Street Scenes

(when pommes de la rue was popular)

Blame the Germans. They created the Autobahns. Not since the Via Appia was anyone in the mood ÿ20- or such a rush — ÿ20to move a lot of people from point A to point B. The Caesars didn't make their superhighway to get vacationers off to the seashore or the Tyrol. Later conquerors didn't read their history scrolls, parchments and bound-up volumes that chronicled their forebearers triumphs — and mistakes.

There were other factors. After the Romans, successor states got cheap. Until a Scot named MacAdam got the right formula for bituminous concrete, the better streets were in the cities. They were cobblestoned or bricked or sometimes built with wood planks. Once people got out of town they were likely to be on dirt roads.

Hitler made more mistakes than most leaders make decisions. One was going to Russia where the roads weren't built to accomodate Damliers. When the weather went sour all of the equipment that looked good on the Autobahn got bogged down in slop and mud. Bad weather might be a little inconvenient when armies are moving forward because it fouls up timetables. But if things go bad and the high-tech transportation can't make space and move a little faster than the enemy on the offense, then trouble becomes disastrous. Only idiots rob the poor.

Americans built superhighways because Henry Ford wanted automobiles in front of every house in the country. His motive was obviously greed. When he made cars cheaper, he forced up the ante with his competition. His competitors had to build cars to vie with his for the hearts and money of potential customers. Many traffic jams can be attributed to men like Ford and Dodge and Durant. The transition from dirt, gravel, brick and wood moved to blacktop and concrete and Americans could advance and retreat back to home with equal ease.

If you weren't careful you might get bitten by dogs or small children or horses. I think our terrier nipped more people than all of the other dogs in the neighborhood. Analysts would excuse that; he was environmentally dislocated from his old home in Easton and he was nervous. He didn't tear anyone to shreads. Those who he bit were on his turf. Consequently there was no support to have him muzzled or destroyed.

Everyone knew why pet dogs got snappy. Tease them, mess with their food, attack their owners, climb in a window at night; they'll do their job.

Nobody understood why little kids picked up this habit. There's obviously no relationship with dog-watching. If so, toddlers would attack mailmen on a basis consistant with those by pet dogs. And they would be seen peeing on fireplugs and trees.

I think Naomi Kulp ran a close second to our terrier. It was embarrassing to run home (as I did) crying "Naomi bit me." That was on her turf. Kulp's didn't need a dog for protection.

It was said that horses could give a really mean bite. Look at the size of their teeth. I'd compare the size of the teeth on the horses that pooped on our street against Naomi's and be grateful. When horses appeared both dogs and children showed fascination tempered with fear. Like I said, look at the size of their teeth. I reckoned that horse could do a lot more damage than Naomi, and her bite on my arm hurt.

The horses seemed passive to most of our attention and to barking dogs. You could feed them if you got consent from their handlers and your parents. They liked carrots and apples and sugar-cubes and clumps of grass.

I remember offering a carrot to the milkman's horse. He looked at me — and the carrot — with eyes the size of bocce balls. I was apprehensive. "Pet him on the nose." They like to be knuckle petted on the nose, it's said. Look at the size of those teeth! And all of that slobbering froth. So there are two reasons to be careful when giving horses a snack: teeth and saliva.

I know of only one kid bitten by one of the horses that worked our street. Dickie Springer probably deserved it and the feeling among my chums was that the horse should have eaten him altogether. Dickie was one of those kids that the nuns beat up. We liked to hear about that, too. Our crowd could imagine nuns going out of their way to beat him up even if he was a Protestant enrolled in public school. He reminded us of Barry Buchanan who lived two blocks away. Barry was said to be a distant cousin of sorts of President Buchanan. Even that news didn't save him from being chased down by every gang of kids he encountered except the Quakers who lived up in the arboretum.

Engineers might observe the road-apples and determine the health of the working horses that plodded up our street pulling milk wagons, bread wagons, veggie wagons and trash wagons. Three stables nearby housed them. Whatever way the wind blew brought an aroma of manure in quantity with it. It wasn't offensive but just lent a hint of rural atmosphere. Eventually all of the stables were closed down. The wagons had been replaced by trucks. The horses were executed and probably became baseball covers, jello, broom bristles and LePage's glue. As they did with dogs, kids observed horses but they didn't pick up their habits, like pooping in the street.

Our street was a hub-bub of commerce. It's fallen away now to convenience and maybe a less personal way of routine. Everything is at the mall and supermarkets. The drift was gradual and ice-men were the first to go. The ice-house was on Belfield Avenue. Every day the yellow trucks were loaded up and sent out on their routes. Their drivers eyed the houses with the cards in the window that told them what size block to cut: 25 cents, 35 cents, 50 cents. On hot days we hung around the ice-truck to beg for slivers and chips. The ice man would play tough until he sculptured away a customer's order. He'd wink and as he carried away his load to the porch we scrambled up on the back of the truck and scooped up the shrapnel and such on these delightful popsicles. Ice boxes were abandoned when Frigidaires became affordable. The motto on the trucks read "Ice Never Fails." But it couldn't save their business. Refrigerators were hauled into kitchens and the old ice-boxes were dumped at the gutter on trash day. Ice cubes were made at home and all the men at the ice-house were thrown out on the street as well as some factory workers who made ice-picks and tongs.

