm down as fast as possible forcing air through the crack formed between the hand and the armpit. This, unfortunately, is a skill that survived the passing of the Briar patch. My son and his friends regularly display this armpit technique. Local gossip had it, that a kid on the north side of town could fart at will, the real thing, not an armpit imitation. If true, then this would have been the ultimate, the most highly prized skill imaginable. We never verified the claim, but the rumor alone was enough to give hope that we too might one day achieve this "Olympic Gold Medal" level of human body manipulation.
We boys constantly freaked each other out, and when we thought we had perfected a new “freak” skill, we let loose with it on the girls, hoping for screams and shrieks. We learned how to stick pins in our fingers, just under the skin, to taunt them. It didn’t hurt, but sure looked as though it did. We also suffered the discomfort of hot candle wax, dribbled onto our hands, producing a deformed looking horror, guaranteed to get a scream, from even the bravest of the "pig-tail set."
One afternoon Woody and I cut our wrists with a razor blade in order to become "blood brothers," a ritual we saw demonstrated in cowboy movies. After all, the Lone Ranger and Tonto were blood brothers. Girls didn’t take part in any of these body-piercing rituals; they didn't even pierce their ear lobes in those days, much less the entire outer ear, navel, eyebrow, bellybutton and tongue, as is the custom today. And, tattoos could only be found on sailor’s arms, who, we were informed, endured the pain of the needle in a drunken stupor; a mistake, we were told, they would regret for the rest of their lives. The same lust we had to be "freaks" drives kids today. They pierce, color and tattoo every accessible body part. It's getting harder and harder to stay ahead of the pack. Soon, someone with an unaltered body will qualify as "King of the Freaks".
We were exposed to a whole range of human abnormalities in the Briar Patch. Mongoloids, albinos, midgets, maimed and crippled soldiers, blind men with red tipped canes, people with hooks instead of hands, empty pant legs and patched eyes. These abnormalities, both fascinated and frightened us. At PS13 we had our share of oddities; Tommy Williams had three nipples; Fran Loukes had a shoulder-sniffing twitch which fascinated and entertained the entire class. Every few minutes or so, he'd drop his chin to his chest, rotate it slowly until his nose was even with the top of his shoulder, take a loud sniff and reset for another round. Suzy Latonic's arms and legs were scarred from burns she received when a stovetop water heater fell on her. She received 2nd and 3rd degree burns to most of her body. At the time of the accident she was a grade ahead of us, but a year of convalescence, dropped her back into 2nd grade with Woody and me. The bumpy and blotchy skin grafts that were exposed on her neck, arms and legs, were startling. Her story was well documented in medical journals, and even made it to Readers Digest, our official source of information on unusual human tragedies, second only to Ripley's Believe it or Not. She was the first child to survive second and third degree burns to 90% of her body.
In the spirit of flaunting our physical abnormalities, I stupidly shoved a large bead up my nose while in line on the playground, waiting to go back into the school. I thought it would be cool to have a big bump on the side of my nose. I proudly stood in line, showing off my latest oddity, but didn't get much of a response, until I tried to get it out. Panic City! I couldn't get at it! My frantic attempts just pushed it deeper into my nose. I had the attention of the class, but not in the manner I’d bargained for. Diane Stack (she never missed a trick, ever) started yelling, "Merlin's got a bead stuck in his nose!" "He can't get it out!" "He's going to suffocate!" Now I really was scared. I was sure she was right; I was going to die. Miss McCormick calmly walked over to me, with a look of disgust on her face, handed me her handkerchief, and ordered, "Blow!" I obeyed, and out popped the bead. Needless to say I finished the day by staying after school and writing, "I will not put a bead up my nose on the playground again," 500 times.
Thirty years later this incident came rushing back to me. My youngest daughter Amy bolted from the living room where the whole family was gathered one evening. Her sobs were loud enough to be heard above the thumps from her feet, as she charged up the stairs to her bedroom. My wife, a stay-at-home mother of four daughters who'd "had enough" at that point of the day, looked over to me and mouthed, "It's your turn." I trotted off to investigate this latest mystery that had befallen our five-year-old princess. I found her sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed sobbing quietly. "Amy, what's the matter?” I yelled, over her wailing. She convulsed out a shaky reply between sobs, "I stuck a bead up my nose and can't get it out. I came here to die!" It was all I could do to not burst out laughing as the memory my schoolyard experience flooded into my head. I grabbed a tissue from her nightstand (real cloth handkerchiefs vanished from everyday use on the last day of the Briar Patch), assured her that she was NOT going to die and asked her to "blow." It was all over. She looked at me in amazement, gave me a big hug and went off to play. I sat there on her bed remembering my own ordeal with the deadly "bead up the nose." Ironic that we both experienced this brush with death, and both learned –
School Lesson #9 - Don't put a bead up your nose, you might die" (of embarrassment).
13 - Tools of the Trade
I helped my son with his homework the other night, something I do a lot, much to my chagrin. He holds his pencil as though he's about to stab a tarantula scurrying across the paper. I try to convince him to place the pencil on the side of his middle finger, just above the first knuckle, and cradle it between his thumb and index finger, the way we were taught in PS-13. He lets me know in no uncertain terms that his TEACHER (who obviously has more pull with him than I do) encourages them to hold their pencil anyway they want; she uses a "natural" approach to teaching. I call it anarchy. His writing is "for crap," a testament to the foolishness of yet another liberalization of the educational standards. This "free spirit" penmanship technique, coupled with the elimination of "phonics" from reading lessons, ends up with me being the proud father of a fourth grader who can neither read nor write. Educational bureaucrats in our school weren't fulfilled, sticking with proven methods of teaching the "three R's. They imposed new experimental methods, in the face of advice to the contrary from every single elementary teacher. And, in spite of the failure, as evidenced by the sale of millions of copies of the "Phonics Game," they are sticking to their guns. It looks like I'll have homework every night for years to come.
"In my day," which are my son's three most hated words because they introduce a lecture he doesn't want. But, "In my day," we didn't have homework in the forth grade, or any other grade in PS-13. We went to school to learn to read, write, solve math problems and what went on in the world around us. We did this five days a week, from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon. That was enough. After the three o'clock dismissal bell, and all day Saturday and Sunday, we were free to be kids. There was no such thing as a book bag. There was no need. I take that back. We were required to bring brown paper bags to class the first day of school each year, to cut and shape into covers for the books, "entrusted" to us for the semester. These paper bags were referred to as "book bags." In junior and senior high, when we were assigned homework, we still didn't use book bags. Some nerdy kids used book straps, but the rest of us just cradled a stack of books and papers under our arm, resting the weight on our hip, and struggled home from school. My son's book bag is an elaborate compartmentalized affair with zippers and padded shoulder straps. The padding is essential, I discovered, the first time I tried to lift it. It's so heavy, it's a wonder he doesn't fall over backwards getting on the school bus. He carries his lunch in yet another elaborate zippered compartmentalized container that fits inside the book bag proper. I'm jealous. I would have killed for a lunch box and thermos when I attended ps-13. A few kids rode busses to school because the remote section of town in which they lived was too far from school to walk. It was impractical to send them home at noon, so they brought their lunch in a square metal lunch box that also housed a half-pint thermos bottle. Buzzy Spencer was part of this group of "packers," a kid who eventually joined Woody, Warren and me, as "best friends," enlarging our clique from three, to four. This expansion took place as soon as we were old enough to reach his house on our bikes. The small group of kids who stayed for lunch, assembled in an empty classroom to eat while the rest of us headed home for a sandwich with mom. To this day, I'm covetous of the lunch boxes and thermos bottles that the packers brought to school.
The range of school equipment was rather slim in the Briar Patch: ruled paper, composition notebooks, pencils and two-ring binders. Three ring binders were not permitted at Longfellow Elementary, for a reason that I never deduced; three-ring paper (and binders) were only allowed in high school. Pen, ink, blotters, etc. were added to our meager equipment list, about half way through our stint at PS-13. Using ink was a "privilege" we had to earn by demonstrating good penmanship. My son and his contemporaries would never have made it.
Kindergarten was a year of play and socialization at PS -13; then we got down to the schooling. In first, second, and half of third grade, we did our schoolwork in pencil, perfecting our writing skills, which began by learning to properly hold the "instrument." We practiced every single day. Writing was a separate subject in those days. We filled pages and pages with letters of the alphabet, various size loops, endless coils and other shapes, imprinting writing skill patterns into the cortex of our brains. These exercises were carried out under close supervision of the teacher, who roamed the aisles, observing and correcting our pencil holding technique, and "tsking" when the coils or loops started to wander outside the lines. This aspect of our education was so important that the Binghamton School System employed a Penmanship Director, Mrs. Elizabeth J. Drake. Her job was to audit the writing curriculum in all six of the Binghamton elementary schools. At the end of each semester we were required to submit our best writing samples for inclusion in a "Penmanship Progress Folder." When we graduated from ps-13, we not only received a diploma for completing six years of school, we also received a penmanship certificate and our penmanship folder. I still have mine. It shows the improvement in my hen scratching, as I progressed from an illiterate, to a literate student.
Half way through third grade we switched from pencil to ink. It happened suddenly. One day as we concentrated on the assigned series of loops and coils, the teacher interrupted the lesson and called us to attention. She then proceeded to walk to Alexandra Palmer's desk with an inkwell, ink, pen, blotter and wiping rag. She put the inkwell into the empty hole at the top of the desk, filled it from a quart bottle of ink and handed Alexandra the pen and the rest of the equipment. "You have earned the privilege to use ink," Mrs. Babcock proclaimed. Alex was instructed to carefully dip the point of the pen into the ink, so that only a third of it was covered, and to continue the lesson in ink. Mrs. Babcock then proceeded on her rounds to observe how the rest of us were doing. All of a sudden the loops became important; we wanted ink! One by one, inkwells were added to the desks of students in my third grade class. Blots and spills were common on my side of the room. The girls, on the other hand, proved once again that moderation is best. Woody and I dipped deep, and filled our points to the max. We couldn't be bothered with the constant dipping. As a result, our papers were decorated with a variety of blobs and blots. We didn't know that ink privileges would be withdrawn if we were too messy. Woody and I were back to pencils by the end of the week. I would have killed for a ballpoint pen.
Yes, the "tools of the trade" for students in PS-13 were meager: pencil, paper and notebooks, but the teacher was also equipped in Spartan fashion. She transformed us from ignorant savages with only a blackboard, chalk and erasers. Imagine what she could have accomplished with the TV's, VCR's, computers, overhead projectors and the felt boards that litter today’s classroom. She also had a supply of gold & silver stars, and holiday stickers. What an incentive, to get back a test paper with an A+ in the upper corner, emphasized by two gold stars and a smiling pumpkin sticker. Kudos were not handed out indiscriminately. You had to earn this praise. We might go weeks without glimpsing a coveted sticker or star on a test paper, as we anxiously watched our fellow students pass it back to us from the front of the room. Every kid in the relay, that moved the paper from the teacher to the recipient, eyed the papers for stickers, or lack thereof. The "Diane Stacks" of the class were quick to announce, "Merlin got an F," or "Suzy got an A+ with four gold stars." Public recognition was an important component of the educational system at PS-13, carefully orchestrated by the teacher.
And, it worked; it taught us, School Lesson #10- You get paid for the steak, not the sizzle.
Afterthought: I was discussing a test paper with my son the other day. He got over half of the addition & subtraction problems wrong, but the paper had two happy face stickers next to a note from the teacher, "Nice Try!" "How do you think you did on the test?" I asked. "Pretty good," was his reply. "I won't have to study tonight!" Today you get paid for the sizzle!
14 – Boys and Girls
"Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice! Boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails!" The boys and girls in the Briar Patch accepted the assertions in this verse as fact, and social structure at PS-13 reinforced it, initiating Round #1 in the battle of the sexes.
I served my entire seven-year "sentence" in elementary school on the "puppy dog tail" side of the classroom, with the exception of the first day of fifth grade (see Chapter 10). "Sentence," is the proper term to describe my time at PS-13. I truly felt I was in prison, and my son today, feels the same about his predicament. I get him off to school every morning, one of the advantages of being a writer. The conversation we have on the short journey from the kitchen to the front door, gathering up his book bag, lunch, coat and hat along the way, is always the same. He starts it with a declaration, "I hate school! I wish I could stay home and play." I complete the ritualistic verbal dance with, "The police would arrest your mother and me if we didn't make you go to school." I had the same conversation with my father and his answer was, "Enjoy it, these are the best years of your life! Wait till you have to go to work every day!" I didn't believe him then, and after spending thirty-seven years in "Corporate America," I still don't. Anything is better than school!
I will admit, that on a few occasions, I was eager to go to school: the entire year of kindergarten, the first day of school after the two month summer vacation, and the day I was to assume my assignment as a patrol boy. But that's it. Every other school day, I felt I was marching off to prison, to sit in shackles watching the slowest clock in the world creep toward the dismissal hour. Girls didn't seem to mind school. They didn't bolt from their desks at recess, lunch or at the end of the day like the inmates on my side of the room. They hung back and neatly put their schoolwork and supplies away, chatting and lingering, as though they didn’t want the day to end. The boys simply jammed all the junk into their desk, often sitting on the lid to get it closed. I had many opportunities to witness the girls linger in class after the bell, since I spent considerable time sitting there, "kept after school," writing an endless series of "I will never......"
Girls and boys were definitely different in the Briar Patch, but not different enough to justify the extremes society went to in an effort to keep us apart. The classroom was a "partitioned" country, not much different than North and South Korea. Rarely did we cross the "38th parallel." When we gathered on the playground before entering the building, we were arranged into two lines, one for boys, one for girls. PS-13 even had separate doors at the front entrance to the school; BOYS was carved in stone over one portal, GIRLS over the other. We weren’t allowed to use the front doors, but we did adhere to their symbolism of separation of the sexes, by forming segregated columns, and marching in through the side door adjacent to the playground. Recess was different for boys and girls. We male “athletes,” monopolized the blacktop play area with bat-ball games, baseball drills and "World Heavyweight Wrestling Championships." The girls stayed off to the side, jumping rope, playing jacks and holding marathon "whispering & giggling" sessions. Woody and I spent hours jumping rope and picking up jacks, but NEVER at school recess, and never in front of our classmates. Even the cloakroom at the back of our classroom, was segregated: hooks on the left for boys, on the right for girls. And of course, "girls were not allowed" on the patrol-boy squad.
Elsewhere in the Briar patch the separation principles were also in evidence. The YMCA lived up to its' name "Young MENS Christian Association." The YWCA down the street was for women and girls. The organization, known today as the Boys & Girls Club was simply "The Boys Club." Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and Brownie Scouts, all sustained separation of the sexes. Subtle distinctions between boys and girls were rife in wearing apparel. Slacks were taboo for women. Woody and I wore "dungarees," denim pants with four pockets and belt loops. Girls wore "jeans" - denim slacks absent pockets and belt loops, held up by an elastic waste band and zipped on the side. I still cringe when someone refers to my Levi’s as "jeans." Girls wore shorts, boys didn’t, after age five. Teenage boys pushed the envelope a bit and occasionally wore “Bermudas,” and God help anyone if they referred to them as "shorts." Winter coats with hoods, were in Vogue for girls, but our coats were collared, and head covering was provided by a knitted cap, or a fleece lined aviator helmet, complete with goggles. Woody and I jingled off to school in black buckle boots on snowy mornings. The girls in our class sported slip on, low cut, unadorned rubber overshoes, either white or red. Mittens were for girls, gloves for boys. Most of the fashion traditions that distinguished the sexes in the Briar Patch have been cast aside.
Discipline was also discriminatory by gender in PS-13. I never witnessed a girl receive physical punishment in class, not a cuff to the head, a pinch to the arm, or a slap on the behind. I never shared a cell with a girl, in any of my numerous sentences to the principal’s office, just other boys, and of course, Butchy Lidaka. The girls were usually just scolded for their infrequent, and minor misdeeds. They occasionally went over the edge, and thus earned a stay after school, writing in rote, such things as, "I promise never again to chew gum in class, or talk to so-and-so during arithmetic lessons."
The differences were hammered home in the Briar Patch, and reinforced by many "separation" mechanics at work in society, yet Woody and I couldn't help but notice, that many traits on the other side of the room were similar to those on our side. Traits that defied the myths we were expected to accept as fact. Girls were equal or better in arithmetic, not afraid to stand up in front of the class by their desk, or go to the board "to show their stuff." I chuckle every time I see the ad on TV where a female executive vice president of Ford Motor Company extols to girls, "Be good students in school, stand up and be heard in class, nobody expects less of you because you are a girl.” What Crap! ALL the good students, boys and girls alike, were (and still are) eager to be recognized in class, practically jumping out of their seats, with hands waving frantically to get the teachers attention. The rest of us slunk down behind the kid in front of us, praying that the teacher would call on someone else. There was absolutely ZERO reluctance on the part of any girl to stand up and be counted in PS-13. It was a given, girls were better writers, better spellers and wizards at math and science. It was always a girl we went to for help with schoolwork, not a boy.
The Briar Patch was littered with evidence that belied the "Sugar & Spice & everything nice" Versus "snips, snails & puppy dog tails" equation that society strived to impose. Sure, there were examples of girls who fit the mold. Mary Louise Soldo was one. She lived across the street from our house with her two younger sisters. We weren't allowed to call her "Mary," "It's Mary Louise,” her mother sternly told us. Mary Louise Soldo was afraid of her own shadow! She was afraid of everything else too. What a target she was for Woody and me. Bugs, worms and frogs were constantly in our pockets when we made our way across the street to taunt her.
Every visit ended with her running into the house, both arms raised in the air, a high-pitched shriek issuing from her mouth. Her sisters would sit on the stoop, unmoved by the critter that Woody or I held up to scare them. Yes, Mary Louise Soldo was made of sugar and spice. Kitty-corner from the Soldo's, lived another girl who defied the norm, Beatrice Krupa. Beatrice was the longest ball hitter in the neighborhood. And it was “Bea,” who taught Woody and me how to trap the frogs and bugs we used to taunt Mary Louise. There was other evidence in the neighborhood that belied society’s wall between the sexes. My mother provided one example. She drove a car. This was a man’s "thing," in the Briar Patch. Most women in our neighborhood didn't have a driver’s license. Mom did, in fact she had her own car, an embarrassment to me at the time, a wussy 1953 Hudson Jet. Woody’s mom also drove. The rest of the "gals" in the neighborhood bummed rides, took the bus or waited for Dad's day off to go to the grocery store. Husbands in the Briar Patch hadn't figured out that the roles of men and women in society were ripe for challenge; if they had, their life would have improved considerably, at least the legion of guys sitting in boredom, outside the store every Saturday, while the "Old Lady" shopped for groceries. All they had to do was teach "her" to drive.
The seeds were planted in the Briar patch for the "equal rights” that were harvested in the sixties. The boys and girls at PS-13 dared to notice the similarities between the sexes, in spite of the differences.
All of us, boys and the girls alike, at thousands of PS-13’s across the country learned School Lesson #11 well, and carried it with us into the turmoil of change in the sixties.
"Boys and GIRLS can do anything they put their mind to: become a doctor, a lawyer, a plumber, a CEO, even President of the United States.
Section II - The Neighborhood
15 - A Birds Eye View of the Briar patch
Woody and I took our journey through the Briar patch in a new neighborhood on the south side of Binghamton, a small city in upstate New York. He lived on Denton Road, I lived one street over, on Chadwick. Both streets made a parallel climb over the first hump of South Mountain, starting at Vestal Avenue, a primary east-west route through town. These two man-made intrusions into the quiet hillside bisected dormant pastureland creating an island neighborhood bordered on the east and the west by overgrown hay fields, on the south by a steep wooded hillside that stretched to the top of South Mountain, and on the north, across Vestal Ave, by a narrow stretch of lowland that ran to the edge of the Susquehanna River. When Woody and I "made the scene" in 1942 there were thirty seven houses in our two street subdivision and a like number of vacant lots, posed for action that would surely come at the end of the War, the big one - WW2.
Although we lived on the outer fringe of the city, we found ourselves conveniently located in the middle of everything. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Elementary School was a short, half-mile walk to the east. Two blocks beyond the school was an extensive secondary retail section of the city, called the "Fifth Ward" by the locals. Several small grocery stores were sprinkled in the area between our neighborhood and the Fifth Ward. Though small, they were well equipped to satisfy our soda & candy addictions. The field that abutted our yard was a perfect backdrop for "Cowboys & Indians." The "Big Woods" on the mountain, and the "Small Woods" behind my house next to the field, provided two distinctly different worlds to explore. A working, but slowly fading farm, was a short hike to the west. It nestled on the leeside of a wooded hill, South Mountain’s smaller sister.
Our mini-universe was connected to the larger world by city busses that ran frequent routes along Vestal Ave to downtown Binghamton and beyond. Woody and I woke each day to a land of wonder. Our only problem was to find enough hours in the day to partake in the magic. There isn’t a single square foot that we didn't explore: every woodlot, creek, ravine, tunnel, swamp, pond, abandoned building and meadow. Woody and I drank deep. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
16 – Chicken Heads
Woody and I walked out my back door on a warm Saturday in May. We crossed the lawn, giving the clothes line a spin as we passed by and stepped into the "Little Woods" behind my house, a small forested area that acted as a buffer between our subdivision and an older neighborhood to the east. It was a short trip down the path, around a giant overturned tree, that we used for a pirate ship, past a rusting Model-A truck to a small pond. Sure enough, at the edge of the pond, we found globs of frog eggs floating on the surface of the water. We’d been expecting them for weeks. Woody scooped up a clump and slid it into an old jelly jar. We planned to split the oozy mass later, so each of us could watch the tadpoles evolve into frogs on our bedroom dressers. We planned to use some of them to scare Mary Louise Soldo, as soon as they the legs began to sprout.
On the way back to the house we stopped at the abandoned and rotting truck, taking turns at the wheel. Like most ten year-olds, we were fascinated with anything automotive. After finishing the Indianapolis 500, we headed up the path stopping again, this time at the edge of the woods a few feet from my back yard. Lew (Woody always referred to my father as "Lew," not "Mr. Lessler," or "your father") had hung a pair of homemade swings from the trees at the edge of our lot, so my sister Madeline and I could swing any time we wanted, without having to walk down the hill to the park at the "flats." You couldn’t buy a swing set in those days, which is why old tires and strong rope were highly prized commodities. Woody and I plunked down on the homemade apparatus and began the body pumping action that soon had our feet reaching for the sky. When we hit the maximum arc possible, we pushed out of the seat and experienced a brief moment of flight before landing on the leaf cushioned forest floor.
There was a small shed near the swings, in the neighbor’s back yard. It once housed a handful of chickens. Behind the shed was a small creek bed that diverted runoff from the hill above during the wet season. It was a bone-dry gully the rest of the year. Woody and I walked to the edge and peered into the shallow indentation, hoping to spot a chicken head. We did this every time we went by. Several years earlier, our neighbor, Bill Hendrickson, raised chickens and housed them in the shed, in hopes of harvesting fresh eggs at a bargain price. He fed the chickens, cleaned the coop, and gathered eggs for a year or so, and then tired of the routine, especially after he figured out that he paid more for eggs than everyone else. One afternoon when I was about six, he brought closure to the failed farming experiment; he killed his whole flock, five pampered chickens. He beheaded them with an axe behind the shed and tossed their heads into the dry creek bed. My sister and I, along with Hendrickson's two kids, Billy and Mary Ester, witnessed the "Great Chicken Massacre" from a safe distance.
When he completed the slaughter, he gathered the carcasses and took them into his garage to clean and pluck. The second he turned the corner and was out of our sight, the four of us scrambled to the edge of the creek bed to view the horror. Sure enough, all five bloody heads were lying there, mouths agape and eyes wide open. Billy, three years older than Mary Ester and me, stuck one of the heads on a stick and chased us around the back yard. His mother spotted this spectacle from her kitchen window while she was washing the afternoon dishes. She cranked it open and yelled, "Cut that out! Put that poor chicken's head back where you found it!” For years, I searched in vain for a chicken head in the creek bed behind the shed. It never dawned on me that they would have rotted away or been scarfed up by a fox or a raccoon.
17 - Dinosaur Bones
Our morning adventure was finished; a jar of tadpole eggs proudly resided on the dresser in my bedroom. Woody and I began preparation for the next segment of Freedom Saturday, starting with a slide down the banister and a footrace into the kitchen. We snagged a loaf of bread from a tin, hand painted breadbox on the kitchen counter, peanut butter from the cupboard and home made blackberry jam from the refrigerator, which was still referred to as an icebox in my house, even though it was fueled by natural gas. Woody sat and watched while I manufactured a gourmet masterpiece, a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I wrapped it in wax paper and secured it with a rubber band. Zip lock bags didn’t exist. A banana and three chocolate chip cookies joined the wrapped sandwich, and were carefully slipped into a brown, well used, paper grocery bag. Then I put the bag in my knapsack, a military issue backpack, with US Army printed on the side. My uncle gave it to me after the war, along with an assorted collection of military field gear. I poured a pint of milk into his canteen and clipped it to my belt. We then headed to Woody’s house so he could assemble the exact same lunch, though his would go into a Navy, knapsack & canteen, keepsakes his father brought home after serving in the war, protecting the Panama Canal from an invasion that never came.
We didn't go to his house by the logical route: down my street one block to Kendal Ave, one block on Kendall to his street, and then a few steps back up the hill to his driveway. That would have been the mature thing to do, but we lived by the code of the Kids World, that among other things, required us to travel by the shortest route, not the easiest, in this case taking us down Chadwick to Junk Street, a rough-cut dirt road, littered with tree stumps and junk that the subdivision developer promised to clean up and pave when the building boom taking place across the country reached our neighborhood. We made our way on a path through rubbish and stumps for a hundred yards, and then scampered to the top of a small stone wall along the back of Krupa's property, made our way along the wall, leaning back so the branches of a thorny hedge couldn’t scratch us, jumped off the wall at the end, and crossed the Daley's back yard, praying their beagle wouldn't attack us, or Topper. Topper stuck to me like glue since I’d adopted him as a pup when I was five. We completed our short cut, crossing through Mrs. Vining’s vegetable garden to Woody’s lot. If we had taken the long way we would already have been there. Woody assembled his lunch, and then we snuck a canvas tarp out of the garage, along with six wooden stakes and a length of rope. Then Woody, Topper and I headed up Denton to South Mountain.
At the top of Denton we came to Moore Ave, a dirt, logging road that cut a swath along the foot of the mountain. This dirt road connected our two streets and then wandered west, like a cow path, to the base of Hazard Hill, South Mountain’s sibling. This day, we crossed it, and made our way into the woods to a trail that led to the top. We slowly made our way up the mountain, on hands and knees in the steep areas, and upright, when we hit sections of the trail lined with saplings, skinny enough to grab with our hands, to use like a lifeline to pull ourselves up the grade. We labored for twenty minutes before reaching a flat spot, the first of several plateaus that were created by three separate roads that traversed the hillside: a low road with a gentle slope for winter use, a medium grade for summer travel, and a steep utility road, bracketed with rustic poles that fed power to the old estate at the top. Off came the knapsacks and canteens as we crashed to the ground in relief. Topper, unlike his master, was not the least bit winded. He found this breather boring, and used the break to race back and forth along the road in search of a rabbit or a squirrel. The road we rested on was rarely used and overgrown, hardly passable in a car. It was on this tier that we planned to set up our "base camp."
After catching our breath and taking a few swigs of milk, tinged with a distinct metallic flavor from the canteen, we set off in a westerly direction on the secluded lane that more closely resembled a path than a road. We always enjoyed a stroll along any of the flat levels of the mountain roads because the views were spectacular. Even at this, the lowest level, we could see the rooftops in our neighborhood, fishermen in wading boots in the middle of the Susquehanna River and the skyline of downtown Binghamton. The farther west we went, the more we could see, because the road climbed as it crossed the face of the mountain. At the halfway point we halted our march and plopped down again for another rest, shedding our knapsacks with a sigh. This was where we would set up camp. The road was perfectly flat and slightly wider. The extra width was carved out of the mountain face to create enough room for two vehicles traveling in opposite directions to get by each other. We gathered some sturdy branches to hold up the tarp, and with the rope and stakes, created a crude shelter. We sat in front of the tent and dug into our packs for the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, taking hungry bites, washing them down with gulps of the metallic milk. It’s a taste you never forget. Topper settled for a few hunks of bread crust. Little did it matter that it was only ten in the morning; we were starved. As we ate, we chatted about current events: the upcoming Roy Rogers and Dale Evans movie, how we’d use crepe paper to decorate our bikes for Memorial Day, how old Topper was in dog years and if we would really find dinosaur bones at the top of the hill.
The last discussion brought us back to the task at hand, breaking our reverie. We stored the knapsacks in the tent and started back on our climb to the summit. You could get to the top by simply staying on the road, but we wouldn’t consider that option, since it violated our tenet to always take the shortest route. We scrambled up a twelve-foot dirt cliff with the help of tree roots that lay exposed on the surface of the bank. The going was easier once we struggled over the face, but still steep. We took full advantage of saplings along the route to pull ourselves up the slope. Even so, much of the trek was accomplished on all fours. Every fifteen or twenty minutes we reached another plateau. At each crossing we came face to face with the challenge of another twelve-foot cliff. We had to scout for a spot with enough tree roots jutting out, to provide a good handhold; otherwise we couldn't make it to the next level. Sometimes we had to search for ten minutes or more before finding a good spot.
