Tag: manifesting through memories

Posted on

Remembrances of the Late 50’s, Early 60’s (Part 2/5)

Continuing on with my pre-adolescent childhood remembrances from the late 50’s, early 60’s, I will continue this series of posts with three more pleasurable memories from that time period.

1953 – 1965 Childhood Remembrances

The Woods

  • The Creek — Many times I would enter the woods via the back yard of the Fox family, regularly playing with two of their sons, Niles and Earl. There was a steep decline which leveled out at a small creek. Once you jumped over the creek, you had entered “The Woods”. There were different trails leading to different areas of the woods. One area lead to a swampy area. Another lead to a large hill called “Suicide Hill”. Another led to some back yards while yet another led to an area we called “The Indian Ruins”. Sometimes you would catch frogs and salamanders from the creek and then let them go again. Occasionally there was a turtle or two.
  • Suicide Hill — At the far edge of the woods, next to the City Dump and the Jersey Turnpike was a very steep hill called “Suicide Hill”. There were two stories of how it got that name. The first was that at one time there was a part of the hill that was more like a cliff and someone jumped to their death off the cliff. The second story was that the hill was so steep and rutted that if you tried sledding down it, it was tantamount to committing suicide. In any case, it was one steep hill and I never did try sledding down it. From the top of the hill, you had an unparalleled panoramic view of the entire surrounding towns including the skyline of Philadeplhia.
  • City Dump — Just what it sounds like. It was a great big pile of trash where the city trash collectors dumped their loads. No garbage though. That was picked up on a separate collection where the garbage collector sold it to local pig farms for feed. Sometimes I would nose around the dump and see if I could find any “neat stuff”. I brought home a broken lamp one time. When I told Mom where it came from, she threw it away and told me not to go back there anymore because a rat might bite me. That was enough for me to hear. I stayed away from the dump after that.
  • Toy Gun Wars — We had some great “wars” with toy guns back in the woods. Two or three to a side and once you were “killed” you had to join the other army. No projectiles of any sort, just make shooting sounds with your mouth. There was the inevitable “I got you” and the just as inevitable, “No, you didn’t, you missed”. So the only way you could ever claim that you killed an opposing army soldier was if you snuck up on him and were so close when you “shot your weapon” that he couldn’t possibly deny it. Sometimes guys would lie under a pile of leaves for almost an hour before they would jump out at you as you walked by. It could shock the shit out of you. Sometimes guys carried the metal tops of trash cans which they would claim were bullet proof vests so you had to get them from behind. Once the war started, you couldn’t leave the woods for any reason unless you “surrendered” first.
  • Swamp Area and Reeds — There was an area of the woods down by the turnpike that was lowlands and very “marshy”. Some cattails grew there and we used to cut them and dry them out and use them as “punks” to keep the mosquitoes away at twilight time in our back yard. Came home with some cattails one time with my shoes totally caked in mucky mud. “Hey Mom, look what I got” as I stepped into the kitchen. She took one look at my shoes and said, “I don’t care what you have. Go right back outside and get those shoes off”. Kids don’t have much sense sometimes.
  • Arrowheads — There was one area that we called the “Indian Ruins”. It had a couple of posts that nobody ever figured out what they were doing there but the reason we called it the “Indian Ruins” was sometimes we were able to find authentic Lenni Lenape arrowheads in the area.

