I came to New England from the Bronx, much like the Pilgrim predecessors of yore, unkempt, unshaven and totally unprepared for the environment awaiting me. I encountered a language and a culture that was strange both to the ear as well as the eye. I recognized the native tongue but to this day have had difficulty in mastering the nuances. Everyday items had different nomenclature; soda is tonic, a hero is a sub, a liquor store is a packie, a car is a cah. When I first met my bride to be, I thought that she was a Brit, her accent so pronounced; but it was intriguing and in her visage, beguiling. The problem being that the locals, youths of all persuasions and temperaments mostly, did not reciprocate these feelings. This was 1970, you see, in other words pre-2004. If you still do not get my drift, we are talking baseball here. Yankees vs. Red Sox. There was the culture shock. When challenged by the local toughs, who had been schooled by their fathers and grandfathers before them to hate NY’ers, not only did I respond to their verbal threats but threw gasoline on the impending inferno by taunting them with the witticism; “Gee, NY’ers do not ever think about Boston, why so hostile?’ I am grateful that my children in growing up Boston did not pick up the accent of their father. Also, being a baseball fan first, it was not conceivable to me to raise them to root against the hometown team. First of all, that would have been sentencing them to a life of extreme labor and secondly, the Sox were a bunch of lovable losers who tried so hard and came so close so often, plus they played in a ballpark; a real honest to goodness park were it was a joy to watch a game. It was about 1975 when I fell. Rice, Lynn, Evans, Burleson, Fisk, Scott, Tiant, Yaz; it was painless. That was the year the Sox beat the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati in the World Series, 3 games to 4 ( Sox-think) when Carlton body englished a tenth inning homer to win it all in the Sixth Game. The seventh game didn’t count.

  Of course that has all changed now. New owners spruced up the old ballyard, brought in talent and it is now the Yankees looking up at our butts and cursing. But those first thirty years were adventurous. My wife did not fair so well. For reasons too complex and threatening to elaborate, her father and three brothers  were not immediately thrilled when I entered their lifes, unexpectedly, from left field.  Her Mom with the patience of Job, intermediated and I was allowed to coexist with them. Thirty-seven years later, my sentence has been commuted but according to my father-in-law, I am still on probation. It did not take long for my dear wife to feel the effects of one who had Grown Up Bronx. One year after marrying, when ordering a hot beverage at the local Dunkin’ Donuts, she was taunted by the counter person for requesting a large “cawfee.” “No”, she had to demur, “I am not from NY; my husband is”. Must be viral and contagious. Her beautiful mellifluous intonations gone forever, swept under by the pounding surge of onrushing Bronx verbiage.

  Baseball played a much too significant role in Growing Up Bronx and the most pleasant of memories, ironically seemed always to be entwined in the frame of nine innings on a diamond cut in a pasture during a game played idyllically while on vacation in the country. Two incidents separated by two years in two different places stand out in my mind. They were the very same play, but I was involved in two dissimilar aspects in both incidents, after which I felt keenly the respect of older players.  It taught me that at least in sports, if you worked hard and honestly, you would receive your due.

  As a nine year old vacationing in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, one of the highlights of our stay was to go down to the ball field by the Delaware River with my Dad and watch the local semi-pro hardballers play their games on the grounds of the White Horse Tavern.  We could, if we so desired, sit on the hillside of the farm that we stayed on and watch from a distance, but my Dad and I loved the ballpark.  This particular Friday was a gorgeous July evening, perfect for a ball game and as the time approached for the game to commence, one of the three umpires required had not arrived.  Both teams agreed to seek a volunteer from the stands to fill-in, and when I was the only person with hand upraised, they somewhat hesitantly allowed me to participate.  I was stationed at third base and told to mind the line for fair or foul balls.  The game progressed briskly through the nine innings without any difficulties or notable judgments from me until the bottom of the ninth inning with the home team up for their “last licks” down one run in the score.  Hard-working men from the farm and mining country that was about populated this league and they took ball playing seriously, many of them having been high school and minor league legends in their time.  So, would you not know it but with two outs a man is on first base having drawn a walk and the next batter laces a line drive single toward the right center field gap.  The base runner alertly off with contact is waved on to third base by his coach, only a perfect throw from the right fielder being able to stop his advance.  Though it was my first time on a field as an umpire and only being nine years old, the many hours, days, weeks and years of playing ball triggered the perfect reflexive reaction on my part and as the throw came to the third base bag, all the elements of the perfect storm were in place.  Runner sliding, raising a red cloud of clay, the throw coming over his right shoulder as he hit pay dirt, the third baseman straddling the base as the peg came in on the bag and me, the ump in the consummate position on the outfield side of the action, hands on knees and nose right on the play.  I can still see the image as if frozen in time as clear as a digital photo, the ball, the glove, the spikes all arriving together not six inches from the bag.  “Out”, I immediately bellowed with thumb raised back and above my head in the universally recognized hand signal that telegraphs an umpire’s decision to all concerned.

