 A Series About Childhood Memories |
|
They Still Carry Brown Paper Bags |
 This earnest lad a thief from Woolworth's? |
Some thoughts about my youth
and where my head was at 12
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
I saw a little kid clutching
a brown paper bag with his lunch inside it as he walked toward
Shea Stadium for a Mets game the other day. He seemed about 12.
It recalled when I was 12, living in Brooklyn, and went to baseball
games clutching a chicken fat-stained brown paper bag.
When I was 12:
Mel Ott was my favorite ball player.
James Cagney was my favorite actor.
I had a favorite everything.
I was the second best roller skater among the "little kids"
on my block.
| > Stan's childhood movie hero: James Cagney as an Indy 500 driver in "The Crowd Roars" (1932) |
> |
I wore navy blue sweaters zipped from the neck to the middle of my chest.
I walked across the Williamsburg Bridge when I had nothing else to do.
I was a member of Angelo Forte's gang; our rivals were his brother Dominick's gang.
We called Epstein, the candy store owner, "Eppy." We said he was a "stingy miser."
I hated string beans.
The bumping autos were my favorite ride at Coney Island.
I was not the best fighter on my block.
I was ashamed because I did not know how to tie a knot in my tie.
I killed mice in our apartment by slamming them against the wall with a hockey stick.
I constantly lost the thick rubber bands that held up the legs of my brown corduroy knickers.
> |
> Stan spent much of his boyhood watching slugger Mel Ott set records. |
We rented bicycles at five cents a half-hour; balloon tires cost
a nickel extra.
Hoboken, New Jersey was the farthest I had ever been outside
New York City.
I couldn't hit (punch) a rubber ball a sewer-and-a-half.
I never wanted to go anywhere with my parents.
I hated Hitler.
I was secretly in love with Betty Koscio. Whenever she was nearby
I whistled a tune. It was the only thing I could think of to
impress her.
I hated eggs.
I wanted to be four inches taller than I was.
I couldn't draw.
I thought "Dead End" was the best movie I ever saw.
I spent two cents a day playing the horse racing pinball machine
during lunch hour at the candy store near P.S. 37.
I was good in geography.
I had a "pusho," a wagon constructed out of a two-by-four
and a wooden fruit box nailed atop an old Winchester roller skate;
I nailed red and yellow soda bottle caps in the form of a No.
4 onto the wooden box. We called bottle caps "checkers."
When we played skelly, I never took the sissy option of the safe
way of trying for the difficult No. 9 box.
I dreamed that some day I would find $1,000, return it and be
rewarded with $100.
I combed my hair twice a week.
No. 4 was my favorite number: Mel Ott, Dolph Camilli, Lou Gehrig
and Tuffy Leemans wore No. 4.
I thought the movie "Penrod and Sam" was was about
boys named Penn, Rod and Sam.
I hated Ralph Novak, the bully who lived on So. 6th St., almost
as much as I hated Hitler.
I liked "Tootsie Rolls" better than "Twists."
I looked at the legs of the young women leaving work coming out
of the Gretsch Building at 5 p.m.; I didn't know what I was supposed
to look for, but it was what the "big guys" did.
I looked forward to another night like the second Joe Louis-Max
Schmeling fight, the only time my parents allowed me to stay
up until 10 p.m.
| > Joe Louis, "The Brown Bomber," whose fight with Max Schmeling gave Stan his first chance to stay up past 10 o'clock at night. |
> |
Stanley Sussman and I didn't go to the movies Saturday afternoons during the football season. We stayed home and listened to Bill Stern's WEAF college football broadcasts. Dartmouth was my favorite team; his was Michigan.
I didn't like to believe some of the things Heshy Wasserheit told me about sex.
I read the Dick Tracy comic strip.
I put a penny on the Crosstown trolley tracks to get a flattened coin.
I squeezed a rubber ball like Robert Taylor in "The Crowd Roars" to make my wrist strong.
I played the card game, "Bluff," winning or losing baseball trading cards.
I stole a "Little Big Book" from Woolworth.
I learned what the word "rape' meant by reading about the Errol Flynn case in the New York Daily News.
I packed two salami sandwiches, a pickle and a peach inside a brown paper bag and started out at 10 a.m. for a Sunday doubleheader at the Polo Grounds.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The Joe Louis photo is from IMSI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
You can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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