The Street Playground

Way before Ninetindo, just before Game Boys, lost to Play Station.

My sons will tell you that they are the last kids who grew up playing outdoors in the street. They are Millennials, born respectively in 1981 and 1986. Most video game consoles were in the beta phases and those that were available were beyond the budget of two poorly paid parents.

Out you go, I told them as my mom did to me, and out they went into a more raucous Brooklyn neighborhood than I ever knew in Philadelphia. The nearest park was 12 blocks away, the closest ball field seven blocks in the opposite direction under a highway underpass. That left the kids with the pavement on our steep block. Their battered Big Wheels careened down to the corner. They dodged cars when their balls bounced into the street. There were treasure hunts, and water balloon fights, and forts constructed from empty boxes and discarded furniture. Their limbs were skinned, scratched, and bruised from attempts to shimmy up light poles, high jump over spiked wrought iron fences, and scale the outer edges of the houses’ stoop. The block was a cacophonous of screams and laughter. Come late afternoon on broiling summer days there was the added magnified pleads for a cup of shaved ice.

The shopping avenue up the street was lined with small carts, handmade from plywood and 1” x 2” boards. In the middle was a deep well for a big block of ice bought early in the morning from an ice house in an old warehouse by the nearby docks. In the cart, it was usually draped with a damp towel to slow its melt in the summer heat. Little compartments around the cart’s sides stored old 40s malt liquor and soda bottles filled with different color syrups: red for cherry, blue for blueberry or grape, white for pineapple, and so forth. Some cart owners made their own flavors, especially piña colada for adults who would add rum. For a mere 50 cents, the owner scraped ice into a Dixie cup and doused it with copious amounts of syrup. Once all the kids had their cups, they’d run back down the street, their chins and tongues already dyed with their favorite flavors. They settled on stoops to finish their cups. Fortified, they set off running around again until called in for dinner.

My oldest was almost fourteen when we somehow scraped together $1,000 to buy a computer. It had two five-inch floppy drives because hard drives weren’t available yet. Three years later their grandfather’s Christmas presents began to be the latest video consoles, starting with a Sega and going all the way to Nintendo 64. It’s a wonder they ventured outside at all. By the time Playstation 2 came out, they were teenagers and the street, eerily quiet for some time, had become dangerous for young men. I didn’t even think of kicking them out to play.

Today, my sons credit their youthful days of running around our street with kids from different backgrounds and home lives for making them the well-rounded men they are now. Their youthful scars still linger and they have outrageous stories they love to horrify people with. They doubt they’ll be able to provide their own children with their advantages, but swear they’ll kick them out of the house, anyway.

Sharing my shaved ice with you.