  The hubbub was instantaneous and quite honestly, scary; but as quickly as it arose, it subsided as all the players involved recognized that as beautiful the baseball play was executed, the umpire too, performed expertly.  The crowd cheered, the players, winners and losers congratulated each other and as I tried to walk off the field unobtrusively as all umpires do, coaches and players alike patted me on the head, shook my hand and said, “Good job”.  To tell the truth, the best part was the way my Dad looked at me; proud.

  Two years later, similar scenario now as an eleven year old, at a different summer resort in the Catskill Mts; our team of grownups playing another resort team.  These teams consisted of the staff of the resorts in an official summer league, which allowed two to three guests to play, if needed. Our team was short one man and again I was the only available body who was willing to play.  Begrudgingly, the players put me in right field, which in pickup ball is where you try to hide your weakest player.  That positioning ploy lasted only into the second inning, after myself cutting off a drive to the right centerfield gap and tossing a perfect peg to third base nailed the runner from first base trying to advance. With as little fanfare as possible, I was immediately waved over to play centerfield and the game continued on.  I could only have been happier if they had given me the number 7 of my hero, Mickey Mantle, to wear on my back.  Once again, my Dad gave me that look!!!

  There is something to playing the game in the country.  That is where baseball originated and has tried always to duplicate in the major leagues.  Ballparks were walled off patches of green in concrete cities and there is a timelessness that touched players and fans alike that was simpler and more basic than the entertainment spectacle that contemporary sports has become; but what the heck, the game is still there, somewhere.  Play Ball!

Growing up Bronx was a very insulated lifestyle, when viewed from hindsight; but in it’s day, it seemed to be universal and inspiring in perspective.  Perhaps when you are eight years old, there is a bond that one needs to really feel secure.  Whether it is to your Mom, your home or as it seemed to me, your neighborhood.  My situation may have been unique; my extended family all realized in their inculcation to American ways that both parents needed to work to make a go of it and gratefully, the Catholic school system help support these families by providing both nursery and kindergarten levels, I imagine, at affordable prices, so that mothers and fathers could rest assured that their children were in good hands during the day light hours.  In order to understand the complications that this social arrangement effected in me in the long term, I should diagram the parameters of the neighborhood that were to me self-evident.

  Your neighborhood was sub-divided into three distinct areas, from which one did not roam too far without permission: first, your base of operations was the stoop.  The word is of Dutch derivation, stoep; a small front porch, (I looked it up, don’t bother) and used mostly in the Northeast, i.e.; the City.  Daily, your marching orders were given to you by your Dad and if you were told, “not to leave the stoop”, you were basically, confined to quarters.  The stoop extended was the block.  If told to be  “ ‘round the block”, you now had privileges that allowed you to wander the distance of a full city street, which opened more, yet still limited possibilities for adventure.  The full leash was to be told to stay “ ‘round the corner”.  Oh joy!!!  This allowed for free range movement, much like the cowboys so admired in the movies, about the four square circumference of your neighborhood with all it’s enticements laid out before you; empty lots, candy stores, grocery stores (in which, I had unlimited credit, satisfying any urgent need for snacks, heroes or soda) and haunted houses.

  There were unwritten but well understood rules of responsibility with this freedom, though.  On being granted free rein to roam the whole neighborhood, you stayed in this area, which was in fact, within shouting distance.  I believe this was a vestigial remnant of the tenement dwelling days of our parents.  The neighborhood was self-patrolled by the predecessor of Neighborhood Watch; the ever-vigilant eye of parents who sat by their windowsills and observed.  Necessity is the mother of invention, correct?  Then that is why cell phones and such were not developed for 50 yrs because if a mother needed to know where her kids were, she would just yell out the window and on that rare occasion that she did not get an immediate response, the vocal drumbeat message reverberated out from building to building sending forth an alert as to your location.  I, once, made the mistake of not responding to a call from my Mom.  Being that I was ‘round the corner, I thought that I could get away with making believe that I did not hear her.  The only forewarning of the consequences of such heretical thinking was the horrified expression on the face of my buddy, Booby, with whom I was shooting the breeze as my Father within two minutes of my Mom’s exhortations, grabbed me from behind by the ear lobe and dragged me home.

  So the world was tightly wound for an 8 yr old growing up Bronx.  I know that I often wondered what else was out there, but I also felt strongly that there could not be much more to experience.  The very same windowsill perch that served as a lookout for Moms’ was also a window on the world for us youngsters.  At this very tender age, I can remember gazing out as the local teenage goddesses walked home from the junior high that was nearby and feeling my first percolation of hormones bubbling to the surface.  One young lady, Bunny, continues to be, along with Annette Funicello of Mouseketeer’s fame, my gold standard for adolescent beauty.  My view from the sill was nonpareil.  From this third floor vantage point, I gazed above and beyond all the other single and two family buildings to what was my virtual horizon.  Off in the distance, stood the structures of the very first housing project in the city, Parkchester.  Housing projects then did not have the negative urban decay connotation that exists these days and were, in fact considered very desirable and there they stood, taking up the whole panorama of my worldview.  The sun even set behind them.  Until, 30 yrs later, upon viewing the sunset at the Grand Canyon it remained the benchmark for nature’s beauty to me.  At night, as the lights came on in those distant apartments, I could only imagine the activities going on.  It was if I had my own private human menagerie to observe.  Neither did it occur to me, nor did I possess the wherewithal to obtain a pair of binoculars, which was fortunate because I think that would have de-mystified my perceptions.

  One final note on responsibility; I learned the lesson of not heeding the time honored code of conduct in the neighborhood, when at the wizened age of 10, I ventured beyond the neighborhood on foot to a realm faraway by any standard.  It would take 3 public transportation transfers to get to the Bronx Zoo and I foolishly followed the urging of the neighborhood savant, Joey Pelican (so monikered by a corruption of his surname as was our want) to walk with him to the Zoo. Every neighborhood had at least one savant. You knew who they were; they generally started shaving when they were nine yrs old.  Now, this neighborhood was beyond my horizon even.  What possessed me can only be explained as the first manifestation of wanderlust.  It proved to be the absolute confirmation of every mother’s fears, when I inexplicably climbed on top of the retaining wall at the gorilla pit and waved down to the inhabitants below.  Gorillas have loonnnggg arms; he grabbed me by the wrist and since I was only ten, not only did my life flash before my eyes, but I had enough time for my future to whiz by too; it had something to do with an unnatural version of me Jane, you Tarzan.  Fortunately, I did not smell right or something; he released me and unescorted I double-timed it back to the safety of the stoop with a self-imposed timeout that lasted approximately three years.

  Well anyway, the view that I had from the window was dominated by the presence of my grammar school, Sacred Heart in the foreground.  As profound as the horizon was, one’s school right in front of your nose was grounding.  I could see up close the playground, which was interesting, but also 75% of the classrooms.  Think about the reverse; from 75% of the classrooms that I ever attended, I could gaze out the windows and see my bedroom window.  At the earliest age, I did not want to be there; in fact, I clearly recall my first day at nursery school, age 5, refusing to take off my slippers and attending class thus shod.  I was psychologically damaged against school from day one, having to look out the window and seeing where I wanted to be. It is the excuse that I used for the next 15 yrs of somewhat uninspired educational performance but also, now that I think about it, perhaps bonded me so curiously to Growing Up Bronx.

