Typical summer morning with friends:..................Yeah, and when there was construction nearby, it meant wood for a club house, “No girls allowed”. My 40’s were, turning produce grates and 2x4’s into scooters with roller skates, throwing dirt bombs at each other,playing kick the can in the middle of the street along with stick ball and stoop ball. Scavenging empty Coke and Pepsi bottles at the beach for the 2 cent deposit to purchase a full one, or a frozen custard. We mowed lawns for 25-50 cents, we played the real sand lot baseball, we chose teams after we designated captains. I was usually the last one picked, but it didn’t mater, they were still my friends. After a few coaching lessons from my peers, I moved up on the choice scale. Umpires? Who needed them, we worked it out when there was a disagreement by fingers odd or even.
We spent quiet time making model planes, only to make them fly by a string attached to the wing as it burned in flight due to cotton soaked in lighter fluid or alcohol. But! Remember, we had our chores to do, there was always a list.
After school hours there was always a little time to do something with your friends before dad came home. I grew up on the Streets of NYC, we shared them with the traffic. Most of the activity centered around the middle of the “block”. Every kid on my block had dozens of mothers who knew us all by our names. I am sure this scenario covers most of us back then when candy bars were a nickel. We were taught a lot, we learned to drive nails, screw boards, and cultivate gardens. Yes we had gardens in the city, post war Victory ones, that continued in to the late 40’s and 50’s. Every spring, I had to dig up the plot in the back yard for planting. Tomatoes, squash, beans, peppers and eggplants were the big thing, big ones, thanks to all the fish carcasses that we buried in the soil. We lived in that little fishing village west of Coney Island. I have to say, it was a great time to have been a kid in that era.
.Yeah, and when there was construction nearby, it meant wood for a club house, “No girls allowed”.
The key point I remember in my childhood was that we planned our own day, set our own goals, solved our own problems and self initiated ourselves. Adults were not involved in our play time. Heck, even older teens were excluded.
We liked watching the little rascals for ideas. Adults usually got in the way of the plans.