The sound of a pink spaldeen smacking against the molding on the external mass of 575 was not a satisfying sound to individuals living in the condos on the opposite side of that divider. Every once in a while they'd get the bars of their ground floor windows and advise us to "quit hitting that ball against that divider!" Sometimes they would speak more loudly. Now and again they would even shout or take steps to do us harm.
We didn't have anything against such individuals. We simply didn't consider them. In the event that they kicked enough, we'd move west ten feet and begin hitting "that ball" against the following segment of divider and the game would go on. Nothing could stop the game.
Some of the time they'd attempt to stop us by stopping before the segment of divider against which we were hitting the ball. We would request that they if it's not too much trouble, move their vehicle. In the event that they rejected, we'd stand by till they left, discharge their handbrake, put their vehicle into nonpartisan, push it back five feet and the game went on. There could be stops in the game, however nothing could stop the game. (The vehicles in those days were as yet pre-War vehicles and didn't have programmed transmissions or pinion wheels that bolted when the motor was off. Today they'd call such vehicles 'stoop-ball-accommodating,' however individuals didn't talk like that in those days.)
One person we called "Und Furdermore" would compromise us from between his window-bars and deliberately leave his vehicle where we were playing. He was an outsider and bare, and dipped the hair from the side of his head over the top and glued it down with the stuff Goosegrease Gus utilized in the Wildroot advertisements and we didn't view him appropriately.
"I vill tell your folks," he would cry. "Und furdermore I vill call the police."
We never come at the situation from his perspective or figured what it should resemble to hear kids pound a ball against your divider multiple times an evening. Nor did it happen to us that his significant other may have headaches, or that he had a complement since he'd been 'dislodged' during the War and had potentially endured something more awful than meatless Tuesdays two or three years without pink spaldeens and Dubble Bubble. We were adolescent matured children attempting play stoop ball and Und Furdermore continued hindering us.
At some point, after he deliberately left where we were playing, Blue Book, Matt and I delivered his handbrake, put his vehicle into nonpartisan, pushed it to the corner, controlled it around onto West End, up to 89th and left it flawlessly on the opposite side of the road. We continued our game and Und Furdermore went to his window, gotten the bars and begun reproving us. Unexpectedly, he saw his vehicle was proceeded to come running out in his undershirt.
"Vere's my vehicle?" he cried, boney arms, boney shoulders, hair in all out chaos.
"Tank vehicle?" we said. "Ve don't zee no vehicle."
He called the police who, from what we heard, looked through each taken vehicle shelter from Hell's Kitchen up to 207th before they thought that it was ten days after the fact, left on 89th and West End.
"Very much like in The Purloined Letter, by Edgar Allan Poe," Blue Book would say each time he recounted the story. As we giggled and praised ourselves over our keenness, we had no clue about that the Soviets were preparing Kim il-Sung's North Korean armed force, which currently included infantry and reinforced divisions and a mobilized line constabulary all equipped with caught Japanese weapons.
Name: Herb Lobsenz
Site: oldtimewriter.com
I'm attempting to forestall the vanishing of fascinating individuals, spots and deeds I've run into by protecting their memory recorded as a hard copy. So far my oldtimewriter blog covers Manhattan during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, marble shooting, stoop ball, punch ball, the milkman, the organ processor, the streetsweeper, the iceman, Frankie the Fixer, Abner the Stooper, Lockup Bill, The Penguin, Cedric the Singles Hitter. Future memories will incorporate Joe Louis, the Polo Grounds, the baseball Giants, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War.
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