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  I now have proof-positive that there is a genetic link to Growing Up Bronx.  It is an established scientific fact that both dormant and recessive genes that lie buried deep in the double helix chromosomatic structure of the DNA molecule will often skip a generation before they rear their all too unpredictable heads in the development of physical and emotional traits in our offspring.

  This brings me to my grandchildren, who are all quite the pieces of work that makes one the typical lost in space, ga-ga, can you believe this kid, grandfather that stands before you today.  Our two children, now mature, hard-working, nurturing, thirty-something parents of the current generation seemed, in my humble estimation, to have reached this exalted perch quite naturally; making all the requisite stops and go’s along the way, without any indication of any internal emotional or intellectual conflict resultant from their upbringing by a good, solid, well-intentioned mother, The Weze, and a father who could never quite understand why the stickball games have ended and how did I wind up in this truck, working for a living.  JD and J are two of the finest people I know who love their lifes and most especially, their children whose orbits take up all the gravity in their constellations.  JD’s Emmie and Colin are spirited, energetic and chatty little people with smiles as wide as the great outdoors, who when that time comes can also require the solitary confinement of a “time-out”.  Hey, when you are an all out 5 yr old, running with a 4 yr old sidekick, a little down time is inevitable.  J’s BT is an almost 10 yr old direct from heaven’s One of a Kind Sale.  He is our first grandchild and he did a great job of teaching us what that is all about.  He lives a Huck Finn life on Martha’s Vineyard with his Mom and step-Dad and brother, Cabot; fishing, horse backing, swimming in a “swimming hole”, farming and basically walking barefoot in the woods through the summers of his life, while spending much loving,fun and educational time with his Daddy J in the Big City. The very best of both worlds.  Sigh...! 

  So what’s the problem?  There have been times when I see it.  It is there, the gene shows itself, it cannot hide; I know it too well.  The smarty-pants attitude, the “oh grandpa” look on their faces, the wise-crack remark and most conspicuous, the thought, the question that causes you to back pedal to get your balance that only comes with the marination of Growing Up Bronx.  Where, why, and when did this happen and how can I save them?

  For example; in chronological order, BT when he was a mite of a 2 yr old, having been caught out with the Weze and I in a thunderous rain and lightening storm took refuge under a sapling growing hesitantly alongside a nearby apartment building.  Trying to delude him, we raised our voices acapella to the melody “Singing in the Rain”, in hopes of allaying all our mounting fears of the crashing, crackling torrents about us.  After several minutes of this charade, this two yr old with a facial expression worthy of the most streetwise Dickensonian urchin, opined: “Grandpa, I don’t thinks this is a good idea!” Thus reproached, we gathered our belongings and ourselves and hustled to the safety of home and hearth.

  Emmie at 4 yrs old, while blithely recounting to her grandpa the day’s gaiety that she encountered at a carnival size outdoor party thrown by her Uncle Paulie, suddenly grew mute, which immediately caught my attention. Gazing luxuriantly out her dining room windows to the expanse outside, populated by a cranberry bog and a wooded area alive with nature’s wonders, she slowly turned to me with an expression both profound and pressing.  “Grandpa, do trees have families, or do they just live together?”  How much time do I have to answer this inquiry; my tousled brain sputtered and stalled.  Quick, hit reboot, say something, she is looking at you chin on cupped hands expectantly.  Is that a smirk I seeing crevicing her smile, she is only 4 yrs old, where did this insight come from, oh no! There it is that “oh, grandpa” look before I even got a chance to mutter a response.  “Well, Emmie, it depends on your definition of family” was my best retort.  “Lame”, my fevered brain shot back.  Fortunately, her Mom rescued me from further embarrassment.  Seeing the perplexed looks on both our faces, she inquired as to what she had said and when so informed, whisked her off to bedtime with a kiss on the noise for Grandpa that somewhat allayed my desperation.

