The friends of Dot and Ev were prime targets as they were all reaching child-bearing ages and loved to gush over little ones. I was there waiting and ready to be gushed over! Dot’s friend Althea agreed to go for a wagon ride with me. She should have known better. Polk Street hill in Columbia Heights between 39th and 37th Avenues was a long, steep hill. It was made for wagon rides, sledding, and roller skates! Once in the wagon and dependent upon a six-year old me to steer, Althea learned I didn’t know how to steer, nor brake, nor stop the wagon until we were at the bottom. She was a trim lady with long legs which were on the tree-side of our break-neck speeding Red Flyer! I can still hear her screams today. Ev’s friend Buckles was also taken for a ride. He thought himself quite cosmopolitan, was studying to become a doctor, had recently married and screamed like a girl all the way down the hill.
Polk Street hill played a prominent part in most of my adventures. The largest number of us who played together lived near the top of the hill. There were the brothers across the street Tommy (my age) and Chucky (younger by two or three years). They also had a sister, Shirley, who was Pat’s age. Next door were the four boys in order from eldest to youngest: Terry, Normie (my age), Danny, and Russ. At the bottom of the hill were four brothers of whom I can only remember two: Dickie, and Gary (my age). There were two adopted boys across the street from them who weren’t allowed to play with us much: Steven and David (my age). Later a second David moved into the neighborhood (a year younger than me). There were three girls in the middle of the hill not related to one another: Louise, Mary, and Sherry. The girls were all three to four years younger than me and weren’t allowed to play with me very often (and there may have been good reason).
A girl amongst all those boys has to learn to hold her own or play alone. While I didn’t mind playing alone if I wanted to, joining in was more fun. Some girls would have learned to rule with a velvet glove cajoling, teasing, or winning her way into the games. I found boxing was more expedient. I learned to expect to be treated like one of the guys and I gave as good as I got. Dot and Betty were prissy and while I never heard Betty called “princess” she definitely could play the role. Pat was a tomboy and loved to play football and be outside; mud was not offensive to her – but her favorite pass time was reading. I loved being dressed up, playing dolls, and having tea parties, but I knew those things were reserved for those days I must play alone. I remember one afternoon while Mom was busy baking my birthday cake, Dot kept me occupied by making a crepe paper dress for me and an aluminum foil crown. Once in my royal garments, Dot placed me in Dad’s arm chair and left the room content she had set me with a game to keep me busy. She was right. The Queen’s problem was that her throne was not big enough nor high enough to impress. I put the matching footstool on the chair, added a box and two pillows and put my little metal rocking chair on top of all. Mom came from the kitchen to find me commanding an imaginary audience of peons while teetering precariously nearly five feet off the ground. I still smile when I realize it wasn’t me who got yelled at. After all, Dot was supposed to have been watching me!
I played alone whenever the boys were grounded because of mass mischief (which was usually instigated by me and orchestrated by them). The week they were all kept inside for smoking, I was the one who brought the cigarettes and matches and lit them for the boys to puff on. I was never discovered hence never grounded. When Tommy was grounded for fighting with a girl, it was after he tried to pistol whip me with a toy gun. I punched him in the stomach and when he fell to his knees gasping for air, I grabbed his hair and started vigorously shaking him. I shook that handful of hair attached to his head until he had crawled out of the yard. Kangaroo Court Justice is the title for that. Adding insult to injury was his enforced stay at home. Who knows? His mother may have been trying to protect him from me.
Normie was the one I gave the black eye to. We were arguing over who would wear the roller skates first. Boys wrestle and tussle and roll in the dirt to settle an argument. I watched boxing with my dad and practiced what I saw. As Normie rushed in to put a bear hug on me, I timed my punch so that his momentum, and my know-how landed my fist squarely on the point of his nose. The nose didn’t break, but he had a black eye for a week. I used the roller skates while he was inside being comforted by his mother. Normie’s older brother, Terry didn’t pick on Normie if I was around because even though he was two or three years older, I would tear into him like a terrier after a mastiff for picking on my friend. I guess the right to maim Normie was mine alone!
In spite of the fights, we three, Normie, Tommy, and I, were inseparable friends. We played together almost every day they were not grounded. I married each of them so I would not show any favorites. I believe we were all five at the time. We were invincible, clever, and nearly fearless as a team. We invented the first skate boards but will never have any credit for it. Tired of the routine wagons and skating and hopscotch and jumping rope, we looked for a way to spice up an afternoon. We started going down Polk Street hill sitting on a single skate. These were the skates with metal wheels, ball bearings needing oil now and then, clamps for your shoe toes, and a strap around the ankle. They were not a comfortable ride; every sidewalk crack could be felt from the tailbone to the neck bone! We rounded up pieces of cardboard and put those on top of the skate which cushioned the behind and allowed us to sit, hold hands and feet high in the air and sail down the hill all day long. Yes, sometimes the skate, cardboard, and rider went in three distinctly different directions; yes, there were contusions and abrasions as battle scars. That game stayed popular for several years until we all became too tall to make it work. I think it was a game that caused the kids from the bottom of the hill to join in and get along with the kids from the top of the hill.
Chucky didn’t mean to be but he was a pain in the derrière! He was enough younger to not know how to play without having his feelings hurt. Since he was tiresome, we devised ways to get rid of him; some of those ways could have been permanent but for the protection of a Merciful God. We used the neighbor’s lumber pile to support large cardboard boxes and created a two-story cardboard house. We pulled lumber out part way to hold the boxes and cut trap doors and windows and were beginning to decorate with colors on the inside. It was Chucky we sent to the top story. Suddenly there was an ominous shaking. We departed the structure but left Chucky inside. We stared as the walls bulged here and there, little mewing noises were coming from the frightened boy, and the entire building project crashed to the ground. Somehow (remember that merciful God) Chucky wound up on top of the collapsed mess. He wasn’t hurt, just frightened out of his mind!
When we played cowboys and Indians, we could spread out over several yards and have a never-ending pioneer territory to settle. Sometimes I was Dale Evans but usually I was just another one of the hired ranch hands. I often was an Indian and that was my favorite. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would often tell people “an Indian”. I just didn’t understand you couldn’t grow into what you admired. We would have our wars, yelling and hooting and shooting. The guns had “caps” sold around the 4th of July. When the caps were gone, we had to make our own shooting noises. Mom stopped me from chasing Terry out of the yard with my bow and arrow before I could let fly my arrow. We all died appropriately falling to the ground in the best of groaning agony. We fell out of trees, off imaginary horses, and out of wagons. Well, that is we did all that if the mortal shot was not fired by Chucky! If he shot we all kept going. After Chucky’s third or fourth trip home to tattle, their mom would open the front door to scold us for not playing nicely. One day she caused the entire top of the hill neighborhood to laugh when the front door opened. She stuck her head out and yelled, “Tommy! Drop dead once in a while for your brother!”
I was thoroughly fed up with young Chuck one day and sat staring at an old truck tire we had been using as a prop for various games. I conferred with Tommy and Normie. We were in agreement! We forced the edges of the tire open and convinced Chucky he could sit in there. He could. When we let the rims go, he was held fast. I really have to say I don’t know how one thing led to another, but I can bet it was my clever little mind and willing followers that developed the unfolding events. With Chucky’s protests nearly inaudible from inside the tire, we stood the tire on end and let it go down Polk Street hill. The tire wobbled a little, picked up speed, and rolled rapidly toward the bottom of the hill. Chucky’s little arms were flapping out the side and we could hear his screams with every rotation of the tire. The screams were small when he was facing away, but at the bottom of a rotation, he would be facing us and the screams were louder. The tire tipped over before it came to the busy 37th Avenue at the bottom of the hill. No one was grounded because we were all too frightened to tell, especially Chucky! The little pest lost enthusiasm for playing with the big kids for about two weeks.
Over a period of several years, I caused Tommy major dental work. They wouldn’t let me play baseball with them because I might throw like a girl. I picked up the hard ball and asked Tommy where he would like it. “Right here!” came the prompt answer as he held the catcher’s mitt in front of his face. I pitched. The unbelieving Tommy moved the glove, and for two years he didn’t eat apples or caramels or anything very hard while his two permanent front teeth reseated and strengthened themselves. He lost some baby teeth to me as well. The final molar came out the day we were in our early teens and he informed me I had to quit beating up on boys or I would never have a date. I swung straight from the shoulder and he spit out a tooth.
The second David that moved in when we were around ten years of age, was a tough little character built like a barn. He was a year younger than the rest of us, but he was my height or taller and outweighed me by a good fifteen pounds. He was broad of chest, quick and muscular. He terrorized the rest of the boys. One day he and I were the only ones out of doors. He started bragging about how tough he was. I said I wanted to show him something behind our huge lilac bush. I knocked the snot out of him, as the saying goes. He lay, crying and nursing a bloody nose. I sat down next to him and said, “I won’t tell anyone what happened if you start playing with all of us instead of picking on everybody!” I never told and he became a part of the group.
Dicky and Gary rarely played with the top of the hill kids. Dicky suffered polio when he was quite young. I think he was two years older than me. His family had problems that kept the neighbors at arm’s length but I don’t know what they were. Once he was on the mend with braces and crutches, he often came to spend time with my mom. He was somewhat neglected at home and couldn’t attend school yet. Mom would encourage him and help him. She also began teaching him some independence. She let him decide when he needed help and taught him to ask for it. He was sometimes belligerent and cantankerous so as a four-year-old bystander I wondered why they liked each other so much. One winter day as he was leaving, he fell. There he was on the path toward the end of our yard a tangle of braces and crutches and legs that wouldn’t work. Mom started out of the door and he barked at her he didn’t need help and not to come near him. She stopped. He ordered her to go in the house. She did. Just out of sight, she watched through the multi-paned glass of our front door as he struggled to get up. He tried and tried. The tears rolled down Mom’s cheeks and she didn’t even wipe them away. She hadn’t closed the door tightly as she wanted to be able to hear him. Soon, a thoroughly tired out, sweaty, youngster called out, “I know you’re there. I’m ready for help now. Please?” I think there was a love between the two of them that surpassed friendship. Mom opened the door, walked to him and pulled him to his feet. “Next time don’t be so stubborn!” she admonished.
When Dicky grew to early teens, he preferred to be called Dick, but I could still call him Dicky. My but he was turning out to be a handsome man. He wanted to re-learn to ride a bike. His back muscles had compensated somewhat for what his legs would not do and, while he still needed crutches, he could move about quite well for short periods of time without them. No one would let him try a bike. Those dark brown eyes, wavy dark brown hair, and killer smile were the catalyst for me to help him succeed. I let him use my dad’s bike. After several failed attempts, it was clear a grassy field, level ground, and me pushing were not what he needed to get a good start. He would not let me say it might not work. So! We went up our alley and around the corner grocer’s on 39th Avenue, to the very top of Polk Street hill. No guts, no glory was our motto. He gave me his crutches and got on the bike, with the kickstand down for extra steadiness. I sat down and took out my shoe laces and tied his feet to the pedals. I hugged him and cried. Then I put up the kick stand and gave a mighty shove. He flew down the hill, careened around the corner onto 37th Avenue, and was able to use the momentum to pedal up the alley where he could fall over and untie his feet. I met him in the alley so grateful to see him alive! A few more practice runs and he began to be able to pedal. He didn’t ride often nor far, but it gave him something he had longed to have.
Gary was in track and field. Remember this was in the late fifties and graduation for me was in 1960. Several of my friends and I were in the bleachers watching the track team practice hurdles. Gary was not having a good day and had several bad starts knocking hurdles over with each try. Of course, we girls were not being sympathetic. We were laughing. I became his target because he knew me and we fought more than we got along. “If you think you can do it better get down here and show me!” he yelled. I stood. I was wearing a blouse, full skirt with lots of crinolines, nylons and “shell” shoes. I came down the bleachers. You know, I don’t remember the coach saying anything to stop what happened next. He just stood there staring like all the others. Gary and I lined up. Hurdle for hurdle, we went over with me coming in just a step or two ahead of him at the end. Not a single hurdle was knocked over. I walked away without saying anything (more of a feat for me than running the hurdles). I am sure we were both surprised. We got along better after that. Funny.
They all remain in my memory just as they were. Boys: irresistible, funny, rambunctious, curious, enjoyable, and beyond understanding. We never stayed in touch after we grew up. I don’t know what they turned out like as husbands and fathers. They don’t know what I turned out to be as a wife, mother, grandmother. They were my playmates, my friends, and I liked them. There was always a spontaneity in our play I’ve lost in adulthood (well, somewhat). I think it was a time, an era, a group, a place, never to be repeated nor replaced.
God was merciful. We were a melting pot of Poles, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Italians, middle class and poor, public and private school attenders, exemplifying what America was meant to be. We didn’t fight over things like skin shades, churches, or schools. Although, we did fight over whether a Christmas tree should have a star or angel at the top, whether spun glass angel hair was better than tinsel rain and tinsel garland, and whether or not there really was a Santa Clause. While we were growing up we waited for winter. Summer was fun and there was no school, but it was hot and there was work in the gardens and on the lawns. Winter meant a sense of security in that it seemed war couldn’t touch us because the world was silent and white. Little did we know that in Korea war was happening whatever the weather. We didn’t know yet about Viet Nam, nor presidents and senators being killed by their own countrymen, nor 11 September 2001. Kids today seem to know all those things and their life has a frightening side that is stronger and real rather than imaginary boogey men and monsters under the bed. We knew we would find safety in any of the adults between school and home if we needed them. Not so in this day and age.
We were together. We played together, fought together. We didn’t have to wait to get home to eat our treats from Halloween because no one would put in something that wasn’t home made, tasty, and safe to eat! We visited each others’ churches and synagogues. We exchanged Christmas presents we made and were polite about the way they looked. We sang carols together at Christmas – even the Jewish kids joined in. If I could wrap these memories in a colorful glass globe, I’d hang it on my Christmas tree. They are a part of the mix that makes me who I am today. It wasn’t that life wasn’t with hardship or grief. It was. But it was a slower time when news didn’t travel as fast or as far. We had time to be kids before we had to become adults.
This Christmas, along with spending time on reflection of what the Day stands for, take out a memory or two of when you knew life was good. Cherish it for a time and mentally put it on your Christmas tree. Thank God that you remember all the things He gave you and be grateful you lived without some of the things you might have had to face. Bless the fact you are who you are because of total life experiences. Ask God to let you walk into your future knowing that because He sent His Son at this time of year you will never walk without Him at your side. Thank Him that one day you will be a perfect reflection of Him because of the events He allows you to participate in on this earth. If you have not yet asked Christ to participate in your life, there’s no time like the present time to do so. He is The Gift that truly keeps on giving.
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