We played outside all the time. There was no
TV, video
games, or computers to keep us indoors and no
air-conditioning yet. In
fact, we got our first refrigerator when we lived there.
Before that, the
ice man would come right into our kitchen carrying a big
block of ice in
huge tongs. He would put it right in our ice box. I hated to
empty the
pan at the bottom. I was always afraid I'd spill the water
on Mom's kitchen
floor (that you could eat off, of course !)
As kids, we had the most fun at night from
right after
supper until way past dark. It never occurred to us to be
afraid. There
was no crime that I ever heard of, but on the other hand,
I wasn't allowed
off Conselyea Street. I wasn't even allowed to go to the
other end of our
long block, the Union Avenue end, unless I was going to
Our Lady of
Mt. Carmel Church.
My girlfriends and I loved playing
bouncing ball stories
where we had to think fast. In one of them, each time we'd
say a word that
began with "A" we had to cross a leg over the pink rubber
ball as we bounced
it. If we didn't miss a beat saying the "A" words, we
could go on and name
things that started with "B" and so on. I can still hear
the sing-song
refrain of:
"A"
my name is Anna
and my
boyfriend's name is Al
We come from
Alabama
and we sell
Apples
The girls skipped rope, including Double
Dutch, while
we recited rhyming stories that made no sense, like:
Baby
in the high chair
Who put her in
Ma, Pa, oo la
la
Wrap her up in
tissue paper
Send her down
the elevator
Ma, pa, oo la
la
one, two three,
four, five,
six, seven
Our roller skates had four metal wheels and
needed a skate
key that made the skate clamp tightly to our own shoes. We
skated for hours
up and down the street until it felt like the skates were
part of our feet.
When you took them off, it felt like you were still skating.
Some of the other games we played outside
were hide-and-seek
and ringolevio, a more sophisticated version of it. I
couldn't remember
the rules for ringolevio, but a nice guy named Joel from
Haring Street
in Sheepshead Bay sent me an email explaining how they
played it in his
neighborhood in the sixties and seventies. Joel said
he once broke
his nose playing ringolevio while trying to free some
prisoners! This is
no game for wimps.
"You
choose up two teams
of approximately five or more players, establish a
jail (the mailbox or
lamp post or something). You make up rules prior
to starting like,
'no use of someone's house to hide.'
Then one team
hides and the other
seeks prisoners. When you catch someone, you
must say 3 times while
holding them: 'Ringolevio 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.'
If the person
gets away before
you complete that saying, he or she get to re-hide
or you chase him/her.
If you complete the phrase that person becomes your
prisoner and goes to
jail. Once all are captured, your team wins or
gets its turn to hide.
However, the
team who is hiding
can free prisoners by charging the jail and getting
through someone as
the guard, tag his or her players and go free, and
the chase begins!"
We played potsie (potsey), a Brooklyn version
of hopscotch.
Fortunately Patricia D. Dietz, formerly
from
Greenpoint, sent me the rules of the game.
"I
remember potsey as
a sidewalk chalk game similar to hopscotch. We
drew 6 big squares
with HOME at top and bottom. Squares 1, 2,
3, then 4, 5, 6,
going down.
"We used a bobby
pin and threw
it on square 1.
Then we stood on
one leg and
jumped over square 1 and landed on 2 and jumped to
3.
"HOME was the
only place you
could put your foot down. Then down 4, 5, 6,
to HOME. You could not
step on a line. If you put your foot down you had to
start all over at
1.
"If you made it
to 1, you picked
up your bobby pin and when it was your turn you
threw it on 2, got on 1
leg, jumped onto 1, skipped 2, and so
forth. First one to make
it through 6, won.
"These are the
basics I remember,
but there might be more."
We played kick the can a lot, too, but the rules
escape me.
There weren't many cars on Conselyea Street until after WW II
so we played
safely in the street. We played stickball in the street using
broom handles
for bats and manhole covers for second base. Sometimes the
ball went in
the sewer and we let the boys try to get it out. They usually
did.
However, hitting the ball onto the roof of
Grandma Normandia's
two-story house meant you lost your ball forever and that
was that. Grandma
had a big tin can where she kept the balls she made her son,
my Uncle Henry,
retrieve from the slanted roof, not an easy task. Whenever I
needed a ball,
I knew where to go. My grandma was so good to me in every
way.
I loved playing marbles along the gutter.
"Hit and span"
was two! That meant if you hit your opponent's marble and
could then put
your thumb on it and stretch your hand so your pinky touched
your marble,
you won two marbles! My husband, Gordon, kept all his pretty
marbles from
his childhood. They are in a cigar box in our storage room.
Sometimes I
look at them and remember the old days. I wish I had kept
some of mine.
Did you also have
boat races in the
gutter after a quick spring rain storm? We used ice cream
bar sticks for
boats. We had Good Humor (the first ice cream on a stick)
and Bungalow
Bar trucks that came to Conselyea Street to sell us ice
cream. Remember
the blue and white Bungalow Bar truck that looked like a
little house (a
bungalow) with a shingle roof? My all-time favorite was
their coconut-covered
ice cream bar. I tried to make it last a long time, but at
the same time
I was anxious to see if the empty stick said "Bungalow Bar"
on it. That
meant you got a free ice cream! Or was that the Good Humor
bar where you
could win a free ice cream. I wish someone would remind me!
How about the excitement when someone
was brave
enough to open the cast iron fire
hydrants we called
"johnnie pumps" on a sweltering summer day? There was always
the fear that
when the fire department or the cops came to turn it off
somebody might
get in trouble. It didn't stop us from running under the
water to cool
off though.
The
only other place to cool off was the pool at McCarren
Park. There
was this little ritual when you checked in. Boys went to the
right side,
girls to the left. They gave you a little metal basket to
put your clothes
in when you changed into your bathing suit. Then you
returned your basket
to the counter and you got this elastic band to wear around
your ankle.
It had a metal tag with your basket number on it. I as
always afraid I'd
lose it and they wouldn't give me back my clothes. I never
did, of course.
Before you went into the pool I seem to remember there was
purple-colored
water you walked through that was supposed to prevent
athlete's foot!
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