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TTFN,

The Day Arnie's Mom Went Crazy

by Ken Thompson

         Being a Brooklyn kid, at least in my part of Brooklyn in the mid-50’s, meant that you played street ball with a “pure and gen-u-wine” Spaldeen and only a “pure and gen-u-wine” Spaldeen.


         Let me be emphatic about this. You DID NOT use any of the following:

•      A pensy or Pennsylvania “Pinky”. These were markedly inferior to a Spaldeen and demonstrated a distinct absence of class. There is serious doubt that they were even “Made in America” back then.

•      The white pimple balls that were more grey than white and that felt mushy and funny but not “ha-ha” funny. Kids in Joisey used these. Besides, pimples would be something we would have to contend with later on in life and were not logically part of ball-playing.

•      Sponge balls, no matter what size or color. These were only good to give to a dog to chew-up and probably eat. Under no circumstances would you ever play stickball with one of these ‘cause they didn’t go far and they were stupid.

•      Tennis balls, while being unacceptable in a money game, could be used fooling around stickball since they had markings similar to a real baseball. Note that in my time the tennis balls only came in white and were pretty rare.

•      Wiffle balls for the simple reason that they probably hadn’t been invented yet and if they were invented they weren’t widely available. Besides, only sissies would say “You wanna come out and play with my wiffle?” Think about it.

         As street kids, we knew these non-Spaldeen balls existed and that some kids in some neighborhoods may actually use then but they weren’t gonna be used in our neighborhood. Nor were we gonna use store bought stickball bats.

         In life, three things could happen to a good Spaldeen: loose its hi-bounce and be given to your younger sister or brother, split in half in a game and the parts then mailed to cousins in Philadelphia who actually could use them in some sort of their own street game, or they could wind up down a sewer through a botched play. The possibility that they could be hit somewhere else where they couldn’t be retrieved, even with some difficulty, was extremely remote and will not be considered.

         Spaldeens that wound up down a sewer were not necessarily gone forever, particularly with them costing a dime or 15 cents. The balls that wound up in the sewer were affectionately known as sewerballs. If they stayed in the sewer for any length of time the half in the “water” became stained thereby forever being able to be identified as a sewerball. Note that sewerballs seemed to lose some bounce from the experience. Jeff said they lost “heart” from being in the sewer.

         (Note that the terms stickball and sewerball are each neither hyphenated nor multi-words terms. They are simply nouns.)

         If there was water in the sewer it was sometimes possible to fish the sewerball out with a bent wire hanger also called a “ball-puller-outer”. If the ball was unreachable there was a possibility that a rain storm would temporarily flood the sewer system and the balls would float up to the sewer opening where they could be fished out or simply grabbed, even in the rain This was pretty rare.

         We were usually out of luck if the sewers were dry.

         Here is where I segue into the part dealing with Arnie.

         Arnie was my age and lived in the next apartment house over. We did a lot of things together including playing, ever constantly, stickball. Arnie was constantly wearing out the toe part of his right sneaker by dragging his foot as he either pitched, practiced pitching, or faked pitching. Arnie had an older brother, David, who was much more scholarly and actually used the Public Library to get knowledge books rather than to just look at the National Geographic magazine pictures. David was a little strange.

         Their Dad worked in the Post Office and seemed real nice. Their Mom was also a bit strange and what we would call a “super-worrier”. She had three primary concerns: cleanliness of her house and her kids so to be free from illness, her kid’s education and grades so they could get scholarships to college, and money for everyday expenses that did include doctors, medicines, and Arnie’s right sneaker but did not include Spaldeens. She was also concerned about the communists, nuclear attacks, constipation and regularity, Republicans, race riots, and Israel. She had a lot to worry about and took it all very seriously.

         One July 1954 afternoon, as were playing a three against three stickball game, a hit Spaldeen was bobbled and inadvertently became a statistic as a sewerball. While we had a hanger stashed away just in case of such an eventuality, we were out of luck since the sewer was dry and the ball was in a spot where we couldn’t get the hanger ball-scoop under it. After we flipped up the iron sewer grate and had a good look, we could see two other balls in similar positions. In discussing our predicament we felt particularly challenged because there were three balls that needed to be rescued.