After crossing the third plateau, we were close to the top. The path spilt at this point, the east branch heading to our “dig” site, the west, to an area where an abandoned railroad track was reportedly hidden under a thin layer of sod. Today, we were after dinosaur fossils, so we took the east branch. The woods here were sparse, the slope gentle. Every so often there was a mound in the middle of a clump of trees. Some of these protrusions were anthills and made great sport for two ten year‑olds. A couple of pokes with a stick would get a swarm of angry ants to boil to the surface, quickly covering the ground, and us, but the mounds we were looking for weren't anthills. We were after a cluster of four large dirt hills that we’d spotted on a scouting expedition a few weeks earlier. We expected to find dinosaur bones in this clump, thinking the area was a prehistoric graveyard, like the ones’ we’d seen in Tarzan movies, where the elephants went when they were ready to die.
Finally, we reached the spot. We were within sight of an old farmhouse that was occupied by an elderly couple. They tended a few cows on a rundown and neglected estate. It was once a prestigious gentleman's farm, reported to have been the property of the US Ambassador to England in the 1800’s. Rumor had it that the old guy hated kids. Woody and I contributed to the folklore by reporting that he once yelled at us, "Get off my mountain," and then fired a shotgun in our direction. He did yell, but we made up the part about the shotgun. No matter, the story stuck, and a generation of kids crept around the top of South Mountain, wary, and on the lookout for a crazy old man with a shotgun.
The coast looked clear, so Woody and I selected a few sticks to dig with and attacked the mounds. We had to use sticks because we’d been forbidden to "ever again" take our fathers' tools into the woods, having lost a few prized items over the years. Even so, we made out quite well with the sticks. The mounds were soft and our dig a success. We made a pile of white bones, selecting the biggest to take home. We covered the rest with leaves; we’d retrieve them another day.
The journey down was a treat. We used the saplings in reverse, like a skier uses his poles, to slow our rate of descent, as we half ran, half fell, down the slope. When we came to the cliffs we slid down on our backsides, as if on a slide at the park. These slides were done with care, since we each carried two "valuable" bones. When we reached base camp we sat on the ground in front of our tent to examine our find. The bones were awesome, but unbeknownst to us, were simply oak tree roots that looked and felt like real bone.
After several minutes of gawking we decided it was time for a bonfire. We collected a few handfuls of leaves and made a pile near the tent. I had matches; my dad was a cigarette smoker, so I did the honors and set flame to the pyre. We weren't cold and we didn't have hot dogs to roast or marshmallows to blacken, but we felt compelled to have a fire. I’ve no idea why. I guess it was another code we lived by, because we always had a campfire when we were in the woods. Fire was magic; it fascinated us the way the leaves and twigs simply disappeared in the flames. Rested, and rewarded with our prehistoric find, we headed home, to "show off." There were a lot of skeptics in our neighborhood that day and other than a few little kids, no one bought it. What did we care; we knew the dinosaur bones were real, even if no one else believed it.
We went home for dinner, and then gathered blankets, flashlights and other stuff so we could spend a comfortable night in woods. We also secured a new supply of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, bananas, apples, and milk. We packed everything in our knapsacks, along with a fresh supply of matches and headed back up the mountain; our second trek of the day. It was seven in the evening and getting dark, as Woody, Topper and I entered the woods and got on the trail to our camp. We made the trek in record time, mostly because I was afraid of the dark and had begun to imagine all sorts of werewolves and monsters lurking along the path. Woody never acted afraid, of the dark or anything else. The minute we reached the tent we built a fire, this time using sticks instead of leaves. We’d discovered that there was a lot less smoke and the fire lasted a lot longer when we used wood. It took longer and was harder that just tossing a match on a pile of leaves, but I wanted the fire to last as long as possible, hoping to avoid a trip into the pitch-black woods for more fuel later on. We continued our talk of current events as we sat in the glow of the fire, and then shifted to ghost stories. Woody usually told the scariest stories, but tonight I was sure I had him beat. Hidden in my knapsack, under my peanut butter & jelly sandwich, was the "Dead Finger."
18 - The Dead Finger
The "Dead Finger" terrorized me for years. I was introduced to it when I was seven. My mother loved to scare my sister Madeline and me, all kids really. She couldn't control herself. When trick-or-treaters came to our house on Halloween, it was they who ended up being startled when the door opened. My mother would leap out and shout, "Boo," wearing a Frankenstein or a King Kong mask. More than one terrified kid fell backwards off our stoop after ringing the bell and yelling, "Trick or Treat."
My exposure to the dead finger began with a casual conversation at the breakfast table. My mother launched into a, "When I was a Girl," story, about growing up in the 1920’s. She and her sister and their five brothers often played near the railroad tracks. One day while playing hide and seek among idled freight cars, a tanker car rolled off a jack and ran over a railroad workers hand, severing his fingers. Mom and her siblings stood dumbfounded as he ran across the rail yard, holding his hand, the stumps oozing blood like five miniature drinking fountains. They quickly came to their senses and fled, but not my mother. She couldn't help herself; she had to see the severed fingers. So did another girl who was jumping rope in the area. They both walked to the spot of the accident and stood there in a numbed state, staring at the fingers. The girl picked one up, put it in her handkerchief and ran. My mother looked around and spotted some newspaper scraps lying off to the side. She grabbed the papers and knelt down by the four remaining fingers. With her eyes closed, she picked one up and dropped it onto the newspaper. She folded it up and ran home with her prize, "The Dead Finger."
Madeline and I sat at the table listening to her story, mesmerized. Dad was in the basement at his workshop, having left with a sigh when Mom started. I could tell by the look on my sister’s face that she was as frightened as I was, but at least she had enough courage to ask, "What did you do with it?" My mother's answer turned out to be the worst four words I ever heard, "I still have it." She told us she kept it in a matchbox, and asked if we would like to see it. Madeline said she definitely would, I wasn't sure. I went down the basement stairs to "help" my father at his workbench. I was safe with him; he didn't believe in scarring kids.
He and I worked for thirty minutes or so before mom showed up with a matchbox in her hand. I knew the finger was inside. I had to see it, but was terrified. She opened the box and sure enough, the finger lie inside on a bed of cotton. It was a ghastly gray, except for the fingernail, which was dark and discolored. She told me to blow on it, that it took life from people’s breath. Like the seven-year-old sap that I was, I blew. The finger slowly rose above the cotton and then settled back down. Mom closed the cover and went back upstairs to the kitchen. Dad looked over at me and asked if I was OK. "Sure dad, that was funny not scary," I lied.
I was so scared that if you’d taken my blood pressure at that moment it would have been off the chart. Later in the day my mother casually mentioned that she kept the dead finger in the attic, anytime I wanted to see it to just let her know. It’s too bad I hadn’t been more observant and noticed that the nail on her left index finger was black from an encounter with a misdirected tack hammer; I might have suspected that her tale of "The Dead Finger" was a joke. As it was, I spent the next three years going to bed in terror. The door to the attic, the resting place of the dead finger, was located in my bedroom and every night I lay there worrying about the finger, picturing it moving inside the box as it caught my breath rising into the attic. "What if it comes after me in my sleep?"
It was bad enough that I had to be on the lookout for the "Devil" under my bed, my mother having told me years earlier that if I was real bad, the Devil would come to visit me in the night. "You can hear him breathing under the bed when he's there,” she’d warned. Now, when I went to bed, I not only had to listen for breathing, so I could bolt to safety if the devil showed up, I also had to keep an eye out for a dead finger, floating down from the attic. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night in such a state of terror that I fled the room, crawling on my belly in perfect silence to my parent’s or my sister’s bedroom, to spend the night on the floor, at the foot of the bed. If I had only let them know how afraid I was, things might have been different. But no, I was faithful to the stoic example set by my cowboy heroes; I kept it to myself. As a result, I went to bed in dread for over three years.
My terror ended a few days before Woody and I went searching for dinosaur bones. Madeline complained about me sleeping at the foot of her bed, "He's so stupid, imagine being afraid of a dead finger!" When mom heard this she was shocked! "That's just a joke," she guiltily explained. Then she showed me the secret. I had it with me in my knapsack, a matchbox lined with cotton, a finger-sized hole cut in the bottom. “Boy was Woody going to scream when he saw it!"
Woody didn't even blink! After my careful and drawn out recitation of "The Tale of the Dead Finger," which of course, he’d heard many times before, I turned my back to him and pulled the match box from under the blanket where I’d hidden it earlier, slipping my index finger through the hole in the bottom. Then, as Woody calmly sat on his bed roll in the dimly lit tent, I slowly removed the cover of the box, exposing the finger in the eerie light. He took one look, and then grabbed it, yelling, "That's your finger!" We both fell back on our bedrolls laughing so hard that tears streamed down our faces. Every time we calmed back down he’d start us on a new laughing jag by saying, "You're afraid of your mother's finger!" (The following week we both took dead fingers to school, and much to our surprise, the trick worked better on the boys than girls, if you measure better by who screamed the loudest when the finger rose from its coffin.)
We awoke rested and refreshed early Sunday morning, in spite of being woken every few hours by Topper's barking. Any time a deer, rabbit or squirrel passed within a hundred yards of the tent, he was yapping to get out and give chase. He didn't get his wish; there was no way we were going to sleep in the tent without him there to protect us. What if a bear comes along? Woody started a fire, and we enjoyed a traditional South Mountain breakfast - peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, bananas, and chocolate chip cookies, washed down with tepid, metallic flavored milk. We packed up our bedding and headed home. Our freedom was over. Now we had to face up to the obligations of Sunday: church services and formal dinner with the family. We left the tent in the woods, to use as an excuse to come back after dinner.
19 – The Deer Skull
Our plan worked; we escaped after a "leg of lamb" dinner at my house and a baked ham at Woody's, because, for once, we had planned ahead. Leaving the tent in the woods was a good idea. John Almy went with us. Johnny was a new kid in the neighborhood. It was only a year earlier that a cellar was started on his family's lot, directly across the street from Woody. The minute the steam shovel arrived and started to dig, Woody and I became excited, not because a new family would be moving in, but because we would have another place to play, and more important, a new source of materials for our many construction projects - tree huts and hot rods to name two. We were blessed to live in a neighborhood where new houses were going up; we were there every step of the way, inspecting the daily progress, playing hide and seek after the carpenters left for the day, imitating monkeys by climbing around on the rafters and pilfering wood, nails, tarpaper and anything else tossed to the side in the scrap pile. Occasionally we’d "mistakenly" snag a prized piece of lumber from the good pile instead of the scrap pile, but only when the scrap pickings were slim. Woody once blew my mind; he boldly strutted out the front door of a house in progress, lugging an unopened roll of tarpaper. It was exactly what we needed for our new hut, hell, for several huts, but it was way too heavy for a couple of ten-year-olds. It took days to drag, roll and push it the two miles to our secret spot in the woods. Two miles through overgrown pasture, wooded hills and thickets of pricker bushes.
The carpenters, painters and electricians knew Woody and me on a first name basis, because of an incident that took place when we were five. A new house was nearing completion on Moore Ave., an area that was off limits to us at the time, unless we were accompanied by my older sister or Woody's older brother. Woody and I snuck off to explore the empty house. It was our first inspection. The painters forgot to lock the door when they left for lunch, but even worse, they left several cans of paint open and a handy selection of brushes. We were forbidden to touch paint at home, so the cans sitting open on the floor of the living room were too tempting to resist. Thirty minutes later we walked out, spattered with paint, our work finished. We snuck into my backyard and tried to clean up with water from the hose. It didn't work; no matter how hard we scrubbed the oil base paint wouldn’t come off. It clung to our faces, arms and clothes, flashing like a beacon, announcing to the neighborhood, "The boys are at it again." Later in the day, Woody and I, along with our parents met with the builder. Arrangements were made to pay for the damage and we two budding "Michelangelo’s," were required to apologize. When my parents got me back home I was "grounded," though it wasn't called that back then. I was confined to the house for seven days and had to work off the cost of the damage. It's the reason to this day that I hate to wipe dishes, the only chore available for me to earn the money, at a rate of twenty-five cents a day.
Yes, Woody and I were well known to the building crews, and apparently our reputation had reached Mr. Almy, because after a few "inspections" of the progress on his house he caught us. "Come on out of there boys, would you please,” he called to Woody and me. Surprisingly, we did. Our instinct to scoot out of the cellar hole and into the field was overcome by the tone of his voice and his use of "please." He looked like a good guy, and we’d only been "looking," not wrecking or stealing anything. Besides, he wasn't much bigger than we were. As we climbed out and walked toward him, a "Talbot’s" ice cream truck came up the street, the driver ringing the bell as though he was piloting a fire engine. He drove through the neighborhood every afternoon and evening in the summer. Mr. Almy waved to the driver, and looking over to Woody and me, asked if we wanted ice cream. Of course we did! We opted for orange cream-sickles, twice the price of our usual purchase, a five-cent Popsicle. As we slopped and slurped on the bribe, he asked if we would do him a favor and keep an eye on the house. He didn't want any of the little kids in the neighborhood getting hurt playing around in it. We took the job, and once a week he came by to make a protection payment. We played our fannies off, every single day in his house as it was going up, watching it progress from a hole in the ground to a three bedroom bungalow, but we didn't steal a single piece of lumber or wreck anything. There was honor in the Briar Patch.
Johnny Almy was the oldest, of the two Almy boys. He went to Saint Johns School, enduring nuns, eight hours a day, five days a week, a lot, compared to my two weekly hours in religious instruction. He was wild, like all the over-disciplined Catholic school kids. We hung out with him from time to time, like we did with other kids in the neighborhood who weren't part of the "Merlin, Woody, Warren and Buzzy" gang.
Johnny was in tow as Woody and I retraced our steps to our base camp. He hadn't seen much of the mountain, being new to the block, so we showed him our campsite and then started on a trek to the west to let him see Hazard Hill. He was interested in dinosaur bones too, and was one of the few kids who had been impressed with the specimens we brought back the day before. We hiked through the woods for thirty minutes and came to our destination after crossing a fast moving stream called “Hazard Hill Creek” by the locals. We split up to scour for burial humps, and after shuffling around for a few minutes, Johnny let out an excited squeal,
"Come over here and look at this! I think it's a baby dinosaur head"!
Sure enough, he’d uncovered a gleaming white skull. Teeth were still imbedded in the jawbone; the head came to a point at the snout. It must be the skull of a baby dinosaur! We finally had something to show the skeptics. We’d show those kids who’d snickered at the dinosaur bones we brought back Saturday. Woody threaded a branch through the baby dinosaur’s eye socket, so we could carry it without touching it. It reeked! It smelled so bad we weren’t sure we could get it home.
Johnny came up with the bright idea of dousing it in the creek, to wash away the smell. We made our way to a spot where the water rushed over a series of small falls. We took turns holding the skull under the water, letting the foam wash through it. A swarm of bugs and worms wiggled and squiggled out as the cascading water rushed in. We didn't know it at the time, but those scurrying worms and bugs were maggots; the baby dinosaur was a deer. It didn’t smell quite as bad after we flushed it out, so we made tracks for home with the head skewered on a long stick that helped keep the lingering odor at bay. Johnny held one end of the stick, since he had made the discovery; Woody and I took turns holding the other end. We felt queasy and had bad headaches by the time we made it to Johnny’s yard, but perked up as our conversation turned to how we’d parade our "prize" around the block after we washed it out again. We came out of the woods and crossed the lawn to Johnny's back door. He ran in to get his father, the only adult who showed any interest in the dinosaur bones Woody and I brought around the day before.
Mr. Almy came out the back door with a grin that quickly changed to a grimace. He was alarmed!
“Drop that thing! Right Now! It will make you sick!” He was so animated that we did as he said without any hesitation. He grabbed us and hustled us into the downstairs bathroom, making us scrub up with strong yellow laundry soap, but it was too late. We’d inhaled the toxic stench for too long. It was time to pay the price. I was never sicker in my life. I threw up every half hour for the rest of the day. So did Woody and Johnny. Our days of hunting for dinosaur bones were over!
Though our hunt for dinosaurs came to an ugly and abrupt end on that warm Sunday in May 1952, our life in the woods did not. As it turned out, Mr. Almy was something of an amateur archeologist. He helped us come to terms with the truth. The bones we’d gathered were roots from an oak tree and the skull was that of a deer. He didn't lecture and he didn't scold, but with his books and words he "educated" us. He also left us with intact egos, by conceding that dinosaur bones could be buried somewhere in the hills surrounding Binghamton, but that we’d more likely find Indian artifacts, not dinosaurs. Searching for arrowheads and stone tools didn't have much appeal so we stopped excavating, but we didn't stop spending time in the woods. After all, we still had to find the abandoned railroad tracks, rumored to be just past the crazy farmer’s house on the top of the mountain, and someone had to solve the "Powder House" mystery.
20 - Blackberry Jam
I only saw two adults in the woods in all the years of playing there. One was the "mad” farmer who lived on top of South Mountain; the other was my mother, who ventured in once a year to pick berries. We were constantly warned to be on the watch for hobos in the woods, the same way we were warned not to take candy from "strangers." There was a basis for both cautions. A substantial number of men bummed around the country in the years after World War II. Once in a while, one of these guys would come to the door offering to do odd jobs for a hot meal. For the most part, these wandering souls stayed in the section of town close to the rail yards, since "hopping freights" was their primary means of transportation. The tracks were on the other side of town, a long way from where Woody and I lived and played.
Every spring my mother climbed to the first road on South Mountain carrying an odd assortment of pails with Madeline and me in tow. The three of us walked along the deserted road, past the spot where Woody and I camped, and then along a narrow path to a high plateau. The area was a lush pasture in the 1800’s, but had lain dormant for decades. It had long been taken over by a wild blackberry bushes. I hated these expeditions into the woods with my mother. It took hours to fill the buckets with wild berries. Hours of dueling with branches armed to the teeth with sharp thorns, hours of swatting at persistent gnats that clustered around our faces like moths on a streetlight and hours of boring picking. Mom kept us at it with a periodic and convincing threat, "If we don't fill the buckets today, we'll be back tomorrow.” The three of us, but mostly Mom, picked enough berries to last through the winter. I've never tasted anything as delicious as the jam or the canned berries that beckoned from the shelves in our fruit cellar. The memory of the taste of those delicacies, swimming in their own juice is almost enough to get me to go back into the woods with a berry pail, this time, armed with bug spray and long gloves, but I can’t. The blackberry grove is now a swanky housing development.
21 - The Powder House
Not far from the blackberry patch, on a remote hill, difficult to reach because of the steepness of the terrain and a thick and forbidding undergrowth, there was an odd looking lump, huddled close to the ground. It was rumored to be a Civil War era munitions storage bunker, a "powder house." Contributing to the believability of the claim was the fact that the abandoned road that went through the area was named Powder House Road. Woody and I explored this area from time to time, but the most interesting thing we ever found was the rusting hulk of an old tractor. We never got close to the bunker; a thick barrier of briars surrounded it. We passed through this region once in a while when we journeyed to a fire tower on a hill two miles to the south. We didn’t venture this far from home very often, but enjoyed it immensely when we did, thinking of ourselves as the explorers, Louis and Clark.
The fire tower was manned in the summer and the bored ranger always welcomed our visit to his lonely outpost. He would invite us up the 64 stairs to his small observation shack, forty feet above the treetops. He even let us use his binoculars to gawk at the panoramic scene, a birds-eye view of the forest. On the trip home we usually took a different route, one that passed a stone quarry. I’ve never seen water so clear and of such a beautiful shade of green as that in the pool at the quarry. Older kids swam in it, but the steep, cliff like sides and deep water kept Woody and me on the shore.
When the younger kids from our block invaded our woods, Woody and I moved west to the Powder House area, very much like the pioneers a century earlier, who were crowded out by a growing population. We painstakingly hauled building supplies to this remote area, eventually completing an impressive two-room tree fort on a hillside overlooking a cascading brook. It was here that we used the new roll of tarpaper that Woody "found" in the house going up across the street from Warren Brooks.
We carved a path through the blackberry bushes to the “Civil War munitions bunker.” It was only a hundred yards from our fort, but it took more than a week to hack through the jungle. If we’d been the least bit attentive in class, or had actually looked at the maps in our history books instead of dreaming about the new fanged "English Bikes" with three forward gears and hand brakes, that were hitting the marketplace, we would have known that we’d never find a Civil War relic in this neck of the woods. At any rate, one sunny afternoon, we finished clearing a path to the intriguing “lump” in the dormant pasture, and found a stone bunker, half buried in the hillside, protected by the thick briars for decades. The roof was covered with sod; the walls were made of stone, laid up dry. A wooden door hung askew from a rusted hinge, blocking our view of the kegs of powder and flint-lock-rifles that surely were inside. We pulled on the door and it fell off the hinge, revealing the fact that the mountain had fooled us once again. We hadn't found a powder house, we’d simply uncovered an old milk house, set into the hillside like a root cellar so the farmer could keep his milk cool, while he waited for it to be picked up by a local dairy company. A few rusted and dented milk cans lay scattered about on the dirt floor. For a moment we thought of using it as a clubhouse, but when a big black snake crawled out from a dimly lit corner, it put an end to the thought. Our ten-foot-in-the-air tree hut would do just fine, thank-you.
We never did find the railroad tracks that older kids claimed were on the top of the mountain beyond the rundown estate, but we did uncover and enjoy, every treasure the woods surrounding our neighborhood offered. Woody and I grew up on the edge of the city. Sidewalks, paved roads, stores and bus service to the neighborhood civilized our world, yet we never thought of ourselves as "City Boys." We spent so much of our childhood in the woods that "we couldn't see the city, for the trees."
22 - Ross Creek- gateway to hell!
When we weren't playing in the woods, Woody and I could be found in water; we had several venues to choose from, but Ross Creek was our favorite. To be truthful, I didn't know it was “Ross” Creek until recently when I discovered the name on a local map. I had been curious to see if the stream we played in had a name. We just called it the “Creek." It's one of several streams that drain the hills surrounding the south side of Binghamton.
The Army Core of Engineers constructed a narrow concrete channel in the 1930's to contain the section of the creek where it passed though residential areas on its’ final leg to the river. The cement walls were topped with page link fencing to keep intruders out; Woody and I took it personally. The channel section began at Ross Park, once a very popular zoo. In its' heyday it was a unique entertainment center that served the entire region. It offered hundreds of exotic animals, including lions & tigers, buffalo, bears, zebra, peacocks and a wonderland of play equipment for kids - swings, high-walled circular slides, monkey bars, and a huge carousel, covered picnic pavilions, nature trails and even a miniature, steam driven train that usually carried more adults than children. The tamed, walled creek still flows from Ross Park on a two-mile journey to the river. It passes the site of Longfellow School and drops into a deep tunnel, 500 yards before it merges with the Susquehanna River. Our education of the intricacies of the "Creek” began, oddly enough, at the school.
The schoolyard was bordered on the east by the creek, or to be precise, by a ten-foot high page link fence that projected from the top of the channel wall, erected to keep errant balls and kids from sailing into the water. Bat-ball and dodge ball were the only two games we were allowed to play on the paved playground; baseball was forbidden, an attempt by school officials to protect the building’s many, single pane windows. Bat-ball is the exact same game as baseball, except you use a big soft rubber ball instead of a small hard small one, and you hit it with your fist, not a wooden bat, which makes one wonder why it was called bat-ball. Oh well, it was.
The batter’s objective was to smack the ball with his fist as far as he could (the use of “he” & “his” is not a slip into male chauvinism. Girls didn’t play bat-ball in the schoolyard. They jumped rope and played jacks, usually near the side entrance to the school). Knocking it over the fence into the creek guaranteed a home run, but also signaled the end of the game if swift action wasn’t taken. The minute a ball headed toward the fence the race was on. Led by the outfielders, the whole team would hightail it to the narrow footbridge at the edge of the playground, scramble over a low rail and use the framework of the bridge to ease the climb to the floor of the creek. Time was of the essence, because the current carried the ball almost as fast as the players could run. We had to get it before it hit the steep slide into the tunnel that accelerated the journey to the river. It was a rare day when a ball actually made it that far, but only because we were determined to protect valuable school property. If we lost a ball we weren’t allowed to play bat-ball for a week, an eternity in the Briar Patch. Our excursions over the fence to retrieve errant balls lured Woody and I to explore the rest of the creek.
Our first creek adventure was predictable, the tunnel. I don't why, but caves and tunnels are magnets to kids. The lure of the dark and the forbidding black hole that swallowed the creek on its’ run to the river turned from curiosity to obsession. Even in the dry season, when water ran in a narrow trickle, it transformed to “white water” when it slid down the steep pitch to the tunnel entrance. The slope was so severe that we had to descend, crab-walk style, on our backs, feet first. Woody and I scouted the mysterious cavern many times, walking down the creek with a cocky strut, even descending to the mouth of the tunnel with complete confidence, but one look into the black jowls of the monster was enough to send us scampering back up the slope to safety. “Merlin & Woody” didn’t dare go into the tunnel, but we thought maybe “Merlin, Woody, Warren and Buzzy” might.
Two kids, faced with a scary situation, could easily chicken out. Chances were pretty good the other kid was just as scared as you, and even if he wasn't, you could use just about any excuse to get out of it. "I'd do it, but I have my good pants on." This was a lame excuse, but acceptable in the Briar Patch when there were just two kids involved in the dispute over your manhood. When the group was larger, it was a different story. It’s why "gangs" go too far, and get into trouble. It works like this; you feel safer in a dangerous situation, facing a monster for example, because the "monster" has less chance of getting you, especially if you can maneuver into the middle of the pack. If the monster manages to grab you, then there are others to help fight it off and/or go for help. Woody and I were sure of it. If we could get Warren and Buzzy to come along, we would be able to get into the tunnel, probably through it.
23 – We enter the portal!
Woody, Warren, Buzzy and I stood at the top of the slope, some thirty feet from the entrance to the tunnel. We were stalling and we knew it, that chilly April morning. In two days it would be Easter, and today was our "Good Friday," but we weren't in any hurry to face the "Agony in the Garden." Warren initiated the stall, by going over to a pile of wet newspapers lying along the shore, just above the ramp to the tunnel. Kids often placed newspapers in this section of the creek, half in, and half out of the water, to trap crayfish. Warren turned over several stacks, looking for a batch of the pinching critters, but only found one. He held it up for us to see, grasping it by the neck, its’ claws wind milling in air. We all had mastered the technique of holding these miniature lobsters a long time ago and weren't impressed with Warren's feat.
I took over, and continued the "stall" by pulling out my yoyo and announcing that I had finally perfected the very difficult yoyo trick, "bite the dog." I did a few warm ups with my "diamond" studded Duncan yoyo, to make sure the string was wound just right, too tight and it wouldn't "sleep," too loose and it wouldn't come back up the string to my hand. For this trick, it needed to sleep for a long time. The object was to swing the yoyo back and forth between my legs while it was sleeping, then, when it was as far back as it would go, pull it up fast, making it crash into my pant leg. If it was spinning fast enough, and my timing was perfect, my pants would get caught between the yoyo and the string, and the yoyo would "hang on", like a dog biting me in the pant leg. I could perform all the routine yoyo maneuvers, in fact, I had won my "Diamond Duncan" at a yoyo contest, but "bite the dog" had eluded me. No matter, at this moment I would do anything to delay the inevitable, even demonstrate my failure.
I tried it a few times, and failed. Then Woody said, "Let me try it"! That made me feel good; he was stalling too, and he never "acted" afraid of anything. Warren and Buzzy also stepped to the, "let's put it off" plate, and took turns with the yoyo, expanding the demonstration to include, "around the world," "walk the dog," "rock the baby," and a few attempts at the hardest of all, "eating spaghetti." The only one I ever saw do that, was the Duncan yoyo representative at a school assembly. It's quite possible that we would have continued with our "stall" for the rest of the day. Sneaking a glance into the forbidding entrance to Hell only reinforced our unspoken, yet unanimous desire, to "chicken out."
While we were standing in the ten-foot deep, concrete walled, creek bed, trying to figure out how to bring closure to our self inflicted torture, Denzel Kelly leaned over the fence above, and yelled, "Boo!" In our agitated state, that was enough to get the response he wanted. We jumped! He liked that. One of his most frequent statements to us was, “I speak; you jump!” Butchy Lidaka, the first bully that Woody and I cowered to was just a garden-variety bully, big, mean and dumb. Denzel Kelly was another sort of altogether: elite, sophisticated, and with a sense of humor. All us chickens had a similar introduction to Denzel on the school playground. He’d walked over to each of us with his hand out, making us think he wanted to shake. When we’d offered ours in return he’d grabbed it and twisted till we begged for mercy. He was so fast, so strong, that any thought of standing up to him was completely obliterated. With the pecking order established, he pulled us to our feet, put his arm across our shoulder and told us we were now "one of his boys." "Anybody gives you any trouble, you come to me!" There was a price to pay for his "friendship" and we all paid it, every day in the schoolyard. We either gave him a dime, or allowed him to slug us in the arm. I only paid cash once, and he still gave me a slug. Usually we just rolled up the sleeve on our t-shirt when he approached. Then with a smile, he’d deliver a whack, sometimes to eight or ten kids lined up in a row. It wasn't any worse than when we lined up in the school auditorium for a polio shot. I saw one kid stand up to him, Richard Mosement. First, Denzel flipped him, something I thought only professional wrestlers knew how to do. Then, as Richard was getting up, Denzel delivered a barrage of punches to his face, so fast that you could hardly see them. Denzel stopped when Richard’ nose began to bleed. The next day, Mosement was in line with his sleeve rolled up like the rest of us.
