Until the Street Lights Came On
The other night I was in a bar (I know, I’m just as shocked as you are) with a friend of mine. We both have kids, mine (3) grown, his (2) mostly so. With that, the conversation eventually lands on the subject of our kids. This time, we lamented how our children’s childhood was vastly different than our own.
I know, we did not discover new ground under this topic, but we each have our own memories planted there.
Basically, we lamented that our kids did not grow up with the freedom that we had.
When Arlene (ex-wife) moved from Somerset to Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, I hated that she moved into a house, a dead end on one side of the street, a highway on the other. This gave my kids about a quarter mile of pavement to ride their bikes on.
Wished that she had moved into a development like the one I grew up in. Surrounded by highways, but plenty of square miles in between for a kid to get lost in for a day.
Summer days, as a kid, would consist of leaving my house in the morning, astride my gold Schwinn Sting-Ray bike with banana seat and sissy bar (yes, that’s what they were called), and be gone for the day.
I’d ride with a pack of my friends through the town. Baseball down by the little league field, stick ball in the street, football in the street, softball in the street. Do you think AstroTurf hurts when you fall? Try asphalt.
Amateurs.
May or may not return for lunch, but definitely home for dinner. Back outside until the street lights came on, or any other agreed upon parameter to return to base.
For example, a friend who lived across the street, at twilight, his dad would walk to the edge of the lawn, then let out a whistle that carried through the neighborhood. Within seconds, seven siblings, from all directions, raced home.
We moved to New Jersey before I began third grade. Where did we live before that?
Brooklyn.
My grandmother owned a brownstone. She lived in the upstairs apartment. We occupied the bottom two floors. The back door in the kitchen (never locked) opened to a common alleyway where our parents parked their cars, and we kids played. At night they would close the gate at the end so effectively we became self-contained.
I learned to ride my bike in that alleyway, even running into a brick chimney because I had yet to learn how to use the brakes.
We were kids, we played in the alleyway, and we were loud.
You know how in almost every neighborhood, there is that one person that yells out for the kids to be quiet and get off their lawn (or asphalt in this case). We had one of those. An old woman who leaned out her third floor apartment window, perpetual cigarette in hand, as she harshly shushed us away from beneath her apartment.
Meet my Aunt Viola.
A frail woman with a loud attitude, she was the only person in Bensonhurst, probably all of Brooklyn, who’s apartment was decorated in Chinese Modern.
Fortunately, even at this young age, we could break away from Aunt Viola’s consistent glare, and take to the streets (well, street).
Even though I was about eight years old, I had the run of the place – unchecked from one traffic light to the other. Its amazing how much freedom we had, something I could never afford to my own kids.
In fact, at times, even went shopping for the family.
Forget the big box stores, or store chains, we had something better.
At the end of the block, we had a good old-fashioned, Mom and Pop grocery store.
Armed with only a list, I’d hand it over to whomever was working, then stand back and watch the show. The worker/cashier/owner would fill the order. For items high on the shelf, they would retrieve a pole with jaws on the end, like a reverse arcade claw machine, and pull the goods down.
Once the items were collected (and this is the best part) the cashier would jot the prices on the side of the brown paper bag, add it up, and that was your receipt.
Could you send an eight-year-old with a grocery list to the store today? I don’t think so.
The one drawback in this situation? Although we had the run of the street (Eighty-forth), it was just on our street.
We never went on the other side of the block. Eighty-third street was the forbidden zone. On a dare you might ride your bike, very fast, down that street. But, if you were caught trespassing, you would never be heard from again.
Let me remind you, I was eight-years-old.
We all grow up with whatever technology is available. I had six-channels on a black-and-white television, while my kids grew up with the entire wealth of the world’s information in their hands.
We like to say the world has changed, and it has, for both good and bad. And who is to say that if we had cell phones and iPads in the sixties, I’d still be planted on that stoop in Brooklyn.
