School’s out: When summer was freedom

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Children today are subjected to “organized play” (what an oxymoron), regulated as to what they can do, when they can do it, and where they can go, as if on work release. Freedom and imagination have been banished from childhood. It wasn’t always like that.

New York City public schools ran until June 30. At PS 104, the neighborhood elementary school, teaching stopped in the last week and we could bring in board games to play until school ended. There was no air conditioning, only long windows stretching from the top of the cast iron radiators to almost the ceiling. Teachers wielded a long wooden window pole with a hook to open and close the top half. In the laws of physics, heat escapes at the top of the window; cooler air comes in at the bottom. Contrary to science, however, PS 104 had suspended the laws of physics. The heat never escaped, nor did cooler air come in at the bottom. There was no cooler air.

Finally, that long-awaited last day arrived. Now we could do absolutely nothing all summer long. Mothers asked, “Where did you go?” Answer: “Out”; “What did you do?” “Nothing.” And so it went throughout summer. Some kids escaped to the Jersey Shore or the mountains for a week or two. We got up to Cape Cod in a hot car in an endless drive to my Massachusetts cousins. This was a “vacation” only to the Spanish Inquisition. One summer, when I was nine, I was sentenced to four weeks at Camp Don Bosco in the New Jersey hinterland. The camp was run by the Catholic Salesian brothers, whose members we felt had been recruited from Jersey prison guards.

“Go outside and play” was a mother’s refrain. Somehow, we managed to survive without today’s busybody adults sticking their noses into our free time. We played in vacant lots which transformed into the Wild West, or in the park which ran along the Narrows. The park was landfill, part of Robert Moses’ creation of the Belt Parkway. It was at the bottom of a glacial escarpment which had ended in a beach, called in my mother’s day — “Poverty Beach” – which should give you an idea of who went there. With Moses’ park system, the escarpment became a hill for sledding in winter or reenacting Custer’s Last Stand. We explored abandoned 19^th Century mansions along Shore Road or the crumbling Endicott Coast Artillery emplacements at Ft. Hamilton, where bold letters proclaiming “OFF LIMITS” were an invitation to explore. Although the 12” “Disappearing Guns” were long gone, the barbette pits weren’t. It was dangerous. When playing army, I’d have the other kids in loading formation as if the guns were still there. No wonder I ended up with the artillery.

Baseball was summer. Equipment was scarce; we shared bats and gloves and one or two kids had a catcher’s mitt, and extra special, a first baseman’s glove. There were no uniforms; it was T-shirts, dungarees, and Ked’s High Top sneakers. Cleats? What were cleats?

Brooklyn adapted baseball to narrow neighborhood streets. One variant was stickball, the classic game whose origins are lost to time. Team size adjusted for circumstances. There was no bat; a broomstick did the job, sometimes with electrical tape wound around one end for a better grip. There was no pitcher, no gloves, no footwear, only sneakers. The batter threw a small pink rubber ball in the air, hitting it at the right instant to send it flying up the street. The ball of choice, a Spaulding, in Brooklnese, a “Spauldeen”. There were other brands; none held the cachet of a “Spauldeen.” Homeplate was a manhole cover in the middle of the street, as was 2d base. First and third were the storm drains on the corners, or another spot, hopefully where a car wasn’t parked. Foul balls were determined by hitting a car, going over a fence, or landing on a garage roof, necessitating climbing up a chain link fence to retrieve the ball before the angry homeowner appeared.

If there were only a few kids and no stick, there was slapball. Your open hand was the bat. Here, there might be a pitcher. While stickball was lengthwise, slapball was played across the street, sometimes with only two bases, depending on manhole covers and corner storm drains. The drains were repositories of lost balls. Every so often, Mr. Anderson would grab his rake, pull the iron grade off and fish for balls. Retrieved balls were hosed off, maybe more, before being dispensed to the kids on the block. Once in a while, an official “Borough of Brooklyn” dump truck and backhoe would appear to clean out the storm drain, digging out the indescribable muck in which our balls had floated.

Stoop ball was the other game with bases and a home run marked in chalk on the asphalt. Whoever was up fired the ball against the stoop, bouncing it out and the basemen had to catch it at first, second, or third, or if it went into the neighbor’s front yard, an automatic home run.

Stoops became a bomber’s cockpit or the bridge of a ship while small front yards became forts as we reenacted the WW II war movies we saw on TV. Our imaginations were unlimited.

At some point toward evening, a window would open, a female voice would shout out “Dinn-er.” After dinner, with the cleaning up done, and as it was still daylight, would come the forlorn plea, “Can we go out?” “Yes, but only until the streetlights come on.” Today’s adventures would soon be over; tomorrow’s awaited.

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About
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William Layer

Lt. Colonel Civil Affairs, USAR (ret) served twenty-six years in the regular and reserve components of the US Army. He was civil military liaison for the 260th Military Police, DC National Guard, State Public Affairs Officer, Commander of the Public Affairs unit and a counter-drug intelligence analyst. Transferring to the 352 Civil Affairs Command as monuments and archives officer, he became the Command Public Affairs Officer in Iraq as well as liaison to local Iraqi leaders and acting Secretary to the General Staff. He was instrumental in recovering photographic artifacts of the Iraqi Royal family while in Baghdad. He was wounded in action in an ambush in Feb. 2004 for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.
In his civilian career he worked primarily in Army Public Affairs and for the Air Force as historian to the presidential wing in the early Reagan administration and later for Air Force Legislative Liaison covering congressional hearings and assisting in preparing testimony for senior leaders.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the scholarly and popular press including Asian Affairs and the Washington Times. He is co-author, with Ali Wahab, of The Iraqi Royal Family, a Collection of Photographs Recovered from The Ruins of the Zuhur Palace, 2004.
A native New Yorker, he holds a BA with honors in history from Findlay College (Ohio) and an MA in history from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and was graduated with distinction US Naval War College with a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies.