By Gary Herrity
Special to the Herald
July 03, 2009 11:59 pm
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Kids today wonder what we did for fun back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. What could possibly have entertained us, not having iPods, television, video games, cell phones, water parks, etc. etc.? Well, the answer is quite a lot.
It all began one day in 1948, shortly after World War II, when my dad drove into the driveway with what looked like a pointy-nosed airplane without wings. It was a Studebaker. Kids in the back seat couldn’t see out, because the metal wrapped around the car, partially obscuring their vision.
Going for “rides” was a favorite thing. Our whole family ate together at 5 p.m. every night, then often went for “rides.” No one ever refused to go either. It was fun. We toured the town, learned who lived where, and what was made in this or that business. We always stopped at Rederer’s for a chocolate frosty malt or at A&W, near the ball park, for a cold mug of root beer.
By the way, while eating together, we would exchange all the news and gossip of the day. Sometimes kids even got to talk. On hot evenings we would sit for hours on friends’ front steps or porch-swings, describing the latest movies to each other.
On special occasions, we would all go to Eagle Point or Crystal Lake for a picnic. Sometimes we would eat at our cousins’ homes, and Aunt Martha would take pictures with her wonderful Brownie camera. The images she captured are treasures today… so crisp and clear… because she knew how to stand close enough to get everyone’s faces.
Sometimes of an evening we went to the Drive-In Theater, out by the Two-Mile House. We saw good, first-run movies, not horror films of later years. The whole family was in the car. Families did a lot together, which might surprise today’s young people… perhaps even eliciting a “Yuck!” or two.
Strange things happened when I was a kid. We had a huge old house with a dark dingy basement. Only about four things ever happened there. Once, we had a rat in the toilet (that gave us nightmares for months). My brother and I shot BB guns at the wall and listened to ricochets off the furnace. We also shot hoops with a tennis ball… into a coffee-can mounted on the wall. But the most frequent thing that happened in the basement was my mother doing the family wash in a machine that had a wringer. You gotta know what happened next — the fate of all mothers — her hand got dragged into the wringer. Somehow, she survived, just as she did having eight children. Barely.
I was the last. People always laugh when I share with them my tired, old mother’s last words to me. In 1981, shortly before she died, she said, “Gary, if we had known then what they know now, you wouldn’t be here.” But there was a twinkle in the eyes, as she clearly enunciated her complex sentence…I think.
Life was great in those peaceful days after the Big War. Our little town was packed. And so were the swimming pool, the theaters, bus lines and streets… especially on Monday nights, as we parked downtown and watched the crowds walking up and down Fifth Avenue.
Then it happened. All of that changed. Television came on the scene; everyone disappeared from the streets, and they haven’t left their homes since. Before chains and Green Stamps, entire families went weekly to neighborhood grocers… ours frequented B.C. Hass’s.
Kids made things in the kitchen, too… like cool aid, put into metal ice cube trays; or we might make lead soldiers on the stove by boiling and pouring lead into molds. (It’s amazing we didn’t burn down the house.) My sisters once made such ‘durable’ pancakes, we used them as sink stoppers. Another time, they challenged me to eat a “scab sandwich” (actually bread, lard, hot Clinton Mustard and Lux Flakes). They grabbed it away before my first bite. Then we opened a can of Franco-American Spaghetti… the “fast-food” of its day, except for families preferring Chef Boy-ar-dee.
Oh, I remember making popcorn by throwing kernels into a pot with hot butter and clamping a lid on it… before Jiffy Pop came along. We loved watching its aluminum “balloon” expand as it popped. Do kids today thrill at watching their microwave?
We had so much fun, whether it was waiting for postman Don Roode to appear with our classic comic books (abbreviated-form “classic” tales, with pictures) — like The Three Musketeers, Doctor Jeckle & Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island etc. So, after later seeing the movie, we all grew up believing we were well-read. Hah!
If you had to stay home, there was always plenty to do — Monopoly, the Erector Set or tinker toys, cards, or…if patient, like my brother,…build a model airplane.
Also fascinating, was listening to the radio. At night, there were comedy or horrible murder mysteries; by day, soap operas ruled. Best of all, though, were baseball games… with the energetic Harry Caray, the boring Bob Elson, or a Cub announcer who always said, “I don’t care who wins, just so it’s the Cubs.”
Sometimes we’d go to the park and play baseball for awhile (six to eight hours) and “cook” our skin…damage that keeps dermatologists in business to this day. Part of those interminable games was always listening to little Thiel Collins imitate the play-by-play in Harry’s voice.
In the early 50s we saw the movie “The Fuller Brush Man,” with Red Skelton. Shortly thereafter, we watched him and Milton Berle on television. I often went to the Wareham’s at 6 p.m., in 1949, to watch the first television.
We sat for a half-hour just staring at test-patterns before Kukla-Fran-and Ollie came on. Soon, there’d be Marlin Perkins’ famous Zoo Parade, or Ed Sullivan with little Topo Gigio. I actually disliked those, but any comedians or guys with spinning plates were right up my alley. Remember Sky King and Our Miss Brookes intermittently interrupted by the puppet “Speedy” Alka-Seltzer?
Girls played all the regular games, like softball and kick-the-can. Some had roller skate keys on strings around their necks and were into “Avon calling.” The WORST was coming home as my big sisters were giving Toni Home Permanents…they smelled like rotten eggs!
Those years went by so fast, yet stuck with us forever. Why, I’d throw up today if forced to chew bubble gum from those baseball cards we bought by the thousands (never got a Babe Ruth card though).
I see a montage of mental images as I think back: the fire escape tube at Hawthorne School, and kids climbing up it; putting the first Brylcreme on my hair; picking up hot flashbulbs after pictures were taken; riding my bike all over Clinton, and on, and on.
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