Saturdays
Circa 1950’s-1960’s – The Bronx
My weekly schedule was real simple when I was a kid.
Hey, it was the 50’s and ‘60’s.
I had no after-school coding classes, culinary lessons, virtual reality labs.
No online groups. No techno video games.
No social media to fill my mind and challenge my being.
No Alternate Reality…just reality.
My week was pretty much locked in and looked like this:
Monday through Friday
Go to school 8:30-3:00. Play in the street with neighborhood kids until it got dark.
Come home, do my homework (supposedly). Have dinner with family when Mom and Dad got home from work.
Watch a little TV (choosing from 4 or 5 channels). Go to bed.
Sunday
Family breakfast (sometimes made by Dad). Clean room for “mock inspection”.
Head out to visit relatives…Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins…
spread out across The Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester.
Did I dread these “family days”?
No way! I loved them!
Saturday
Ah but then there was Saturday…
Sweet, sweet Saturday…
Plans were made.
Crews were gathered.
Buses and Trains and Subways were taken.
My allowance would be spent.
Often, encounters with members of the opposite sex would take place.
Fun was guaranteed.
Memories were made.
And…the unexpected was always expected.
Where would I go?
What would I do?
An entire Saturday of endless potential lay ahead…
Often, my Saturdays started early.
Morning movies!
As I wrote about in an earlier post:
theforeverkid.com/writings/this-is-where-i-came-in/ …
Just about every Saturday, my school gave us free tickets to go see some “educational” film,
like Julius Caesar or Young Abe Lincoln.
But, after the “school movies”,
we were allowed to stick around for that week’s feature film.
More often than not, the “Saturday afternoon film” was some offering of what we called “Monster Movies”…
“Bride of Frankenstein”, “The Wolfman’s Brother”, “Dracula’s Cousin Twice-Removed”.
Lots of blood, coffins and (I noticed even then)…cleavage 😏.
But what was ON the screen was somehow secondary to what went on IN the theater,
packed with a bunch of wild 8-12 year olds!
My go-to theater was the magnificent Loews Paradise
(or as Bronx peeps always pronounced it…”Lo-wees Paradise”).
A two-tiered palace with a huge spiral staircase, chandeliers, marble statues…
and most memorably…a “ceiling” designed to look like a starlit sky (with “stars” that really twinkled!).
It was known as the best “make out spot” in The Bronx.
Not that I even knew what “making out” meant!?
For me, it was a fantastic playground, to run up and down the staircases,
throw popcorn at girls, eat entire boxes of ice cream Bon Bons…
all while avoiding the dreaded MATRON!!...
A mean old woman ,(seemed like she was in her 90’s, but probably like 40),
whose impossible task was to try to control hundreds of hyper pre-teens.
While not “armed”, she did have that HUGE MEGA FLASHLIGHT,
which was terrifyingly shone in the face of every misbehavor,
and often foreshadowed one’s being thrown out of the theater.
(Of course, a daring friend could later open the Exit Door and get one back in!)
I loved my ‘Saturdays at the Movies’!
But perhaps this Saturday, I’d call up one of my buddies,
Gerry, Larry, Mark or Heintz, …
and we’d make the 35-minute walk to 161st Street and River Avenue,
the precise location of Heaven…
or as some of you may know it …
Yankee Stadium!
Since I was 5 years old, I have been Yankees-obsessed.
They were, and remain, a critical influence in my life….
and my daily mood.
On Saturdays, Yankee home games began at 1:00 P.M.
I would arrive at about 9:00 A.M.
It wasn’t to get into the Stadium early or to watch batting practice.
Truth is…for most of my Saturday Yankee adventures…
I didn’t actually go to the games!?!
I came to…get autographs.
Back in the day,
the Yankees would come strolling up to the Players’ Entrance
from the Player’s Parking Lot,
(or some came from the Concourse Plaza Hotel , where they stayed, just a few blocks away),
and almost all would stop to sign some autographs for the 20 or so autograph seekers.
Not to boast, but I was kind of an MVP among my fellow signature seekers…
that’s because I was able to identify every single player in their “street clothes”.