  And now, Colin; the rootingest, tootingest, wise guy this side of both his paternal and maternal grandpas that I have ever encountered.  At your own peril get in between him and his intended purpose.  At two yrs old, he could wing a stone with deadly accuracy from a distance of 25 ft at his grandpa’s sleepingly nodding head, after being sentenced to a time out on the beach , when he did not agree with my judgment.  Oh, I reprimanded him in my harshest tone; but under my breath, I had to marvel at his arm.  And now, when we visit, he abides by his own internal clock and though he softens the blow with a hug and a kiss, he lets us know when it is time for us to go home.  Once again, I have to give him credit for his good judgment.

  Where do these characteristics come from?  They are not learned. They come from the gene pool, the dormant Bronx Gene.  Yes, I have contacted the necessary State and Federal agencies to make them aware of my observations.  I expect a follow-up any day now.  There is hope…but I don’t know!

You must realize; we are talking about the Bronx, 1950’s style.  Pre-television but also post-radio.  No computers, video games, cell phones, or any hand held technology.  We did have one gadget; the transistor radio, which was a Godsend during the World Series.

  Ah yes, the World Series.   Growing Up Bronx in the Fifties, participation in the World Series was a birthright.  My earliest visual sporting memory dates back to 1956, when Yogi Berra, all star catcher for the Bronx Bombers ran out and leapt into the arms of Don Larsen, after the journeyman right hander had tossed a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of that season’s Fall Classic. The nuns at school would even countenance our transistor radios plugged into our ears and ask for an update when we would react jerkingly to some event happening on the ball field. One parish priest cut short his Sunday sermon because the game would be starting soon.  At that point, I was eight years old and the Yankees had been winning pennants throughout the decade, except for 1954 when the Cleveland Indians went out of their minds and won 111 games and 1959.

  Nineteen hundred and fifty-nine; the thought still brings tremors.  The year my childhood ended at 11 yrs old; yes, the world can be cruel; yes, the world is unfair.  The Chicago White Sox won the pennant?  How so, can life continue?  It has been my contention that ever since, all the turmoil, both for good and ill, of the decade of the Sixties was initiated that fateful fall of 1959.  The balance had been tilted, the natural order defied, the cosmos was now left to its’ own devices.

  Sorry, back to reality.  This devotion to Baseball was bred in the environment.  We lived, ate, slept, and dreamt baseball.  Yankee baseball specifically; you could not root any other way.  Though the City had two other baseball entities, both playing in the National League, (ha! the National League) they were both located in different boroughs for Pete’s sake, the precursor to George Lucas’ galaxies far, far, away.  Except for an occasional cousin who would root for the Philadelphia Phillies because his name was Phillip or some such illogical premise, you were wedded to your team like it was your neighborhood talisman.  It’s logo your banner to carry out onto the field of honor and with you was your legions strong.

  So, we played ball all spring, summer and fall.  The only seasons that really mattered.  School was a way station to carry you through until spring training.  Who could play ball in the snow and slush anyway.  We never considered on a yearly basis whether the Yankees would play in the World Series, but rather who would they play against, until 1959.  Oh my; sorry; snapping out of it.  The early sixties were great years of Mantle and Maris, but there was a foreboding, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Oh, sorry again.  Yes, we played all sorts of Ball and little did we realize but we were practicing our skills with no coaching.  In my neighborhood, we played stickball on the length of a city block, hitting spaldeens prodigious distances and making running and diving catches.  We played pitching in across the street with one player pitching, another catching and a third batting the ball into a schoolyard backing us up.  Slapball was played at the intersection of two cross streets, allowing for base lines and bases at each corner.  You honed your fielding skills, tossing out both the fleet footed and the flat-footed on the shortened field. And indigenous to our neighborhood was a game called man on first; played on a fifty-foot length of sidewalk where one player would simulate game action and two others would complete double plays and fielding plays of infinite combinations.

  All this and much more, so as to be able to don for two months the official baseball uniforms of Little League Baseball.  The season starting in the spring and ending in late June, thus allowing,those who wished, to escape the swelter of mid summer in the neighborhood.  My elementary school even sponsored a team that was incorporated into Little League, being so enthralled with the game I was never challenged by the fact that our team was named Sacred Heart.  We were able to experience the roller coaster of being the Leagues’ doormat in our first year and the League Champions the next; pretty heady stuff for ballplayers.

  As players, we never sensed the overbearing coaching that seems to permeate contemporary youth sports these days.  The coaches and officials had a balanced perspective of what it was they were doing and basically allowed us to play ball and monitored our baser instincts.  In our second season, I had graduated to being our full time catcher, which I adored.  In the middle of everything with the game in front of you, play was continuous and sometimes dangerous.  We had one relief pitcher whose natural ball movement was downward and on one particularly nasty pitch, the ball hit the edge of a removable home plate and took a direct carom into the most vulnerable area of my male anatomy, somehow incorporating the protective gear required into its painful trajectory.  As I laid writhing in discomfort, the coaches and umpire did their best to stifle my cries describing the injured area in the most common of vulgar colloquialism used in the streets of the neighborhood, ’less any mother who had the temerity to spectate at the game may be offended by what she was hearing.  Nobody reprimanded me, of course, all were sympathetic and in fact, my clearest recollection is looking up bleary-eyed into faces of teammates, coaches and the ump trying to suppress their own giggles.  Not so funny to me, but just another day in the neighborhood. ….More to Come

  So, I was one of the lucky ones Growing Up Bronx.   My folks were ahead of their time.  Both working class people who held full time jobs while I was growing up in the 50’s.  No, we were not rich; but we did take a vacation every summer in “the country”. As a toddler, we summered in the Pocono’s on the NY-Pennsylvania border hard by the Delaware River. Some years later,we summered in Upstate NY on an old chicken farm that became available to us through my sister’s marriage. It was and is the kind of place that grows on you, like an old sweater and a beat up pair of slippers.  It required constant maintenance and to this day keeps my brother-in-law and his brother quite busy. But we all love it.  It is located at the foothills of the Adirondack Mts bordering the Adirondack State Park, which is preserved land established in 1900 by Teddy Roosevelt and constitutes the greatest portion of Upstate and Central NY and is larger in area than all the other national parks combined.  Look it up on a map, you will be amazed!  Unbeknownst to me as a youngster, this part of the world contains the most scenic and peaceful virgin forests and lakes that the Good Lord had breathed forth, but that is another story.

  At approximately 10 yrs of age, I sallied forth to this utopia, wide- eyed and innocent of the ways pastoral.  I inhaled the fresh air, ate like a hungry bear, worked harder than I knew possible and slept like an angel in a bower; except that first night that I laid me down.  Early each morning, Dad and I would arise to go into the little town of Corinth, to get the morning papers with news of the city and most importantly of the Yankees.  Fond memories of watching games on a grainy TV, but listening to more in Dad’s  ’58 Delta 88 Olds, where for whatever the atmospheric reasons, the reception was much clearer.  You could tell that Dad enjoyed these daily adventures because he went out of his way to partake of the local custom of greeting, what would have been “every Tom, Dick and Harry” in the city with a robust “Mornin”, He became quite the country squire and we both loved it.

  Ah, but that first morning.  I went to bed late as was our custom when on vacation and was awoken by the sound of cowbells, which to my citified mind signaled the approach of the Junk Man on his wagon with his plow horse pulling him about.  I thought that it was very late for him to making his rounds, but it's the country.  As hour after hour passed and I became more sleep deprived, my city bred temper boiled to the surface. I thought to myself; "Well, rummaging around in the dark, of course it’s going to take for ever", but I could not sleep, I had to see this #^(|&@.   I was rousted from my bed at sunrise by the smell of bacon and eggs cooking downstairs and the cheerful conversation of aunts and uncles praising the night air and the wonderful slumber that ensued.  When I entered the kitchen, all fell silent   “What happened to you”, they inquired.  “I couldn’t sleep waiting for the Junk Man to pass.”  At least, they got a good laugh out of it.  That was the day I learned that cowbells were called that for a reason and that the dairy farmer down the road grazed his herd overnight in the fields across from us. But you bring who you are and what you know from the neighborhood wherever you go, perhaps forever. At least, I hope so.     More to come….

