Fortunate Childhood

In the subway this morning I was thinking about what I could write about and was wondering if anything interesting would happen during that train ride, well nothing except me sleeping happened, but the only thoughts that did come to mind were when I was a kid and the childhood memories from 90th street - and there are a lot of memories!

So it brings me to this entry and looking back at how I grew up.  I didn't get that suburban childhood growing up in a house with trees all around and a culdasack where the kids from the neighborhood would play, even though when I was younger I would see that on TV and think that that's how I wish my neighborhood was.  But seeing it for what it really was now, my childhood was better than that of which I saw on the shows on TV, I grew up in Elmhurst, to be more specific 90th street.

This is the block where dreams happened and where you could do whatever you wanted, there was no limit ... well actually there was a limit, it's called parents.  

We did whatever we wanted, we ran things on 90th street!  Well maybe we didn't actually run things, but you know what I mean, it was our playground and no matter what we did, no matter what injury we had, no matter how in trouble we got, next day was a new day to start over again.

One of the main activities was the baseball games in the driveway to the garage, and if you were good enough to hit one off of the block and across the street, you had to deal with the lady in all black that was dubbed "get outta here" as that was the only thing we ever heard her say.  Those baseball days often ended because a ball would be fouled onto the room of the neighboring building, where we had no access.  But if that foul ball would just go over the 15 foot fence separating the two, we found a way to cilmb that beast of a fence and get our balls back.  One memory that really sticks out for me was when that fence was newly build to keep us out and keep us from climbing to get our foul balls, and it was my "turn" to get the ball ... as I was climbing back to the playing field, I found myself on the very top of that fence.  My apartment was in the back of our building so my parents bedroom window was right there and I heard it opening and my dads voice calling me.  If he had caught me on top of that fence, it would have been over for me!  So I did what any kid my age would do ... jump from that high in a panic!  I landed and stood there as my dad stuck his head out the window asking me a question, I stood there as if I had been standing there for a while and not just have jumped off a fence.  My feet were burning and I had to wait for him to go back in the window for me to take my shoes off and care for my feet.  

That's just one story from that baseball alley ... another quick one was when we played baseball with a basketball and I was the pitcher.  My cousin Michael swung and hit the basketball right back towards me, I didn't have time to react and it hit me right in my nose where I started crying as he rounded the "bases" with a homerun.

Another daily activity was skateboarding, ahhh yes, we skated way back before it was popular as it is now.  The first trick that I learned was the bunny hop which was simply jumping a little on your board as you hit a small bump from the sidewalk blocks.  Too many memories with this as well, but the one that sticks out and I'm sure we'll all remember had to do with my cousin Jay's board.  He had a free style board, similar to the ones that Rodney Mullen would use.  As we were skating outside, a group of other skaters came by and started talking to us.  They were saying how nice our boards where and we were flattered, but some of us were a bit cautious.  I remember one of them asking to see one of boards, it was the banana shaped yellow board (I can't remember who had that), and they said no.  They asked if they could see someone else's board and they said no.  Then they got to Jay and Jay being the oldest one of us said yes and let them see his board.  All I can remember is one of them saying ... "man nice board" and this was right before they ran to the other block and put Jay's board on top of the hood of a parked car.  There they proceeded to take the wheels off and steal part of his board!  We stood there not knowing what to do since these skaters were older than we were.  Needless to say, Jay was without a board that day and we had learned a valuable lesson in trust, even amongst fellow skaters.  

There are just too many memories to write about, I'll save those for another entry.  But growing up, being surrounded by family all the time was great.  Having cousins there everyday to play with, or just sit in front of the apartment doing nothing with was something that can't be replaced by suburban living.  Sure we didn't live in the best part of town, but we made it that way.  It was our block and we took full advantage of the fact that we were so close, physically and in friendship and family.  

This extended to the adults in our families too, where we had family gatherings together, but they didn't see each other as much as us kids saw each other.  Maybe that's why I didn't do too well in school?  I would rush home, and either finish my homework as fast as possible so I could go out and "play" or I would wait to do my homework later that night so I could get outside and figure out what the cousins would be doing today ... would it be throwing bottle rockets from John's basement, would it be sharing one bike that we would take turns riding around the block, would it be to play on the milk crate with the bottom cut out that Michael had nailed to the telephone pole, would it be to go to someone's house and play with our GI Joes or play bingo (yes bingo!) ... it was endless.  

My childhood is one that I remember and will always remember, even when I drive by the old block, new old memories come back.  It also paved the way to keeping the bond with us cousins tight, we don't do the same things anymore, but when we do get together, we sometimes reminisce and we always new memories.  It's good to be surrounded by family, good to have them around, and I miss those days where we could just be carefree and did whatever we want without having to worry about the consequences until they actually were right in our face.  

I sometimes wonder if everyone has a 90th street growing up?  

+ mon