That came from my hours upon hours of “studying” their baseball cards.
As game time approached…
I had to make my decision as to whether or not to spend the $1.25 (if I even had it) for a bleacher seat.
As often as not…
I’d take my autographs, save my money and rush home to see the game on TV.
On some Saturdays, I decided I didn’t just want to just watch Mickey and Yogi take their swings…
I wanted to be part of the action,
so I’d head up to the Batting Cages on Pelham Parkway.
Insert 50 cents into a mechanical pitching machine and you could face “Slow”, “Medium”,“Fast”
or ‘Super Fast” pitches in the “cage”.
If you connected, there were banners off in the distance,
designating “Single”, “Double”, “Triple”, “Home Run”.
I spent a lot of my allowance and suffered many evenings of sore hands from those cages.
But I loved it...
except for the fact that it was located right next to some riding stables,
which meant that as I was trying to channel my inner-Bronx Bomber…
I was inhaling the pungent aroma of some Bronx-made horse manure.
My Saturday sports adventures were not restricted to baseball.
Maybe you’d wanna bowl a couple of games with me?
I went through several years of being into bowling.
I wasn’t very good. I was wildly inconsistent.
My ball had zero “hook” to it. It would roll down the alley straight as an arrow,
(only, I had no idea where it was headed straight to??)
Thus, if I bowled three games, my scores could easily be:
120…180…78???
When I first started going bowling with friends,
we usually frequented a small, dingy venue, up a flight of stairs, with just 6 lanes.
AND…
it actually had “Pin Boys”!!...
some poor guys who had to reset all the pins by hand.
BUT…, the price was right:
Two games…free shoes…and a free Coke for…$2.00!!
We soon upgraded to a much more state-of-the art bowling alley,
with automatic pin setters, electronic scorekeeper, cool jukebox music…
and lots of girls to show off to.
The new technology didn’t help me…
I was still a lousy bowler…
but I did love sliding around, doing my celebration dance,
decked out in my super-stylish bowling shoes!
When I was looking for a bit more of an active Saturday?
Me and my buddies would for a Skate!
We might go to the indoor Roller Rink on Jerome Avenue.
On Saturday afternoons, the place was jammed with young teens
gathered to “get their roll on”.
For me, it was as much about trying to impress the parade of girls rolling by
as it was for me to try my best to stay on my feet.
My roller skating phase passed rather quickly…
but then there was Ice Skating!
As luck would have it…my Mom and Dad’s floor covering store was located right across the street
from a soon-to-be-opened Ice Skating Rink…
and my Dad got the contract to do all the tiling for the venue.
So…as part of the deal, my sister and I got to go ice skating whenever we wanted!!
Pretty cool, huh?
Except for two things:
My ankles!
Weak and weaker!!
I tried all kinds of ankle supports…no damn help.
I’d barely make it halfway around the rink…
before my demon ankles would cave in, rendering my skates and my feet literally horizontal.
While others zipped around me, gliding, spinning, jumping, dancing…
I was barely able to stand.
But I was a maxi-fan of checking out those mini-ice-skating skirts.
From the ice…to the sun.
Summer Saturdays meant I would head to the beach!
Now, my beach wasn’t exactly St. Tropez or Malibu or Miami.
Nah, for us Bronxites, our beach was the less-than-glamorous
Orchard Beach.
(We used to call it “Horseshit Beach”).
But know what?
It was still the Atlantic Ocean.
And, if you ignored, the empty beer cans, the leftover picnic trash,
and the occasional “metal weapons”…
there was lots of sand and sun and water…
and bikinis!
Orchard Beach was sectioned off into various “beach numbers”.
Each neighborhood found their “own beach”.
Ours was Beach 10.
After making the long hot bus ride down Fordham Road…
when I finally made it to Beach 10,
I’d be greeted by familiar faces,
with some unexpected lovely bodies.
Back then, there wasn’t a lot of want for SPF 50….
Nope, we’d use some baby oil, sometimes mixed with Coppertone 2…
and then hold up our cardboard-backed “sun reflectors” in front of our faces.
It’s amazing so many of us are still around today and not burnt to a crisp!?
If the bus ride to Orchard Beach was uncomfortable…
the bus ride back from the beach was torture.
Wet bathing suit.
Sticky seats.
Scorched skin.
Sand in every sweaty nook and cranny and crack.
Like I said…not exactly St. Tropez.
But I bet a lot more fun.
If it wasn’t a sunny Saturday beach day? No biggie.
Remember where I was…The Bronx….
home of the internationally famous Bronx Zoo!
A shorter ride on that same Fordham Road bus line,
took me right to the front gate of the wild, exotic world of beasts, creatures and critters.
I mean, The Bronx Zoo was (and is) pretty incredible.
One of the largest zoos in America.
Been around since pre-1900.
They got every kind of animal there.
My favorites?
As a little kid, I got to go on live Elephant rides!
We used to bring a stuffed toy monkey to the Monkey House,
hold it up to the cage, make it dance,
and the apes would go…um…bananas !
And of course my favorite, my namesake…The Tiger.
I made many Zoo safaris with my own neighborhood group of “animals”.
Always wild fun!
Know what’s right across the street from the Bronx Zoo?
The New York Botanical Gardens.
Over the years, I’ve heard people rapture about the beautiful , breathtaking, inspiring flora and fauna…
But as a kid in the ‘60’s…
The Botanical Gardens was known as a great “make out place”.
Perhaps the fragrant floral aroma was something of an aphrodisiac.
I recall one particular Saturday afternoon,
when I found myself at The Botanical Gardens with my friend Mona Willa.
(Good name for a pornstar, huh?).
Mona and I were good friends…friends!
She was cool and funny and smart and nice.
and it was fun to have a girl friend.
But that Saturday at The Botanical Gardens…
Mona made it pretty clear that she wanted to be more than my buddy.
Not wanting to hurt her feelings,
and perhaps somewhat affected by the dizzying fragrance of tulips and roses,
I did give Mona a small, quick (friendly?) “peck/kiss”.
The rest of that Saturday afternoon at The Botanical Gardens with Mona Willa…
was spent with her serenading me with Mary Wells’ “My Guy” .
Over and over.
To this day, I can’t hear that song without feeling a bit icky.
Like I said…”Expect the Unexpected”.
But…if I was really ready for a Saturday Adventure…
I’d board a bus and head over the GW Bridge to New Jersey,
to heed the call of Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon…
“Last night I took a walk after dark
A swingin' place called Palisades Park
To have some fun and see what I could see
That's where the girls are”
Palisades Amusement Park had it all!
Thrill rides, games of chance, haunted houses, music concerts, hot dogs, cotton candy…
and yes, “That’s where the girls are”!
I made lots of visits to Palisades Park…
sometimes with family, (that was fun),
mostly with friends (that was wild!)
In the summertime, Palisades Park offered some amazing music concerts
presented live on their stage (and on TV).
The first host emcee was Clay Cole and later, Cousin Bruce Morrow.
There were some BIG name feature acts:
The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Lovin’ Spoonful,
Paul Revere & The Raiders, Lesley Gore, Little Anthony, Frankie Avalon, a young Billy Joel,
even Tony Bennett
One memorable Saturday at Palisades…
my best friend (and reknowned troublemaker), Heintz and I were having such a good day at the Park…
we lost track of time.
Our day at the park became a night at the Park,
as the hours slipped away…
so did our money…
and we found ourselves at midnight,
in Palisades Park, New Jersey,
without a penny in our pocket.
There were no cell phones to call home.
There were no Ubers to take us home.
Not to worry!
Heintz declared…
“We’ll walk home!”
And we did.
At 1:30 in the morning we crossed the George Washington Bridge…
on foot…
in the rain…
laughing hysterically!
That is…until I arrived at home at about 3 A.M.
Mom and Dad were not laughing.
Freddy Cannon was not singing.
Clay Cole or Cousin Brucie were nowhere to be found.
I wasn’t allowed to go to Palisades Park for several Saturdays…
nor anywhere else for that matter.
But…there would be lots more Saturdays to come...
Would love to hear about your “Saturday Adventure” memories.