 Remember the poster depicting New York City.  It was a depiction of NYC with significant landmarks bountiful about the Town and as you proceeded due west past the Hudson River to the rest of the mainland USA, the landmarks became less and less plentiful and as you crossed ths Mississippi downright isolated and barren.  Oh, places like Chicago, St. Louis, LA, San Francisco where given a brief recognition for their attempts at civilization but otherwise not much after you left The Big Apple.

  Well, the neighborhood consciousness was much the same to me.  By definition, the neighborhood to an 8 yr. old was in his mind quite extensive, it actually only encompassed a 3-4 sq. block circumference; but in the area was a myriad bazaar of attractions both functional and, well...bizarre !  All neighborhoods were self-sufficient with grocery stores suited to the ethnic mix, Rexall drug stores for health and beauty, candy stores for all your miscellaneous items including your local bookie,  a tailor for dry cleaning, a soda parlor for ice cream, dancing, hanging out and dates and most importantly for the 8 yr. old, every available empty lot, playground, street corners and front door stoops for playing every conceivable variation of Ball.  So, you did not need to see the "outside world"; you had everything you needed in your own neighborhood.

  Oh yeah.!  There was also one other underlying, somewhat subconscious restraint.  You were not welcome in someone elses’ neighborhood.  At the time, I did not really understand the reasons why this was so; but never questioned  it;  well, never questioned it, but also not always remembered it.

  One example,  when hanging out and playing slapball in my cousin’s neighborhood, which was of course 5 blocks from my house and therefore in foreign territory, and needing to make a necessary trip to the public library I against my cousin’s good advice decided to take the short cut through the labyrinth of basement cellars that interconnected buildings in this neighborhood.  These subterrainean passageways where also know to be the clubhouses of local war lords who ruled with harsh judgment on who may pass through their domain.  Inhabited by leather jacket encased, d.a. wearing, BB gun toting potentates I was taken prisoner and managed to pass a trial of inquistion; "what school do you go to;  what religion...what church...do you have any cigarettes...? "  I was sentenced to run the gauntlet and released into the back alley and told to flee for my life as they emptied their weapons into the backside of my dungarees, which fortunately were durable enough armour against their fussilades.

  Other than the occassional encounter with this type of desperado, life in the neighborhood was peaceful and fulfilling.  You grew to feel that all you needed was provided for and it was hard to imagine a world exlsting outside of it.   More to come.

  Heard from several friends concerning 1950 TV and how it effected them.  Everyone agrees it was fun and foreign and the height of technological wonderment, but one friend had a particuliarly intimate experience with the medium.  As a 5 yr old she was a guest on Officer Joe Bolton’s Clublhouse program which featured a live childrens’ audience and was hosted by the genial and beneficent said Officer Joe Bolton.  Amongst other activities the show featured cartoons and censored clips of the Three Stooges.

  V-ron recounts that after her appearance on the program she attained a certain celebrity in her NJ neighborhood, but was constanly reminded of the circumstances;  I quote; " Officer Joe Bolton I remember all too well.  I was on his show!  I cried with fear of the reality of it all.    I remember walking from the bus after our trip to the City and all the neighbors were out and I was a celebrity of sorts except they all said, "You were crying."  I must have been about 5.  Officer Joe Bolton put this huge metal thing in my face and I was supposed to talk, while big monster like cameras rolled around behind him.  I was traumatized.  Funny."

  Can you picture this sweet 5 yr old is in a primitive TV studio with all sorts of techs running around trying to keep this program rolling and she is approached by this very large man in a policeman’s uniform carrying, do you remember those big hand held mics and Huge TV cameras on rolling dollies, something out of War of The Worlds and 800 degree F. kleig lights ?   I’d still be having nigtmares.   Thanks V.  Great story ! !

My cousin and I have been sharing memories of growing up Bronx and recently the phenomenon of early TV broadcast;  To wit: