My Coney Island Memories
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Superman Is Dead
It was the age of innocence. The little battery powered transistor radio played "Sherry" and "Under The Boardwalk". Girls had to wear skirts to school, and boys had to have on a white shirt and tie, or they couldn't go to assembly.... (what a threat!) If you were lucky the Million Dollar Movie would have an Abbott and Costello movie on that week. You could watch it everynight, and twice on Saturday and Sundays! I remember seeing Cagney so many times in Yankee Doodle Dandy, that I knew not only the songs, but all the dialogue by heart. Why is it that to this day when the young marching soldier asks Cohan, (who he didn't know wrote the song and just got the medal of honor from the President), "don't you know the words oldtimer?".... I still cry? We waited on line for hours to get scared to death by the Tingler in our very own movie theatre! Wore silly 3D glasses for 13 Ghosts, and sneaked in sandwiches our moms made us because the candy was too expense at 25 cents. Who was better? Mickey, Willie, or the Duke? The damn Yankees always won anyway, maybe thats why they had so many fans? We played..... hell..... we LIVED in the streets. Sun-up till dinner time, then back out again. Hot sweaty summer nights with the smell of the salt air burning our heaving chests from running around. Then like the shiny white knight, came the incessant musical jingle of the Mister Softee truck. A cool respit. Time to sit on the stoop and eat, and fight about which was better. Carvel, Mister Softee, Good Humor? We fought about everything didn't we? We didn't know it then but we were honing our skills for the real world. Soon after someone would yell out a game and instantly we were fighting about "good sides". "Thats not good sides.... you'll kill them with all the big kids". So we would have to chose sides. How to choose? Another fight! In reality all this was a ballet of sorts, to be passed down from the older kids to the younger ones, so they too would know how to handle a crisis..... Like when a stickball court was occupied, and you wanted to play? You would "challenge" of course! But to properly do this you needed 2 balls? Why? Who the hell knows? Late at night my dad who was not a terribly educated man, would send me down to the corner store to intercept the truck delivering the Daily News and the Mirror. He had to have both for some reason. As the truck approached, the gigantic letters on the side billboard screamed out "SUPERMAN DEAD". We all looked at this puzzled? How the hell can this be? We all read the comics fiercely and knew it was only Kryptonite, and the green kind, that could remotely do this. We started to argue, some of the younger kids getting very upset. We grabbed the 1st paper off the stack and read the headlines briefly and quickly opened the page. The actor George Reeves found dead. Suicide suspected. How could this be? Why would he kill himself.... why would anyone? Especially him. Afterall he was Superman..... err played him at least. By the next day it finally registered that an actor who played the guy on TV, that still looked young on the reruns we were watching, took his own life. Depression they said............ The age of innocence was over......... Superman was dead!
the 2nd best coaster was the Tornado
Stickball
There were several types of stickball games, and balls. The oldtimers played on the streets from sewer to sewer, dodging cars. For me the only kind of stickball was fast pitching against a wall. I was an awesome stickball player. On the fly, against a wall, into a chaulk box. That was a real mans game. You had to pitch, hit and field. When we were young our arms were like rubber weren't they? I could pitch 2 or three games everyday it seems. Used to love the park on 27th street in Coney Island. If you really got a hold of one, it was going.. going... gone... into the CYO across the street. I never had the real great fastball, but I could make that Spaldeen dance. Curves, sliders, screwballs, sinkers, changes. I would dig my knuckles into the ball and squeeze it tight and the ball would head right for the heart of the plate and at the last second dip and hit the ground, while the batter always chased. The ball of choice was a "Spaldeen", or more correctly spelled on the ball as a Spaulding. Since the box was made of a thick chalk line, many ball and strike disputes were settled by a fresh chaulk line on the ball. The ball moved so damned much, that a batter was absolutely sure that a thrown ball would hit him, while it curved effortlessly into the box for a strike. A real good batter would choke up and keep fouling off dozens of pitches to tire a guy out. I was also a switch hitter, with no power lefty, but I did it to foil that great curve that some could make break 3 feet. By the 60's you could buy a stickball bat for a $1 at the toy store. It was straight and thicker that the old broom handles we used to use. It also had a spiral of black tape up the handle. I still have mine somewhere. It was one of my most important posessions. Several times a game someone would hit one on the ground at warp speed directly at you. It usually had tremendous spin on it. What a challenge not only to reach it, right after you just threw the ball and were off balance, but also hold it in your hands while it was still spinning. I also remember something we called an "egg" ball. This was a pop up back to the pitcher that was somewhow spinning really fast with the ball kind of sucked into itself as it tried to escape your grip. We would play 1 on 1 or as many as 5 men on a team , with the outfielders rarely getting 1 ball to field. The fly balls were either pulled very foul, or were hit a mile, and lost forever. A typical game was 5 or seven innings and the score was about 18-16 by the time all the balls were lost. I can remember playing against both my older brothers on the morning of one of their weddings. I was about 16 and they were 24 and 27. I struck them out and hit a homerun, and as far as I was concerned, that was the day I knew I was a man.
Of Dimes, pennies, and
nickels
Coins were the mysterious and magic jewels of my youth. We would jump at the chance to pick up a stray
penny that was facing face up on the sidewalk. The really desperate kids would even go for
the unlucky face down ones. We would go through garbage cans, and search the beaches to
collect bottles that would net us a big 2 cents each. That 2 cents would buy us a pretzel,
sunflower seeds, or various penny candies that lined the shelves of the corner store.
Licorice shaped like coins, banana spongie things, taffy, dots stuck on paper, etc. Our
dentists best friends? The nickel was much more royal. Now you're talkin' a Chunky, my
favorite. Or to us clever kids, 5 separate penny candies. The dime was already high
finance. Ice cream cones and comic books. Now quarters were big time, which could get you
a bag of Nathans fries, or admission to the Mermaid movie theater, or holiest of all a
Spaldeen. I remember the first automated soda machine that I ever saw. The cup plopped
down, and it doled out a little syrup, than a spritz of seltzer. If the cup came down
crooked, the liquid missed the cup entirely, remember the mess? This feat of magic was
about 10 or 15 cents, but the thing I think was amazing is that for an EXTRA nickel, you
could get ice in your cup!! Now a days we get annoyed when our cup has too much ice, and
not enough soda. So now that I impressed the younger ones in the audience with the value
of any coins, here's the true story......
My pals and I were walking the boardwalk absolutely tapped out. I mean between the 4 of us
we had zero money. We walk up to one of the telescopes that you have to pay 10 cents to
see the boats on the ocean with, for about 10 minutes. This machine was obviously for the
tourists, cause there was no way in hell one of us Coney Island boys would ever give up a
whole dime to be a Peeping Tom. We could peek through the wall slats of one of the
bathhouses for free to do that. We look into the lenses which were blackened and closed
up. Finally we find one that is working! Someone must have just been there, and walked
away before the 10 minutes were up. We fight to take turns looking at nothing at all. The
thing keeps on going. I mean it won't stop. We think we have just discovered ice cream.
Boy are we getting away with murder or what! Afer what seems like 30 minutes we are
getting bored, and are trying to figure out how to get it to stop. After all why should
some other creep get to see the show for nothing? Strange logic, I know.... I rap the
contraption on the side, and low and behold...... a dime comes out. A whole dime. We all
grab for it, and in our haste it falls through the crack in the boardwalk planks and onto
the beach below. 2 of the kids take off to find it under the boardwalk, (hence the title
of the famous song is born). When they are gone, I rap it again on the side... this time 3
dimes come out into the little cup on the coin return. Well now we are laughing so damn
hard it hurts. More raps.... more dimes. Again and again till our little grubby hands are
full of more coins than we've ever seen in our lives. Meantime the other 2 kids are
directly below our feet still looking. We are helping direct them... "a little to the
left", and "it fell right here". We are filling up our socks with the dimes
all the while. Finally the flow of dimes stops. It never occurs to us to split it 4 ways.
2 is better. After all they left us. They come back up without the dime, and shake the
telescope in disgust. We walk the rest of the way home trying to hide our "dime"
limp caused by the coins sliding in our socks underneath our feet. 2 of us are laughing
like hell, the other 2 can't figure it out. The next day, we treat the whole gang to Mr.
Softee.... we paid in dimes.
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