One Time Events

  • Chief Halftown — We were at a company picnic at Riverside Park (an amusement park) and appearing there was a local television celebrity named Chief Halftown. Chief Halftown was a Native American who had a longrunning childrens show on tv and was well known to all kids. He was giving out a limited number of colorful beaded necklaces that day and I was lucky enough to get one. I immediately put it around my neck and wore it proudly for the rest of the day. I was going to wear it to bed but Mom said I might choke on it. Yeah kids don’t have much sense sometimes. I wore that beaded necklace off and on for weeks until the string broke and it could not be repaired.
  • Connie Mack Stadium — I was to Connie Mack Stadium (aka Shibe Park) once to see the Phillies play the Milwaukee Braves. My brother had won some tickets in a Philadelphia Bulletin newsboy promotion. This was still in the days of black-and-white television. I had never seen an actual Major League Baseball field in person. When we walked down the corridor to get to our seats, for the first time I saw that magical field of emerald green grass, with the brown infield, bright white foul lines, colors of the Phillies and Braves uniforms, and (to me at least) giant scoreboard. It was almost like entering another world.
  • NY Worlds Fair — In 1964, Mom took me, my brother and a neighborhood friend on a bus trip up to Queens, New York City to spend a day at the New York Worlds Fair. At the main entrance to the fair was the Unisphere, a huge 12-story globe structure, made of stainless steel. There were pavillions from different corporations as well as different states. I definitely remember the New York State Pavillion because of its observation tower. Other pavillions we visited was the one from Disney with the mechanical animated characters singing the song “It’s a Small World After All”, the General Electric “Future-ama” where you would sit in moving chairs and pass by scenes of “what the future would be like” (all with General Electric appliances) and the Ford Motor Compnany pavillion where you sat in actual cars (I think Mustangs) and rode past scenes with dinosaurs and cavemen. I think my favorite was the 7-UP pavillion that had different sandwiches from around the world and a soda fountain where you could drink as much 7-Up as you wanted. Of course, this was well before the ubiquitous soda fountains of today where endless refills are always available.
  • Frontier Village — This was a short-lived park about 10 miles from our house that was surrounded by a wooden palisade fence resembling an army fort from the old west. Inside the fence was a western street resembling the typical western street you would see in a western movie or tv show. Some of the buildings were just facade but some of them were real (the sheriffs office and jail, the saloon, the general store, the stable, the one room schoolhouse). They had guys walking around in cowboy getups, horsemanship and “quick-draw” demonstrations, a stage coach and of course a shoot-out between the bank robbers and the sheriff and the sheriff taking one of the captured bank robbers to the jail (Your’re goin’ to the lockup, you varmint”) to the delight of us kids in the crowd..
  • Kool Aid Show — This was a big show that was put on in the back yard of a neighbor. There were at least 15 or 20 kids there. It was supposed to be a show where everyone did some type of act while the kids not performing manned their wagons or tv trays or whatever they had to hawk Kool Aid or Lemonade or cookies and make some money. One kid was trying to sell pre-made peanut butter sandwiches (made special by having the crunchy type peanut butter instead of the creamy style). My brother had a real money-maker, he was selling root beer Kool Aid. Another kid put so much sugar in his fruit punch that kids were spitting it out and he had to run home and make another batch. It devolved into just a big food court type of thing until the father of the kids whose yard we were using came out eating a plum and said to the kids, “OK enough with this other bullshit, let’s get this show started”. They had the outer wooden shell of an old style console tv that you could get inside to do your act. Or you could stand on top of the console (it was really sturdy wood). Or you could just stand in front of the tv. A few kids did some type of puppet thing. Some told jokes. Some sang some type of song (“John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”) As I remember, most of the “acts” were pretty bad and some were booed off the “stage”. My brother sold out of his “root beer” that day and made a nice profit on the deal. He sang some type of Cub Scout song. I didn’t have to do anything because I wasn’t selling anything plus I was too young.
  • JFK — On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It was a kind of farewell to the innocence of the era, The funeral was being broadcast on television, and I remember my Mom crying as she was watching it. I hated seeing my Mom cry. I scraped up five pennies from my junk drawer in my bureau and went down the street and bought Mom five cents worth of her favorite candy, orange turkish paste. I gave her the candy to try and make her feel better. She gave me a big hug and a kiss. I will always remember that day.

Recurring Treats

  • The Merry Go Round Truck — There was a man who would come by about once a month in the summertime who drove a truck that had a small merry-go-round installed on the back of the truck. He would come by and park on my block and play music over a loudspeaker so as to announce his arrival in the neighborhood. I think it accomodated about six kids. When he got a bunch of kids on board, he would start it up and we would ride the merry go round. He gave each kid a taffy as the carousel went around. I think it cost a dime to ride. Then after the ride and we got off, and he would then move on to another neighborhood that had small kids.
  • Cowtail Bar — Maybe two or three times a year we would get to go to Cowtail Dairy Bar on the premises of Holly Ravine Farm. A Real Treat! It was a sit-down place where you could get all manner of ice cream treats…dishes of ice cream, sundaes, banana splits, milk shakes, etc. As it was a dairy farm, the ice cream product was always fresh. You got a free complimentary small basket of pretzel sticks at your table. It was a cheerful place and you were always happy being there. I always ate my ice cream real slow so we could stay there as long as possible. You could go out to a barn and actually visit with the cows. Later in the mid sixties, they added a small petting zoo with sheep and horses along with the cows.
  • The Jersey Seashore — Once a year we would go to the Jersey Seashore, usually Atlantic City because it was the closest. This was before all the casinos came in during the 70’s. I remember the smell of the salt water as we got close. We wore our bathing suits under our clothes so when we found a spot to park, we would just take our clothes off and wrap them inside a towel that we brought to the beach. A blanket was spread out when we found a spot. Mom put suntan lotion on us so we wouldn’t get burned. We had fun with the waves. .After about three or four hours, we would pack everything up and head back to the parked car. Before leaving the beach, they had an outside shower where you could get a lot of the sand off of you. Back at the car we put our clothes on over our bathing suit and walked the boardwalk for three or four hours, usually getting some salt water taffy and/or fudge then getting something to eat at one of the many places on the boardwalk until nightime when we would head home.
  • Lunch with Mom and My Brother — Once every couple months Mom would pick us up at school and treat us at lunchtime to lunch at either a local luncheonette or when they came into the area, at a McDonalds. If we were a little late getting back to school by 1:00, Mom would give us a note so we would not be marked “tardy”.
  • Clementon Lake Park — This was an old fashioned amusement park about 7 or 8 miles away from our house. It was built in 1907 and featured “The Jack Rabbit” wooden roller coaster, as well as a bunch of other rides including “The Whip”, “The Salt and Pepper Shaker”, and “Collision Alley” (bumper cars), a fun house, an arcade, a dance hall where events were held, a picnic area, a shooting gallery and some other games, food concession stands , and a small train that traversed the perimeter of the park. It was similiar to Knobels Grove in that parking was free and there was no admission fee to get into the park. For any rides, you bought tickets that were available at a booth in the park. Every two or three years, we would visit the park. When we were older, my brother and I would ride there on our bikes.
  • Mister Softee — Not too often, but occasionally was able to have some spare change to get a custard from the Mister Softee truck with its continuous Mister Softee jingle playing as it rode down the street. A few kids would congregate on the side of the road and the truck would pull up and dispense its treats. Before Mister Softee made its rounds, there was also a white “Good Humor” truck that would sell ice cream novelties, announcing its presence in the area by ringing a bell. No more Good Humor truck but even today the Mister Softee truck still makes its rounds.
  • To Be Continued Next Week With Part Three
Posted on

Remembrances Of The Late 50’s, Early 60’s (Part 1/5)

American Folklore

I was born in 1953, the year Dwight Eisenhower was elected president with the slogan “I Like Ike”. My pre-adolescent life stretched into the presidency of John F. Kennedy, (“Leadership For the 60’s”} and the beginning of Lyndon B. Johnson’s tenure (“All the Way with LBJ”). I recently was following some of my own advice (see blog post of 1/7/21, Unclutter Your Life)) and throwing out the contents of stored away boxes of papers and other sundry unneeded items. As I was looking through the items as I tossed them in the trash barrel, I came across an old college report that I had written. It was an assignment in a college elective course named “American Folklore”. The idea behind the assignment was to assemble a collection of something that was representative of “Americana”. After assembling the collection, the assignment was to bring the collection into class and give an accompanying report about said collection and how it related to the folklore of America. There were no restrictions. The professor told us to use our imaginations.

The Memory Collection

I decided to collect pleasurable memories of pre-adolescent childhood from various people that I knew, both young and old. I handed them out a sheet describing the assignment and asked them to write down as many pleasurable remembrances of things that they did growing up between the ages of 5 and 12. It could be anything at all — watching cartoons on tv, going on family outings, fishing or swimming, playing in the backyard or park, etc. While waiting for the sheets to come back to me, I wrote up my own sheet as well, covering the period of time from 1953 through 1965. Most certainly, it was a very different era in America than the one we currently live in. Very different. As I reviewed my sheet, fond remembrances started cascading through the layers of my mind. Experiences, people, places, events became alive again. We did not have much money but my childhood was in fact, rich with experiences. In this blog post, and subsequent blog posts, I will relate some of them to you. Perhaps you experienced some of the same things that I did.

Flipswitch Kindling

How do pleasurable pre-adolescent remembrances relate to manifesting your reality? Well, the answer to that is by way of the manifesting technique called flipswitching. I will speak further of this technique in future blog posts, as well as in the book I am currently in the process of writing. The basic gist of flipswitching is to bring forth something in your mind, a thought form that you are able to sustain for at least a half minute or so, that does no harm to anyone and brings you a good feeling inside. Something basically that puts you in a “feeling good” mode. There are many ways to do this. One of them is to pull out of your memory storage banks, fond memories of things of a positive nature that you enjoyed doing at a particular stage of your life. It is my intention to use the memories of my childhood that I will be describing as part of my “flipswitch arsenal” whenever I use this specific method to manifest something in my life.

Grandmom and Grandpop

Always, always a pleasurable experience. They had a neighborhood store in Philadelphia until the later 1950’s. At that time they moved to New Jersey to a lakeside house. It was a wonderful place to visit. My maternal grandparents always welcomed our visits. Of course my brother and I would go swimming in the cedar water lake. Grandpop even added to the sandy soil of that area to make a small sandy beach for us. There was a small pier to fish and dive off of (plenty of “cannonballs”). He also had a rowboat that allowed us to travel to different parts of the lake. We used to bring inflated inner tubes and float all around the lake. After we were done swimming, we would take a shower to get the cedar water off of us at an outside shower that my Grandpop had hooked up outside of the tool shed. Then we would go in the house and Grandmom would have food for us to eat as well as “soda water” (her term for soda). We would listen to stories from my Grandpop. We would play pinochle. We would listen to Grandmom and Grandpop speaking Polish and me wondering what the heck they were saying. We would feed the ducks and geese. I loved to go out to the front yard and sit on the cement bench and just sit and look at all the rose bushes and flowers that were out front. I would explore all the neat stuff in Grandpop’s tool shed. Sometimes I would take a walk with Grandmom to the local diner and she would buy me a basket of french fries. Whenever I went with my Grandpop to the farmers market, he would always buy me a few comic books from the guy who sold discounted books and magazines from a stall. What a wonderful time we always had at Grandpop and Grandmom’s house. Most of all, we felt loved.

My Brother

My brother was only three years older than me. We experienced a lot together as we were growing up. Many good times. When we were involved in neighborhood games of baseball, football and basketball, my brother always insisted that I be included even though I was always the youngest one there. Up until I was six or seven, we shared the same bedroom and the same bed (“move over, you’re on my side”) until we moved to makeshift bedrooms in the attic.

Many memories. Sharing experiences together at my grandparents’ house…when Mom took us to different parks or treated us to hamburgers and french fries…riding our bikes…joking around and craning our heads from the end of the bed to see the tv in the living room in bed at night…one time we started laughing at something on the tv until we heard from our father “you kids better go to sleep in there or I’m gonna have to come in there (which meant “the belt”) …him sneaking out of the bedroom late at night to raid the refrigerator for us (knowing we would get” the belt” if our father caught us)…going camping together at Hospitality Creek Campground,,,sleeping outside in the back yard overnight under our makeshift “tent” (an old blanket tied to the backyard fence) curbball…wallball…watching tv together, especially Twilight Zone on Friday nights…watching him pitch over at the Little League (one of the few left-handed pitchers) taking our bikes, or the bus, to go to the movies (the Harwan, Coronet, Crescent and Ritz)…going “into town” on the bus to Leary’s Book Store…doing the dishes together after dinner when Mom had a night shift job…just so many memories during that time period (late 50’s, early 60’s).

It was as if a giant had picked me up and just flung me full force against a cement wall when my brother died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of twenty-three. I will always have those good memories of us growing up though, for as long as I live, and I think I will still have them even when I go into “the great beyond”.

Ball Games

While there was organized baseball over at the Little League field, unorganized or sandlot ball was the order of the day growing up. We played choose-up-sides baseball at a vacant lot next to the VFW. Neighborhood men even constructed a makeshift backstop for us. You needed at least six kids for a game (two fielders and a pitcher) although at least eight was best. We would go knocking on doors if we didn’t have enough kids. Baseballs used until the cover came off and then taped up with masking tape. One lady whose house was across the street from the field we called “the witch”. If someone hit the baseball on her lawn, we would have to get it fast because she would come out of the house and confiscate the baseball. She said one time somebody had hit her house and broke a window.

Two hand touch football in the street (“car comin’) or on the VFW parking lot if there weren’t any cars parked there (three completions is a first down). Tackle football on grass yards. A football game that you could play with just three kids we called “Kill The Man With The Ball”. You can use your imagination to figure out the rules of that game. Whoever lasted the longest without getting tackled, was the winner. With just three kids you could also play the “base stealing game”. It was two bases about 60 feet or so apart. One kid at each base. They would throw the baseball to each other. One kid on a base. When kid A threw to kid B, the base stealer on base B would run to base A to try and ‘steal the base” before kid B could get the ball back to kid A. If he made it before kid B got the ball back to kid A, he stole the base. If not, he was “out” and one of the other two kids became the base stealer. The base stealer was allotted one out. You could also have “rundowns” where the base stealer stops between the two bases and either kid A or kid B would have to tag him out. One time I chased a kid halfway down the block on a rundown tag. The one with the most stolen bases won the game. We played basketball at a makeshift dirt court with the wooden backboard sturdily fastened to a large tree in a neighbor’s back yard (they let us use the “court” anytime we wanted).

No computers, cell phones or electronics back then. A lot of outdoors stuff. Wiffle ball, where you could easily throw “curveballs” and you didn’t need as large a playing field as you did for baseball. Two ball games where you could play either one-on-one or alone were curbball and wallball. Curbball was where you had a sponge rubber type ball (but not too spongey, it had to be on the hard side). One player would be the fielder and would stand on the other side of the street. The other player would hit the ball against the curb and try and get it past the fielder. Get it to different areas for a single, double, triple and home run. If you hit it to the fielder and he caught it, it was an out. If he dropped it it was an error and you were credited with a single. If you tried to hit the edge of the curb to make the ball go farther and missed the curb, it was an out. If the ball went outside the designated “foul lines”, it was an out. Three outs to an inning. Nine innings to a game. When I played curbball alone, I always broadcast the game pitch-by-pitch in my mind (“Bunning winds and pitches, pop-up to the first baseman”.) Wallball was very similar only instead of a curb, we used the wall of the nearby hosiery mill which was about 15, 20 feet high and the “playing field” where the fielder stood was larger than just the width of a street.

Penny Candy

Oh, what a nickel could buy back then. A pack of baseball cards (with the complementary slab of stale bubble gum). A full size candy bar. A bottle of soda made by a local soda company was only a nickel as long as you drank it at the store at the fountain stool (another two cents if you took it out of the store because of the deposit). That magical glass case of penny candy with three rows of different penny candies. Orange turkish paste, peppermint candy cigarettes, caramel cream bullseyes, chocalate malt balls, candy dot strips, tricolor coconut strips, little wax soda bottles with sweet syrup inside, mary janes, turkish taffy, green, red and black licorice sticks, shoestring licorice, pretzel rods, bazooka bubble gum, little b-bats banana or strawberry taffies, red hot dollars, and on and on, all put into a little brown or white paper bag. That last penny’s worth was always the hardest choice. My eyes would slowly go over all three rows of candy again. Then I would finally make a decision when the owner said “Come on, I don’t have all day”. The candy store owner always had a cigar in his mouth and was also the town judge. When I walked out of the store with a bag full of candy, it was a great feeling.

I will never forget the day that my brother came into possession of a dollar that he had earned doing errands for a neighbor (he was 8 or 9, I was 5 or 6) and he spent the entire dollar on an assortment of penny candy for Mom, me and him. We were so impressed that he would do that for us. The candy store also sold Breyers ice cream. The cones cost ten cents, two scoops into a cake cone. My favorite was vanilla with the little specks of ground vanilla mixed into the ice cream. On Friday nights Mom would give me thirty cents for three cones, for her, my brother and me. They put thin wax paper over the top of the cones and I would walk home with the three cones. The store was only a block away from us. Actually on the six block walk from my school to our house, there were no less than five candy and soda stores. One of them was called Joe’s Sweet Shop and had a huge offering of five cent candy bars. I think he had every one that was ever invented. There was also a five-and-dime in town and two fully stocked newsstands that also sold candy and soda. Our town was “Sugar City”.

To Be Continued. Part Two Next Week.