The "LOT"

[SfanGoch]

Every neighborhood in The Garden Spot Of The Universe had it special places kids used for fun and getting into trouble. Our place on Dupont Street was a magical and legendary portal into mindless adventure, known as "The LOT".  When we got older, it was where we'd hang out and drink beers or Wild Turkey. But, in our younger days, it was where we'd do dumb stuff like setting up targets on the ancient oak which was once located next to the back fence and have archery competitions or our own Olympic games, including bare knuckle boxing and tackle football without equipment. We were a tough bunch back then and didn't worry about a little bit of bruisin'. What didn't kill you made you a better person.

 

"The LOT" was also our gateway into every backyard on Dupont and Eagle Streets, from Franklin Street to the fence adjoining  P.S. 31's schoolyard, two doors down from my old house at 76. We would play team tag, Army and Hot Peas 'n Butter throughout the block without having to worry about dodging cars driving down the street. Having a play area as big as this was great. It beat going to the park up the block because there weren't any grouchy adults screaming, "Hey, you punks! Go find someplace else to make a racket!" That's where "The LOT" came in.

 

We were the masters of our universe and nobody could tell us otherwise or stop us from having fun. None of the people whose yards we played in ever complained or put a crimp in our funtime. None, that is, except for one man. This embodiment of pure, diabolical evil was known to all as "BEAST". "BEAST" was a fat, balding 35+ year old slob who still lived with his mother on the second floor of 85 Eagle Street. His kitchen window gave him the perfect vantage point from where he could observe the goings-on in "The LOT" and most of the backyards. Whenever we went to play in "The LOT", "BEAST"'s corpulent presence would completely fill the kitchen window as he surveilled our activities. See, "BEAST" wasn't the average fat, balding slob who always tried to put a damper on things. No siree. He was an ingenious fat, balding slob. He ran barbed wire through the shrubbery near the fence separating his yard from the one next door. We got wise to him and kept an old area rug hidden in "The LOT" which we would drape over the fence. He also installed barbed tanglewire disguised as tomato plants in his  yard. Being that we all watched WWII movies on TV, we were prepared for this contingency. We went into his yard at night and, using wire snips, cleared the obstacles and left him a FU note. But, above all, he was also a sniper level shot. Whenever we  would go through the yards, "BEAST" would shoot at us with his pump action BB rifle. He didn't just shoot us while we were in the yards. He would target us inside "The LOT", too. Waldo Gromek, "The Hero For All Ages" from the "Battle of the Waldos" story, once got popped twice in the schozz. His ability to lead and adjust his fire and hit moving targets was nothing short of amazing. We all were impressed with his skill, to say the least.

"BEAST"'s reign of terror lasted about four years. He finally threw in the towel after we tossed an M80 at his window and blew it out of its frame. Fat Boy never called the cops because he knew we'd rat him out for shooting at us.  

Edited August 3, 2018 by SfanGoch

[NYLIBUD]

Um,.....huh?

[SfanGoch]

If you don't get what it's about, I ain't gonna try to explain. Being street rats, this is how kids played in the city and my recollections of the old neighborhood.

Edited August 3, 2018 by SfanGoch

[tbill]

I remember those days,  in front of my house was a street light, and lined up with  the end of our driveway, in the middle of the street, was a man hole cover, or as we called it, home plate. Standing on home plate, my house was on the right, a small tree in the next neighbors house was 1st base, a painted circle in the middle of the road was 2nd, a small corner of the driveway of a house across the street was 3rd base. A few houses down from 2nd base was an imaginary line that indicated a home run. We played ‘baseball’ with a tennis ball, kickball and ‘frisbee’ baseball on our ‘diamond’. Luckily, we didn’t have a lot of traffic on our street. When the street light came on, we all seemed to have to make the run home to check in,  then back out to start/finish whatever game we were playing. We also had a big hide and seek game, the boundaries were about a block and a half , and all yards were fair game in that area, except a few, every neighborhood has one or two cranky old folks, lol.

 

great topic, I haven’t thought of our neighborhood games in quite some time.

almost forgot about the touch nerf football games in the street, with certain driveways denoting end zones, lol

[SfanGoch]

Thanks, Tom. I think of those says whenever I'm walking around the neighborhood. Kids just don't play outside anymore. No two sewer touch football, no stickball or punchball, no kick the can,playing skelzies, crack the top, Ace-King-Queen, boxball....nothing. They hole up in their houses and play video games or waste time texting each other and behaving like little effing sneaks. Playing outside was how we developed social skills and learned how to interact with others. Kids today are treated like they're human veal by their helicopter parents. They can't do anything that could cause even the slightest bruise or injury. Pretty sad not letting kids be kids.