         We finally concluded that if one of us would go down there we could get the balls and our game could continue. Arnie was the logical choice since he was the slightest and lightest, and because Billy and Stanley were strong enough to lower him and to possibly pull him out him. After some heavy duty persuading, Arnie gave in and we lowered him down. After telling us how terrible it smelled and how it was “spongy” under his feet, he got the three balls and tossed them up. As he was about to get hoisted up, his brother David came along and saw Arnie down the sewer. Not good!

         Without a split-second of hesitation he announced “I’m gonna tell Ma that you’re stuck in the sewer and that you’re gonna get Polio and have to be put in a far away hospital and we’re gonna be in the poor house with all the doctor expenses and I’m not going to be able to go to college and you’re gonna die.” David stood there for two seconds with everyone’s eyes on him. He then put on a sinister grin, turned, and ran off to his apartment house to tell his Mom his observations.

         None of these thoughts had occurred to anyone of us, least of all Arnie who let out an ear shattering scream which reverberated and echoed throughout the entire Brooklyn sewer system. All that Arnie yelled up to us was “Get me out. My Ma is gonna kill me.” The fear of his Mom was greater than his fear of Polio.

         In no time he was out and took off for his apartment house but he was pretty far behind David who was probably practicing his maliciously formed pronouncement.

         Since we were down a player we chose up new sides and made Jerry the permanent mid-fielder or second-base man. This was totally logical since he bobbled the hit that led to the sewerball.

         We hadn’t gotten two at-bats when a Police car came careening along Avenue “C” and stopped at our intersection. Both Cops jumped out and checked the sewers and saw noting… least of all Arnie. At this point we’re all gathered around looking down the sewer when one of the Cops says “We got a report of a kid trapped in a sewer here.” Stanley being the most outspoken and the least experienced with Cops said “That was Arnie but he got out and went home to tell his Mom that he ain’t got Polio.”

         “What was he doing down there?”

         “We put him in to get some sewerballs.”

         “Are you kids’ crazy? He could have gotten killed. Give me that bat.” and stretched out his hand.

         He took it from me, broke it over his knee, and put the pieces down the sewer. All we could do was watch.

         The other Cop said “We better get to the apartment.” Then to us “Get outta here, don’t let me find you playing here again”. This announcement was standard for Cops to kids. We gave it the level of adherence it deserved.

         When they got to Arnie’s apartment house, an ambulance pulled up from the other direction. The Cops spoke quickly to them and then pointed to the corner and then at us. The four of them shook their heads and headed up to Arnie’s apartment.

         We stood around for about a half-hour as the crowd got larger attracted by the revolving lights of top of the Police car and on the ambulance. The crowd was primarily made up of the women from the four stoops on the block and some nosey passer-bys. Finally everyone came out… the Cops, the ambulance people walking with Arnie in his bath robe and sneakers, his Mom crying like mad, arms flailing about and then almost like fainting, yelling at Arnie and then at us. She was being walked by her neighbor, Mrs. Friedman, and her sister-in-law who looked so somber as to be planning a family funeral. Finally, David came out feigning fright and worry but who gave us his now famous sinister grin. I think David latently wanted to have been an only child.

         The ambulance took off and the Cops were standing there, looking at some paperwork. Stanley went up to them and asked “Is he gonna be alright? Is he gonna get Polio?”

         Without looking up the Cop said “They took Arnie to the King's County for observation and some treatment. When we got up to the apartment, Mrs. Mendel had Arnie in the bathtub and was washing him with hot water and Bon-Ami cleanser. He should be okay except for the scrubbing.”

         They got in their car and took off. We decided to play stoopball since we no longer had a bat… for the time being.

         The next day Arnie came home from the hospital but his Mom wouldn’t let him out. Only Stanley and me were willing to go up to his apartment for fear of his Mom. Stanley said we shouldn’t worry because Arnie was well enough to come home and his Mom would be happy.

         After we rang the doorbell, David let us in and sat us on the couch with the plastic slipcovers and told us not to touch anything. Stanley went to take a candy out of the candy dish but David yelled “Don’t touch it. You an idiot?” David still had that “look”. When his Mom saw us she went into a long lecture, almost a scream, about her three favorite subjects: health, education (as opposed to wasting time with ball much less Spaldeen sewerballs), and the expense of yesterday’s events. I was coming to feel that visiting Arnie may not be worth the ordeal.

         When she finally calmed down, she let us go into see Arnie.

         He really looked like a patient with his pajamas, big glass of water with a straw, small radio, flowers on the nightstand, comic books, and white cream all over his Pepto-Bismol bright pink skin. We asked what the white stuff was and he said it was an ointment to ease the sting and rash from the hot water and the Bon-Ami cleanser.

         By the weekend, Arnie was out of the house but had to wear dress shoes to prevent him from playing ball. This was his Mom's idea. Before he went home that night he had worked a scrape hole in the toe cap of his right shoe.

         In another couple of days he was out playing with us but had instructions to not even go near or touch a sewerball.

         Some rules are just meant to be broken.

         All’s well that ends well.



[end] © Copyright by Ken Thompson - 2002-2006.

Cockamamie

by Ken Thompson

         As a child in the early ‘50s we didn’t have television, Nintendo, Game Boy, Xbox, PlayStations, or even Atari consoles. Well, maybe we did have play-stations but it was with a lower case “p”, hyphenated, and usually in a school lunchroom.

         As kids in the Brooklyn streets, we were able to busy ourselves with the most simple of toys including chalk, bottle caps, and a Spaldeen. We weren’t into organized sports but everything we did had rules. The rules may have varied from neighborhood to neighborhood but they were rules and gave order to out time on the streets.

         We sometimes busied ourselves with more relatively expensive playthings but still I’m only thinking of yo-yos, kites, or skates. Later on we may move up to basketballs and bikes but those happened in time.

         One of the simplest and cheapest things I can recall were cockamamies. Yes, I’m using the word as a noun as opposed to the more familiar use of the word as an adjective such as to describe something as silly, ridiculous, ludicrous, worthless, or absurd as in “Writing about cockamamies is a cockamamie idea.”

         I remember the first time I heard the word. I didn’t know what it was but the whole idea of it sounding as if it were somehow connected to ca-ca was exciting and not something my Mom would approve of.

         A cockamamie (noun) was a small design or picture on treated paper that you could transfer to your skin a la tattoo by wetting and pressing the picture to the back of your hand or your arm for a couple of minutes. Often we simply licked our skin and then pressed the picture. We reengineered the process for speed and simplicity. No positions were eliminated.

         The transfers were very temporary, washed off with a little soap and water but could busy us for hours. We thought they were absolutely cool.

         One of my friends’ older brothers showed us how to take parts of different cockmamies to make up entirely different pictures. I came to find out that some of these weren’t very nice and shouldn’t be on little boy’s arms.

         The derivation of cockamamie comes from nineteenth century French. A combination of calquer, “to press” and de, “off” making for the word decals, those things pressed off, and by adding manie producing decalcomania, the fad itself.

         If you look at the word decalcomania you can see how the word cockamamie could be derived. Okay maybe you have to stretch a bit but you can do it.

         Over the years variants of cockamamie has stayed with us to this day when you can buy “temporary tattoos” depicting cartoon characters, rock bands, corporate logos, cars, and even demons. Of course they are no longer available at the local candy store for a penny nor are they called cockamamies. Again, all types of “personal adornments of the body” may include tattoos, piercings, makeup, and hair colorings. From my personal perspective, some of these are less than temporary and are a cockamamie (adjective) idea.

         I’m sure every one of you is very interested in all this.

         My time with cockamamies was a time of innocence and simplicity when we could busy ourselves with spit and imagination. These were good times, good Brooklyn Memories and I miss them.



[end] © Copyright by Ken Thompson - 2004-2006.

Jack Bernstein and the Jay-Bee Laundry

by Ken Thompson

     As a youngster in Brooklyn, one of the best deals I ever had was an after school job working as a delivery boy for the Jay-Bee Laundry on Cortelyou Road at East 5th Street.

     The owner and operator of the laundry was a fellow by the name of Jack Bernstein. Think about it… Jay-Bee Laundry… Jack Bernstein? Jack grew up on the lower Eastside and was living in Sheepshead Bay with his family. He was a physically imposing fellow that you knew not to mess with. Anyway Jack was about twenty years older than me and was one of the most fair and honorable men I had ever met.

     There were really two pieces to the laundry. The major part was a wet wash laundry where people brought in bags of dirty laundry, they got washed and dried them and stuffed them back into the now clean laundry bags. Wrinkles in the clothes weren't an issue. The second piece was a “shirt” laundry where we took in men’s dress shirts and in turn sent them out to a laundry in Boro Park that actually did the washing, ironing and folding of the shirts. They did the pick up and delivery back to Jack and it took about five day turnaround.

     I worked at the Jay-Bee Laundry in my Sophomore, Junior and Senior years in high school. I’d usually go in at around 4:30 and be able to finish up around 7pm; 7:30 at the latest. When I got home my Mom would have dinner waiting and I’d have to then do my homework. If I didn’t have the job, my grades would have probably been a lot better but then I would have had to put up with my Dad complaining about giving me money. Either way my Dad had an opportunity to complain, either about my grades or about money.

     As a delivery boy I got 15 cents for each delivery and quarter for each pick-up-and-delivery. Most of the deliveries went to the apartment houses on Ocean Parkway so the distance wasn’t too bad. A number of the apartment houses wouldn’t allow me to schlep deliveries through the front doors so I had to take them through the basements.

     Most customers would tip me extra but others, if they had already paid for the wash, would simply yell through the closed apartment door “Leave it by the door; I’ll bring it in later.” Most days I could earn between $2 in tips and $2-3 from what Jack charged the customers. Jack would always give me about fifty cents to a dollar more as his pay to me. Most of the time, I would make about $5. The most I ever walked away with was $8.25. This was pretty good for a high school kid in the late ‘50s.

     The deal I had with my Dad was that I didn’t get any allowance or extra money and I had to pay for all my extras such as lunches, carfare, shirts, Argosy Magazines, pants, shoes, and the like. Truth be told, my Mom would usually slip me a few extra dollars once in a while. My Dad did too but much less frequently.

     Back to Jack and the job.

     Some customer would argue that they shouldn’t have to pay for delivery and that they shouldn’t have to tip either. Jack would tell them that that was their prerogative as it was for him to have them take their wash elsewhere. He would also charge them for two deliveries if they brought in either extra large or multiple bags of laundry.

     Jack would also charge them extra if they lived outside of the normal range for my deliveries. He also charged extra when people came back from being away in the Catskills and having to do all the bed linens and blankets. Jack felt that if they could afford to go away for the summer they should be able to pay a little extra to make up for the no deliveries during the summer.

     Once every seven months or so Jack would take me aside and ask me if I thought I should be paid more. The first time he asked I lucked in and said “I don’t know. I trust you to pay me fairly so you decide.” Jack simply nodded his head in approval and smiled. Without thinking, I immediately followed up with “Don’t change what you charge Mrs. Adler; she comes to the door with her robe loose.” He roared and told me that he knew that and that sometimes he made the deliveries himself.

     Since I sometimes helped out loading and unloading the washers, some women complained to Jack that they didn’t like that a goy saw or possibly even touched their “unmentionables”. Jack told them that I was reliable, hard working, and had better things to do with my time than peruse their “unmentionables”. Jack reminded them that most of the time he worked the washers and they didn’t have a problem with him as a Jew handling their laundry.

     When the weather was rainy or particularly cold, Jack would have me make only the close by deliveries and we would then load the rest of the deliveries into his Ford station wagon and he would drive me for the deliveries. This sure helped as well as prevented the laundry from possible getting soaked.

     Each Chanukah I would give Jack a bottle of J&B Scotch (appropriately) and each Christmas he would give me an extra $20.

     When I graduated from high school and went to work for the New York Stock Exchange as well as to go to college at nights, Jack gave me a hug and a $100 U.S. Savings Bond. It was the best gift I got.

     On the Saturday following the Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest days of the year for the laundry, Jack called my house and asked me to do him a favor and help out with deliveries since the regular kid didn't show up. Without hesitation I agreed and went in. We worked till about 8pm and got everything taken care of. As we were closing Jack asked me how much he owed me and I said “Nothing… it’s on the house.” Well, he insisted and gave me a $20 bill “For getting him out of a jam.” I again protested, told him thanks, but took the bill and immediately stuffed it into the Muscular Dystrophy donation can (his favorite charity) he kept by the cash register. I then put in all the tip change I had gotten. He gave me a big "Jack" smile and a big hug.

     Things were great.

     [end] © Copyright by Ken Thompson - 2002-2006.

     I liked Jack. Another Jack rememberance was when he found out that I was being "charged" a quarter to make deliveries to one of the apartment houses on Ocean Parkway. I didn't complain to him but he heard that it was happening to the delivery boy from Rudick's.

     Jack simply followed me one day, about 15 seconds behind me, and when he caught up with me as I was handing some money over there was a "come to Jack" meeting. The issue was resolved there and then and was never an issue again.      Again, thanks Jack!