Woody (Walls) and I walked out the back door of my Chadwick
Road house on Binghamton’s south side. We took a path through an abandoned pasture,
which, unbeknownst to us, was soon to be replaced with roads and new houses. We
stopped at the 2nd house on Overbrook Ave, waved to Mrs. Harris who
was watching us through her kitchen window, went into her garage, grabbed two
pairs of stilts that belonged to John and Linda Harris, waved again to Mrs.
Harris as she finished up her breakfast dishes, hopped on the low rungs of the
steel stilts and clanked down the sidewalk, hoping to make it to the playground
at Longfellow Elementary School on Penn Ave. The hardest part came when we
reached the seventeen stairs from street level down to the playground. That was
the quest for the day, the reason for “borrowing” the stilts that had carried
us to downtown Binghamton the previous week.
We lived in a “what’s yours is mine” era, a lesson I learned
the hard way the day I walked out of Bill Scales’ neighborhood grocery store on
Pennsylvania Ave. while unwrapping a 5-cent Baby Ruth candy bar. Buzzy and
Chickadee Barton were lazing on the empty fruit and vegetable racks in front of
the store sharing a Grape NeHi. Buzzy spotted my candy bar and yelled, “Dibs,”
took the Baby Ruth, broke it in two and handed half of it back to me with a
grin on his face. He then taught me how to protect myself by yelling, “No dibs,”
first.
The “what’s yours is mine” social structure that I grew up
with extended well beyond stilts and candy bars. It included the basketball
court and baseball field in the Walls’ side yard, the tree house behind Almy’s,
the toboggan run in the field behind the Burtis boys house, the ski slope that
ran through my back yard and across the pasture to Kendall Ave, the pool behind
the DeAngelo’s garage and the two-story playhouse in the Cook’s yard at the
corner of Brookfield and Overbrook. Kids from all over the neighborhood
constantly occupied it, even though a 10-foot high stone wall and an 8-foot
stockade fence protected it.
Short cuts were another form of “what’s yours is mine.” They
dominated our mode of travel. We seldom took a road route to and from each
other’s houses; we took short cuts, which today would be called trespassing. My
route to Woody’s house had me cutting through Bowen's side yard and across the
back yards of Krupa’s, Daley’s and Vining’s. Municipal property was also
“appropriated” by kids back then. The walled in creek running along Park Ave
was the “unofficial” south side playground, including the huge pipe to the
river, the winding tunnel under Ross Park and the side pipes that delivered
storm water to the creek. We also assumed ownership of the woods that blanketed
South Mountain, the farmland at the top and the Swamp on Vestal Ave. where the
MacArthur School now sits. The land, I assume, was sold to the School District
by the same guy who went on to make his fortune selling swampland in Florida.
Building sites and building materials were plentiful in the
“hood.” New houses were going up all around us. We started the appropriation
process by playing in the cellar hole once the work crew left the scene. We
then moved up a level, into the framed structure, using it as a giant set of
monkey bars. The scrap pile that built up by day, disappeared by night. We
transformed it into clubhouses, tree forts, swamp rafts and hot rods. Left over
scraps of tarpaper made our tree forts rainproof. We hauled the wood and
tarpaper ¾ of a mile from our neighborhood to the creek along Hawthorne Road
where we built a two-story tree fort with a view. Equivalent to today’s man
caves. Whenever we traveled to the site or any other place on South Mountain, our
mothers never failed to warn us to be on the lookout for wandering hobos. They
came in on freight trains and wandered through town looking for odd jobs and
handouts. Nobody called them homeless people in those days. So, along with my
dog Topper, we took the Knox’s Irish Setter, Meg, and any other dog wandering
around. Of course, we never asked permission; dogs were free to roam back then
and we took advantage of it.
Now that I’m an old coot, I walk through the old
neighborhood every once in a while and try to visualize it as it was when
Overbrook and Kendall barely jutted past Brookfield. Aldrich didn’t even do
that; it ended at Brookfield. When the land between Denton Road and Hawthorne
Road was part overgrown field and part cow pasture. South Mountain was without
roads or houses. Moore Ave, from Chadwick westward, was a one-lane, dirt farm
road and MacArthur Park was half park and half veteran’s housing. But, most of
all, as I wander around, I squint in an attempt to bring life back to
Longfellow School; it was torn down in the 1970’s while I wasn’t paying
attention. It was the most important structure in our young lives. We spent
endless hours inside, learning the three R’s and even more time out on the
playground, learning how to get along with bullies and acquiring our street
smarts. Those “what’s yours is mine” rules that governed our behavior would be
ill served today. I’m sure the 911 system would be overloaded with reports of
trespass, thievery, home invasion, dognapping and bullying. Social scientists
claim the new way is better. I’m not so sure.
I don't remember which neighbor this bike belonged to, but Woody and I sure enjoyed it.
Woody waving the white flag while I sit in a hot rod made from "borrowed" scrap lumber.