[NYLIBUD]

2 hours ago, SfanGoch said:

If you don't get what it's about, I ain't gonna try to explain. Being street rats, this is how kids played in the city and my recollections of the old neighborhood.

I gotcha,sorry about that.I had to read it a couple of times..And besides,I grew up in the burbs..

[tbill]

Ya, the digital age sure seems to have put a damper on outdoor play. I can also remember building all sorts of stuff with lego’s (sp?) , playing with matchbox cars, and model building on rainy days. Then there were the phone calls on land lines with the 40 ft cord so you could climb up the stairs so the rest of the family couldn’t hear you, untill your sibling would try to pick up the other phone to snoop on you, lol. And a bike was like a car back then, 2 wheels, two pedals, one speed, and off you were on a black top adventure......

[SfanGoch]

You must've had places that all the kids would go to besides a park to have fun and cause trouble. Lawnguylant ain't that much more different than the city when it comes to that kind of stuff.  

 

[bismarck]

We grew up on a small street in a dirty old steel mill town. Yeah, we had to find ways of having fun without ticking the neighbors off too. It didn't always work either.. we used to use black powder to blow up mail boxes, and one time, an old ringer washtub basin. The mushroom clouds that stuff sent up was HUGE. Try that stuff NOW, and it's a trip to the slammer, and rightly so. We were hard headed kids who thought that doing stuff like that was fun. Dad finally caught us and brought that stuff to a very sudden and painful end. Our favorite target was a old garage at the end of the street where a lot of the older kids hung out. You either learned to run fast, or stand and fight. 

[Casey]

So it was you who co-wrote the screenplay for The Sandlot. 

[SfanGoch]

Funny that you should mention that film. A couple of my old neighborhood pals and I were discussing this movie after it was released. We were wondering where the writers got the idea for "the lot" and "Beast" from. Too much of a coincidence for us. The story could've been about us in Brooklyn instead of Cali. We thought it was weird how the storyline also took place in the '60s and pretty much paralleled everything we used to do to a tee. Even the kid who became a pro ballplayer in the movie was a carbon copy of my friend, Jose Rivera. Jose was a star player in the Greenpoint Little League, playing for La Plata, and at Lincoln High School, the same school which produced Sandy Koufax and other great athletes. Only, Jose didn't make it to the majors. He was called for a tryout by the Mets in 1980 and was told he didn't have the right stuff. He was so pissed off, he switched allegiance to the Yanks. 38 years later, Jose is the Managing Director of JMR Wealth Management Group at UBS Financial Services and is a regular guest financial expert on CNBC. He hasn't forgotten where he came from. He donates large sums of money and equipment to the Little League teams here and organizes a Dupont/Eagle Old Timers' Reunion party at Dupont St. Park every year. There were over a thousand people at the last one. He still hates the Mets.  

There were two dogs on the block that all the kids were afraid of. One was Bosco, an Alsatian Shepherd and Ralph, a monstrous black Great Pyrenees. Turned out Bosco was a punk. His owner came by the house and asked my parents to keep our six cats indoors. They used to gang up on Bosco whenever he was in the backyard and they would shred him up. Ralph was another story. He was a homicidal maniac and had no qualms about chasing one of the kids down, chomping down on his butt and tearing the seat of his jeans right off whenever he got loose. If you look at the photo of "The LOT", he lived in the rear house on the left. See the wooden fence along the side? Ralph broke through it numerous times. 

[OldTrucker]

I've had friends and co-workers over the years from those areas of NY.

The stories are all the same just different names just like yours! No one had a real name just nicknames it seems!

I grew up in a small town next to a small city. But we all had our neighborhoods which tended to be about an 8 square block area.

We had our share of troubles there too but were severely curtailed in our endeavors by the parent alliance! That was all the parents told the other parents to treat us like we were their own kids if they saw us doing something we weren't supposed to be doing!

So we shifted to the east to the Illinois Central tracks and hung out under the trestles over the creeks and the tunnel under an old trolley barn/warehouse building the creek ran under! That was the place the "tough guys" hung out! (ie the ones not afraid to go under it!LOL)

One of our "beasts" was an old lady that sat on her back porch in the evening with a box of rocks which she would throw at us when we came to steal a stalk of rhubarb from her huge rhubarb patch which she let go to seed every year. There were several more that just did not like kids and would call the cops almost daily!

BTW kick the can was one of our favorite games that was brought to us by a kid that moved into the neighborhood from the Bronx! We all gave his a hard time about his accent but we were not much better with our "Chicago" accent even though we were about 45 minutes south of the city!!

[SfanGoch]

Pretty cool. Kids are the same everywhere. Kids from the city are pretty good at exporting our particular culture when they move elsewhere. Did the kid from Da Bronx show you guys how to play skelzies? This was a popular street game. No equipment, except a piece of chalk and bottle caps, were needed.

Growing up in a post-industrial wasteland (but, it was OUR post-industrial wasteland  ), everybody's family was blue collar lower middle class. We didn't have much; but, we made do with what we had and were resourceful enough to invent activities to keep ourselves occupied.

[Ramfins59]

Thanks for the memories Joe.  Up in "Da Bronx" we played stickball, boxball, "Stoopball"... we'd bounce the ball off the bottom step of a buildings stoop.  We'd always try to use a new, pink "Spaldeen" or a Spaulding ball.  With the bottlecaps we'd fill them with melted wax and play "skelly", which I guess was similar to skelzies.  I remember making a milkbox scooter using a large wooden box mounted to doubled up 2x4's that I attached pieces of an old roller skate to using screws... That was a fun ride down the hill on 183rd St. from University Ave. My step father was the superintendent or "super" of the building where we lived and I had the run of the buildings hallways, basement, roof, back and front courtyards, etc.. It wasn't all fun for me though as I had to help the old drunk with chores like sweeping and mopping the halls and lobby, putting out the buildings trash for collection, shoveling snow, etc..  Great memories  even though that was over 50 years ago.

[OldTrucker]

." Did the kid from Da Bronx show you guys how to play skelzies? This was a popular street game. No equipment, except a piece of chalk and bottle caps, were needed."

He tried but most the other kids showed much interest in it. He was only here for a few years and they moved back to NY.

Still miss the kid! He brought a whole new world into our neighborhood!

[peteski]

Cool story Joe!

Growing up in Poland my cousin and I, along with his buddies caused all sorts of mischief.  Some of my favorites were getting a bag of saltpeter, mixing it with sugar and then pouring a small pile of it on cement stairs of one of the neighborhood tenements. We would stick a lit match in it and it would become a smoke bomb!  And it also left sticky mess on the step. We also use  the same mixture for making flying bottle-caps. We would take those metal screw-top caps from vodka bottles (plenty of those around ) and pick out their cardboard seal using a pocket knife.  Then pour the saltpeter mixture into the cap, about two thirds full. Then we would cover it with the seal and crimp the metal cap around the seal.  Then take a pocket knife and drill a small hole in the top of the cap (just big enough for a match head to fit into.  We would then light a match and stick it in the hole, igniting the mixture, then quickly throw it up in the air.  Those things would fly like miniature jet engines, leaving a smoke trail behind it.  Those were the days!

Then there was the time I was trying to leap over bushes I thin we were running after igniting one of those staircase smoke bombs. Unfortunately I didn't realize that in the middle of that bush was a post made of steel railroad rail.  My shin ended up slamming into that rail - still have a scar from it.

We also used to climb a walnut tree in one of the kid's backyards and pick the not-quite-ripe walnuts off the tree.  They had a thick green skin over their shells and we used scrape it of by rubbing them on cement pavement. We would end up with brown-stained fingers, but the delicate flavor of those unripened young walnuts more than made up for the stained fingers.

Edited August 6, 2018 by peteski

[SfanGoch]

Pete,  Wyborova vodka and spirytus bottle caps were great for making heavy duty skelzie caps, too. Thanks to the marynarzy who always came to The Point to visit friends and relatives when their ships were in port, there was always a large supply of them to be found.  

My dad was a master blender for Lane Limited and I always asked him to bring home metal cigar tubes which were used for the company's Medal of Honor brand of cigars. Being an evil genius kind of kid, I also used to make the saltpeter and sugar mixtures. I'd pour the wet mix into the cigar tubes and stick a pencil in the middle and set it aside to dry. When dried, I'd pull the pencil out, leaving a hollow cavity in the center. Then, I'd punch a hole in the center of the screw-on cap, stick a fuse taken from firecrackers into the hole and seal it with melted crayon or wax. Ta-da, instant rocket engine!! My friends and I would get long cardboard tubes from the plastic factory across the street and use them as launchers. Pretty primitive; but, those suckers would fly a pretty good distance when launched off the docks and over the East River.

[peteski]

Skelzie caps?  So that's what they're called here.  Sounds like you guys did a bit more advanced stuff than we did.  But to sum it up, no matter in which part of the world you grow up, kids find similar ways to entertain themselves.  Or should I say "did"?  Kids nowadays keep themselves busy other ways.  And just like any old fart would say, I think that we had more fun back then.  We also didn't have to worry about being politically correct, or getting in trouble in school for making gun gestures with our hands or using a stick as a gun prop.   But I don't really want to start anything here - let's go back to talking about having fun when we were kids.

As any self-respecting kid, I installed a "motor simulator" on my bicycle (a folded piece of cardboard rubbing against the spokes.  it was on a string attached to the handlebar. BY pulling on the string I was able to change the sound.  Then one time I needed new rubber brake pads.  I think I had no money to buy a new set so I just sliced up an eraser into a brake pad shape and installed them in the holders.  Well,, they sort of worked but they also shredded very quickly, covering my pants with eraser shreds.  They wore down in no time.  Ah, those fun memories. . .

 

[SfanGoch]

Check the link which explains skelzies. It was a fun game. 

We did the same thing with cards on the fork. We also used those long thin balloons, partially blown up. The balloon was squeezed so that the inflated part was in the middle of the two ends and the ends were tied to the fork with the balloon on the rear of the fork.When you started moving, the balloon would be pulled forward, and rubbed against, the spokes. It sounded like a minibike.  

Edited August 7, 2018 by SfanGoch

[Jantrix]

On 8/3/2018 at 3:23 PM, SfanGoch said:

If you don't get what it's about, I ain't gonna try to explain. Being street rats, this is how kids played in the city and my recollections of the old neighborhood.

I grew up on a ten house dead end street in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. Your story brings back memories of stickball, street hockey, and all sorts of craziness with our bicycles. Outside til the streelights came on and then back outside after supper, till mom hollered from the front door. It was idylic to say the least for us kidsI made friendships that endure to this day. A shame that modern kids will never know what they are missing by not stepping out the front door, drinking from the spigot, skinning knees, climbing trees and just simply being kids.

[Ramfins59]

3 hours ago, Jantrix said:

I grew up on a ten house dead end street in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. 

Hey Rob......  For 31 years after moving from The Bronx, NY, I lived on Oakneck Road and on Babe Ruth Street in Bayshore.  We paid taxes to West Islip, but our mailing address was Baysore.

[Jantrix]

1 hour ago, Ramfins59 said:

Hey Rob......  For 31 years after moving from The Bronx, NY, I lived on Oakneck Road and on Babe Ruth Street in Bayshore.  We paid taxes to West Islip, but our mailing address was Baysore.

I lived on Henry Place off 5th Ave, near Sunrise Hw. We might not have been neighbors, but we could have sat next to one another the the Islip Speedway or the Friendlys. 

[SfanGoch]

Who'da thunk you was a Noo Yawka, Rob?  We used to hit all the clubs like OBI, Rum Bottoms, Hammerheads, Speaks and My Father's Place in the late '70s.

[iamsuperdan]

Out "lot" used to be a stand of trees near a farmer's field. Now it's good, replaced with nothing, plus some generic ugly housing. 

The green circle is where I grew up.

Big red circle, top left was our "lot"

yellow area was all farmer's field.

Small red circle, lower right, is bridge crossing "the creek." This is of significance because every Monday is when the local convenience store got their new shipment of magazines. That mean the old mags got the covers torn off and thrown out. We would assist the store by taking all of the car mags, music mags, and porn mags. That bridge is where we hid all of our porn. lolz. Ahh, junior high. 

All of the car mags, and the junk food we bought, would come to the lot with us, where we had cleared a spot to sit and hang out. Because it was treed, the spot we cleared was pretty closed off.

That entire neighbourhood was our turf though. We had a main group of about 6 of us that knew out spot, but a gang of 20 that freely roamed the hood. Tag, bike riding, hide n seek, it all went down.

Summer vacations, we'd leave our houses right after breakfast, show up at lunch to grab a sandwich and watch The Flintstones, then gone until dinner, then out afterwards. Our parents never knew where we were, and never worried. 

I miss the simplicity of those days.

[SfanGoch]

Nice bit of territory you and the gang had.