Go Karts, Jon Gnagy and the Halls
It was important to find wheels in good shape before we cannibalized them from discarded baby carriages left in front of the neighbors’ homes for the garbage man to pick up.
Once we had the wheels, it was pretty easy to build the go-cart out of wood we found somewhere. It was very rudimentary, no paint, no shine, nothing superfluous. It had no engine and relied on the slope of the hill and the skill of the driver for speed, which could be considerable.
We figured how to make it ourselves, no manual, no Google to check, no adults involved. The brake was a small piece of wood nailed to the frame. You pull the wooden brake and it rubs against the wheel, maybe stopping it, maybe not.
A rope was tied to both sides of the wooden axle and you tugged it to the right to go that way and to the left to go that way. The only real danger was when a wheel came off, which was not uncommon, or when the rope broke, equally common, sending the go-cart into the curb and beyond.
Our homemade carts went pretty fast down the hill leading to the hill in front of my Bergen County house. There were never any crashes with cars. Most of the kids in the neighborhood built carts, including Richard, the boy across the street who was killed in a car accident in high school and Howard, who lived up the street and died of some malady soon after graduating from high school.
After an afternoon of go cart runs, three of us might retreat to the poor excuse of a hill next to my house and play king of the hill. The rules were simple: Dislodge the king on top of the hill and take over the royal place until the next violent dislodging. After that it was probably time for dinner.
At night we’d sit down for a delicious dinner that might have included Swanson Frozen TV dinner of fried chicken (at least it claimed to be chicken) with peas and carrots and a piece of apple crisp that was utterly undigestible. Or maybe dinner would be macaroni and cheese or meatloaf or chicken pot pies with tasteless jello for dessert, containing small pieces of materials that purported to be fruit including halves of cherries.
After dinner, if there was time and it was still light out, I’d be outside to play “first to see the lights go on” where the winner was the kid who was first to see the (street) lights go on. Or maybe we’d play hide and seek or a round of SPUD. That’s where someone tosses a ball in the air and someone catches it and throws it at somebody else. If that person is hit by the ball, he or she but most probably he, got a letter until someone got S-P-U-D and lost.
Our neighbor was a gruff but helpful man named Martin who had an anchor tattooed on his forearm. He had a daughter and son who had cerebral palsy and he used to beat his wife, Betty. At least that was the word in the neighborhood.
Next to Martin was the Hall family. Every summer they were the most popular family, all 10 kids, because the Halls had a pool, an extravagance that no other families could afford. I had no idea where Mr. Hall worked and never figured out how Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who seemed to be always pregnant, could support their 10 kids and have a pool. We’d line up outside their front door waiting to be invited in to the water and as quickly ushered out for the next wave of neighborhood children. The Hall children’s popularity and standing in the neighborhood fell precipitously after summer ended.
Carmine’s family was next to the Halls. Carmine’s father fell off the roof one day and died. Before his father died, Carmine also was one of the more popular kids on the block because he knew where his father hid his 8 mm dirty movies which we would gaze at frame by frame for cheap kicks. Another friend had a deck of playing cards with nudes on them.
One of my more memorable memories was the crystal radio kit I made with toilet paper, wrapped with wire and a mineral crystal as a diode and with two ancient earphones connected by wire to the rudimentary radio. It was trip when I actually heard noise although it was never more than static. Still I had made a radio.
Anyone interested in making one can go to:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Build-an-antique-style-crystal-radio/
My Gilbert chemistry set, microscope and Jon Gnagy learn to draw books were among my most prized possessions.
With the Gilbert chemistry set I could make all kinds of chemicals, most that would smell very badly. I generally didn’t know what I was doing but liked the smells and smoke that was generated. One experiment involved small black cone that when lit, smelled like rotten eggs and grew a long grey tail.
I used an alcohol lamp to heat the chemicals in beakers or test tubes but the alcohol turned the glass tubes black making it difficult to watch the chemical reactions. I wanted a gas, Bunsen burner but my mother thought that would be too dangerous.
The sets were “educational, magic, fun” and “tested, approved, safe” and promised to “prepare young America for world leadership.” The kits came with glassware, chemicals, a scale or a mortar and pestle, and other necessary equipment for carrying out chemical tests in medicine, geology or other scientific fields.
Chemicals included sodium cyanide that can dissolve gold in water and is also a deadly poison; real radioactive uranium ore; and tools to learn real glass-blowing.
I learned a lot about drawing from Jon Gnagy, who was 74 when he died in 1981 and from watching his TV show, “Learn to Draw” on channel four. Gnagy had a goatee and usually wore a flannel shirt. He broke down instruction into four shapes, a ball, cone, cube and cylinder and showed how just about anything could be drawn from the shapes.
My microscope was second only to my chemistry set in fascinating me. I particularly liked to look at a piece of hair under the microscope or maybe a dead bug I had found. Youthful curiosity is a great thing.
And as far as candy, there were items that needed a bit of refinement.
Like the tiny sugary dots on paper. You’d peel the candy dots off the paper and try not to eat the paper stuck on the back of them.
Lick-a-Maid was good. Now I particularly appreciate the sexual innuendo. As a kid, you licked your finger and stuck it in the pack to get some of the altogether totally unhealthy sugar powder. It didn’t dawn on us that we should have washed our little fingers before coating them and sucking them.
And there were those ridiculous tiny, wax soda bottles that included barely a trace of sugary water when sucked. Everybody tried eating a wax bottle and realized it tasted like wax.
You slapped the Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy in your palm to crack it in edible-sized pieces that were like magnets to any fillings. And Pez wasn’t about the itty bitty rectangular pieces of candy but were about the dispenser that could have been a Superman.
After dinner if it wasn’t bed time maybe I’d play with my slot cars that never stayed in the slots, my vibrating electric football game that never really moved the little players or just see the world through my View Master.
It seemed pretty good.