So naturally, on that Good Friday, when Denzel leaned over the fence and yelled boo, we jumped. He followed up with, "What are you girls doing down there anyhow"?
"Getting ready to go through the tunnel,” Warren muttered in response.
“Good, I'm going to stay right here and watch. I don't think you have the guts to do it."
He was right, we didn't, but we had no choice now. If we didn't, Denzel would make sure we never forgot it, and that the rest of the school never forgot it either. Buzzy went first, followed by Warren, then Woody. I was the last to slide down to the tunnel, needing to put my yoyo away first. Years later, when I first heard the expression, "Caught between a rock and a hard place," I immediately knew what it meant, Denzel on one side, and the horror of the tunnel to Hell on the other.
Our fate lay ahead. We entered the dark, forbidding cavern, a round concrete structure, fifteen-feet in diameter. There was an angled shoreline on each side. If the water got any higher the walkway would disappear. We went in far enough to block Denzel's view of us, but we knew he was there because he shouted down, "I'm waiting right here in case you chicken out, and I'm running a Good Friday special, twenty five cents, or three slugs". Nobody spoke, but we were of one mind, welded together by terror. We knew we were going through, come hell or high water, two distinct possibilities for four chickens crouched on a narrow walkway at the edge of a rising stream on Good Friday.
Our eyes adjusted to the dark; we could see the path ahead was clear. A dim circle of light in the distance beckoned. Buzzy was in front, leading the way, something that normally would have been decided by a round of "one potato, two potato,” which in a case like this, the winner would go last. The ledge we perched on was too narrow to change the order, something I took secret delight in, from my safe spot at the end of the line. We moved ahead, slowly at first, then at a good clip, considering how dark it was and how scared we felt. After ten minutes we noticed that the circle of light was larger and brighter, testament to our progress. It also appeared to be about the same size as the one at our back, indicating that we were about half way there. If there had been such a thing in the Briar Patch, we would have "High Fived" each other to celebrate. As it was, we settled for a few loud "Whooeee's" from Woody, the big mouth of our foursome. Buzzy jolted us out of our revere, with a, "Shut up! Something is moving up ahead!"
A normal group of ten year olds might envision the movement ahead as a snake, a muskrat, or skunk. Not us; we’d recently completed our first year at "Horror Movie University." We visualized giant ants from the movie, "Them," the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a radioactive rat, as big as a dog, fanged and vicious.
"What is it," I bravely asked from my secure position at the rear of the line. Buzzy didn't know, but he reported that it was big, too big to be a rat, even one that mutated from a radiation overdose. It crossed over from the other side of the creek on a clump of branches that formed a crude dam. We froze, listening intently for clues as to the whereabouts of whatever it was that had startled Buzzy. When nothing happened we decided to forge ahead, a little slower and with nervous caution. We’d progressed about fifty feet when all of a sudden, Buzzy splashed past us with a yelp, and got behind me in line. His shoes, socks and pant legs were soaked, but he didn't care, the "thing" wasn't going to get him first. Warren led the way for the next few yards, but then, whatever had startled Buzzy, did the same to him and he fled to the back of the line. The "beast" was as big as a giant cat, and glittered and glowed as it crossed back and forth on one of the many haphazard clogs of twigs, dirt and rubbish that littered the tunnel. It must be radioactive! What else would explain the glittering glow?
With Woody in the lead, we pressed on, four terrified chickens. My position was less secure that it had been, but I still felt safe. Woody would never back down. Another hundred yards, and I was at the head of the line. The unthinkable had happened; Woody had freaked, and now I was trapped. I couldn't get my feet wet. I was wearing a brand new pair of sneakers, PF Flyers. When I left the house my mother told me to put on my old sneaks if I was going any place messy. Of course I didn't. "What a revolting development this was."
We now inched ahead in absolute silence, posed to flee at the first sign of attack. All of a sudden I could see what had frightened Woody, Warren and Buzzy. The "thing" did glitter as it swiftly leapt back and forth across the tunnel, but I now was close enough to the end of the tunnel for faint rays of sunshine to illuminate the floor. In my position at the front of the line I could see that it wasn't a rat at all. It was a big black cat with white feet and a fancy collar that glittered. I accelerated the pace, with three scared companions quietly asking, over my shoulder, "Are you all right?" Their view of the cat was blocked, only I knew what it was. I played out my "bravery," all the way to the river, hoping the cat would scamper away before they saw it. But it didn't. When we emerged from the tunnel, rubbing our eyes in reaction to the bright sunlight, it sat on the river bank licking its' paws. The Radioactive-Rabid-Vicious-Sharp Fanged-River-Rat was someone's house pet, probably with a name like "Boots." I went through the tunnel a hundred times after that. My last visit was with my late wife, Jackie, on our second date in 1962. Even then, when I was a nineteen-year-old college student, it was still an eerie place, but nowhere near as scary as my first trip into “hell.”
24 – The Brady Tunnel
Two other tunnels connect to Ross Creek. One is a three-foot-wide storm drain that empties into the creek adjacent to the school playground. It comes from Mary Street, crosses Mitchell Ave three blocks to the west, follows the path of High Street in a steep descent to Park Ave, bends sharply and then crosses under Park to the creek. I went into the pipe on a dare, at the creek end, by climbing into a hole in the creek wall, two feet above the floor. I made it about 100 feet, to a point on the other side of Park Ave where the pipe bends before heading uphill underneath High Street. When I hit the bend, I quit. It was too dark and too narrow for me. No one I knew at the time made it past the bend, but there was a rumor that a kid got way past the bend and was never seen again. A few years ago I met the “kid.” His name is Pat Brady, and he’s since become a good friend. He not only made it past the bend, but all the way to Mary Street, where he climbed out through a manhole. He was never seen again by the kids on the playground who had watched him enter the pipe and waited for him to come back. If you could meet Pat, a burly State Police investigator, specializing in undercover drug busts, you'd quickly understand why he was the only kid in the Briar Patch to conquer the "Brady Tunnel," as I’ve since named it. When he was still hardly more than a kid, he walked unassisted to a medivac helicopter in Viet Nam, cradling his intestines in his left arm, having been slashed by a Viet Cong guerilla, while holding off snipers with an M-16 in his right. I think I might have made it through the tunnel too, if I knew Pat when we were kids, and he led the way.
25 - Who's afraid of a moose?
The third tunnel connected to the creek runs under the Ross Park Zoo. It's a ten foot square, concrete tube that follows a serpentine route, beginning in the moose pen, going under the monkey house, the bear cages and lion’s den. It then travels on an erratic route for several hundred yards before exiting into an open, walled creek channel, a half-mile above Longfellow School. Woody and I took several shots at it, but always turned back when we lost sight of light coming from the end of the tunnel. The twisted route wasn’t conducive to exploration by two chickens. We finally opted for safety in numbers and teamed up Buzzy and Warren, hoping to duplicate our successful journey through the river tunnel. We came prepared: with flashlights, sturdy sticks and BB guns. I brought my dog along for added security, but it was for naught. We still didn’t make it past the first corner where we found ourselves in a pitch-black tomb. Too bad Denzel Kelly wasn't there to cheer us on our way.
We next launched an all out assault; we got more kids: Billy Wilson, Steve Fish, Tommy Conlon, and Wayne Rosen, and we got more dogs, but it was to no avail, though we made it farther. The roar of a lion came barreling at us and we freaked. The sound was amplified by the narrow walls of the tunnel, making us think that the beast was on the loose and right on our heels. Had we been in an Olympic relay race, there is no question we would have won a gold medal. I had no idea I could run that fast. The tunnel won, though Woody and I gave it one last try, this time we started at the up-stream opening in the Moose pen, thinking it would be easier to travel down hill. We never even made it to the entrance. Half way across the pen, the moose charged. Woody and I discovered we could climb a fifteen-foot fence in three seconds.
26 - The Great Swamp War
Woody and I had two ponds near our neighborhood to play in, neither of which is in existence today. A small pond nestled in a field 100 yards behind my house was where we spent a lot of time in our first ten years. It was a great place to catch frogs & tadpoles. Our mothers hated it because we usually came home with wet shoes, socks and pant legs. We passed it everyday on our way to school. We could have gone the "long way," on paved sidewalks, by walking to the top of my street and then taking Moore Ave, but other than the first day of kindergarten, we always opted for the “short cut,” a route that started in my back yard and wound through the field and by the pond. We’d stop and “mess around” by it just about every day, either to stock up on critters to scare girls with, to launch a homemade watercraft, or to test the ice on cold winter mornings, often with my mother watching from her kitchen window, doing the breakfast dishes. Years later I learned how she cussed under her breath, as Woody and I boldly stepped onto, and through the thin ice, destined to sit in class with sopping wet shoes and socks.
The other pond we played on, and in, was hidden in the center of a wooded lot at the bottom of our hill, in the "Flats" -- a low lying stretch of land between Vestal Ave and the Susquehanna River. The "Flats" was a mixed plot of: open pasture, woods, baseball diamonds and a large complex of temporary housing for veterans and their families. The housing complex was broken into two clusters. One section contained single story, two-family houses. The other was a series of two and three story, multi-apartment buildings. My cousin, Jerry Collins, lived in a single-family unit, two adults and four kids, trying to start a new life after the war, in a cramped two-bedroom "shack." Jerry's grandfather and my grandfather were brothers. All four Collins kids grew up to be very successful, a tribute to the quality of values they received from their parents, in spite of the humble surroundings they lived in. I stopped by to play with Jerry every once in a while. He was a few years younger than me, but he was a relative, so the "thou shall not play with little kids" code that governed who we were permitted to hang out with, didn't apply. His whole house would fit into the average family room today. Uncle Bill, Jerry's dad, imposed a routine on his kids that drove me nuts. After every meal, Jerry, his sisters and brother, were required to lie down on their bed or the couch for thirty minutes, "to properly digest their food." I hated waiting outside for Jerry, while this ritual played out. Uncle Bill never exempted Jerry, nor ever let it end one second early. Years later, when I was the father of a brood of kids myself, I realized how wise Uncle Bill and Aunt Doris had been. Their "digestion" ritual guaranteed three islands of "peace and quiet" every day, a valuable commodity when bringing up four active kids in cramped quarters.
The "Veterans Houses," as we called them, were built in 1947, a temporary solution to a housing shortage in Binghamton. The complex was dismantled and removed five years later, except for a single building, which still stands. It's now used as a bathhouse for a community pool. This last remnant of a once bustling complex is the very house the Collins family lived in. Every so often, I stop by their old place to get a drink of water, after jogging on the school track nearby. I'm always stunned, at how small a space they lived in, those five long years.
A dense wooded lot bordered the Veterans Houses on the east. Now, it's a cleared plot of land, occupied by the MacArthur Elementary School. The school and adjacent park are named after the donor of the land, Archibald MacArthur, a generous Binghamton merchant who donated the parcel to the city in the 1930's. The park is a valued community asset, containing a very busy high school track, tennis courts, swimming pool, baseball diamonds and soccer fields. We never referred to it as MacArthur Park. To us, it was either, "The Flats," or the "Veterans' Houses." In the center of the dense woods to the east of the houses, was a large swamp, hidden from the view of drivers and pedestrians, passing by on Vestal Ave. I didn't even know it was there until I was ten years old, that's how well it was hidden. Woody and I played baseball at the "Flats." Sometimes there were enough of us to have a real game, but usually it was just the two of us, playing catch and taking turns hitting pop flies.
One day we tired of our game and decided to check out the woods. We worked our way through the closely planted trees and thick underbrush for five minutes or so and then broke into a clearing. We were flabbergasted! We stood in shock, gazing at a huge swamp, sprinkled with dead and dying trees that tilted at odd angles. We started to walk around the clearing, at the edge of open water, in an attempt to scope out this surprise discovery. We were soon up to our ankles in a black, oozy muck. The same scary thought went through our heads at once, "What if it's quicksand?" We knew what happened to people who made the careless mistake of walking into a quicksand pit from the many Tarzan movies we’d seen at the Grand Theater, two blocks to the east of the swamp. They were usually pictured screaming and frantically struggling to escape, as they slowly disappeared into the ooze. The camera would pull back and the picture would fade on the silver screen leaving the image of a solitary arm sticking out of the goop, the owner’s hat floating nearby on the surface of the bog. The thought of a slow death in a black slimy bog was enough to halt our exploration. It wasn't a group of allies that we needed to bolster our courage; we needed transportation; we needed a raft.
We left the "hidden swamp" and returned to the neighborhood to stock up on boards and nails from a scrap pile at a new house under construction. It took two trips, but we managed to lug several armloads of lumber through the woods into a clear, dry space on the edge of the water. Using rocks for hammers, we hurriedly put together a crude imitation of the raft that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer used in the Mississippi. We launched this three-foot by five-foot raft, only to find it, and our feet, under water as it drifted from shore. It floated, but unfortunately, two inches below the surface of the water. We definitely needed technical advice. We knew we couldn't go to our fathers. They’d find out what we were up to and make the secret swamp off limits. We couldn't ask any of the older kids, especially Woody's brother, Stewey and his crowd. They’d take over, and kick us out of our own swamp. We had been in the Cub Scouts, and Stewey was in the Boy Scouts, so we paged through all the scout manuals at Woody's house in hopes of finding a section on raft building. We were in luck. In Stewey's manual, under Eagle Scout survival techniques, we found a diagram of a crude raft that could be used to cross a river. We just had to mount our “submarine” raft on some large round logs. The "Boy Scouts" had come to the rescue.
I must admit that my stint in Cub Scouts is a huge embarrassment to me, even today. Just thinking about it turns my ears bright red. Woody and I joined a Cub Scout den with six other boys our age. The meetings were held at the Ahearn house, which was across the field behind my house. Mrs. Ahearn was the den mother; her son Donald (Bucky, in those days) was also a member of the den. I can still recall the excitement I felt when my mother took me to the "Scout" section of Fowlers Department Store to purchase a cub scout uniform, a blue military styled shirt, neckerchief and metal scarf slide with an eagle embossed on the front. It was one the "coolest" outfits I’d ever seen, which says a lot when you consider I’d recently received a full blown Hop-a-long Cassidy cowboy suit for my birthday. When I arrived at the den meeting, proudly sporting my new uniform, my bubble burst with a single glance in Bucky's direction. He'd been in the den for over a year and his shirt dazzled! His chest was covered with dozens of gold and silver arrow heads, sewn beneath two triangular wildlife badges, one depicting a wolf, the other, a bear. A bobcat pin topped off the parade of glitter. He also wore a pair of official Cub Scout pants, dark blue, the front pockets edged with gold stitching. The pants didn't faze me; it was the badges that took my breath away.
I soon learned, that I too could "earn" achievement badges like the ones on Bucky's shirt, by completing prescribed scouting projects. The specifics were outlined in the Cub Scout manual that Woody and I were given at the meeting. The first step was to memorize the scout oath and the scout law. That was easy compared to the weekly catechism lessons I had to memorize for the nuns at Saint Johns. I was psyched! Looking back on it now, it wasn't motivation I felt; it was compulsion. Every night after school and in big chunks of Saturday and Sunday I slaved away, just so I might parade around with as much confetti on my shirt as Bucky. I spent hours in the basement at my father’s workbench, trying to sort through, and complete the tasks laid out in the scout manual. One of my early projects was to build a ring toss game. I nailed six, empty spools (Mom never missed the thread) to a board, painted a number under each to designate a point value, and attached a cup hook at the bottom to store the canning jar rings used in the game.
The game was played by standing four feet back from the board and tossing the canning jar rings onto the spools; you tried for the spool with the highest value. Whoever scored the most points after three rounds, won. Building the ring toss game took me two weeks, earning me one measly silver arrowhead. I figured I'd never get a chest full of badges at this rate, but I plowed on anyway, wondering if Bucky had really completed all the projects required to earn the badges he wore. Woody and I never saw him do anything except sit around. We suspected, that having "mom" as den mother might have something to do with his success.
I finished a new scout task every few weeks; my mother would sign and date the page, and Mrs. Ahearn would log the accomplishment. Merit badges were passed out every two months at a "pack" meeting, where several dens joined together for a combination award ceremony and potluck supper. Six months into my scouting career, I still looked and felt naked compared to Bucky. One Saturday, while working on a merit badge I looked through my father’s office supplies for a compass and stumbled upon a rubber stamp; it appeared to be a signature stamp. I pressed it into his inkpad and "stamped" it on a piece of paper. "Wow, I yelled, to no one in particular, look at this, a perfect "Lew W, Lessler." I then broke the Cub Scout oath, and a few rules taught by the nuns, by imprinting my fathers name on the page I was working on in the manual. In one second, I’d "earned" a wolf badge.
I took the manual to the next den meeting and handed it to Mrs. Ahearn. She didn't blink an eye, just noted the accomplishment in her records. After that, my scorecard grew at a phenomenal rate. Some weeks I'd "complete" two or more projects, a little ambitious when compared to my normal rate of one every two or three weeks. The left chest area of my scout shirt sparkled with a wolf and bear badge, underscored by a plentiful showering of arrowheads. In simple terms, I was a "pig." After using the stamp and inkpad for several months, Mrs. Ahearn lectured us at length at a den meeting, on the meaning of "honor." She told stories of several famous people who had dishonored themselves, recanted, cleaning the slate and then went on to a life of honor. George Washington (and the cherry tree) was her most poignant example. I didn't get! I had no idea she was talking to me. It wasn't until twenty years later, when a kid pulled a similar stunt on me in a youth program that I was running for the Elmira Jaycees that the light in my head clicked on. I finally realized that Mrs. Ahearn was talking to me that day so long ago. My ears turned red as the epiphany struck me. I'm still embarrassed. I kept at my quest for badges, sometimes really earning them, sometimes not, but I never caught up with Bucky.
With help from the scout manuals, Woody and I managed to put together, not one, but two, workable rafts that floated above, rather than below the surface of the water. The secret was in the logs tied beneath the wooden planked platforms. We maneuvered the crafts about the pond with long poles obtained by chopping down a few small trees in the woods nearby. Word got out! The "Great Swamp" was no longer "ours". Soon the shore was littered with rafts. At one point I counted thirteen. Then war broke out, as is usually the case when too many people are crowded into a confined space. On many a Saturday afternoon the pond was filled with rafts, transporting two "soldiers," one to maneuver the raft into position, the other to "fight," using a lance made from a long branch, the end cushioned by wrapping it in old rags. A sudden push from behind usually was enough to dislodge a soldier from his perch, pitching him into the muddy water. In other words, the "Great Swamp War" was a blast. I never made it through a skirmish with dry clothes. Victory was short lived in the great swamp war, since we fought a new battle every day with new allies and new enemies. We chose up sides the same way we picked a team for sand lot baseball. Two "Captains" anointed themselves by shouting claim to the title before anyone else, and then took turns picking from the "draft pool" of the day. The war was brought to closure by the “establishment,” not the participants. Highway crews drained the swamp, as a first step in the construction of a new parkway along the river, an expressway between the City of Binghamton and the nearby Town of Vestal.
27 – THE ICE CAVE
My mother often advised me, “When one door closes, another opens.” So it was with the loss of our swamp. The same crews who drained it, created the world’s longest ice-skating rink, though that was not their intent. The highway project they were working on included construction of an elaborate storm drainage system - two miles of tunnel along the route. They dug a long trench parallel to the river, and then laid pipe, interspaced by manholes. The whole thing was covered with dirt and gravel before winter brought an end to the construction season. Rain entered the buried pipes and froze, creating a two-foot wide skating path on the bottom. The pipes were huge, at least ten foot in diameter, and of course, Woody and I had “inspected" the project every step along the way.
But even so, we were amazed when we climbed down a manhole on a cold November morning and discovered the "Ice Cave." The skating surface was perfectly smooth, and surprisingly well lit, due to sunlight that poured in through uncovered manhole openings, spaced 100-yard intervals. Two kids never ran home faster than we did that day. We had to get our ice skates and tell the rest of the kids on the block about the newfound skating rink. By early afternoon the tunnel was filled with skaters. The underground lane was wide enough so we could race, two abreast, and the tunnel long enough to absorb a pack of skaters with ease. We had but one season in the ice cave; the roadway was completed and the manholes were capped and bolted shut the following spring. I've lived near several New York City reservoirs in Putnam County, close to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York State and on the Susquehanna River, so I've had access to, and taken advantage of some of the best outdoor skating venues in the state, but none compare to the "Ice Cave" under the Vestal Parkway, that winter in 1953.
28 - The Uninvited Guests
You might think the lure of a river as prominent as the Susquehanna River, a short hop from our block, would have draw Woody and me to it like a magnet. But, it didn't. It was boring, a slow moving body of water that offered neither adventure nor excitement. The most time we ever spent in or near it, was at the conclusion of one of our many journeys through Ross Creek tunnel, when we would sit on the grassy bank near the sluiceway that marked the terminus of Ross Creek, skipping stones or tossing debris into the water. On one occasion, when Woody and I were resting on the bank after a successful passage through the tunnel, a policeman hopped over the dike and started toward us. We were debating the merits of Wrangler dungarees versus Levi’s, so we didn’t pay much attention until he came up to us and stood looming like a giant.
"What do you boys think you're doing," he asked.
"Nothing," we replied in unison, our standard response when asked this question by an adult. We soon found that our “nothing” was in fact, something, something that got us in trouble, kids weren't allowed to play by the river.
"Does your mother know where you are," he asked.
Woody wisely said nothing. I foolishly replied, "No she doesn't," something I would soon regret.
He made us get up and walk to his police car, crossing over the dike in the process. I considered bolting when I got to the other side, but he caught up with me so fast the thought of flight, fled. He drove to Woody's house first, left me in the car and took Woody to the door. After a short conversation with Mrs. Walls he got back in the car and asked for directions to my house. If he had just taken me to the door and told my mother that he found me playing by the river and he better not catch me there again, I might have survived the incident unscathed. Unfortunately, he made it clear to her that I told him she didn't know where I was that afternoon. The glint in her eye said it all; I was in big trouble. She thanked the "officer" and escorted me to the back yard, selecting a switch on the way from the thicket of trees at the side of the house.
"DON'T YOU EVER TELL THE POLICE THAT I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE," she screeched, while teaching me a new dance step called "hop and jump."
The welts on the back of my legs were proof that I learned all the intricacies of the dance, and her, "To your room with no supper," guaranteed I’d run and hide in the tunnel the next time I saw a cop by the river. Woody got off with, "Don't you ever go to the river again," an appropriate reward for NOT telling the cop that his mother didn't have any idea where he was playing.
Swimming pools were rare in the Briar Patch. The City of Binghamton operated only a single public pool, and that was on the other side of town, too far for Woody and I to venture until we were twelve. Prior to that, we had to cool down on hot summer days by running through a sprinkler, spraying each other with a hose, or crawling around the bottom of an eight inch deep canvas pool in my back yard. Doctor DeAngelo and his family lived on a two-acre estate a few streets over from us. They had a small concrete swimming pool in the back yard, near the edge of the property, all of which was enclosed by a twelve-foot high, thick, evergreen hedge. The five little DeAngelos and their friends hung out by the pool all day, swimming, splashing and having a great old time. Woody and I weren't among the select group invited to join in the fun. No matter, we still enjoyed the facilities; we snuck in at night when the DeAngelos were in the house. We were very quiet and very sneaky swimmers; we never got caught. In fact, after several summers of "moonlight swimming," we felt a degree of ownership, and as usual, our cockiness led us to more trouble.
Our preposterous "ownership" of other people’s property was a pattern that was started, not with DeAngelos swimming pool, but with two pairs of stilts owned by the Harris kids. John and Linda Harris lived next door to Bucky Ahearn, a block over from my house. Each had a pair of metal stilts, which they seldom used. They didn't mind if Woody and I borrowed them. In the beginning we knocked on their door and asked permission. Then we'd "stilt" all over the south side, traveling several miles in one session, two nincompoops walking down the sidewalk on stilts. We became so skilled we could climb the stairs at the Longfellow school playground and other places on our route. Eventually we skipped the formality of asking permission to borrow the stilts; we simply went to the garage and took them, waving to Mrs. Harris if we happened to see her at the window. We even loaned the stilts to other kids. The difference between our use of DeAngelo's pool, and John & Linda's stilts, was that we "never" had permission to use the pool. No matter, after dark it was ours.
One hot week in the summer of 1956, the DeAngelos went on a long vacation. On the first night they were gone we sashayed over for an early evening swim. It was so light out that we didn’t dare "borrow" a towel from a neighbor’s clothesline. Thinking that the DeAngelos must have an enormous supply of towels, what with five kids and all, we tried the back door to see if we could get in and borrow a few. The door wasn’t locked, a common practice in those days, and so in we went. We found what we were looking for in the downstairs bathroom and returned to the pool. Tommy Conlon, yet another south sider who’d joined our clan that summer, was hungry; he went back into the house for a snack. Soon, there were six of us sitting at the DeAngelo's kitchen table, eating sandwiches, potato chips and cookies, washing it all down with chocolate milk. It was a great way to finish off a moonlight dip. We ended up spending the week in DeAngelo's house. We slept there at night, hung out in the basement game room in the day, reading comic books, playing monopoly and just plain "doing nothing." We were smart enough to stay away from the windows to avoid being seen by the neighbors. It was a little tricky getting in and out in daylight, but by using the shrubs along the front of the house as a shield, ingress and egress was accomplished with minimal risk. Our parents thought we were camping in the woods, not luxuriating in the plush residence of Doctor DeAngelo. We may have been uninvited guests, but by the end of the week, as we slunk away in anticipation of the DeAngelo's return, we felt we were being evicted from our own house, not ending the longest case of trespass in the history of Binghamton.
29 - Free Baby Sitter
"Stay on the block!" That's what my mother said when she left me home alone. She never hired a babysitter; nobody in the Briar Patch did. The "Block" was our babysitter. We have an artificial "block," called "Smart Play,” in our local shopping plaza. Our son plays there every once in a while. It's a secured play land; they charge eight dollars for two hours. It’s a well-staffed fantasyland, loaded with elaborate slides, tubes, mazes, games and a snack bar. When you drop your kid off, they give you a beeper in case anything happens. You can’t get in to pick up your kid without a photo ID. In spite of the high tech and "child psychology" intelligence that went into the design of the facility, it doesn’t compare to the "block." When Woody and I were told to stay on the block, we usually hung out in one of our own yards, or that of a friend, where we hadn't been banned for previous misdeeds. We also were allowed to be in the vacant lots, sprinkled among the thirty-seven houses in our subdivision. The woods, the creeks, the "Flats,” or anyplace beyond the limits of the neighborhood were off limits. Parents loved it. It was safe; it was free.
Woody and I had lunch the other day, so I could get him to help me with a few facts in this section. Together, we counted how many kids lived on our block and were surprised when it came out at 43 between the ages of five and fifteen. We didn’t count the babies, and we didn’t count the kids that were 16 or older. Once they hit that age they got their drivers licenses and drove off to play somewhere else. Forty-three kids and thirty-one "stay at home moms" created quite a pool of eyes and ears to keep track of what was going on in the neighborhood. So, when my mother left me home alone, with orders to "stay on the block," she left without a care in the world. She knew I’d be safe.
We seldom wore watches in the Briar Patch, but we rarely were late for lunch or supper. Most families ate at the same time. When Mr. Merz, the loudest yeller around, called Linda, Roberta, and Nancy to come for dinner, we knew it was time for us as well. Some parents rang a bell when they wanted their kids, others whistled; the rest just yelled. Woody’s parents, like mine, didn't have a special signal to call us home, they were happy to have us someplace else, as long as it was safe.
30 - Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits (almost)
I got my first haircut, "on the block,” from Bill Hunsinger; he lived across the street from Woody and had a regulation barber shop in his basement, complete with a comb sterilizer, electric clippers, and an authentic barber chair. I still remember the first time I crossed his yard with my mother, headed for the shop door around back. A duck attacked and bit me as I reached for the knob. It was Roberta Hunsinger’s pet, and one of the most proficient watchdogs in the neighborhood. It was a teary eyed kid he lifted onto a board placed across the arms of his barber chair for “numero uno” haircut. I was three years old; my long curls had never felt the tug of shears. The unruly mop disappeared, and so did my tears as a new "Merlin" emerged in the mirror. I was rewarded with a lollypop; Hunsinger got his standard fee, thirty-five cents. Adults were charged a whopping fifty cents. All the kids in the neighborhood had their hair cut by him. We knew we were growing up when we were allowed to climb into the chair without the board. Mr. Hunsinger cut my hair until I was twelve, and then flat tops became the rage. He couldn't get the top perfectly flat, so I was forced to move on, to the pros in the shops downtown.
31 - Where There's Smoke, There's "Boys"
The Almy family lived next door to Hunsinger’s barbershop. You met Johnny in Chapter 19, The Deer Skull. David Schatty was Johnny's schoolmate at Saint Johns Catholic School, and like Johnny, was on the wild side. I assume they were wild because they were forced to endure a rigidly supervised day under the thumb of the nuns. David's mother worked at a local supermarket, "Loblaws." It's since been converted to a liquor store, but in its day it was a magnificent store, five times the size of the neighborhood groceries we were used to. She was given a discount on food and other merchandise, and as a result, her cupboard was stocked with cartons of her favorite brand of cigarettes, Kent, the safest on the market because of its “Micronite Filter,” according to the advertisements of the day. David “borrowed” a carton and brought it to the Almy’s house.
The four of us, Woody, Johnny, David and I, climbed into Johnny's tree hut in the Almy’s back yard, with the "cigs" and several packs of matches. We didn't come out until we’d smoked the entire carton of cigarettes. When we emerged from the tarpaper fortress, we were four sorry looking, green-faced kids. It was the second time I threw up in the Almy's back yard. I didn't take another drag for several years, the day of my fifteenth birthday, to be specific. Mrs. Almy was home at the time, but she didn't let on that she’d noticed the four jerks in the back yard, "selling Buicks,” which is the sound we made as we retched, “Buuuuick.” I suspect she knew the source of the white cloud that hung over the tree-hut that afternoon and that she also understood that nature would take its' course, as it did, and "reward" us for our delinquency.
32 - The Winter Olympics
Woody and I spent hours and hours playing in my back yard or his side yard. His parents bought the lot next to them, installed a basketball hoop on one end and planted grass on the rest of it so we could use it to play ball. The basketball court slanted down hill a bit, so we were constantly chasing after the ball when we missed a shot in a game of "Horse," which always seemed to evolve to "Horses." The first one to miss enough shots to become the “Horse” was usually quicker on the draw, shouting, "Let's change the game to Horses, I call it.”
We held the "Winter Olympics" in my back yard, skiing and sledding down a steep hill that started on the neighbor's property. The hill was steep at the top, flattened out for a bit as it crossed my backyard and then sloped down again before it came to a gentle stop in a field. It was straight as an arrow, which was perfect for Woody and me, especially since the skis we used were so long (they were two feet longer than we were tall) and impossible to turn, not just because of the length, but also because they were attached to our feet with a simple leather strap. If we tried to make a sharp turn, one of the skis would come off, sending us into an acrobatic tumble. We did better standing on the back of our American Flyer sleds, holding on to a rope attached to the steering mechanism. Cardboard boxes were best of all, but they never lasted long in the wet snow.
Madeline and Merlin taking a sledding break
The two streets that defined our neighborhood were also great for sledding, as long as we got there before the "ash trucks." The streets swarmed with “Olympians” the minute it began to snow. Sometimes we hooked our sleds together to form a "train," ten sleds going down the hill as one. Other times we’d race, side by side, boys lying on their stomachs, head first, and girls sitting up, feet first. But our fun on the snow-covered road was usually short lived. An "ash" truck would turn the corner at the bottom of the hill and work its' way up, two laborers standing in the back shoveling ashes onto the roadway in wide curved arcs. They were so good at it; they didn’t leave even a skinny strip of clean snow by the curb for us to slide on. It’s the reason Woody and I weren’t able to develop our talents enough to qualify for the U.S. Olympic ski team.
33 – Man’s Best Friend
Even a "dogs life" was special in the Briar Patch. I sometimes wrankle at the freedoms I've lost due to the excessive government regulation that has been enacted over the last several decades, but my loss is nothing compared to that of the canine population. I had three dogs growing up. The first was Blackie, a cocker spaniel who was the family pet long before I came along. She was high strung and objected when a two-year old cowboy shoved his hand in her mouth and pulled her tongue. She also objected to being ridden around the kitchen by the same cowboy. I can still remember the feel of her teeth clamped on my fingers when I played the tongue pull game; she never bit hard enough to break the skin. I've seen her in pictures with me as a toddler, but she disappeared from the family album when I was about three. I asked about her, years later, and was told she ran away. I suspect my parents sold her to save her from me.
Our second dog was a stray, border collie who followed me home looking for a handout. My parents let
We had thirteen puppies in the basement for a time when Topper was developing his climbing prowess. My father friend’s Irish setter delivered seven puppies, dying in the process. He brought the puppies to our house in hopes that Lassie would nurse them, along with her own brood. She did, and all thirteen thrived.
We remained a two-dog family for about a year, but Lassie became a problem; she chased cars. My father, a talented inventor, created a series of restraining devices that allowed her to walk around the yard, but prevented her from breaking into full stride, something she did whenever a car sped down our hill. These crude contraptions were constructed of metal coat hangers. They'd work for a few days, and then come apart or slip off. Tying her up in the back yard wasn't an option. You just didn't do that to a dog in the Briar Patch, so my father found a family in the country to take her. It was a tearful goodbye, but a lick on the face from Topper helped me through it. Topper chased cars once in while, a genetic affliction I'm sure, but he was selective. He only went after cars that were loud and exceeded the speed limit. He got hit twice, but thankfully his injuries were minor and he recovered after a few days of limping around.
Topper was a faithful companion for a dozen years. Except for school, he was allowed to go everyplace with me. It wasn't "Woody and Merlin" going to the movies, it was Woody, Merlin and Topper. He'd sit outside on a busy street in downtown Binghamton, the sidewalk bustling with shoppers. He’d stay next to our bikes while we were inside watching the standard Saturday fare: a horror movie, the latest episode of "Industry on Parade" and a cartoon. When we emerged two hours later, rubbing our eyes to adjust to the sunlight, Topper eagerly awaited, his tail wagging, ready for the next adventure.
He had the run of the city and was rarely tied up or put on a leash. He was leashed once a year for a trip to the Fifth Ward Fire Station to get a free rabies shot and was tied up in the backyard so he couldn’t follow me on the July 4th, Memorial Day and other public holidays when Woody and I decorated our bikes with red, white & blue crepe paper and joined in, uninvited, at the end of the parade through downtown Binghamton. Dog ownership was so laid back in the Briar Patch, that we left Topper alone for a week or more at a time when we traveled to my aunt’s house in Connecticut. We propped open the garage door so he could get to his dog house, or to just stay cool on the shaded concrete floor. A neighbor kid would feed and water him every day. We once returned home from a trip and he wasn't there. We scoured the entire south side of town, on foot, on bikes and in the car for days, asking everyone along the way if they’d seen a black dog wandering around, but to no avail. We’d about given up, when early one morning, three days later, he came running down the hill and turned into the driveway and plopped down next to me. I was outside the garage door working on my soapbox racer. His tail wagged so hard I thought he was going to take off, like a helicopter. I don't know who was more excited. Had I a tail, mine would have wagged even faster than his. I guess he just felt he needed a vacation too.
34 – THE INDY 500
The soap-box racer I was working on when Topper came home from his "mini" vacation might have been the subject of Ralph Nader's breakthrough best seller, "Unsafe at any Speed," had he noticed it before he drove a Corvair (Years later, I owned one of those too). This particular racer was the product of a scrap pile at a house going up down the street. I used a six-foot long 2 X 6 for the body, a rare find in those days. It was crudely joined to a three-foot long 2 X 4 steering board with a long spike, bent over loose enough so it could turn. I nailed old roller skates to the steering board and to the main board, forming an “unholy cross” on wheels. A short slat was attached on the side, to function as a brake. Theoretically, it would rub against the road and slow down the vehicle when I pulled up on it.
The racer worked great the first few times down the hill, but then the design flaws began to show. First, the brake came off, causing me to crash into the Gazda's hedge. The Gazda's were an elderly couple who were meticulous about their yard. It was one of several properties on the block that was off limits to Woody and me. I reattached the brake and took another run; my ride lasted less than thirty seconds. The right front roller skate wobbled free and beat me to the bottom.
My father observed these technical failures and decided to take over the mechanical aspects of my soapbox-racing career, forming a pit crew of one. He was an excellent mechanic; he made a good living as a design engineer. This was an assignment he relished, especially since he’d been forbidden to take on any new projects of his own, after building a travel trailer in our garage, something my mother wasn't thrilled to have sitting on the side yard after he finished it. I was never sure if it was she or a neighbor, who turned in a complaint to the zoning board. At any rate, my father was forced to get it off the property. He took it to a friend’s house in the country, where zoning laws were less restrictive.
He jumped into the reconstruction of my racer with delight, after all, he remarked, "This wasn't a project for him; it was for the boy." He used screws instead of nails, and replaced the roller skates with full size racing wheels. His design modification included two independent "push" brakes on the front wheels and most amazing of all, a steering wheel from a Piper Cub airplane. The later was connected to an elaborate cable system that steered using the rear wheels. The jitney, as he called it, was "museum quality," glistening in a fresh coat of spray paint, my favorite number 7, stenciled on the front hood. It was with great reluctance that he handed it over to me for a test drive.
I was happy with the hot rod I’d made myself, but learned long ago to "fake" appreciation for one of his creations. I pushed it to the top of the hill for its maiden voyage. Woody was next to me with his poorly constructed, self made racer, a set of discarded wheels from a baby carriage nailed to a scrap lumber chassis. One! Two! Three! Go! Off we went down the hill. Woody beat me by a mile. The wire cable slipped out of the grooves on the Piper Cub steering wheel, causing me to travel a serpentine route, twice the distance of Woody's. My father confiscated the vehicle, moved it to the "Pit Area," shut the garage door, and started a major redesign. Woody and I were free to race on our own, he in his homemade crate, and me, in an "Irish Male" - a four wheel vehicle that was propelled by pumping a handle, something like a hand-car on a rail road track. It was steered like a sled, using your feet. I've never seen another like it. Apparently it was a poor selling toy, but I suspect it would be a big hit today because of its' aerobic and strength building characteristics.
When it rolled out of the shop a few days later, it sported larger wheels, a narrower front end and a chain steering mechanism to replace the flawed wire cable system. My father didn't stick around to see the race, knowing there wasn't any more he could do. He just couldn’t bear to witness Woody’s un-engineered crate beat his masterpiece. I did beat Woody to the bottom of the hill, but he lead most of the way; then his front wheel came off near the bottom, causing him to give the Gazda's hedge a pruning for the second time that summer. I played around with my father’s jitney from time to time over the next several years, but it never was as much fun as the hot rod I’d built myself.
The pattern of my father playing with my toys started when I was eight. My parents gave me a set of electric trains for Christmas. I had the privilege of running the engine and six freight cars under the Christmas tree for two days; then he took over. Two weeks and later, I had an elaborate two-tier train layout in the basement. Three trains ran at the same time, through tunnels under mountains, past a working rail yard, and into the city of “Plastic-Ville.” The controls were returned to me after he finished creating this miniature world. I'll admit, I had a lot of fun playing with the layout, pushing electric switches that routed the engines and cars through the various landscapes. It even had miniature railroad workers who scurried out of trackside sheds to signal the arrival of a train at road crossings. His layout was fantastic, but I had just as much fun when I hauled the engine and a few cars up to my bedroom and ran them around on the floor while I lay down on the rug.
When my own son turned three I bought him an electric train. It runs on a shelf, two feet below the ceiling in his playroom; there is a second set running around in my office. At least the layout my father made allowed a kid to actually touch the train. Poor Zac can only watch. I wonder if he'll get his kid an electric train someday
35 - Tennis Anyone?
While my father was working on my hot rod, I was required to be by his side, "helping." And like an operating room nurse, I wasn't allowed to touch the patient, just hand the "surgeon" the tools and hardware he called for. Whenever he miss-hit a nail or broke a drill bit, he’d yell, "Sucker," his version of swearing. After two or three "Suckers," my mother usually came into the garage where father/son "quality time" was underway, and suggested I go outside and play for a while. I was happy to oblige. Watching him work, without being able to pitch in, was as exciting as watching proverbial "paint dry," and to make it worse, most items he ordered me to fetch, were tools I'd never heard of and couldn't find fast enough to suit him. Mom had freed me of servitude, but I knew I couldn't leave the property. I had to be on call for a mandatory "Oh and Ah" session, when he completed a new phase of construction.
It wasn’t a problem for me to be forced to hang around outside the garage while he worked. Like all kids in the Briar Patch, I could entertain myself with little difficulty. The valley on our roof funneled directly into the driveway. It was perfect for a game of solitary tennis. I could hit the ball anyplace on the roof and it would usually follow the valley, and drop onto the driveway. Woody and I both played tennis, though most of our games took the form of “roof-ball” in my driveway, or “three-bounce-long ball”, played in the road, a hundred feet apart. Our tennis equipment came from an outlet store run by the Salvation Army; a wooden racket was fifty cents. Of course, at that price, it looked like a cannon ball had been shot through the strings. We were forced to cough up an additional $2.00 to have the racquet restrung. For a grand total of $2.50, or in "Kids" currency, fifty returnable soda bottles, we were equipped for the U.S. Open. "Roof Ball" was my favorite. You could never be sure where the ball would land. Sometimes it shot straight down the valley. Other times, it bounced off a dormer and hit the driveway at an odd angle. I didn't become a tennis star when I got older, and even though Woody made the high school team, he didn't become one either. The hours of "Roof Ball" created a tennis style where we returned serves twelve feet in the air, a technique that guaranteed failure on a regulation court.
36 - The Mayo Clinic
William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, sons of Doctor William Worrall Mayo, traveled throughout the United States in the late 1800's and early 1900's to learn and perfect new surgical techniques. Their skills grew at an extraordinary rate, as did the reputation of the small clinic they ran in Rochester, Minnesota. Woody and I, too, traveled far and wide (in the vicinity of our neighborhood), developing medical skills of a sort, in the tradition of the Mayo brothers. Medical treatment at our clinic though, was limited to examination of the patient's fanny, and the taking of an occasional rectal temperature, using a twig from the floor of our creek side examination room. We ran our clinic until we turned seven, having espied the bottom of every kid our age or younger in the neighborhood.
Our practice got its start when I received a children’s "Playing-Doctor Kit," a very popular toy in the Briar Patch. The kit consisted of a small cardboard doctor satchel, covered with paper that resembled alligator hide; inside was a breathtaking array of simulated medical devices: a stethoscope, ear funnel, reflex tester, fake pills, and other assorted paraphernalia, and most important of all, a wooden thermometer. In our day, an oral thermometer was not an option. Anytime our temperature was taken, either at home or at the doctor’s office, it was done with a rectal thermometer. We did the same in our clinic, cajoling kids out of their drawers and into a "bend over" pose for the highly sought medical treatment at the "Woody and Merlin" medical center, a clinic lavishly equipped with scientific instruments from several toy doctor kits.
Playing Doctor has long been a pastime for kids, still is, though these days, parents go ballistic when they discover that their darling has dropped their pants in a, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" exchange. When caught, kids in the Briar Patch were told to “cut it out” and that ended it. Parents understood that playing doctor was the result of a normal healthy curiosity. Today's kids have to endure psychological counseling when they get caught. Woody and I never were ratted out, which is amazing considering the extent of our practice and the number of kids who could have filed a complaint with the A.M.A. Nobody told us it was wrong, which may explain why the clinic remained in business for so long. Our practice eventually dried up, as kids on the block learned to "Just say no," and baseball practice diverted our interest.
37 – The Original "National Inquirer"
Woody and I read a book in fourth grade about two boys in a small town who published a weekly newspaper called "The Tom Thumb." I've forgotten the name of the book, but I haven't forgotten the thrill of producing the first edition of our own "Tom Thumb." We weren't clever enough to come up with a new name. Notebooks and pencils in hand, we went door to door, signing up subscribers, and gathering "news." The premier issue was printed, typo's, cross outs, eraser smears and all, on a gelatin printing press, which consisted of a letter size tray, filled with a semi-solid mixture capable of capturing the impression from a typewritten page and transferring it to blank pages, becoming progressively fainter with each copy. It could reproduce the original image six or seven times and then we had to re-imprint the master in a fresh batch of gel. It took an entire Saturday to create and print our first issue. We delivered it to twenty-seven subscribers and were immediately besieged by a dozen or so families in the neighborhood who had not signed on for the original issue. We had a "Best Seller" on our hands, and took great pride in our publishing skills, not knowing we had simply produced a gossip rag, covering dirt from every family on the "block."
What we didn't get from the adults in the way of news, we gleaned from their off spring. The paper progressed from a one-page publication to three. It included hand drawn pictures to compliment the stories. We were forced to switch from the gelatin press to a mimeograph machine in my fathers office, due to the increasing number of pages and copies. Twelve editions were produced in all. Our information stream began to dry up as horrified subscribers blocked our news sources after reading about a "plate throwing" argument in their very own home. The unidentified source was easy to discern; it was their child. They loved reading a report about the extravagant vacation trip they’d taken to the Catskill's, and were delighted to see their neighbor's dirty laundry aired for all to see but when their own soiled undergarments graced the smudgy pages of the "Tom Thumb," it was all over. Our success killed us. Nobody cared to read about vacations or bridge parties; their appetite had been wet by the "dirt," and when it stopped coming, sales plummeted, bringing to an end, The "Tom Thumb" of Chadwick & Denton Road.
38 - "There's Nothing To Do"
These words were never spoken in the Briar Patch. I first heard them from my two oldest daughters in the late 1960's, as they sat in their toy room, the floor strewn with "Barbie’s" - coloring books - tricycles - wagons and blocks, a TV blasting, and a sing-along record playing on their Mickey Mouse phonograph. My son, who has twice as many toys and five times the electronics, complains of having nothing to do even more often than his sisters did. Woody and I always had something to do. Our problem, was finding enough time in the day to take advantage of the "entertainment" at our disposal, most of all, our imaginations, which, with ease, turned idle time into an afternoon of fun. I never played basketball by myself, though you could spot me all alone shooting baskets in the driveway. I was the classic "American underdog," battling the "mean-cheating-Russian commies," coming from behind to win at the last second, in spite of the bloody head and broken arm I’d received from my imaginary opponents.
At other times, if you peered around the outside corner of the garage, you might spot me with my back to the wall, throwing a screw driver, or a hatchet, into the ground on the steep side hill that marked the edge of our property. In that scenario, I was either a knife thrower in the circus, coming dangerously close to the unblemished skin of my attractive assistant, or an Indian, fighting off an attack from a band of rogue cowboys. Boredom didn't exist, even when we stayed inside because of the weather. Woody & I, like all kids in the Briar Patch, were board-game, card-game and bingo fanatics. There was nothing like a hot game of "War" or "Old Maid" to fill the lull on a rainy afternoon. Birthday parties were relished, not just for the cake and ice cream, but also for the prospect of a "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" game, or better yet, a fast paced round of “musical chairs.”
Checkers, Parcheesi, Uncle Wiggly, Finance, and most of all, Monopoly, were the board games of choice. We played so much Monopoly, that Woody's mother and father duplicated the exact image of the playing board on a piece of plywood and covered it with three layers of shellac after we wore out the original board that came with the game. My fondest board game memories are of Woody and me lying on his living room floor in front of the family console radio, playing Monopoly or Parcheesi on a cold dark winter night, a blizzard howling outside, while the exploits of Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wafted through the room from a mahogany encased speaker.
Life on the "Block" was good. The options offered by my mini-universe were endless. How could it not be so, considering the forty-three playmates who lived there and the array of interesting venues, including such unique attractions as the roof on my very own house. It wasn’t just a great place to bounce a tennis ball, but also provided a climbing challenge, on a par with the Himalayan Mountains. Woody and I would sneak out my parent’s bedroom window onto a porch roof, from which we did a "pull-up" on the gutter, bringing us to the main roof. From our "base camp," the climb to the top was a rush. We had to travel up a narrow and steep riser, past the chimney to the peak. It was a great spot to sit and watch the "Norman Rockwell" world below. I think the hours I spent looking down from the roof are why I'm drawn to the White Mountains in New Hampshire for an annual hiking spree. It's the closest thing in my adult world, to the magic of sitting on my roof as a kid and observing the world below.
All alone, or with Woody, Warren and Buzzy, I spent hours watching life on the block: the Gazda's in their garden, weeding and nurturing a crop of tomatoes, beans and corn, the three Soldo girls skipping rope, taking turns in the middle, Bea Krupa sailing a homer out of the park on "Junk" Street, Mike Almy and Tommy Spangoletti bouncing all the way to the top of Chadwick on pogo sticks, my sister and her friends playing a hot game of jacks on the front stoop, Bunny Horowitch installing a "motor" on his bike by clamping a piece of cardboard onto the fender frame so that it extended through the spokes, mimicking the sound of an engine when he peddled, the Colavito brothers flipping baseball cards, Bobby Ahearn setting the woods on fire for the fourth time, the telephone pole across the street with a black cylindrical transformer at the top, which we often climbed up to and touched on a dare, the square boxes lined up on everyone’s porch, ready for delivery from the milkman at five in the morning, his truck laden with glass, quart bottles of milk, the cream floating at the top, crates of eggs, slabs of butter, and "yuck," butter milk for the "old man," and the neighbor down the street mowing his lawn with a new fangled power driven, reel mower, while six envious fathers watched, reluctant to go home to their push mowers. Yes, life on the block, like life in all of the Briar Patch, was picture perfect, especially from the roof top, thirty feet above the fray.
39 - Penny Candy
Our neighborhood was bordered on the west by woods and fields, but to the east, on the other side of a large vacant field, it abutted a residential area similar to ours, just older, and then ultimately gave way to a commercial mixed zone. “Mayberry’s” was a small grocery store a block from school on the corner of Park Ave and Cross Street. Mrs. Mayberry ran the place; her children were grown and she ran the place; her husband filled in behind the counter when she needed a rare break. The store was small, having once been a garage attached to the Mayberry residence, but it was the biggest thing in the world as far as I was concerned, a magic place with an eight foot long, glass encased, oak candy counter, stocked to the brim with a wide array of mouth watering candy selections, priced at a penny each. The store also sold bread, Campbell’s Soup, milk, Hershey's ice cream bars & pop-sickles, and soda. The soda was ice cold, thanks to an old fashioned cooler that circulated 38 degree water between the submerged bottles. When you pulled out a Coke on a hot summer day, it was a delight to feel the freezing water dribble down your arm.
Mrs. Mayberry was a grandmotherly storekeeper. She never hurried us as we methodically agonized over how to best spend the pennies clutched in our sweaty, grimy hands. As we made a selection, she would drop it into a miniature brown paper bag. There wasn’t a happier kid in the world than one walking out of Mayberry’s with a sack full of sugar delights. Penny candy was the drug of choice in the Briar Patch, and most of us needed a "fix" every day. Even a single penny would provide hours of enjoyment, ala a "Jawbreaker," the predecessor of today's "Fire Ball." This little grocery store, with its friendly, child tolerant service, became a “Mecca” for all the kids in the area. Even the Duncan Yo‑yo Company recognized its' drawing power, and held their yo‑yo demonstrations and contests on the sidewalk in front of the store. It's where I broke my own "Loop-de-Loop" record in one such contest, after completing the standard eight mandatory yo-yo tricks in a tie with six other participants, and then winning in the sudden death show down by racking up fifty-eight “loop-de-loops.” I walked away with a highly prized diamond yo-yo and a sleeveless sweater with "Duncan yo-yo Champion" embroidered across the front. The Philippine, yo-yo master, who’d conducted the contest, carved a Pacific Isle scene on the side of the yo-yo as an added bonus. I still have the yo‑yo, but the sweater was sacrificed years ago, to a long gone generation of moths that once populated my mother’s attic.
40 - "F" Commerce
There was no such thing as "E" Commerce in the Briar Patch; not a single computer nerd posted an ad on "E-Bay," and then sat back waiting for the mailman to deliver envelopes stuffed with money. But there was commerce. Woody and I used "F" Commerce for spending money, "F," as in get off your "FANNY" and work. It didn't take much money to satisfy our materialistic needs. Stuff for kids was cheap. Toy companies knew that parents weren't going to spend any "serious" money on playthings. Unlike today's kids, whose average expense on amusement is astronomical, we eked out a mountain of fun on pennies a day.
A steady source of income came from returnable, glass, beer & soda containers, 2¢ for twelve ounce bottles, 5¢ for quarts. My grandfather and his neighborhood cronies drank several quarts of ale every day. A Saturday afternoon visit to his house was a bonanza for me. The biggest challenge was to lug armloads of the darn things three blocks to the nearest store. Too bad the six pack had not yet been invented.
My first venture beyond bottle redemption “commerce,” began when my father bought a power lawn mower, one of the first on the block. As the only "male" child in the family, I was “allowed” to mow the lawn (my father "Tom Sawyered" me on this one). My older sister didn't get the privilege; not until she graduated from college and I moved out of the house. She was stuck wiping dishes. I cut our grass on Saturday morning, moved across the street and mowed the Soldo's lawn, then kitty corner to the Bowen's. By noon I was a rich, having earned a dollar at home, and a buck apiece, from Sam Soldo and Charlie Bowen. I hated working for Soldo because he inspected my work, and required that I trim along a fifty foot wall and an eighty foot sidewalk; all with hand powered grass clippers, the only thing available in those days. Bowen was happy to just have his lawn cut; he and his wife took care of the trimming or just let it slide. Eventually my “F-Commerce” evolved into a lawn service partnership. John Mingus, a kid from the next block and I pooled our equipment and our customers. Together, we mowed seven lawns every Saturday. Nobody mowed anything on Sunday in those days; it was considered disrespectful.
In addition to the lawn mowing enterprise, I also entered the newspaper business, buying a paper route at the astronomical cost of thirty five dollars. The payments stretched out on an installment plan that scarfed up half my profits for several months. Today, our local newspaper is forced to pay a "sign-on" bonus to get a kid to take on a route. Kids aren't interested in getting a job, at least not while Mom and Dad forks over the money so readily. I delivered sixty-three evening papers, six days a week, and fifty-seven double sized papers on Sunday. I also went door to door collecting, usually Monday night after supper. I had to hound many of the customers to make sure I at least had enough money to pay the circulation manager on Saturday morning. He didn’t accept any excuses, though I could have listed many. I heard them all when I collected, “I don’t have any change,” “Come back later when my husband is home,” “I’m sure I paid you for two weeks last week.”
Weekday, and Saturday papers cost customers 5¢; the Sunday paper was 15¢. I made a 1½¢ profit on each paper, yielding me a weekly profit of ten dollars, provided I stay on top of collections. This was a fortune, and as a result, my bike was equipped with every imaginable accessory: chrome fenders, saddlebags, horns, reflectors, and even an expensive and highly coveted, generator-light. But most of the money I earned, like all kids in the Briar Patch, went directly into my belly, in the form of soda (which we referred to as soft drink), penny candy, nickel candy bars, ice cream cones, Popsicles and potato chips, none of which were available at home. The rest of my earnings went for movies, yo-yos, badminton birdies, baseballs, kites, balsa wood gliders and the other cheap toys that proliferated the Briar Patch. We didn't have much cash, but fortunately, we didn't need much.
41 - Bicycle-built-for-two
My sister Madeline and I received bicycles for Christmas in 1949. Mine was red, hers blue; both were second hand. After the holiday they were moved from under the tree to the garage, where they sat for months, not coming out for a test ride until the end of winter. Our street was too steep to ride on, so Mom and Dad helped us push the bikes up the hill to Moore Ave, a flat street that was perfect for the training mission at hand. Not only was it flat, it had little traffic and few houses. We could disgrace ourselves in private. I can still remember the exhilaration of being pushed along by my father. I provided the propulsion, while he steadied the bike with his hand on the rear fender. I can also remember the feeling of sheer terror when I looked over my shoulder a few moments later to discover that his steadying hand was gone. I crashed! He convinced me that I’d kept the bike balanced all by myself and that I didn’t need him. I climbed back on, and with a gentle push, rode off into the sunset. I didn't know how to get off. I braked; the bike jerked to a stop and I tumbled to the ground, getting the first of many skinned knees that I would receive over the next few months.
For several weeks, most of the summer to be truthful, my sister had to race ahead, jump off her bike, and then catch me as I slowed down. Eventually I learned to stop near the curb, so when the bike slowed down, I could reach my foot out and prevent a fall. The curb was also the only way I could get on the bike and get started by myself. The darn thing was too big, like everything else in those days. Pants, shoes, shirts, jackets and even bicycles, were purchased with the intent of getting maximum use from the item; everything had to be big enough to "grow into." The bike was large enough to serve me for five years, which it did. But for most of that first year, it was a "bicycle-built-for-two," me riding it, and Madeline scrambling ahead and catching me when it came to a stop.
I spent a lot of time that summer on Moore Ave, practicing, and eventually developed a relationship with the bike. I don't think a cowboy ever loved his horse more than I loved that bike. It was freedom; it was status; it was entertainment, and it was a teacher. I took it apart all the time. Sometimes to fix it, other times to convert it into a "racing machine," removing the fenders, reversing and lowering the handlebars. Sometimes I decked it out with red, white and blue crepe paper and miniature American flags for a parade. Quite often it was "motorized," a piece of cardboard flapping against the spokes. The "motor" loosened the spokes and thus is the reason I became a master at tightening, and tuning up the wheels.
My oversized and repainted, second hand bike was fantastic. Mom loved it too. Practically every day she sent me on an errand to the store, most often to get a loaf of bread. I used a cloth sack that was secured at the top with a drawstring to carry the goods. The drawstring allowed me to hang the bag on the handlebars, freeing both hands for steering. I'll never forget the taste of a fresh slice of bread, snuck from the middle of the loaf, the price my mother unknowingly paid for delivery service. Even store bought bread didn't contain preservatives in those days, which is why it tasted so much better; unfortunately it became as hard as a rock after two days. Maybe this explains the recent rage for bread machines.
On one of my "bread runs," I got caught up in the mesmerizing taste of a the slice of bread I’d snuck out of the package and wandered from the bike lane next to the curb into the side of a small truck. I was banged up and startled out of my socks, but otherwise OK. Mom was brought to the scene by a passerby, and walked me, and my out-of-whack bicycle, back home. She got such a scare that she yelled at me all the way to the house, "Don't you ever do that again. You've got to watch where you're going. Bla bla bla."
The bike was repaired and served me well for many years, but then was cast aside in a selfish action, very much like that of a doctor, who casts aside the loyal mate that put him through medical school, and flees with the first cute nurse that comes along. In my case, the “nurse” was a three-speed “English” bike with narrow tires and hand brakes.
42 - A DILEMA AT THE STORE
My bread runs were usually to Scales' Market, the closest store to our house. Bill Scales and his brother, both opened stores on the south side when they came back from the war. Bill's was near our house; his brother's was several blocks away, near Saint John’s Church. I spent a whole summer avoiding Bill’s store, because I mistakenly pulled a bottle of tonic water from the cooler in the back of the store, thinking it was ginger ale. I uncapped it, using the opener attached to the cooler and walked to the register with a nickel in my hand. Bill rang up eighteen cents on the register and then responded to the surprised look on my face, by explaining that I’d opened a bottle of special tonic water, not five cent soda. I only had a nickel, so I promised to pay the difference the next day. The next day never came. I procrastinated. Whenever I had thirteen cents, I spent it on candy at Mayberry’s store. Eventually I was too ashamed to go back and face him, so I did the kid thing, I pretended the store didn't exist. All my errands took longer, because I had to travel three blocks farther to get a loaf of bread. When I was with the "gang," and they stopped at Scale's Market for a soda, I hung back, around the corner.
Finally, it came to a head. I was in the car with my mother, when, much to my dismay, she pulled up in front of the store, an unannounced stop for groceries. I told her I'd wait in the car. "No you won't. I need you to help me with the bags!" I told her I couldn't go in, finally "coughing up" the real reason. She marched me in by the ear and up to the register, to face Mr. Scales. I blurted out a confession, telling him that I owed thirteen cents for a bottle of tonic water that I opened by mistake four months ago. He had no idea what I was talking about, but took the money with a chuckle, giving my mother a knowing wink. Boy it felt good to have that over with. It was a great lesson for me; it’s better to face your problems, not run away. Too bad I had to learn the same lesson 1,000 times before I left the Briar Patch.
Woody and I frequented two other stores on the south side, though not as often as Scales' Market or Mayberry's Candy Store. Both were on Vestal Ave, one near MacArthur Park, the other, a few blocks to the east, directly above the tunnel that ran from Ross Creek to the river. The Cuckoo Store, as we referred to the first, was run by a strange couple, who were so weird they scared us; our parents made the place off limits, but it was a handy place to stop for a soda after a ballgame and was the only store around where we could buy cigarettes. Other stores would sell cigarettes to kids, but then would be sure to inquire of the parents the next time they saw them, "Did you get the cigarettes I sold Merlin the other day?" The Cuckoo Store owners never checked on us; they never even asked who we were buying the cigarettes for.
The other Vestal Ave store where we traded was owned by, yet another veteran of WWII, Ben Medolla. He had a huge walk in cooler that he let us go in on a hot day, to cool off and to decide if we wanted a bottle of Pepsi, Squirt or Grape Ne-Hi. He didn't object to us lounging on the empty produce racks outside the front door. We'd laze with our sodas for an hour or more, watching the world go by. It’s where I developed my love of “people watching.”
SECTION III - LAW OF THE JUNGLE
It’s been claimed that Hammurabi's Code is the oldest documented rule of law governing social interaction. Unfortunately the code that governed my world in the Briar Patch more closely followed the Law of the Jungle than Hammurabi's humane regulations. Butchy Lidaka, armed with a baseball bat and a body twice the size of his peers, determined who, and what, we played with in Kindergarten. Likewise, Denzel Kelly decided when and how high, Woody and I would jump. Jungle law ruled when the bullies were astir; at all other times our lives were governed by a complicated set of unwritten laws. Following is the body of law, which until now has never been chronicled. My son reports that many of these laws are still in effect and religiously followed in his "school yard." The Briar Patch Laws are divided into four categories: #1 How things are decided, #2 "Call It" rules, #3 Rules of Honor and #4 Sunday
43 - How things are decided
Adults choose between two options by flipping a coin. Each outcome has an equal chance of selection, a proven mathematical principle. Both, routine and major events are decided this way. The Super Bowl, for example, with millions of dollars at stake, is started with a coin toss. In the Briar Patch, Woody and I usually didn't have a coin to flip; fortunately, jungle law offered a variety of authorized mechanisms to use when making an impartial decision.
The Wet Stone Flip - This is the ancient predecessor to the coin toss. We used this mechanism when we wanted to choose between two options. All that was required was a small flat stone and some saliva. The "flipper” spit on one side of the stone and rubbed it around to clearly identify the "wet side." Then the stone was tossed in the air, and while in flight, the "caller" shouted his choice, "Wet" or "Dry". And like a coin toss, if the side he called landed face up, he won.
Odds and Evens - This method of selecting between two options was more fulfilling than the wet stone flip. We had direct input, and besides, it was manlier. Two contestants, trying to decide who goes first, who picks first when choosing up sides for a ball game, or whose sister really is the ugliest, faced each other at a comfortable distance apart. Each contestant bent forward at the waist, formed his right hand into a fist, and placed it behind his back. Sometimes they circled each other, rocking back and forth from foot to foot, as though preparing to fight. In this, "intimidation" phase, they negotiated who would be "odd", who "even." Usually it was decided on the basis of who called it first. Then, they chanted in unison, "One, Two, Three, Shoot!" When they shouted the word "Shoot,” they simultaneously swung their hands into the center of the "arena,” with a violent, punch like lunge. As their fisted hands traveled from behind their backs to center stage, the combatants decided the number of fingers they would offer for the "count," manipulating their hand so the correct number of fingers stuck out. You could "shoot" anywhere from zero to five, but most kids threw a "one", or a "two." When the dust cleared from the "throw," the numbers of fingers were added up. If the total was an odd number, then the combatant who started the process by shouting, "I've got odds," won. A single "shoot" was rarely used with this process. Most decisions were made by a series of the best of five, or seven "shoots.”
Eeny Meeny - This was a good mechanism to use when selecting between several options. A “Pointer” chanted a rhyme while moving his finger in sequence, from object to object, or person-to-person, from which the selection was being made. The chant - "Eeny – Meeny – Miney – Moe – Catch a – Tiger - by the – Toe – If he – Hollers – Let him – Go – Eeny – Meeny – Miney – Moe," was structured so that the option (thing or person) pointed at, when the chant came to "Moe," was the winner. But, a clever "Pointer" would split some of the "two-word" sections of the rhyme to manipulate the outcome. If that didn't work, then they would extend the rhyme, by adding, "My – Mother – Told – Me – To – Pick – This – One – Right – Over – Here." "Here," became the new end point, designating the "winner." Once again, the "Pointer" could cheat by stretching "Over" and "Here" into two words - "Oh – Ver," and "Hear – Er," to control the outcome. Half the kids in PS-13, myself included, never figured this out. Our ignorance allowed "Mensa" bullies to take advantage of us, just like Butchy Lidaka and Denzel Kelly did, in this case with their brains, not their brawn.
One Potato - Two Potato --- This was another popular method to decide things when selecting from several options. A "Selector" in One Potato - Two Potato usually conducted the process for others, but was also allowed to join in, and become part of the group from which a winner would emerge. This is how it worked. Participants stood in a circle with both hands balled up into a fist, and held in front of them at chest high level. The "Selector" tapped the top of each hand with the bottom of his/her fist in a counterclockwise sequence around the circle, at each step of the chant, "One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four, Five Potato, Six Potato, Seven Potato, More." The hand that was tapped when the chant came to "More" was "out." It was removed from the arena, and placed behind ones back. The chant was restarted, and continued until it once again came to "More," eliminating yet another hand. When participants lost both "hands," they were out. The winner was the last person with a hand/s. If the "Selector" participated in the process, they did so by hitting their fists gently onto their lips, first the left, then the right, as it came their turn. One Potato - Two Potato was superior to Eeny-Meeny, because the selector could not manipulate the outcome. Hammurabi would have approved.
Baseball Bat Grab - This method of deciding things was primarily used to decide which team batted first, and/or who "picked" first, when choosing up sides for a baseball game. Two self-appointed "Captains," started the process by facing each other at a distance of five feet, circling in an antagonistic crouch while maintaining eye contact, one of them holding a baseball bat. After a few minutes of posturing, they both stood erect, the kid with the bat, gently tossed it to the other, the handle pointing up. The "receiver" had to make an instant decision as the bat came toward him, take the safe route and catch it in the middle, kicking off a prolonged selection procedure, or try for a shut-out, and catch it on the "knob," using just the tips of his fingers. If the "finger-tip-knob-catch" was successful, he "won." This option was seldom tried, because it’s extremely difficult to catch a bat in this manner. Generally, the "catcher" took the safe route, and caught the bat in the middle. In that case, the "thrower" took the next turn by placing his hand directly above the catcher's. Alternately, they took turns; working their way toward the knob, hand over hand. Strategy was involved in the process, because of an alternative grasping option. The option allowed you to move up the bat a shorter distance by placing the "vee" formed by your index and middle finger on the bat, above your opponent’s hand, rather than your whole fist. With this technique you could control, to some degree, who would end up with their fist on the last space below the knob, the "loser’s spot." When the loser’s spot was grasped, one turn remained, a tricky one at that. You had to grip the bat by the knob on the top, using only the tips of your fingers. If you managed to hold the bat, and then fling it over your head, backwards, a distance of ten feet, you won. This is where the adequacy of fingertip grip came into play. You might be able to hold it by the knob with a frail fingertip grab, but the requirement to toss it ten feet undid many a potential "winner".
44 - "Call it" rules
"Call it" rules are one rung above "Bully" rules on the ladder of social regulations. In PS-13, like schools everywhere, bullies used their size and power to get what they wanted. But the rest of us could also "bully" our way to the "front of the line", thanks to the "Call-it" regulations. All we needed to do was be alert to opportunity and quick on the draw. In it's simplest form it worked like this. If you "Called it," you got it. For example – “I bat first, I call it” – “I get the front seat, I call it.” Ninety nine percent of the time you could resolve a conflict by saying, "Hey, I called it." The challenger would usually back off gracefully with, "Oh, I didn't hear you," unless he was a bully, in which case your "Call-it" was irrelevant, "Bully" rights superseded "Call It" rights.
Parents loved the Call-It rules. Fights between siblings were truncated because of the rules. Once it was established that someone had, "Called it," the bickering stopped. Mothers loved to say, "Get in the back, your brother "Called" the front seat." End of discussion!
A variation of the "Call-it" rule was a "sharing" regulation called "Nigzies." This legal mechanism was used to get a bite of someone's candy bar, or a swig of his or her soda. All you had to do was shout, "Nigzies," the minute you spotted a friend with something you wanted a bite of. He had to share it unless he’d been alert enough to shriek, "No Nigzies," the minute he spotted you coveting his treat. "Dibs," is a variation of Nigzies, that some kids used in the Briar Patch. A shout of, "I've got Dibs," would also get you a bite of a friend's apple. I still remember my first encounter with this Law of the Jungle. I was five years old and my father had just given me my allowance, a nickel and a penny. I conned him into driving my sister and me to Scales' Market, a neighborhood grocery store so I could invest my six cents in a "Baby Ruth" candy bar and a piece of "Fleers Double-Bubble" gum. As I walked out of the store my sister yelled, "Nigzies," and I tearfully surrendered half the candy bar after she explained the rule. The pain of that lesson is still with me. I consciously whisper to myself, "No Nigzies," when I come out of a convenience store with a candy bar or an ice cream cone.
Another variation of the "Call-it" rules, was the "Mom, Watch this" rule. It is unique, in that it is one of the only "Laws of the Jungle" that bridged from the "Kid" world to the "Adult" world. Parents in the Briar Patch didn't spend a lot of time in the bleachers at the little league field, or at the YMCA gym, watching their little darlings play baseball and basketball. In fact, I never saw more than four adults at a little league game when I was one of the ace pitchers for the Elks Club (at least in my mind I was an ace). The stands were generally occupied by younger brothers or sisters of players who were forced to bring them along to the game. Mom and Dad had work to do. We didn't expect them to waste their time watching us, though we still had the need for their recognition. We satisfied this need by using the "Mom, Watch this" regulation. Most often, we did it with physical feats that could be demonstrated in a "flash," as opposed to organized sport activities, which would have required hours of their time. "Mom, watch this," worked great for a quick cartwheel in the back yard, or a belly flop off the high dive. No mother, or father, (since "Dad Watch this," was a permitted variation of the rule), ever failed to observe the "Called" request, to "Watch". My mother confessed to me, one afternoon as we stood leaning on a rail surrounding a kiddy merry-go-round, my oldest three daughters riding on prancing horses, while waving to us and shouting, "Watch me," that the three words she hated the most when my sister Madeline and I were growing up, were, "Mom, watch this." She had no mechanism with which to bow out. There wasn't an authorized, "No Watchies," or "No more watchies," for her to shout, to put an end to the misery.
45 - Rules of Honor
"I dare you," - "I double dare you." I wonder how many "bad" days were caused by these, progressively more compelling taunts. I know they created a few for Billy Wilson and me, after I dared him to throw a lit match into the wastebasket in the school library (see Chapter 5 for the full story). We were allowed to brush off a dare of the first order with little consequence. But a repeated "Dare" or the dreaded “Double Dare" evoked "Rules of Honor," requiring us to accept the challenge or be called a "chicken." Woody and I were "chickens," many, many, times, as were most of the kids we hung out with. The label lasted but a few hours, and unless you consistently chickened out, it didn't have a permanent effect on you. If you did, the "chicken" label stuck, and was subject to being stepped up to, "sissy," the ultimate disgrace under the rules of honor.
Dare rules varied widely in the Briar Patch, since they weren't written down, but passed on by word of mouth. The best movie of all time, "A Christmas Story," sometimes referred to as, "You'll Shoot Your Eye Out," includes a scene with a kid getting his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole after accepting a "Triple Dog Dare." There was no such thing as a "Dog" dare in our honor code. For Woody and me, the "Dare" rules worked like this. If we were dared once, we could brush it off, act like we hadn't even heard it. If the dare was repeated and witnessed, the challenge had to be acknowledged, and responded to. The rules provided several options. If the feat wasn't too dangerous, three or less on a scale of "one to ten," we had to do it, or be called a "Chicken."
Challengers were restrained from issuing frivolous dares by a "reversal" provision in the code. Under the rules of reversal, you could acknowledge a dare and then reverse it, by responding, "You go first, and then I'll do it." If the challenger balked, he became the "Chicken." The reversal provision stopped many dares from being issued, though there definitely was an element of bluff involved. If the dare was dangerous, seven or above, on the one to ten scale, you were permitted to ignore it, until it was restated as a "Double Dare." Rules of response to a double dare were exactly the same as those covering a single dare, including the reversal provision. Kids who constantly dared others and weren't prepared to perform the feat themselves were short lived in the Briar Patch. They became "Chickens" quicker and for longer periods of time than the kids who simply balked, when dared. I'm convinced the reversal provision saved our lives. Otherwise, Woody and I would have jumped off the Empire State Building.
The Rules of Honor contained several provisions that defined "Fighting Words." We had no choice but to fight if we were called liars, if insults of our mothers or sisters were issued, such as, "Your mother wears combat boots," or if two kids or an older kid, pushed around your friend. When Woody and I went to Camp Arrowhead for two weeks in the summer of 1952 an older and much larger kid started shoving Woody around on the mess hall porch. Without a seconds thought, I stepped in to help Woody, and took on the big kid. He beat the living crap out of me. That's when I started to think that the rules of honor "sucked." It was the third time that summer I was beat up on a porch. The first was at the hands of my friend Warren. We were arguing one day, and he ran into the Horowitch house to hide. I went to the door and called him a "Chicken" and a "Liar" through the locked screen door. He had no choice, but to face me. He opened the door, and before I even got my fists up, he hit me in the face a dozen times. It was over in less than ten seconds. The second "Porch Whooping" I took that summer was delivered by Albert Kessler, a younger, but larger kid who lived a few blocks away. I wrongly assumed I could take him, based on the fact that he was two years younger. It never occurred to me, that his 25% height and weight advantage would affect the outcome. I rang his doorbell one Saturday morning, inviting him outside to settle a feud we'd been having for several weeks in the schoolyard. He stepped out the door onto the porch, and delivered a quick jab to my Adam’s apple. I was stunned, I couldn't talk, I wasn't sure I could breathe. Another ten second, porch defeat.
The balance of the rules of honor contained a slew of do's and don'ts, most of which we found out about after we violated a rule. It seems everything we did, was covered by one rule or another. It wasn't until after I left the Briar Patch when I figured out that many of the rules weren't real rules at all, just a mechanism used by the rule maker to control our behavior. Below is a partial list of the rules that fell outside the "Dare" and "Fighting Words" regulations; they help complete the picture of how extensive a range the rules of honor spanned.
L If you step on a crack, you'll break your mothers back.
L You can't hit a girl.
L Boys can't play with dolls.
L Boys don't cry.
L Never tell on someone. If you do, you're a tattletale.
L Never borrow money.
L Dogs are for boys, cats for girls
L In a fight, if your opponent says "I give," or "Uncle," you must stop hitting, twisting, or what ever you're doing to hurt him.
L If a kid comes up to you, forms his thumb and index finger into a circle and holds it near your chest and you looked down at it, he is entitled to slug you in the arm as hard as possible. If you suspect what he is about to do, and reach down without looking, and “break the circle," you get to hit him in the arm.
46 - SUNDAY - THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
When the Briar Patch closed, on November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, within rifle range of the National Book Repository, the tradition of Sunday tranquility ended as well. Kennedy was killed on Friday; the nation spent Saturday and Sunday glued to their TV sets in disbelief, hanging on every word of Walter Cronkite as he hashed and rehashed the details of the assassination. We witnessed the hurried ceremony in which Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president. We were shocked yet again, by live coverage of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and we were told of the details of the State funeral being planned for Monday. That Sunday, when Camelot come to closure, was the most unsettling Sunday of the century, an omen that signaled the passing of Sunday "tranquility" in America.
Sunday was a special day in the Briar Patch, distinctly different from the rest of the week. On Sunday, the world "Stood Still," because of Blue Laws, but more importantly, because of the Laws of the Jungle. The Blue Laws made it illegal for retail stores to open on Sunday. Drug stores, restaurants, grocery stores and gasoline filling stations were exempt from the restrictions, but most remained closed in compliance with the Laws of the Jungle, ie. social pressure on the owners. On the south side of Binghamton the only free-enterprise that took place on Sunday was at the Rexall Drug Store, the Baby Bear Market and the Park Diner.
The drug store dispensed medicine, ice-cream sodas, cosmetics and boxed candy. A delinquent husband, desperate for a last minute birthday gift for the "Misses," might buy something here, and escape “her” wrath, but his options were limited, predictable, and expensive. Today's drug stores would have failed in the fifties. Not because their merchandise, which runs the gamut: drugs, groceries, bulk beverages, hardware, stationary, auto parts, candy, electronics, records and CD's, but because they would have been shunned for breaking the spirit of Sunday, tempting the weak to discard the accepted ritual of worship, relaxation, and family activities.
The Baby Bear Market experienced, yet survived, local displeasure with their Sunday operation. They were the only local market open on Sunday. All other grocery owners closed up their stores and spent the day with their families, as they were expected to. The Baby Bear Market was shunned during the week, as a regular place to buy groceries by most everyone but a handful of nearby residents, most of who lived in apartments above the store. The store made up for the boycott by a brisk Sunday and late night business, being open till midnight; all other stores closed at five. It's easy to figure out that the boycott was put aside when the "Shunners" needed something on Sunday or late at night, which is why the store survived, and, in fact continues even today, though discount liquors, not groceries, line the shelves.
The Park Diner sits on a perch overlooking the “Rock-bottom Dam” in the Susquehanna River. It has maintained a family dining atmosphere for over seventy years. It's a classic diner, specializing in breakfast from midnight to noon, hot roast beef sandwiches and hamburgers the rest of the day. It was a place I loved to go as a kid on the rare occasion we went out to dinner. A miniature jukebox sat on every table, displaying the record selection in the "master" player at the end of the dining room. In fact, the boxes were functional; you could deposit a nickel and the record you selected would be pulled out of the stack in the "master" and played. It was magic to Madeline and me, but must have been agony to Lew and Kathleen, as their two darlings took turns playing "Mule Train" again and again and again.
The most notable difference between Sunday today and that in the Briar Patch, is the "volume." Sunday used to be quiet, the volume control turned way down. In the morning, most families either went to church or stayed in, enjoying a leisurely family breakfast and lounging around with the paper, the kids devouring the brightly colored "funnies," dad the sports section, and mom scouring the department store ads. Lawn mowers were silenced, as were the hammers and saws of carpenters. No delivery trucks rumbled by, nor did very many city busses, which ran on a drastically reduced Sunday schedule. Even kids were quieter, usually because they were wearing their "Sunday dress clothes," and didn't dare come home with a grass stain or a torn pant leg. Sunday dinner was served at two or three in the afternoon in most homes, so the earliest Woody and I could break free was at four, our parents reluctantly letting us don our play clothes, and sending us off with a Sunday caution, "Please play quietly, remember, it's Sunday." Most Sundays though, we didn't escape at all, being roped into an after dinner ride or a visit from family or friends, all decked out in "Sunday go-to-meeting clothes."
In the summer, the afternoon dinner was often forsaken for a picnic lunch at Chenango Valley State Park. This was heaven - great food, a lake to swim and canoe in, and hundreds of kids, anxious to play baseball, capture the flag or an enormous game of hide and seek. It was these Sunday afternoon picnics that motivated my father to build a camping trailer so we could spend most of July and August parked at the campground, across the lake from the picnic area.
Even drunks took a day off on Sunday. Bars in New York couldn't open until one in the afternoon, and in nearby Pennsylvania, not at all. In most towns, the local filling stations were closed, making extended road trips a particular challenge. In the greater Binghamton area, only two gas stations were open at all on Sunday, and then, only in the afternoon. Sundays were special, offering a therapeutic pause for society: quiet, relaxing and regenerative. It was lost when the Briar Patch closed, going the way of the buggy whip.
SECTION IV – JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL - THE MIDDLE YEARS
Junior High was an important “passage” for Woody and me. We entered as immature, sheltered, eleven year olds', and exited as fully developed teenagers, fourteen and ready for anything. Little did we know that we were still immature, sheltered, geeks, incapable of survival on our own. Still, Junior High was a major “passage.” We swam out of our little pond at PS-13, on the south side of Binghamton, and joined the graduates of seven other elementary schools in a big pond, called West (West Junior High School). It was only a short journey by bus, but socially, it was a world away.
47 - Greenhorns
Our passage began ahead of schedule, in the summer of 1954. Woody's older brother, Stewey and his friend Vincent DiStaphano took us under their tutelage to prepare us for Junior High. They were two years older, ninth grade seniors at “West,” so they sucked us in with a promise to save us from the harassment rituals unleashed on Junior High "Greenhorns." We knew all to well of the rituals. They were carved in stone, an important chapter in the “Law of the Jungle.” Most of the harassment took place on the bus ride from Longfellow. Two "boy's" busses carted male graduates of PS-13 to "West." Greenhorns were beaten and humiliated for the entire twenty-minute ride, "Welcome" to junior high!” Woody and I witnessed this indoctrination every September, from a vantage point on the playground next to the bus stop. We watched the greenhorns board the bus all spiffed up, relaxed and cocky. We gawked through the windows as upper classmen tossed them like rag dolls to the back of the bus, before it even pulled away from the curb. We also saw them at the end of the school day, the last to totter off the bus, hair mussed, shirts pulled out, or, turned around backwards and a look in their eyes that signaled defeat and terror. Yes, we knew what to expect, and bought into the salvation offered by Stewey and Vinnie, hook, line and sinker.
Woody and I spent the entire summer as slaves, running to the store for a bottle of soft drink, doing their chores and fetching fly balls when they decided to take batting practice. We were the lowest of the low in the pecking order, but it was worth it. They promised to help us escape the greenhorn rituals. I'll never forget that September morning in 1954 as I headed toward the junior high busses for the first time. Woody and I hung around at the bus stop with our protectors, waiting for the doors to open. Our nervous classmates must have wondered why we were so calm in light of the pending doom awaiting on the bus. The doors opened; Stewey and Vinnie scrambled onto the first bus and simultaneously yelled, "See you later, Suckers!"
Woody and I looked at each other in disbelief, and then felt the rough hands of Denzel Kelly’s older brother, Chuck, clasp our carefully combed hair, dragging us toward the other “boy's” bus, grinning and cackling, "This way, girls! I've been expecting you." We were pushed, shoved and mussed up right along with the rest of the freshman class, made to stand at attention, to respond with "Sir, yes sir," to endure accusations that we were sissies, babies and girls by Chuck and his gang of junior high bullies in the back of the bus.
This went on for several weeks, coming to an end, only because they tired of it, finding more pleasure in singing derogatory "Bus Driver" songs* and making poor Earl Landon, the puniest of all greenhorns, stand at attention and yodel.
The poor kid was still the target of bus bullies when he was a senior, three years later, all because he was a shrimp who had let it slip that he knew how to yodel. He's the greatest, as far as I'm concerned. If it weren’t for him, it probably would have been Woody and me, standing in the aisle, performing on the bus every day.
- A typical bus driver song was sung to the tune of, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” For example – “Oh we love our little driver, yes we do. Oh we love our little driver, yes we do. Oh we love our little driver, we love our little driver, in a pig’s ass, yes we do!”
48 – A HARD COURSE IN FRATERNITY PLEDGING 101
Woody and I survived our greenhorn days at West Junior High, in fact, lived to experience three additional hazing rituals; the first, as pledges to a semi-official “junior” fraternity. Alpha Zeta (AZ) was one of three fraternities at Binghamton High School. A group of West Junior kids, whose older brothers were members, established a "junior" branch of the fraternity. They lured in a swarm of prospective members with the prospect of automatic acceptance to the high school chapter. Suckers to the end, Woody and I accepted the offer and endured a fortnight of hazing, slaves all over again. On one occasion I was ordered to carry the pledge master “piggy-back,” from a school dance to his house, an eleven block trek.
I finally tired of the abuse, and with a small group of dissenters removed myself as a pledge in a prolonged and mean spirited war that took place entirely over the phone. Name calling, hang up calls, and disabling each others phones for hours, which you could do in those days by calling someone and then leaving your phone off the hook, were a few of the tactics used in the squabble. We forever severed ties with the junior AZ members and their "Chicks," who handled many of the salvos in the great phone war. We rationalized our justification for the schism with the thought that, "They're just a bunch of snobs, whose only claim to fame is that they live on the west side of town, and because of that, consider themselves Four-Hundreds. They taunted kids from other parts of town with an irritating chant – The West Side is the Best Side."
Woody didn't join the revolution, though he didn't fight for the enemy either. He stayed on as a pledge, gaining membership, while the rest of us started a new fraternity, The Kings Knights. Our new club outlawed pledging and hazing, held few meetings, and fell apart within two months. A month after that, I was back pledging to get in the "West Side is the Best Side" clique.
49 – BANANA DAY
Leaders Club was the second junior high membership where Woody and I displayed our recently honed hazing skills of: cowering, blind obedience and servitude. Leaders Club was an organization for boys who participated in and excelled in a variety of sports. Woody and I qualified, more for our widespread participation than our skill level. "Leaders" helped the gym coach in class, by leading exercise drills, participating in instruction sessions and otherwise being the coach's lackey. Of course, new members had to undergo a hazing ritual.
It took place in the swimming pool and the adjacent locker room. We were naked, the standard uniform for swim class, blindfolded and stupid - stupid, for voluntarily subjecting ourselves to yet another ritual of this sort. The event took over an hour. We were paraded around the locker room and pool, our hands forced into toilet bowls to squeeze bananas, passed off as turds, our faces blasted with shaving cream and limburger cheese; onion slices were shoved up our noses. For a finale, we were pushed off the high dive, into the pool. The coach watched the entire ritual in approval. Years later, it was revealed that he had a particular preoccupation with young naked boys. Fortunately, he never approached either of us.
At any rate, we passed the test; we became Leaders. The first kid I ordered to do something in gym class refused outright, and then slugged me in the stomach to emphasize his point. So much for the status offered by Leaders Club.
50 - Fraternity Pledging, again.
Our third, and most intense hazing ritual came at the hands of eleventh and twelfth grade "Brothers" in the real, not the junior, Alpha Zeta Fraternity. These guys were huge, at least to a couple of puny thirteen-year-olds like Woody and me. Several were the high school seniors that made up the front line and backfield of the football team. They totally dominated our lives for six long weeks. We were forced to memorize the Greek alphabet, which to this day still occupies valuable space in my brain, to carry a black book with us at all time in which demerits for imperfect response to orders were documented and to provide slave labor to all forty three members - carrying their books and mowing their lawns, to mention two of the many time consuming and embarrassing tasks.
On Friday nights we were sequestered in the back yard of a member’s house, while the weekly business meeting was conducted inside. One by one, we were brought before the group and chastised for our misdeeds; then given our "work-orders" for the following week. At the close of the meeting we were lined up in a queue and paddled by the largest and meanest fraternity brothers with tightly rolled magazines; we got three lashes for each demerit. My rear end was black and blue for the entire six weeks of pledging. After the paddling we were blindfolded and driven miles from town and dropped off in pairs on pitch-black desolate roads.
The grand finale, the formal initiation, took place over a two-day period. First, we were hassled as usual, at a Friday night meeting, paddled for the week's demerits, and driven blindfolded to the country, this time, we were dropped off without a partner and ordered to find our way to Quaker Lake by ten the next morning. At the lake, we were smeared with eggs, shaving cream, Limburger Cheese and cow dung in a two-hour ritual. The ceremony concluded with an intense paddling session, where we settled up, yet again, for each demerit received during the entire six-week pledging period. I took thirty-three hits, and walked away unaided. Some guys weren't so lucky. It was several days before they recovered from fifty or more lashes. The good guys in the fraternity took their turn with the magazine paddle, but only delivered a token pat, but the big guys took pride in being able to drop a pledge to his knees with a roundhouse swing. A year later, when it was my turn to deliver the blows, the first pledge I paddled ran me down and would have beat the living crap out of me if his older brother, the president of the fraternity, hadn't pulled him off. So much for brotherhood.
51 - Clothes Make the Man
The Law of the Jungle was amended at West Junior; all amendments were fashion related. For the first time in our lives, Woody and I began to care about how we looked. The thrill of getting our heads buzzed for summer was replaced with the need to grow it long so we could create a "duck tail" in back, and a "Bill Haley" curl in front; Wild root Cream Oil finished off the look by creating an oil slick on our foreheads. The fashion laws allowed a shorter haircut in summer, a "bal boa," in which the top was cut short and flat as an aircraft carrier, but the sides and back remained long. (And, we gripe about kid’s hairstyles today)
We were no longer free to wear just any old pants; they had to ride low on the hips, have a buckle in the back, and be "pegged" so tight at our ankles that we could barely slide them over our feet when we put them on. Some kids went to the ultimate extreme, and had zippers sewn in at the bottom so the “peg” could be as tight as possible. Belts had to worn with the buckle at the side, not in front. Cotton oxford cloth shirts with button down collars were mandated, preferably with a third button at the back center of the collar. The fashion laws required us to have at least one pink shirt in our wardrobe, to be worn with gray flannel slacks and a black knit tie. V-neck sweaters were outlawed for boys, unless they were worn backwards with a suit jacket, thus appearing to be a crew neck, the only approved male sweater style in the Briar Patch.
Shoes, for us "Hip" dressers, were plain front cordovans, accessorized with a metal cleat on each heel, to create a "cool" sound when we walked down the school hallway. Wool golf caps (cat hats) topped off the look and also had to have a buckle in the back. For the first time in our lives, Woody and I were fashion plates, snobs, who judged everyone around us by how they looked, not what kind of a person they were. Our three-year journey into "Shallow-hood" had begun.
52 - We all failed Sex-Ed
The reason we religiously obeyed the fashion laws at West Junior, was because “girls" had emerged on our radar screens. No longer were they the giggly, timid, classmates we grew up with at Longfellow. We were swept into a huge pool of fresh faces, who also decked out in compliance with fashion laws - poodle skirts, bobby socks and penny loafers. Sex was free and easy at West Junior, as long as you define sex as: holding hands, stealing a kiss while playing spin the bottle or passing around "love" notes in the hall. In my first week at West I picked up the vibes and phoned the best looking girl in my homeroom, Margaret Cavanaugh, for a date to the next, weekly, Friday night dance. She accepted my offer to meet her at the door, thus allowing me to pay her way, as was the tradition in the Briar Patch. When the last 45-RPM record of the evening was finished, "Good Night Sweetheart Good Night," we walked out of the school gym together and then parted ways.
My next date was to the movies, with yet another West Junior siren. This time it was a Sunday afternoon. My mother drove; Kendra (Dager) and I sat in the back seat of our 1954 Ford hardtop. During those first few months at West Junior I was like a grizzly bear poised at the side of a stream swarming with salmon headed for their spawning grounds; I was drunk on the prospect of so many choices. That was before the cliques emerged. By the end of the year the pickings were slim, forcing me, and the rest of the great lovers, to settle down and go steady, if we wanted to be assured of a Friday night date. Going steady was usually negotiated over the phone, prior to even a single date with the prospective mate. Our love connections were based on how girls looked, not who they were, thus these "arranged” unions worked quite well. The relationship was consummated with a friendship ring, an expensive three-dollar trinket that "proved our love." If we didn't have cash, we could get by without the ring, by inking our "intended’s" name on the back of our hand.
At this stage of our development, (not quite teenagers), Woody and I had no clue about sex. To us, it was a good night kiss or a make-out party that was initiated by some sort of kissing game. We only had a vague awareness that a more complicated process took place and resulted in babies. How could we know? Our sex education came from misinformed classmates and the "National Geographic," the only access to pictures of the naked female body we had. We were so stupid; we thought married couples used condoms to get pregnant, not prevent it.
We also followed an honor code; if a girl said, “NO,” we stopped whatever we were trying to do, most likely, just inching our hand up for a "feel" in the safety of a dark movie theater. This was the ultimate sexual achievement in Junior High; something neither of us accomplished, nor did many others, though you wouldn't know it if you heard the "lies" told in the locker room. By the time we finally figured it all out, pimples and full geek-hood had emerged, smashing our self-esteem and keeping us at a safe distance from the girls. There were legions in the same boat. You couldn't fail to notice us in class, “Clearasil” smeared on our zits and at odd times, unable to stand, because of physical circumstances beyond our control, which also, on occasion, forced us to walk down the hall with our books carried in front, not on our hips. I know people today, who swear they’d love to be a teenager all over again. Not me.
53 - When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
This Yogi Berra quote completely explains Junior High School. It was the time in our social development, when Woody and I got a chance to apply all we had learned, to make choices and then live with the consequences. The two forks we most often encountered, represented good and evil, and we took both. For example, we had the option of doing our homework, studying hard and making good grades, or goofing off, rarely studying and barely passing. Woody was the smartest, so he did the former; I opted for the latter. He'd come bouncing out of school to the bus at the end of the semester, sporting A's and B's on his report card. The report card I presented to my parents also contained A's and B's. Woody's were due to hard work, so were mine, though, the hard work I did was accomplished in a single afternoon, not over an entire marking period.
I conned the school secretary into believing I’d lost my report and she gave me a new blank one. In those days we carried our report cards from class to class at the end of the term and while we tensely waited in our seats, the teacher went through the stack, transferring marks from her ledger to the card. The process was repeated at every class. Nice teachers passed back the cards as soon as they were completed, ending our anxiety. The cruel ones made us wait till the class ended. If you lost your report card you had to repeat the process, go back to each teacher. I just took the blank card home and filled it out myself; I used different color inks and writing styles to make it look authentic. C's and D's were replaced with A's and B's. I used my fathers rubber signature stamp, it having served me so well in the Cub Scouts, to forge his name on the real report card, which I returned to school as required and saved the fake one for the next marking period. I guaranteed myself a semester of bliss. This worked quite well for a year and a half, and then I got caught. One of the teachers called home to discuss my low grade and after a confused conversation it finally dawned on both the teacher and my mother that I’d forged the report cards I brought home. All hell broke loose. My mother had to go to school for a conference with the principal, and I had to stay in every night after school and do my homework for an entire six-week marking period. I never brought home a fake report card again, though I did erase and replace a low mark here and there, when my goofing off exceeded my ability to "fake it" on the tests.
54 - Tone Deaf
The second fork in the road that Woody and I encountered forced a choice between music and sports. My musical career started when I was five; my mother signed up my sister and me for piano lessons with Mrs. Lacey, a music teacher who lived a few blocks away. Mrs. Lacey was the nicest, most pleasant person I ever met, always smiling and thrilled to see us. She perfectly personified the image of a fairy godmother. She gently imparted a love of music in just about every kid within walking distance of her home, and for only a mere 50 cents per lesson.
We learned the notes printed on the sheet music and the proper keys to push down on the keyboard, but nothing about the beat or the length of time to hold the note. This method worked great; most of her students were able to play a recognizable song after only a few weeks of lessons. It kept us interested, even somewhat smug, about our musical abilities. There was plenty of time to learn about half notes and quarter notes and the rest of the technical stuff later, when we were older and capable of comprehending the subtleties of music.
In my case, it came about when I was ten. I took lessons from a professional pianist, Don Grey, who, with a conductor's baton, literally beat the timing of the score into my head. He sat next to me on the piano bench while I played and winced. A metronome would have been kinder, but his method did the job quicker.
In addition to the piano I also took up the trumpet, taking lessons on the third floor, combination music room - library at Longfellow Elementary. Woody took clarinet. We entered West Junior with a limited proficiency, but enough to lure us into a try-out for the school band. Woody made it, but I missed the cut. Too many kids had been attracted to the trumpet in grade school music classes, so competition was fierce. Those of us who had learned via group instruction every other week at school, instead of through weekly private lessons, were out of the running. Mr. Green, the bandleader, suggested I try the French horn. It was similar to the trumpet and he needed three more players. I rented one from the school and gave it a shot. Three weeks later I had an audition. I eyed the music that Mr. Green selected for the test, and in a panic, simply pushed down any old key and blew. I faked it. Apparently it was close enough; I made the band, and then learned to play from the more skilled members in the French horn section, who actually knew what they were doing. When we came to a difficult passage you would often find me taking a break, turning the horn upside down to remove the build up of saliva. Woody and I practiced with the band three mornings a week, an hour before school started. My father dropped us off, but we had to lug our instruments home on the bus. I envied Woody with his little clarinet. I had to drag around my heavy French horn, practically pulling my arm out of its' socket. Thank god I hadn't tried out on a tuba.
In ninth grade I tried out for the basketball team and made it. Unfortunately, basketball practice was held at the same time as band practice. After being "missing in action" for two weeks, Mr. Green caught up with me to find out what was going on. He lectured on the obligation I’d assumed, to finish the year with the band. He claimed that he was depending on me for the upcoming concerts and competitions. His logic had no effect, but his physical presence did. He was twice as big as the basketball coach, and it was an era when teachers routinely used force to keep kids in line. I withdrew from basketball and can only speculate on how adversely the New York Knickerbockers were later affected by my choice to take the "musical" fork in the road at West Junior High.
55 – Wheels, The Root of all Evil
Since I was old enough to walk I was obsessed with anything controlled by a steering wheel. Most kids in the Briar Patch had the same affliction. Our baby car seats, lethal by today’s standards, were equipped with steering wheels, horns and gearshifts. We sat between Mom and Dad on the front seat of the car, facing forward, steering our little fannies off, aping the driving motions of Dad. The next steering wheel we got our hands on was that in a metal pedal car. Tricycles, bicycles, sleds, and wagons continued the pattern, adding speed to the equation, but lacking the essential element, the steering wheel. I was lucky; I had a hot rod, concocted by my father, complete with a piper cub steering wheel.
I never was weaned from the wheel. When I outgrew the hot rod I switched to the family sedan, even though I was only thirteen at the time. I was allowed to drive back and forth in the driveway. Sometimes I satisfied my lust by simply sitting behind the wheel pretending to be in motion. My father should have nipped it in the bud, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was a car fanatic himself. He often boasted about growing up in an era when there was no such thing as a driver’s license nor were there any age restrictions on driving. He resented government intrusion on "man's inalienable right to drive.” In fact, he fed my "addiction" by taking me on deserted country roads and teaching me how to work the clutch and gearshift. I did pretty well for a thirteen-year-old city kid. Farm kids, on the other hand, drove tractors and cars on the farm from age ten.
I "borrowed" the keys one afternoon when my parents were occupied with friends and had a set made for myself. My driving lust just couldn't be satisfied. It seemed like it would take forever to reach the legal driving age, so I took another wrong fork. I "borrowed" cars and General Motors made it possible. All GM cars: Buicks, Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs had a feature that enabled amateur car thieves, like me, to ply our trade. They had an on/off switch that didn't require a key, provided the owner left the switch in the "off" rather than the "lock" position. I spent a lot of my spare time checking out GM cars, to see if they were available for a spin at a future date. A quick glance in the window was all it took.
It probably isn't statistically valid, but my experience indicated that over twenty five percent of people who owned GM cars didn't lock the ignition. For a thirteen year old, the temptation was too much. Woody stayed on the proper path when he came to this fork in the road, but I had plenty of company as I slid into my first unlocked Chevrolet and drove away on a joy ride. It was only a ten-minute venture, but it was enough to hook me for good. For more than a year our little band of car-jackers, test-drove dozens of G.M. cars. I was partial to Chevys, Steve Fish liked Pontiacs and Tommy Conlon preferred Cadillacs. Our drives were usually short and the cars were well cared for while under our care, though the owner did have to travel to the next town to recover his vehicle. We knew from the movies, that criminals who returned to the scene of the crime got caught, so we rotated our target area.
56 - Hard Time in the Slammer
Eventually my "life of crime" reached a predictable climax. It happened in the summer of 1957. I was fourteen; my partners, Steve Fish and Bunny (Hymen) Horowitz were thirteen and twelve respectively. My mother and sister were vacationing in Atlantic City, several decades before Trump invaded the Jersey Shore and killed its relaxing seaside atmosphere. I stayed home because I couldn’t get a substitute for my paper route. Actually, that was a phony excuse. I didn't want to go where teenage girls would be able to see me with my mother and sister. How "uncool" would that be? Dad drove to work in my mother’s 1953 Hudson Jet, so I was stuck “home alone” with his prized 1954, two door, two tone, hardtop Ford. It just sat there in the garage, begging to be taken for a summer drive. I used my personal set of keys and answered the call. Steve, Bunny and I tooled out to Laurel Lake, a fifteen-mile ride into rural Pennsylvania. We crashed a party that some kids from Binghamton were throwing at a lakeside cottage and were treated as celebrity guests, being the only attendees who drove themselves to the bash. On our exit from the party I floored the Ford, planning to burn a little rubber, something hard to do on a dry and dusty dirt road. The wheels didn't spin, instead they grabbed and the car shot forward on the narrow lane, clipping a sapling and knocking the headlight out of kilter in the process.
It wasn't a major crash, but the damage was beyond my limited mechanical skill to repair and impossible to hide from my father. Using our collective teenage intelligence, which summed to an I.Q. of seventy-five, we decided the only way to resolve the dilemma was to drive to Florida and get it fixed in an all-night garage.
We hustled back to Binghamton and stopped by each of our houses for cash and a fresh set of clothes for the trip. I made arrangements with a kid on the next block to take over my paper route and then we headed south on Route 11, thrilled with the prospect of driving for two straight days and nights. We managed to make it to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania without incident, stopping at a diner every hour or so for cokes and fries.
Our luck went down with the sun. The damaged headlight didn’t work, so every few miles I stopped the car so Bunny could run out and check to see if it somehow had been jiggled back into operation by the bumpy road we were on. On one of these inspection stops a state trooper passed by in the opposite direction. Bunny spotted him and scrambled back into the car yelling, "Cheese it, the cops!" He'd been waiting his whole life to utter that phrase. All three of us were big fans and avid readers of "Hood" and "Gangster" stories. In fact, Steve carried a switchblade knife, to emulate the tough teenage thugs who were prime characters in the books we consumed. I drove off, watching our fate unfold in my rearview mirror; the trooper turned around in the middle of the road and sped after us, his flashing red light screaming for me to stop. I pulled to the side of the rood, the first intelligent thing I did that day and rolled down the window as he walked up to the car.
Before he could say I word, I started my jive routine. "Officer, I'm so glad you stopped. Do you know where there's an all night garage. Our headlight isn't working and my father asked me to see if I could get it fixed." He took one quick look at our frightened teenage faces and chuckled. "How old are you?" That did it; the jig was up.
He made me follow him to the barracks after putting Bunny and Steve in his back seat. Then we were separated and interrogated. They exchanged grins and winks when they brought us back together. “Do you boys want to spend the night in a motel room or the jail?” We opted for the jail. What can I say; we were 14 and stupid. We thought a stay in the slammer would be “awesome.” The jailer also exchanged winks and grins with the other troopers as he escorted us to a large cell in an isolated section of the county lock-up. We were thrilled. We’d be able to add, “ex-con” to our reputations.
The cell door was slammed; we were left to ourselves. We sat on the bunks swapping reports on what each other had said to the cops. Bunny bragged that he'd been "cool." He’d used his famous Brooklyn accent to throw them off. Instead of pronouncing his name as Hymen Horowitz, he said "Hay-man Horror-a-vitch." No wonder they got such a kick out of the interrogation. Steve reported that he managed to ditch his switchblade in the bushes outside the door to the barracks. We were safe from prosecution for carrying a concealed weapon. An hour later, the arresting officer was back at our cell and in our face, waving the blade and shouting, "Which one of you jerks belongs to this?"
Thankfully, Steve took a bug gulp and confessed. We then endured a ten-minute, animated and ranting lecture on the dead end road we were headed down. I was sure the trooper was going to beat the crap out of us, but instead, he walked us through the facility to meet the other “guests.” Underlying the stroll was the implied prospect that we would be relocated and mixed in with real criminals if we had any future encounters with the law. It worked. We were "Scared Straight," twenty years before the official program was conceived and implemented by inmates at Rahway Prison in New Jersey.
The next morning we were woken up by "Room Service," a trustee, delivering three metal bread pans filled with soggy corn flakes swimming the backstroke in lukewarm milk. At noon, we were returned to the barracks to await the arrival of our parents. Steve's mother, Bunny's father and my father pulled up in the Horowitz family sedan at one o'clock. Bunny, Steve and their parents pulled out and waved, as Dad and I stood next to his “one eyed” Ford, saying good-by and thanks to the troopers. I dreaded getting into the car for the trip to Binghamton, but my father proved he was the genius everyone claimed him to be. He simply looked over at me as we pulled away and said, "We'd better get a move on. You've got to do your collections. You're already a day behind schedule."
He was wise enough to know that I would beat up on myself more than he would. He skipped the lecture and parental punishment; he took a huge leap of faith and taught me a huge life lesson that day that has served me well all my life. You don't beat up on the defeated; you trust people, even teenage people, by giving them a second chance and leaving their dignity intact.
57 - Not all bad
I didn't spend my entire three years at West Junior on the wrong fork of the road. I learned Latin, which has only been of use to me as an adult when searching for an occasional word in a crossword puzzle. I stuck it out with the band, contributing in a minor way to its' achievement of an A-6 ratings in several musical competitions, and even a B-4 for myself and three other French horn players in a quartet competition. I graduated with perfect attendance, continuing my record from grade school. I received a special plaque and a twenty-five dollar check, signed by the very same principal who’d detected and prosecuted me for my report card forgeries. His smile was weak when he made the presentation at the awards ceremony, and non-existent, when he posed with his arm around my shoulder for a picture that appeared in the local paper.
I filled our house with bookcases, water glass carriers, lamps, bookends and assorted creations from wood shop, a mandated course for boys in those days. Girls couldn’t take it. They were restricted to Home Economics, a sign of the times. I also acquired and taught a parakeet (King) to talk and sit on my shoulder as I walked around in the house, and once or twice, quite by accident, out into the back yard. He even learned to wolf whistle better than his master.
Woody and I played every intramural sport available, becoming somewhat proficient, at a wide variety of athletic activities. Swimming was our favorite, mostly because we were good at it, at least compared to the kids in our crowd. We both had spent a lot of our growing up years in the pool at the YMCA, having been members since first grade. I spent summers at State Park, swimming every day and taking diving and life saving lessons from bored life guards, who would do anything to make the day pass quicker. Woody cut his teeth on long distance swimming at Silver Lake, where his parents had a small cottage. When not at the lakes, we rode our bikes across town to the public swimming pool in the First Ward, an Olympic size pool that charged a thirty-five cent admission and refunded a quarter when you returned the locker key on your way out. The quarter always disappeared at nearby, Lambs Ice Cream Parlor, one of several dozen soda fountains scattered throughout the city.
We both amassed scrapbooks filled with certificates and awards from numerous swimming competitions, which ultimately stimulated us to try out for and make, the high school team.
Woody graduated with honors, I with perfect attendance, two PS-13 alumnae ready for the world of high school. We’d taken our lumps, learned a few tricks along the way and couldn't wait to start a new life in a new school as full-blown teenagers. We were cool! Our hair was oiled down, our pants pegged, our shirt collars turned up in the back, our white bucks scuffed in just the right places and a prophylactic was straining at the leather in our wallets, making a distinctive ring, that remained undisturbed through all four years of high school. Yes Sir, we were just two fifties "men of the world" moving on.
Section V - A High School Vocabulary list
Woody and I attended Binghamton Central High School, one of two institutions of higher learning in Binghamton. The other was our arch rival, simply called “North.” It was on the other side of town. High school was a continuation of the junior high journey; it took me a considerable distance up both forks in the road, the good and the bad. The adventure unfolded as a chronology, but the events were stored in my memory in alphabetical order, much like the dreaded vocabulary lists I was forced to memorize in English class.
"A" - as in Alpha Zeta, and Arlington Hotel
Alpha Zeta is the fraternity I joined in the ninth grade. Some of my “brothers” attended the weekly meetings and learned the ins and outs of "Roberts Rules of Order" and other meeting skills that would be useful in adult life. I hadn't endured the paddle and the other humiliations of pledging for scholarly benefits. I joined for the jacket (a snappy, blue - corduroy number) and the beer blasts. The jacket was purchased with money I stole from my grandfather when I took the trip to Gettysburg in search of an all night garage. It came from his stash of bills hidden in his sock drawer. He lived in our basement for the last two years of his life. He moved there after his son, my uncle, Thomas Carns, died in a fire that also destroyed the old homestead. Tom went to Calvary Cemetery, Grandma to State Hospital, with advanced Alzheimer’s (called hardening of the arteries in those days). My grandfather, Ernest P. Carns moved into our family room in the basement. He received a pension from the Endicott Johnson Shoe Company and a monthly social security check. His expenses were minimal so he kept a big wad of twenties hidden among the socks in his dresser. I knew about the stash because every afternoon he yelled up the cellar stairs to me in his raspy, scratchy voice, “Hey Merlin. Here's a dollar. Run to the store and get me two packs of Pall Malls; keep the change.” His vocal chords were all but destroyed twenty years earlier in a primitive radiation therapy he underwent to cure his throat cancer.
Sometimes he didn't have singles, so he'd dig around in his sock drawer while I looked on. That piece of information came in handy the day I wrecked the Ford and needed cash to get it fixed. I sent in an order for an A Z jacket before leaving on the trip south, using a small portion of his stash to pay for the jacket and to finance the excursion. I hadn't been able to save a cent toward the jacket all summer, in spite of taking in over fifteen dollars a week from my paper route and lawn mowing enterprises. When I got back from the escapade I tried to avoid paying back the twenty dollars. I claimed he must have miscounted when he checked to see how much money was missing. At any rate, when I entered high school I had the jacket and a free pass to an endless series of beer blasts. How could it get any better?
I attended my first fraternity blast that fall. I was a fourteen-year-old jerk in a blue corduroy jacket on top of the world. It was a relatively austere affair, held in an empty equipment barn at Brady's beach resort on Quaker Lake. All the cottages around the small Pennsylvania Lake were quiet on that late fall date. I doubt if Tom Brady, the eldest of the Brady kids, had his father’s permission for the party. He, too, was below the legal drinking age of eighteen. Over a hundred teenagers made it to the barn, a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Binghamton. Woody was not among the attendees; he’d decided to let me travel this fork in the road without him. The keg was tapped and the fun began. It was my first glass of beer and it tasted awful, but I had another and then another. An hour later it tasted like the honey of the gods. I was drunk and didn't know it. The “in crowd” no longer intimidated me. I freely mixed with them as though we’d been friends all our lives. In fact, one of the most popular and best-looking cheerleaders (Mo Hickey) insisted that her boyfriend taxi me back to the city at the end of the party. She said she wanted to be sure the funny new kid made it home safely. That was before the three pitchers of beer that I’d consumed objected to taking up residence in my immature stomach. It was before they bolted for freedom in the middle of the storage barn. The floor became a skating rink and I, an unsteady skater. Down I went in the slop. It ended any chance of a ride home in the back seat of Mo’s boyfriend's car. It was a long walk home, but a sobering one. I couldn't stand the smell of beer for the better part of a year. The thought of putting a glass of it to my lips made me gag.
I managed to bring myself back into the game, to take up the hobby of my teenage years and I wasn't alone; I was joined by a squad of semi-misfits on a journey through the maze of growing up. The summer of 1958 was boom time for beer blasts. It was the first year in a long era of illegal parties in the hills of nearby Pennsylvania. (At least, I thought it was the first year of this stuff. I was too naïve to realize it had been going on for generations) We had neither PC's nor cellular phones to communicate with, but somehow the word got out to several hundred kids, who then made their way to Schmuck Hill, Hidden Valley, or Quaker Lake for a beer bash of epic proportions.
When there wasn't an official fraternity blast, my squad of guzzlers: Tommy Conlon, John Denniston, Jimmy Wilson, Wally Zagorsky, Don Campbell Matt Goukas, John Manley and others, held our own events, but on a miniature scale. We did our drinking in parks and in deserted backyards around town, always under the cover of darkness. We knew the stores where we could buy beer. There were several that Ok’d the transaction if you showed them a Social Security card. We could also bribe an older kid to buy it for the small price of a quart for himself. The price of Topper Beer, our favorite, was three quarts for a dollar; the storeowners always tossed in a church key with the purchase. He’d usually look us in the eye, smile and then ask, "Cigarettes, anyone?"
The beer and the beer blasts sustained us through high school; they allowed us to walk on the wild side and to taste the forbidden fruit with minimal negative consequence. The salad years are a time when our species is driven to buck the system; it can't be stopped. A majority of kids will challenge authority and find their way around the rules. I'm just thankful that drugs were not available in my Briar Patch.
(The) Arlington was the major hotel in downtown Binghamton. It was a multi-story landmark that came with a classy bar, restaurant, and two-tiered ballroom. It was a showpiece of early 1900's architecture. It also was center stage for most of the formal teenage social affairs held in the Briar Patch. Most of the high school fraternities and sororities held at least one formal or semiformal dance there, every year. Even my Alpha Zeta brothers mustered enough positive energy to run a charity fund raising dance every spring. The Spanish Ballroom at the Arlington was where these affairs were held. It was an impressive showcase for splashy events such as this. The walls were lined with ornate carved paneling. A second story mezzanine ringed the chandelier lit dance floor. This second level was sprinkled with tables and cozy little nooks that were perfect places for sneaking off to steal a kiss, the primary purpose in springing for a dance ticket and an enormous, tasteless wrist corsage. We repaid the generosity of the Arlington for allowing us to use their facility in the usual teenage fashion, by taking advantage of it - spiking drinks, yelling and running through the halls where paying guests were trying to sleep and staging fist fights out back. One time a hulking, well skilled teenage boxer asked me to step outside. I opened the door for him; he stepped out and I quickly pulled it shut, locked it and headed for the front door. I was dumb, but not stupid. Some real bad eggs (nobody I knew) got out of hand at one dance and flushed cherry bombs down the toilet, destroying the waste lines in the basement. This turned out to be a symbolic omen; the whole place was blown up a few years later when the urban renewal frenzy wrecked its havoc across America.
"B" as in Band, and Bowling
The Band at Binghamton Central was a highly disciplined and musically astute organization run under the gentle and skilled baton hand of Bernard Shiffrin. It also was an organization I joined, because of the strong-arm tactics of Mr. Green, the West Junior music instructor. He "transferred" all his graduating musicians into Shiffrin's band. We really had no say in the deal. I didn't want to be there, but still hadn't developed enough backbone to challenge his authority, so I "went along." We started daily rehearsals the first week of school in September, in a desperate attempt to prepare for marching at the football games. It turned out to be a good gig. We practiced outside in the beautiful New York autumn weather; we were guaranteed seats on the fifty-yard line and were provided free admission and transportation to all the games.
The football team looked good from the first kick off; they decimated team after team as they worked their way through the schedule. They even buried the heavily favored Elmira Free Academy, which was captained by the late, great, Ernie Davis. Woody and I were there, sitting on the fifty-yard line having the time of our lives, he blowing on his clarinet, me on a rented French horn. The difference between us was that when we marched through town after a victory, he actually played music with his licorice stick; I just walked in time, holding my horn, claiming to have misplaced the mouthpiece on the bus. It was bad enough to be marching down Main Street in a God-awful, wool band uniform. I wasn't going to add to my embarrassment by blowing off key on my horn in public.
My downfall came at the next-to-last game of the season; undefeated Central faced undefeated Vestal. I didn't show up, though I did call and report my prospective absence. I was working part time at Soldo's Drug Store, (see "D," for details) and Sam Soldo was sick of me being "missing in action" on Saturdays, his busiest day of the week. He gave me an ultimatum, "Be at work next Saturday or be out of a job." I went to work and missed Central's most exciting victory in their first undefeated season in thirty-seven years. I also missed watching the band screw up a critical marching formation at half time that was caused by the absence of a freshman French horn player.
Bernie wasn't happy when he called me into his office the following Monday. He all but kicked me out of the band for my last minute truancy. I saw the opening to even the score and took it. I quit, saying it was better for the band that I bow out now that I had a job and attendance at parades and concerts was questionable. He was miffed, but he let me get away with it. He didn't know that I was quitting to make up for being too chicken to quit Mr. Green's band the year before. It was a failing that cost me the opportunity to play basketball, not just on the West Jr. team, but possibly the high school team as well.
Bowling was introduced to me in a rush. Jim Wilson and I were paid $43.00 for delivering telephone books. He suggested we go bowling with the money. It was something I'd never done, though I had set pins once. It was a rainy and dreary Thursday in April and we were out of school for Easter vacation. We drove his crinkled (having recently been rolled) 1955 Chevy to Midway Lanes, a new, forty eight lane, bowling alley that had automatic pinsetters. I rolled 180 my first game. It was beginners luck according to Wilson. He was right. I didn’t come close to that score the rest of the day, and a long bowling day it was. We started before lunch and didn't leave the alley until midnight. We were broke. Our right arms were sore and probably longer than when we started. Our stomachs ached from the three quarts of soda and the dozen or so hamburgers we consumed in the thirteen-hour marathon. I had quite a welcome to the fast lane, the bowling lane, that is.
"C" as in Car Pool.
Car pools were the desired option for getting to high school in the Briar Patch. School busses were not an option. The small fleet that the school district had was only used for junior high kids. High school students were old enough to get there on their own, according to the school board. We could walk, bike, hitch hike or find a car pool. I walked once in a while, hitched a few times and wouldn't be caught dead on a bicycle. Though the word didn't exist in the good years, "Nerd" would have been the term applied to a teenager who rode a bike to school. Thankfully, I was able to join two car pools in my tenure at Central High.
The first one was run by John Fish. He was the older brother of Steve, the kid who accompanied us to Gettysburg when we “borrowed” my father’s car. Car pool is a misnomer; we didn't use a pool of cars, just John's, 1953 - four-door, green Chevrolet sedan, affectionately known as "The Turtle". The rest of us didn't own cars, nor would our parents allow us to use theirs. John collected two dollars a week from the five of us every Monday morning, a good deal for him and us. His gasoline bill for the week never exceeded three dollars. Our journey from the Fish residence to school was generally a somber event; we were still working to wake up or groping with the prospects of a taking a test we hadn’t gotten around to studying for.
Our commute to school got exciting the day John tried to see if he could make the trip without using his brakes. It was quite a challenge. He faced a route that involved a dozen or so traffic lights and a lot of traffic. Every day he tried and failed, but every once in a while we set a new record; we got closer and closer. He eventually developed a technique of slowing down three blocks from a green light, giving it a chance to turn red and then green again before we made it to the intersection. His car had a manual transmission and being able to downshift helped a lot. Finally one day, we made it to within a block of the school. We were coasting toward the last traffic light when it unexpectedly turned red. We all, including John, jumped out of the car in unison. We used all our might and slowed the vehicle to a crawl. It barely crossed into the intersection when the light finally changed back to green. We made it! It turned out to be a one-time thing. We tried and tried, but never made it again.
I joined my second car pool after John Fish graduated. This time, I rode in a 1956 - innocent looking Ford sedan that started life as a State Police car, but now was owned by John O'Neil, a classmate and friend from the neighborhood. The thing was loaded with a 420 horsepower motor. We loved it when John pulled up to a high school hot shot with a greased down DA with his arm hanging out the window, a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve. John would gun the engine and glance over at the driver. The guy always looked at us like we were crazy. "Who’s challenging me in the old ladies car," was the thought conveyed by the look on his face. Another rev and John had them sitting up and ready to race. It always ended the same. The hot shot sat at the light spinning his wheels while we tore down the block. The look on the guys face was more than worth the weekly price of the car pool.
"D" as in Drug Store.
Drug stores in the Briar Patch were quite different than the corporate cookie cutter variety today. Each store reflected the personality of the Pharmacist who owned it. Most had soda fountains. They limited sales to medical supplies, drugs and cosmetics. Sam Soldo, the neighbor who lived across the street from us on Chadwick Road on whose lawn I labored for years, offered Billy Wilson (the kid I dared to throw a match into the library wastebasket in third grade) and I part time jobs doing dishes, taking out the trash and other messy chores in the soda fountain. Billy and I took turns working on Saturday. When my stint with the school band ended I also worked one or two weeknights. Billy did dishes. He had the habit of eating raw hamburger as he worked. He stuck with our limited, entry-level responsibilities. I found I had a flair for food preparation and eventually performed as a full-fledged soda jerk. I even invented a sandwich, which was added to the menu. It was called the "Merlin" - cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo on rye.
My career lasted less than a year. I took another trek up the wrong fork in the road. It started innocently. I, and my fellow soda jerks helped ourselves to a snack every hour or so. I assumed it was an authorized practice, designed to entice us to stay on at a job that paid only eighty cents an hour. I took the privilege to another level and added gum, cigarettes and prophylactics. The gum and cigarettes made sense; I consumed both, but the prophylactics were a joke. All I ever used them for was to imprint a circular ring in my wallet or to pass out to friends for the same purpose.
Sam finally realized that more than an occasional soda or sundae was missing when I worked my shift. He let me go on the premise that he had to cut back. He never mentioned the missing cigarettes, gum or "rubbers," as we called them in those days and it never dawned on me that my “entitlement” routine was out of bounds. I was unemployed. It was a condition that stayed with me throughout high school.
"E" as in Egg Toss
Egg tossing in the Halloween season was a favorite for my gang of "Topper” beer drinkers. We bought dozens of eggs and quarts of Topper beer at a neighborhood store where the sale of goods was more important to the owner than whether or not we were of age. Some kids drove around throwing eggs at people walking along the sidewalk, not caring who got pelted. We were more discretionary. We did occasionally massacre "regular people," but we usually targeted a collection of local drunks, who sipped their booze in downtown alleys from bottles hidden in brown paper bags. They generally didn't catch on until the third of forth volley of eggs.
Our first pass usually resulted in a, "What was that," from one of the drunks. By the second or third go-around we'd find them standing in a befuddled state, knowing they were under attack, but not being able to figure out from where or by whom. Finally, their booze soaked brains would come into focus long enough to identify the source of the problem, a car full of laughing teenagers. We ended the onslaught when they waved their fists and swore, as we let them have it. On one famous siege it took twelve passes before the overcooked pair of sots finally reacted. What a wonderful fall sport.
The most famous egg toss I ever witnessed, but unfortunately did not participate in, was at the welcoming ceremony for our new high school principal, Mr. Willard Hamlin. He transferred to Central from our archrival, North High. He called us into an assembly in the school auditorium on his first day on the job. He laid out his plan for our journey through high school using nautical terms. He said he was the captain and we were the crew. The teachers were the officers. We all concluded the same thing at the end of his long boring oration, "What a pompous ass!" When we finally were released, only because the lunch bell rang, he walked out the front door with a swagger. We walked into a three-pronged barrage of eggs. I don’t know who concocted this magnificent closure to his outrageous bombast or where they had secured the eggs so fast. They must have been friends with kids in North, who warned them what an ass he was and how he would launch his new ship. The egg toss resulted in a second assembly. We “all” were chastised for the crimes of a few, "A cowardly attack,” he proclaimed. It was not just an attack on him, but worse; it was an attack on his distinguished position. It was the best assembly I ever attended. I imagine the sea of grinning faces he looked out upon must have appeared as white caps, keeping with his nautical theme and driving him a little batty.
"F" as in Fake Proof
Fake proof wasn’t essential if you wanted to drink before you reached the legal drinking age of eighteen. It was fairly easy to buy beer at a many small grocery stores where they didn't bother to check your age. You also could bribe an older kid to get it for you. Getting served in a bar was another story. The owner’s livelihood was dependent on maintaining a valid liquor license and it would be suspended if they were caught serving minors. They asked for proof and my crowd used the Motor Vehicle License Bureau to thwart the regulations of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, referred to by bar owners as the "dreaded" ABC Board.
The two forms of acceptable proof in the 1950's were driver’s licenses and draft cards. Fortunately, the License Bureau, which was eventually renamed, DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) kept racks of blank driver's license forms in their offices. A person seeking a license simply filled out a blank form and then received an official stamp when it was approved by one of the hostile DMV clerks. I was taught to create an official stamp by David Wiseman, a friendly older kid on my paper route, who was a proficient artist and ran a small business making fake licenses. It was simple. All you had to do was insert a piece of carbon paper between the blank application and the seal on a legitimate one and retrace the insignia. .
I went home excited, certain I could master the feat. I practiced several times, using my sister’s driver’s license and a blank piece of paper before I was ready for the real thing. Finally, I tried it using an official license bureau form. It worked great, though by this time my sister’s license looked odd because of the darkness of the official stamp, having been inked over several times. My first sale was to Tommy Conlon'. I made a fake license for him and myself and together we went to Tino's bar to test them out. Tino's was a small, six stool watering hole on a side street in downtown Binghamton. Most of their patrons worked in the nearby Endicott Johnson Shoe factory and stopped in on their way home. Tommy and I bravely walked in, the fake driver’s licenses securely tucked in our wallets, and a sloe gin fizz, the most adult sounding mixed drink we knew by name. Mr. Tino asked us for proof, which we eagerly pulled out and handed over. "OK boys, sorry to have questioned you, but you can't be too careful these days," was the welcome response he uttered. We were a little nervous as we consumed the odd tasting “adult beverage,” but we got over it. Tino's became our hangout. Tommy and I were joined by several other underage drinkers, all of whom were equipped with first class fake licenses purchased from me at a fair market price of three dollars.
Not only was I of "legal age," I also had a business, until the police raided the school and confiscated all the phony licenses. Wiseman had produced most of them, but I’d manufactured several dozen myself. Nobody ratted on us; the honor code held up, but I knew I’d dodged a bullet and decided it was a good time to get out of the business.
"G" as in Greiner got his teeth knocked out.
Greiner, Carl - was one of the biggest kids in Central High. I’d guess he was six foot five or better and well over two hundred pounds. The average male student was five ten and weighed 160 or less, so Carl was something of a giant. His older sister Ann was tall as well and in several of my classes. Paul shot up to his high school size the summer before he started at Binghamton Central. He hadn't mastered control of his bulk, though he was coordinated enough to make the JV basketball team. We were leery of him because of his mass and because he was developing into a bully. He’d knock the books out of smaller kids’ arms when he came up behind them in the hall. I watched him the day he pushed Jerry Downey's books to the floor. Jerry was a classmate of Carl since grade school. Carl wisecracked, "Dropping a few subjects, Jerry?" Jerry was more than pissed; he was boiling. He’d endured Carl's bullying for years. "Meet me at the corner of Seminary and Murray after school you big ass; we'll settle this once and for all," Jerry hissed at him through clenched teeth.
I was there with a few dozen nervous and entranced onlookers, unable to fathom how this battle between David and Goliath would play out. Carl stood holding his books as Jerry turned the corner, slammed his own stack to the ground and strode up to him. He knocked Carl’s books from under his arm. The fight was on. Carl looked nervous. He missed his first several attempts to KO Jerry, managing only to graze an ear. Someone in the crowd shouted, "Not in the ear, you'll kill him," reminding us all - that three months earlier - Jerry lay in a hospital bed in critical condition with an ear infection that raged out of control. We even said a prayer for him in homeroom, an action that would not be allowed in school today. I don't know if Carl heard the cry from the crowd or not. He kept swinging at Jerry's head and missing. Jerry ducked under his slow, telegraphed punches and unleashed a long sweeping right hook in return. It ended at Carl's lower jaw, much of its' fury spent on the long journey to the target. Jerry managed to deliver the blow by standing on his toes and stretching for all he was worth.
The fight continued for about three minutes. Carl’s pattern of swinging and missing was interspaced with Jerry connecting a right to Carl's lower jaw. The pattern kept repeating. Then, as quickly as it started, it ended. Carl shrieked, put his hand to his mouth and stood dumbfounded; the four front teeth in his lower jaw were lying perpendicular to the rest of his ivories. A gush of blood spurted through his fingers to the sidewalk below. The crowd was stunned - and like me, a little sick to their stomachs. Carl's sister came to the rescue and took his hand from his mouth; she replaced it with a tissue. Then she, Carl and Jerry hurried up the street to the Greiner's dentist, who fortunately was only a block away. The next day, a subdued Carl came to school with a mouth full of wire holding his re-implanted teeth in place. He claimed to have lost the fight, because he'd recently had braces, which left his teeth susceptible to falling out. Even so, I never saw nor heard that he knocked anyone's books to the floor again. He retired from bully school.
"H" as in Hitch Hiking and Haunted Houses
Hitch Hiking was a vital and acceptable means of transportation in the Briar Patch, for both kids and adults. You were considered a nerd (though the term had not yet been invented) if you carried a brief case, wore a slide rule on your belt or rode a bike. Thus, the two-wheeled form of transportation was not an option for teenagers unless you wanted to join the geek parade. Busses were of limited use, providing transportation from downtown to neighborhoods. They didn’t fit most of our timetables or destinations, so we walked or hitched. Two teenagers could snag a ride to Quaker Lake on a sunny afternoon in about ten minutes. A ride to Vestal using an educated thumb could be had in five minutes or less. Hitching at night tripled the wait time, but still got us where we were going. Kids, adults, sailors and soldiers, standing by the side of the road with a thumb cocked and beckoning were a common sight in the Briar Patch.
I thumbed for about three years, from age fourteen to seventeen; after that I only did it when I ran out of gas or had a break down, a fairly common occurrence with the old heaps I drove. I never had a real bad hitching experience, just a small incident when a suspicious looking driver picked us up near Apalachin, the home of Joe Barbara, the reputed Mafia boss who hosted the famous 1957 bar-b-q where Gambino, Profaci, Genovese, Bonanno and others were arrested by local police as they fled the scene. The guy who picked us up turned to Tommy Conlon and me as we sat on the front seat of his car and pulled a small six-shooter from between his knees. He made sure we had seen it and then slipped it into his shoulder holster that was hidden under his jacket. He said, "I guess you guys are OK. I won’t need the gun" We sat frozen for the next several miles and then weakly asked to be let out as we came to a brightly lit area. "This is our stop," we lied. We said thanks and tumbled out the door. We could hear him chuckling as we scampered to the safety of the streetlights. We were miles from our destination, but more than happy to hoof it the rest of the way.
Haunted Houses were all over the place in the Briar Patch. They were a favorite venue for teens. Any deserted house was "haunted," especially if the siding had weathered and the yard was overgrown with weeds and littered with rubble. We were a generation of easily scared kids. We’d been brought up on old wives tales and horror movies. My gang went inside every haunted house on the south side of town. We usually did so in the safety of daylight. Even in full sunlight it was a terrifying, which is why we did it. By the time we made it to Central High there was one haunted house we hadn't explored, though we’d tried on several occasions. It was an old country manor house located several miles from town on a long and deserted dead-end road in a densely wooded area. Every time we tried we were stopped in the foyer by an eerie flapping, rustling noise from the second floor.
One summer night after a macho bragging session fueled by Topper Beer we decided to try again, equipped with flashlights, weapons and the security offered by "safety in numbers." Eight of us "Ghost Busters" pulled up to the front door of the deserted house; moonlight spilled down on its' peaked roof, peepers chirped in the adjacent meadow. Cotton Kurtz, the bravest soul in the group, was the first to enter. He swaggered in carrying a three-foot machete and a heavy-duty flashlight. All eight of us were soon charging around the first floor. Kurtz was out of hand, as usual, and crashed through the wall with his machete, hacking through plaster and lath as if it was butter. I stood quietly in the front parlor listening for sounds from above when the blade of his jungle knife sliced through the wall in front of me. It cut my shirt, but miraculously stopped just as it pushed into the skin on my chest. It didn't release any red corpuscles, but you wouldn't have known it from the bloodless skin tone on my stunned face. "I had met the enemy and he was us."
We finally established an orderly exploration and made our way up a circular stairway to the second floor. The lethal weapons were holstered. We entered the 2nd floor landing and encountered a squishy, lumpy floor that had been created by several inches of bat dung mixed with plaster from the ceiling. It had probably crashed to the floor under the weight of years of accumulated bat dung. The underside of the roof was completely hidden by the hundreds of bats hanging from the exposed rafters. One look and one smell was all it took; we raced down the stairs and outside to safety. Mother Nature was a lot scarier than an old ghost.
"I" as in Iowa Tests.
Iowa Tests were administered every year to public school students. It was two days of torture and boredom. A proctor handed out each section of the test, started a time clock and signaled us to open the booklet and start reading the questions. Answers were recorded on a single master sheet that covered all sections of the test. A stern warning was prominently displayed at the top of the sheet, ordering us to fill in the circle next to the selected answer with a #2 lead pencil, being sure to stay within the outline of the circle. Also displayed at the top of the page was a sample question and answer, properly filled out for us "Dummies" - who might not understand what staying in the lines meant.
We were tested on Math and English, an maybe other subjects, I can’t remember. It was depressing to be handed a two page answer sheet with hundreds of numbered circles on the first day of the test, knowing that the time allotted for each section was excessive and that most of the day would be spent waiting for the next batch of questions to be handed out while our heads rested on folded arms. The only point of interest during the two-day ordeal was to see if a design or pattern developed from the filled in circles on the answer sheet.
I usually did fairly well on these tests, in spite of the drudgery, but one year I did spectacularly well. I hadn’t glanced at a single question. I simply opened the booklet when it was handed out to keep the teacher from detecting my tactics and then filled in the answer sheet in a manner that created an intriguing pattern. This was art, not science; my "creation" gained me the highest score I ever achieved in six years of "Iowa" testing.
"J" as in Jet, ala Hudson Jet
Jet was a misnomer for the economy sized, five-passenger town car produced by the Hudson Automobile Company in the fifties. It was more like a glider than a jet. Dad finally gave in to Mom's campaign for a car of her own and purchased a used 1953 Hudson Jet, a three quarter size car conceived by Hudson Marketing executives as a product for "The Little Lady.” Ours was black when it first came to live with us, but my father had the rusty rocker panels replaced and the entire car repainted a gag producing, two-tone, bright blue and white. It was an embarrassing member of the Lessler stable and the only vehicle I was allowed to drive unless I was going to a formal school dance or other special event.
It really was a pathetic thing. A small, straight-six engine propelled it. A column shifter was used to change gears: 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It didn't go fast, turn any heads in passing nor deliver a big payload, but it did have one unusual characteristic that earned it fame in my circle of friends. It coasted farther than any car made. Quite often we took a little ride after school into the nearby hills of Pennsylvania where traffic was light and cops were non-existent. We had little money for gas so we sought routes where it was possible to coast for long distances. Some of these coasting routes went on for miles, but we had to speed recklessly down the hills and take some of the sharper curves on two wheels in order to carry over the next ridge. The Hudson Jet beat all comers; it hardly lost speed as it coasted up hills that brought most cars to a halt. When we coasted, we turned off the key to minimize gasoline usage. One time I turned the key off and then back on with the car still in gear. BOOM! It backfired; it scared the hell out of my three passengers. I tried it again, and the same thing happened.
I’d discovered something that ultimately cost my parents dearly, all our parents. We made our cars backfire whenever we wanted to scare or impress someone strolling down the sidewalk. We didn't know that the bang was caused by the ignition of unburned gas in the exhaust system It wasn't long before the muffler simply blew apart. I think my father replaced three mufflers before he figured out it might be my doing not faulty equipment or shoddy installation. The climax came when I blew the exhaust system off his pride and joy, his three-tone, 1958 Edsel. It was a financial disaster; his prize lemon had two mufflers and two resonators. All four had to be replaced.
"K" as in Knee Driving
Knee driving is a skill I perfected on the back roads of Pennsylvania during the many swimming excursions I took to Brady's Beach at Quaker Lake. It started by accident on a hot muggy August afternoon in 1957. I attempted to change into my bathing suit while driving. I wanted to dive into the lake the second I got there. My hands were occupied removing clothes and slipping on my bathing suit so I maintained the direction of the car using my knees to move the wheel. I discovered a hidden talent. I was able to keep the car in the middle of the lane and on the right side of the road. I could even handle gentle curves. I kept at it long after I'd changed into my suit, fascinated by the experience. I was hooked.
Over the next several weeks I perfected the fine points of knee driving; eventually I could maneuver the car around sharp corners and winding curves. I set an objective for myself, to drive to the lake without using my hands. It meant I had to learn to back out of our driveway and get the car turned so it would go down the street on the right side of the road, maneuver through several stop signs and right angle corners to get me out of the neighborhood, and on to Pennsylvania Ave heading south. From there I would continue the journey for fifteen miles on a winding two-lane road to Quaker Lake. I didn't accomplish my goal that first summer, but I practiced whenever I got the chance and finally made it all the way to Quaker Lake using only my knees to steer the following summer.
This driving skill has come in handy for me as an adult, especially when my four daughters were little. In many situations I needed both hands to handle an emergency and could do so with ease. I still use my knee driving ability to change into jogging clothes en-route to a local park or to impress my son when he claims I am too conservative. I'm thankful that my skill is so well honed that I have never had to suffer the embarrassment of veering off the road and then being pulled from the wreck with my trousers half off, a sneaker on one foot, a shoe on the other and a pair of jogging shorts on the seat next to me.
"L" as in Leslie, King of the Voc's, and Lunch Hour
Leslie is the largest human I've ever seen in person. He was part of a small group of misfits who attended the vocational training program in the basement of Central High School. Print Shop, Auto Repair, Beauty Culture and Welding made up the curriculum. Vocational students, "Vocs," or "Vokies," as they were disrespectfully referred to in those days, did not attend regular high school classes. Relegated to the basement, their curriculum was designed for kids who couldn't or wouldn't pass core high school subjects. It was designed to prevent them from dropping out of school and to provide them with usable life skills. There wasn’t any cross socialization between the Vocs and the regular high school students. We didn't even share the same entry to the building. A separate and obscure portal was provided for the Vokies who went to class in the bowels of the building. We were afraid of them. They were scruffy, tough, surly and physical. They often engaged in huge "war like" football games on the front lawn of the school, displaying an animal like ferocity that made us glad we weren’t invited to play. Leslie was "King of the Vocs." A single swat from him ended any disagreement. His hands and head were huge; he seemed to be of another species, something from the Neanderthal branch.
Two legends surrounded Leslie's physical attributes. The first, was that he couldn't feel pain. He was reputed to have been hit in the head with a tire iron during a brawl and didn't even flinch. He’d simply plowed ahead and destroyed his attacker. None of the regular school toughs ever took him on. Not even the guys who drove sixty miles to Elmira or Scranton to challenge a rival high school student, seeking to square off with the "best fighter in town." I don't know if it was the "no pain" legend or his size that kept these guys from an encounter with Leslie. I do know that they did the right thing, having seen him in action with his classmates on the school lawn.
The second, "Leslie Legend," was that he could fit three billiard balls in his mouth, a staggering feat when you consider the average human can't force in a single ball. I know, I tried and failed, as did many other kids in my crowd at Central High. Leslie was given wide berth, and with good reason. I saw him recently. He was standing in the check‑out line at a local supermarket. His stature had not diminished one iota, which surprised me, since everything else from that era looks smaller to me when I see it today. He still projects a terrifying profile. I hung back until he checked out, watching the clerk pass him his change, and seemingly lose her hand as his giant paw swallowed it during the exchange. He strode out the door carrying three heavy sacks of groceries as though they were bags of marshmallows. I have no idea what his full name is, but "Leslie - King of the Vocs," is a well-known moniker to an entire generation of Central High students.
Lunch Hour in high school was an hour of freedom in the middle of a day of imprisonment. I didn't spend one second of it in my three years at Central in the school cafeteria. I walked past it once and glanced in to see what it was like. My crowd was too "Cool" to eat with the nerds and geeks who did use it. We were too anxious to get out of the building for a smoke. We spent our lunch hour squashed together in Baird's Bakery, a small sweet shop that sold milk and soda in addition to baked goods. For reasons I’ll never fathom, they tolerated fifty or more kids hanging out on their lunch hour, blocking all but the bravest adult customers from the store. It was like being in Times Square on New Years Eve. It was so crowded we barely had enough room to maneuver a sandwich from a brown paper bag to our mouths. I never understood the attraction, but everybody who was anybody ate there. It was quite a challenge to consume three roast beef sandwiches, made from Sunday Dinner's left-overs, two cupcakes, a pint of milk and an apple, while jostling around in a sea of surging teenagers. When Baird's Bakery became too full to squeeze in the front door, we went down the street and ate at Lottiss's Pool hall, the closest place that also tolerated a massive crowd of hungry teenagers in exchange for the sale of a few dozen bottles of soda and milk. No matter what, even when forced to eat outside in the rain or snow, we never, ever ate in the school cafeteria.
"M" as in Mothers Day Flowers
Mothers Day is a perplexing event for mothers and children. It's a forced role reversal for two parties ill equipped to handle the switch; they are uncomfortable in each other's role. Kids burn toast, fry eggs to a rubbery demise and spill orange juice on the bedspread in a futile attempt to make Mother's Day a special event with breakfast in bed. Mothers are forced to fake surprise and delight, in spite of knowing that their laundry and dishwashing chores have increased by twenty five percent. For my high school cronies and me it was a distressing annual occurrence. The woman who slaved to keep us nourished, healthy, clean, neat and socially acceptable must now be repaid for a year of devotion with a single gesture. It was the same woman, who along with her spouse, we dreaded being seen with in public, especially in view of female classmates. Tommy Conlon and I solved the problem by strategically waiting to shop until sunrise on the second Sunday in May. The florist shops were closed; the candy stores shuttered, but Vestal Hills Cemetery was open. The graves were adorned with a wide selection of potted plants. We parked in the woods nearby and slipped into the burial grounds. The early morning mist eerily rose from the grass. Shopping was easy. We picked out the flowers we wanted and took them. No lines, no fumbling for the right change. Our mothers never questioned the source of the beautiful potted perennials we handed them, crudely wrapped in white tissue paper, even though they knew we were penniless. It's yet another of those poignant childhood memories that brings a bright red burn to my ears. At I can report, that I kicked the habit long ago.
"N" as in New York City Trips
New York City was often our destination on a Friday evening after downing several quarts of Topper Beer. Usually we didn’t made it past Hancock, a small village, forty miles east of Binghamton - one hundred and sixty miles short of the objective. Hancock saw a lot of teens from Central High in those days because their bars stayed open an hour later than Binghamton’s. I often found myself crammed into the back seat of a friend's sedan with seven or eight inebriated pals. We’d chosen to risk life and limb rather than be chastised for chickening out on a second, “last call,” this one in Hancock at two in the morning. The decision whether or not to go to New York was made at the bar. Every once in a while we made it to the Big Apple, arriving at Times Square at sunup, wondering why we'd bothered. We took a quick walk around Times Square to gawk at the freaks and then had a cheap breakfast of toast and coffee and headed back home. We told our parents we’d gone camping; it was too late to call them. We also took late night jaunts to the north, usually ending up in Cortland where we’d have a milk shake and drive back. It sounds stupid now, but it made perfect sense at the time.
"O" as in Ooo-gah!
Ooo-gah is the sound I wanted emanating from my car when I pushed on the horn ring. That wonderful sound came from the horns of Model-T era cars, but was expensive to achieve in the fifties. The horns were rare and pricey. They were complicated mechanical contraptions that used a motor to force air through a metal bellows, creating the distinctive guttural tone. Tommy Conlon was lucky; he got his hands on one - a treasure discovered in the attic of his grandfather's garage. He painstakingly coaxed it back to life and became the envy of the south side. The rest of us scoured the hulks of vintage cars rusting in junkyard pastures, but never came up with an ooo-gah horn. We settled for truck horns. Our parents never suspected their cars had been modified to scare the hell out of pedestrians. The buttons controlling the horns were installed under the dash, assessable to our knowing fingers, but hidden from all others. Tommy's horn was the best attention getter. It was perfect for cruising through town on a hot summer night, but our truck horns were a close second. We could affect a similar reaction when we meandered through the city. Our blaring truck horns would cause teenage girls to wave and giggle and they were more than capable of startling old ladies, sometimes causing them to drop a bag of groceries. Even today, I sometimes find myself fumbling for a horn button under the dash, but alas, it’s just a memory I’m groping for.
"P" as in Pool – “trouble in River City.”
Pool replaced baseball as my favorite pastime in high school. Woody and I discovered the game when we joined the YMCA as first graders. We waited for our ride home in the poolroom every Saturday after swim class. We thought the objective of the game was to hit the balls as hard as possible. Some balls ended up in the leather pockets at the corners of the table, but most flew over the rail and landed on the floor. Our favorite game found us at opposite ends of the table rolling balls toward each other as fast as we could. We strived to get all sixteen balls moving at the same time and at great speed. In my first year of high school I discovered the real pool games: eight ball, rotation and straight pool. My appetite was whetted at the Lottis Pool Hall. It was a teen hangout located just a short hop from the school. It was a place I stumbled onto by following the lunch crowd after being turned away from Baird’s Bakery. It soon became a second home. For a penny-a-minute you could play straight pool. We usually played to fifty or one hundred. We kept score of on a string of wooden beads hanging over the end of the table. Eight ball and rotation were ten cents a game; they gave the owners a better rate of return. A typical match lasted less than five minutes. The Lottis brothers, who owned the place, racked balls, collected dimes and gave pointers on the game. They tried to teach us to shoot softer so the cue ball would go where we aimed it. It was a futile attempt to rid us of the technique we developed on the tables at the YMCA. I eventually shifted my lunchroom to the pool hall. I regretted that decision the day a classmate was struck with a grand mall seizure in the middle of an eight ball game. He dropped to the floor, spasms racking his body. It scared the hell out of us. One kid threw up. Then we all followed. The floor was awash in puke; kids were slipping and falling in it. The trashcan by the door was filled with discarded lunch bags.
We eventually returned the pool hall to permanent "lunch room" status, added it as a stop on the way home from school and a small group of us would sneak there for the hour we were supposed to be at St Patrick's Church taking religious instructions. The place was deserted, so the Lottis brothers had time to kill; they taught us the fine points of “six ball” and “nine ball,” the two primary "money games" of the day. When I finally got caught skipping religious class, the school principal was none to happy. He was upset that I skipped out of the religious class, but he was livid that I spent my "release time" in a pool hall. I could almost hear him break out into song - "We've got trouble - right here in River City, it rhymes with "T" and starts with "P" ..... and stands for POOL." He sentenced me to after school suspension and then let me choose how I would settle things with the "Church." I could continue to be released from school every Wednesday for religious instruction if I confessed my truancy to the nun running the program or I could discontinue it by bringing a note from my parents. The choice was clear. I'd rather face my mother with my crime than a surly nun with a good right hook. I dropped out of religious instruction. To this day, my truancy serves me well when I'm lured into a match. They don't call me "Stick" for nothing.
"Q" as in Quaker Lake - "Mailbox Football"
Quaker Lake was a Mecca in the Briar Patch, drawing us like pilgrims to a holy shrine. It’s where we learned to drink beer. It’s where we cooled off, tanned and swam in summer. We’d go to deep water, dive down and harvest a mass of algae from the thick bed of seaweed. Then we’d arrange it in a mound big enough to cover our heads and shoulder and glide into shallow water to scare the girls. Quaker Lake is also where the AZ initiations were held. I’ll never forget mine, walking around with a mass of limburger cheese and shaving cream covering my head, waiting in line with the rest of the hapless pledges so we could receive our final paddles and become a full fledged member. The lake is also where I played out my "car borrowing" swan song. It happened many years after I'd given up test-driving General Motors automobiles with the popular “off” switch that meant you didn’t need a key to drive it. On a hot August evening we decided to head to Quaker for a midnight swim. We needed towels. We disembarked from our two-car caravan and scoured the backyards of an affluent south side subdivision, searching for towels on clotheslines. The mission was successful; we quickly rounded up an armload of towels. I showed up with a 58 Chevrolet convertible; it had been parked at the curb, unlocked and beckoning. Down went the top and our two-car parade to the lake grew to three. What a wild ride it was. We stopped every few miles to change drivers; everyone wanted a turn. By the time we reached Quaker Lake the fate of the hapless vehicle was back in my hands. I skidded around a sharp corner as I came to Brady’s Beach and knocked over a mailbox. The game was on. In ten minutes I’d circled the lake, knocking down every mailbox along the route. I guess you could call it mail box "football." Mailbox "baseball," a similar pastime, is a game I first saw in the movie, "Stand By Me." A group of teenage punks smashed mailboxes with baseball bats. Each smash counted as a run. Since I didn't use a bat in my adventure, but just plowed right into the structure like a lineman taking out a quarterback, the game was more like football. Everybody had a turn; even the guys driving their own cars got carried away and took out a few "Quarterbacks." The climax came when I drove to the infamous haunted house in the deep woods where we’d uncovered its' mystery, an infestation of bats a few months earlier. An old barn stood behind the deserted house; it was a perfect place to ditch the car. The area was remote; it would be years before it would be found. The barn door was stuck so I simply revved the engine and aimed the car at the center of the door. I’d had a lot of practice plowing into things by then. The car crashed through with ease and then came to an abrupt stop when it hit a low concrete curb, the base of a horse stall. John Manley, riding shotgun, banged his head on the windshield. He wiped the blood off his forehead and broke into a belly laugh; he was OK.. The next day we spent hours slinking through the woods and fields leading to the barn to remove our fingerprints from the car. We were afraid we'd be caught and put in a real jail this time. We “swore to God,” we'd never steal again if he just gave us a pass on this one. I can't vouch for the rest of the crowd, but I know I lived up to my end of the vow.
"R" as in Record Hops
Record Hops were the rage in the fifties when rock and roll music was emerging. Fans of Bill Haley, Elvis and Little Richard were considered non-persons by local radio DJ's. They bored us with tunes by Frank, Bing and Doris. They’d only play a “rock” song only every hour or so. We found other ways. The country became awash in 45 RPM records, distinctively designed with a half dollar size hole in the center. We had lunch box carrying cases to hold our favorite tunes. "DJ's go to hell" was our mindset as we dealt with an "establishment" that shut us out. Everywhere we went, our 45's went too. The bands we hired to play at Fraternity and Sorority Dances also shut us out, inundating the hall with big band music, music that didn't even register on the scale of, "how good does this make you feel." Ted Urda was a teenage classmate who fought back. He started a band with an electric guitar and two friends. They weren't very good, but at least they played what we wanted to hear. It wasn’t long before Urda’s band and a few other amateur groups began to monopolize the teenage gigs. Free enterprise was at work in its' purest form, filling a gap in the market place, but the local musician’s union moved in fast. They forced the under-age players out of business until they turned eighteen and were eligible to join the union. We turned to record hops, a precursor to the "DJ" events of today where glib announcers use a stack of CD’s to provide entertainment for weddings, dances and other outings. In our day, he just played records. He never said anything. These events started small, but eventually became so successful that they were moved to larger venues. They eventually ended up in the biggest facility in town, the Endicott Johnson Recreation Center. Record Hops were so well attended that the meager one-dollar admission charge enabled the promoters to provide live rock talent in addition to the music provided by their 45 records. I danced and clapped to the music of such stars as Ricky Nelson, The Everly Brothers and Fabian, who were "on stage and in person" at the EJ Rec Center. Record Hops were a major victory over the “establishment” and the success contributed to the positive, “take-em-on” mindset that fueled student protests through the following decade.
"S" as in Smoking, and Southern Comfort
Smoking is a vice I worked hard to acquire. I started when I was fifteen with free access to cigarettes in my job as a soda jerk in Soldo's Drug Store. It took months of hard work to condition my body. When I pulled the smoke into my lungs they protested -sending me into a violent coughing frenzy. But, I was persistent and stuck with it. I eventually learned to inhale. I achieved the adult status I was seeking, an image portrayed by the Hollywood stars of the day, professional athletes and political figures. The only way I could smoke in my first few months was by chewing a piece of Dentyne gum to cover up the awful taste of the smoke. I soon had a two-pack-a-day habit, one pack of Marlboros and one pack of Dentyne. I cursed my "teenage self" for the twenty-five years it took me to finally kick the habit. Just the other day I was in line behind a woman at the register in our local drug store. She placed a carton of Marlboros, a carton of Camels and a birthday card on the counter. I almost fell over when the clerk entered her items into the cash register and turned to ask her for $101.55. When I started the habit in high school it cost me thirty cents a day, twenty-five cents for the Marlboros and five cents for the gum. There weren't any labels on the pack to warn the user of potential health dangers. Quite the contrary, many of the cigarette ads claimed positive health benefits for people who chose their brand. Kools was a popular menthol cigarette that used this technique, "Got a cold, smoke Kools."
Southern Comfort is a whiskey I haven't tasted over forty years. My first encounter with alcohol was at a beer blast at Quaker Lake when I was fourteen. I got so sick I didn't touch a drop of beer for a year. I had a little experience with hard liquor from the sloe gin fizzes that Tommy Conlon and I drank at Tino's Bar, but not enough to handle straight shots of Southern Comfort. I nervously entered the Fifth Ward Liquor Store with a phony driver’s license clutched tightly in my hand. Awkwardly and with ears ablaze, I grabbed the first bottle I came to, Southern Comfort, and slunk to the counter. I completed the transaction without incident and then Tommy and I took turns swigging on the whiskey as we hotfooted it to the Queen of Hearts Sorority Dance at the Arlington Hotel. I remember walking into the Spanish Ballroom in good shape, ready to party. I also remember reeling in the middle of the room when a stomach convulsion possessed my body. I ended up decorating the dance floor. The jitterbug crowd shrieked in revulsion, several of whom slipped and fell in the reprocessed Southern Comfort. I was sick for twenty-four hours and have yet to touch the stuff. When my oldest daughter, Wendy, was at her first high school dance I received a call from the nun supervising the event. She asked me to come and pick up Wendy and her friend Beth. "They're quite drunk. Wait a minute! Oh damn it! Wendy just threw up on me." I picked up the somber, pale-faced teens, apologized to Mother Superior and headed for home. I asked them what on earth had they been up to? From their feeble replies I was able to piece together the events of the night. They’d purchased a bottle of whisky at a liquor store with fake ID, downed it on the way to the dance and then began to feel sick in the gym. The eagle-eyed nun spotted their odd behavior and pulled them off the dance floor into the school office. "What did you drink," I casually asked, filling a blank space in the conversation. "Southern Comfort," came the weak response from the back seat. I had all I could do to finish the ride home and get them in the door. My wife gave me a puzzled look as I deposited them in her care and quickly hustled back out the door. I ran up the street; when I was out of hearing range I let loose with an uncontrolled laughing attack that lasted several minutes. I couldn't let Beth and Wendy get the idea I thought there was anything funny about their evening of delinquency, but I had to release the laughter that started swelling inside me the minute the words, Southern Comfort left their lips. It is true. History does repeat itself.
"T" as in Tan, once over lightly.
Tan was the color we wanted our skin to be in summer in the Briar Patch; red was OK, tan was better. Our ability to achieve a decent color in an area of the country with the highest percentage of cloud cover in the nation is difficult. And even when the sun did shine, we often couldn't get to the lake to absorb it. We averaged about eight days a month at the beach, stretched out on towels, in hopes of turning our bodies into bronze duplicates of those in the Coppertone ads. I always worked on the front side first. I was unable to endure the boredom long enough to expose my back. I ended up looking like a "before and after" ad for Coppertone. My face and the front side of my body were nicely tanned. My back was pearly white. I have the same problem today when I try to endure the boredom of lying by the pool in our backyard, but now when the color balance between front and back gets out of whack I run to a tanning salon and correct the situation. It’s only costs a few bucks.
"U" as in U-Turn.
U-turns are illegal on all streets in Binghamton unless you are driving a police car. I know first hand. When I was sixteen I tried to get out of a speeding ticket by accusing the arresting officer of making an illegal u-turn. The judge didn't buy it and I lost my drivers license for nine weeks. It was an eternity to a car crazed high school kid. I got into the mess by wondering out loud, "How would it feel to go a hundred miles an hour." Tommy Conlon and I were tooling along upper Court Street at the time. He suggested I step on it and find out. It wasn't a “dare,” but I put my foot to the floor anyhow. When my father’s Edsel hit 100 MPH a cop going in the opposite direction did a quick u-turn and gave chase, his siren screaming and warning lights flashing. He was generous; the speeding ticket he issued was for going 65 in a 50 zone. I had a "junior" license, which allowed 17 & 18 year-olds to drive (during daylight hours) until you were cited for a moving violation. My 100-MPH mistake was going to cost me dearly. Word on the street was I'd lose my license for a month. I doubled it by shooting my mouth off in court. I accused the cop of making an u-turn to catch me. It took the judge two seconds to blow his top and yank my driving privilege for nine weeks. He glowered down from the bench, "Any questions smart guy?" "No sir," I responded, my law career in shambles.
"V" as in Vandalism
Vandalism is driven by a primeval clump of cells in the brain stem of teenage boys. It’s been going on for a long time. Probably the roots go back to early mankind. In those prehistoric days, teenage male cave dwellers wrecked the campsite when their mothers and fathers were off hunting & gathering. Every once in a while our local paper carries a story of teen vandalism where kids turn over and smash gravestones in a cemetery. My wife shakes her head as she reads it and wonders aloud, "Whatever possessed them to do such an awful thing." I never say a word, though I know the answer. "Possessed" is the correct term; it best describes the condition. I never wrecked a cemetery, but probably would have if the opportunity presented itself. I lived out my "possession" by playing in, and then wrecking havoc on buildings. The only two exceptions to venting this demon on buildings were, the night we massacred mailboxes at Quaker Lake with the stolen Chevy convertible and when my gang of rejected ten year olds shot out thirty street lights to get even with the police who wouldn't arrest the owner of the dog that attacked Tommy Conlon's dog. All the rest of our carnage took place at construction sites. The seeds were sown in new houses going up in our neighborhood. When we were little we played in the slowly emerging structures, pilfering lumber and assorted nails. Once in a while we'd smash something and experience a high, but it never got out of hand. It couldn’t; the houses we played in were in full view of the neighbors. Even the "paint job" that Woody and I performed on the house on Moore Ave when we were six, was done with reserve. But, when we became were teenagers we moved to commercial construction sites, safe from public scrutiny.
Two notable "Possessions" were both the climax and the conclusion to my vandalism days. They played out at two construction sites along the Vestal Parkway. The first was at the new site of Harper College, now known as SUNY Binghamton. The second was a mile down the parkway at the now defunct, Ozalid Manufacturing plant. In both cases we entered the sites in an exploratory mode, curious to see how these monstrous buildings were constructed. They offered an endless playground with multiple climbing venues, chasms to bridge and jump and eerie crevices to crawl through. Our exploration juices were energized and we enjoyed a harmless frolic for a few hours, but then we became "possessed" by the vandal demons that lurked deep in our brain stems. In the Ozalid building we found keys in a small pick up truck that was parked on the roof. We started it and took a few innocent laps around the tar and stone roof. Then we started crashing into small piles of material in an attempt to duplicate the bumper car rides we so enjoyed at the carnival. It didn't take long to smash everything on the roof, so we went down a shaky ramp to the floor below and quickly undid weeks of construction effort. We left in a rush after running the truck through a back window, crashing it onto a pile of oil drums fifteen feet below. We escaped without a scratch, but the truck received fatal injuries.
A similar possession took place at the partially constructed SUNY gymnasium, though we didn't have a truck to help with the carnage. We were forced to use manual labor to lift and empty a dozen kegs of roofing tar, creating a black sticky floor in the bathroom. The spell was broken when I slit my hand on a porcelain fragment from the toilet bowl as I smashed it with a sledgehammer. The cut wasn't too bad, but the flow of blood brought me to my senses. It was like waking from a dream, wide eyed and frightened. And though we never discussed it, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the fear of being caught that ended our vandalism days. It was the fear of losing control and being swept into a shark like feeding frenzy that scared us straight.
"W" as in White Wall Tires
White walls were the only tires acceptable to teenagers in the fifties. We considered it sacrilegious (uncool) to drive or ride in a car with blackballs. A car with hubcaps instead of wheel covers was even worse. It announced to the world that the owner had no taste - the equivalent of strutting around in a black suit, high water pants and white socks. The problem we had in the Briar patch was that our fathers were indifferent to our taste in tires. They all preached from the same bible when we pestered them to pay a few extra dollars for white sidewalls. In those days it was something you did every 10,000 miles. Tires just didn’t last very long. Our fathers claimed that white wall tires weren’t as strong as regular black wall tires, that the color was achieved by bleaching and thus, weakening the sidewall." We knew there was some truth in their retort, but who cared about tire safety; we were after image. Good old free-enterprise provided the solution, Port-a-Walls, those flat donuts of white rubber that fit under the rim, turning a black wall into a whitewall. For three dollars we were able to convert a drab family sedan into a "semi-cool" machine. I spent many hours removing tires from one or the other of my parent’s cars and painstakingly going through the time consuming process of: letting out the air, breaking the bead by jacking a second car up on the tire, fitting the port-a-wall evenly under the rim, pumping air back into the tire with a hand pump and then remounting the wheel. Often I would have to repeat the process because the port-a-wall would shift when the tire popped into place on the rim. Then, and only then, did I feel proud to wheel the family car around town, my left arm hanging out the window, an unlit Marlboro hanging from my lips, and best of all, glistening whitewalls adorning the spinning wheels below.
"X" as in eXam
X is a letter that conveys a powerful negative image; it signifies death, poison, a discarded spouse or rays that can pierce your body. That's the way the letter affected us in high school when it was preceded by “e” and followed by “a and m,”especially if it was a dreaded Regents Exam. These semester finals were prepared in Albany by a staff of sadists and conducted statewide at the exact same moment in every New York State high school. Several of us decided to turn the tables, to be the aggressors rather than the oppressed. Stu Williams, John Denniston, Matt Goukas and myself were pretty good at Math. Stu was good in all subjects, the rest of us, only in math. You "Got it" or you didn't. It took no study. We all got it! The Regents exams were three-hours long, but you could leave as soon as you finished. Many kids hung in to the end, checking and rechecking their answers. The four of us decided to see how fast we could get out of the test room and still make a decent grade. The contest was my only academic achievement in high school. The first two times we went for speed we set a thirty-minute limit; no one got a mark lower than ninety. I discovered that if I approached these exams with a cocky attitude I did better than when I slunk into the test room with dread. I eventually went after all tests with the same aggressiveness; speed was my goal, cockiness my driver. It worked in everything but History and Latin. In the Math contest I set a record with a thirteen-minute 98 in Trig. Matt was done in eight, but didn’t see the last two questions; they were worth twenty-five points. He barely passed. We all achieved at least one perfect Math score, but nobody combined an ace with the fastest time. The technique of facing adversity with a cocky, self-assured, attitude has served me well since stumbling on it in high school. I just wish I could remember to use it more often.
"Y" as in YMCA barber shop
I spent a lot of time as a kid at the YMCA; I became a member when I was six. My final visit to Y on Washington Street (now, long gone) was the day after graduation from high school. The Binghamton Central class of 1960 partied long and hard after the boring ceremony that marked our passage into adulthood. I visited many (parent sponsored) beer parties - too many. I was forced to perform a reenactment of my once famous, "Southern-Comfort Waltz," this time in the center of Shelly Smith's rec room. I sent a horde of fellow graduates scrambling for safety to avoid slipping and sliding in the reprocessed alcohol that I suddenly deposited on the already slippery tile floor. Somehow I made it home and into my snug bed. I awakened the next morning, refreshed and ready to face the world as a high school graduate. I felt an urge to do something symbolic, but what? I slipped into my fathers Edsel and headed to town, a lit Marlboro in my lips. Real white wall tires, not fake port-a-walls announced to the world that I was cool. I spotted the "Y" as I drove through town and knew in an instant what I must do. I walked into the three-man barbershop and sat in George's empty leather and porcelain barber chair. George was a new to the shop; he’d just finished a hitch in the navy. "A shave and a haircut please," I announced to a puzzled, but chuckling junior barber. He responded by winking to his partners, who did what they could to hide their snickers, while snipping away at the hair of shop regulars. He was chuckling and they were snickering because I hardly needed a shave, having performed the chore myself just a month earlier. Even in his early days as a civilian barber, George had a flair for customer service. He went ahead and did as I asked. It was important to me; it validated my adulthood status. Years later I returned to the scene of the crime. I’d not lived in Binghamton for several decades. I walked into the new YMCA and was delighted to find that George was still there. He now was the sole barber in a one-man shop. I still get my hair cut by George, but he claims he doesn’t remember the ritual shave and haircut he performed those many years ago.
"Z" as in Zagorsky
Zagorsky, Wally - had the nicest car in the gang I hung around with in high school, a customized MGA. His father also had an MG; his was a prized 1954 MG-TD. We weren’t allowed to touch it. Mr. Zee was nobody’s fool. Wally's parents were stricter than ours and Wally often missed events or had to leave early to comply with their demands. It usually involved working in his Dad's barbershop or in his mom's kitchen or laundry room. Imagine that, a boy doing laundry in the fifties. We couldn't believe it. Mrs. Zee didn't exactly approve of us, but she tolerated our existence if we waited outside the house for Wally while he completed his chores. One fall afternoon we tied a garbage can to the bumper of her car while we waited for him to finish mopping the kitchen floor. We hid the rope under a blanket of oak and maple leaves. Wally finished his chores and came slinking out the door. We greeted him with identical "Cheshire cat" grins prompting him to smile and ask, "What's going on?" We told him what we'd done and as expected, he was delighted. It was an old Halloween trick that we pulled when people stopped for a red light. One of us would sneak up to the car and slip a loop of the rope over the back bumper while somebody else tied the other end to a garbage can. We'd laugh our fannies off when the car pulled away with a bouncing garbage can spewing trash behind it. The driver couldn't help but hear the racket and usually stopped within a few feet of the intersection to remove the noisemaker.
A few minutes after Wally came out his mother opened the door and strutted to her car, oblivious to the four teens hiding in the bushes across the street. She started her engine and pulled away from the curb. The garbage can didn't move until she was several houses down the block’ Then it exploded into the air like a kite pulled behind an eager six year-old. It bounced to the ground and rattled along, keeping pace, but several car lengths behind her. She never heard it. She never saw it. We raced down the block to track her progress caught up in time to see that the garbage can made it onto the main thoroughfare (Pennsylvania Ave) and was on its way to downtown Binghamton. Nobody laughed harder than Wally. Somehow it made up for the strict parentage he suffered under.
SECTION VI - The Final Days – (the end of the Briar Patch)
The Salad Days come to an end – I spent my last days in the Briar Patch completing the transition from child to adult. I went to the local community college, Broome Tech, primarily because I couldn't come up with a better idea. A lot of friends in the same boat had signed up, so like one lemming blindly following another to the sea, I did too. It was very late in my senior year that I was admitted, thanks to a school policy that favored local residents. The policy has since changed. I suspect it was because the schools fifty-percent drop out rate became an embarrassment. I enrolled in the Electrical Technology Program. I rationalized that it was as a good as any other and I liked messing around with electrical stuff. I'd wired my bedroom with a network of cords that I hid under the rug (a definite electrical safety no-no). The cords connected to switches mounted on a cigar box on my nightstand and controlled several devices scattered about the room. With the flick of a switch I could turn adjust the radio on my dresser across the room, turn on the light on my desk in a cubbyhole near the attic or be cooled by a breeze from an electric fan on the windowsill. My crude cigar box control panel was one of the first remote control devices. My success at Broome tech surprised me; I did well. I discovered that when I read the textbooks and worked on the assigned problems I became proficient in the subject at hand. Too bad I hadn't stumbled on this epiphany in high school.
There were a lot of firsts for me in on this last leg of life in the Briar Patch. I bought my first car, a 1953 Ford convertible for $60. It didn’t have a heater or an ignition key and wouldn’t start on occasion, because of a bad spot in the starter motor. I met my first serious love, Jackie Evans, who endured a second date where we ventured into the tunnel from Ross Creek to the Susquehanna River on a "Rat Batting" expedition. Eighteen months later we were in city hall getting a marriage license with my mother sobbing at my side. Her presence and signature were required since I wasn't old enough to get married without parental consent. (Males had to be 21, females 18). I was fitted for my first business suit; I bought it for the wedding, but not in time to be tailored so I stood at the altar with straight pins holding up the cuffs. I left home for the first time, to Auburn where I worked for NYSEG as a co-op student and lived in the YMCA. I got my first real job, at General Electric Company where I tested and troubleshot electronic components of a fighter plane guidance system. I donated my first pint of blood, to the chuckles of the nurses who wondered if I had enough energy to make it through the process, since it was my first day back at work after a two-day honeymoon. We’d only made it to the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Binghamton because we left the small reception at my house in the middle of the worst snowstorm of the decade.
My transition to adulthood was quite intense in my last days in the Briar Patch. It forced me to face adversity and grow from the experience. It included: 1) the death of a pal, Diane Stack. Yes, the little tattle tale from Longfellow Elementary School. We’d ended up as close friends after all those years of her monitoring my behavior in elementary school. She and her friend, my ex girlfriend, Jacquelyn Williams, died in a collision with a tractor-trailer, 2) my first encounter with Jackie Evans mother, who upon meeting me, told me I could never marry her daughter because I was a Catholic (that statement started me on a track to prove her wrong), 3) the tragedy at General Hospital that caused the death of eight newborns. Salt was mistakenly mixed in their formula instead of sugar; the mystery baffled local officials as it unfolded over a weeklong period. Jackie was a nursing student in the hospital at the time. We were horrified when another baby died every day, for no apparent reason, 4) my close encounter with an irate, armed and dangerous, ex-boyfriend of a girl I dated before meeting Jackie. He came looking for me with a gun, but luck was on my side. I left the bar he came looking for me in minutes before his arrival, 5) my last fist fight, this one with a drunk who mistakenly thought I was making a play for his date. I was lucky; a big strapping guy broke it up before the outcome was decided, probably saving me from a bloody lip and a black eye. Some of these events will provide raw material for the great American novel I hope to write someday, but I've yet to sort it out. Maybe in a few more years.
November 22, 1963 - My last day in the Briar Patch – I was working at NYSEG, an upstate electric & gas utility company. I was the newest member of the Planning Department. I'd turned twenty-one the previous week and had been married for the better part of a year. Jackie and I were anxiously expecting our first child, having passed the doctor's predicted due date two weeks earlier. The engineering team I worked on was housed in a pair of historic houses on adjoining lots in downtown Binghamton. Our desks were huddled together in richly paneled rooms, five technicians to an office. It was an atmosphere conducive to long range planning. I was proud as a peacock to be knocking down fifty four hundred dollars a year, driving a brand new Volkswagen Bug, easily making the thirty-seven dollar a month car payment.
I was on a coffee break in a converted billiard room in the basement when Sherman Piersal rushed in and yelled, "Turn on the radio. Kennedy's been shot." I was shocked, but not disheartened. I knew he'd be OK. In fact I truly expected to see him on television later in the day, wisecracking from his hospital bed, giving the doctor a hard time about staying in the hospital. We turned on the radio and like the rest of America, sat waiting for the reassurance we knew would come, the only imaginable outcome for the hordes of us who had grown up in the Briar Patch. We went into denial when we heard unsubstantiated reports from witnesses at the scene, claiming he'd been hit in the head and was gravely wounded. Our stomachs dropped to the floor and then, through the floor. We just sat; nobody made a move to go back to work.
Piersal finished off the somber event by saying he knew this was going to happen. "Assassination attempts are cyclical, every twenty years. This is the twentieth year." I couldn't believe how casual he was talking about this tragedy. I left the room, stopping in front of him on my way out, "You're an asshole, Sherm," I calmly spate at him, looking deep into his beady eyes. In my heart I wanted to strangle the callused fifty-year old bastard. When I arrived home I joined Jackie in tears in front of the TV and listened to the gong sound, announcing that the door to the Briar Patch had been slammed shut. It was sealed by the words from Walter Cronkite’s lips, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the united States is dead."
Mrs. Springer’s 6th grade class- 1954; 1st row, from left – Bill Hurban, Nancy Harmon, Diane Stack, Karen West, Nancy Wolcott, Janice Burrus, Fran Loukes * 2nd row - David Greenblot, Peter Basmajian, Lana Fahs, Sharon Kipper, Esther Borst, Suzzie Latonich, Alex Palmer * 3rd row – Dick Leahy, Woody Walls, Billy Drucker, Bob Cady, Billy Wilson, Paul Geragosian, Buzzy Spencer, Donald Perl
The other half of the kids in my Briar patch - Miss McCormack’s 6th grade class – 1954 – 1st row, from left – Helen Byrnes, Joanne Morebito, Pat brown, Carol Gallagher, Sally Night, Diane Westgate, Elizabeth Jumper * 2nd row – Bobby Hamm, Alan Crumm, Steve Fish, Merlin Lessler, Robert Smith, Delmar Gould, Donald Ahearn * 3rd row – Emerson Woodruff, Marcia Riger, Pat Kessler, Ronetta Watrous, Carol Adsit, Janet Elgena * 4th row – Donald Jamieson, Steve Szwalla, Wayne Rosen, Tommy Williams, Ernest Bryan, Ronnie Wagner, George Farrell
A neighborhood birthday party in our basement - From the left: me, my cousin Kathleen Heath, Bea Krupa, Billy Hendrickson, my sister Madeline, Barty Calovito, Joey Colavito
Madeline and I, enjoying a standard fare Saturday supper – hamburgers on bread
One of our scout projects – a skit sung to the tune of “My Merry Oldsmobile”
From the left – Kent Titus, Woody Walls, me, Marshal Reutlinger, Dick Tuttle, Donald Ahern
My home in the Briar Patch, circa 1954
Dear Merlin,
ReplyDeleteMy mom, Mary Louise Soldo, and I have been completing some family history research and came across your cool blog. She has been laughing on the phone with me for 20 minutes as I have been reading your comments to her. Stay tuned for a phone call from her and Millie and Suzy! They are still all trouble! Thanks for making our evening so special. Her email is cookie.schultz@mail.wvu.edu and mine (Sara Rutledge) is srutledge@mtaloy.edu. :-)