"Mom and Pop" stores were carved into houses. The entrepreneurs lived upstairs. Pharmacists and barbers and cobblers and grocers and bakers and confectioners and restauranteurs could roll out of bed and be at the work site. Convenience had another meaning in that time when I was young. The bread route and the milk route and the veggie huckster prospered as well. Corner stores were almost everywhere. Women loafed around to compare notes, maybe about prices and certainly about the doings of their neighbors.

Men had fewer "hang-outs." In their free time some would spend a little time at the gas stations or the barber shop or "Jimmy Thompson's," the only saloon in the area. They could fortify discussions of sports, of world events, of work, with a couple of beers. The best jokes were told in bars.

Present society might find it odd that there were no robberies in our community. We would have found that kind of crime incomprehensible. Burgulars and thieves worked somewhere else, to be sure. I guess we were small pickings.

Alleys ran behind the rows of houses. They were paved walkways that carried foot traffic into and from neatly fenced yards. Certain tinkers frequented them. They shouted into kitchens. "Clothes poles, rope and clothes pins," " Any knives to be sharpened?", "Horseradish," "Pots and Pans," "Any old rags, today?", "Umbrellas," stuff half sung by raspy tenors and baritones in the alleys, dragging their wares along the narrow walks.

The alley and the street were our playground. (We were chaperoned by everyone from behind their windows). They vied nicely with porches and yards as popular rendezvous for games: hide and seek, red-rover, buck-buck, half-ball, hose-ball, wire-ball, tag, cowboys and indians.

For more advanced games we would go to special places: to the big sloping lawn of the Junior highschool for "King of the mountain" or to Glickman's grassless yard to play marbles or "land" in which we carved territory with pen-knives and for mumbly-peg played to degrade losers.

There were playgrounds not too far away. We didn't need them.

People were always sweeping almost insignificant amounts of dirt away from their doors, off the porch, then the steps, and their portion of the sidewalk. It would be shovelled into a trash can that would go to the curb on Friday night for the next day's collection. No one ever considered sweeping anything over the gutter into the street.

The trash was hauled away on Saturday mornings in a wagon pulled by a horse. That act was followed by a water wagon and its crew of three: a driver and two men who pushed great rough bristled brooms made from former horses. They swept downhill along the curbs behind the flow of water that washed the road. Later, the sewer cleaners appeared. They lifted the lid of the storm inlet and removed all the gunk and sludge and leaves and horse-poop and dirt that was accidentally washed (by rain) into the sewer. They were heroic figures to us when we were boys. We would stand near to their work to examine the slop and ingratiate ourselves with the crew to ask for balls that might have rolled down there. The crud covered prize (whether previously ours or no) would always be gratefully received. "Thank you, mister."

Mister was the working class salute equal of "sir."

The postman always delivered mail twice a day: morning and afternoon. His arrival was heralded by barking dogs. Foreign spies might come and go unnoticed by some dogs but mailmen were somehow drawn to their attention. Our mailman (Jim) was, after the barber (Frank) the second adult kids called (with respect) by name.

His bag wasn't burdened with bills or junk or magazines (except for maybe the National Geographic for select families). It was full of nice surprises, lots of post cards licked with penny stamps and two cent letters from friends or relatives. There aren't many letters written anymore.

We were forerunners of today's obsessive fetish called the yard-sale (or garage sale) and the flea market. The words "antique" and "collectibles" were not raised to disproportionate currency then. We were trash pickers, little scavengers collecting baubles that were discarded because their old owners had no more use for them. We rooted around trash cans, and down in the woods and at the dump of pre-toxic times for treasure that only kids could define. Things appealed to us that responsible people saw as rubbish. We had brains like crows.

Trash picking wasn't repulsive. Adults probably saw it as a phase that we would mercifully abandon after awhile. It might be noted that we didn't dump any of the trash on the ground after gathering up the things we wanted.

A lot of the stuff in trash-cans had been thrown away because they were broken and were beyond repair. Things that worked might be given away and gratefully received by new owners who considered themselves beneficiaries. Maybe that's the way the lower middle-class and the poor saw things. That's to their credit. Necessities were a priority over squandering.

Trash-picking took us to other streets where other people had other tastes — and maybe other values that permitted them to throw away things that people on our street might repair. Most of our "collectibles" didn't have a long life. They would eventually be weighed in value and less attractive things would be recycled into our trash. Some items were reduced to clutter. We did have some sense, afterall.

The world wasn't ready for yard sales and garage sales. We had yards but they were in back of our rowhouses. Strangers didn't poke around in our alleys. They'd be bit by our dogs. They were used by hucksters and tinkers, by the garbage collectors on Tuesdays and by a lot of kids as one of their playgrounds. There weren't many garages in our part of the world. If there wasn't a Hudson or a Ford inside there might be junk but there wasn't much chance that strangers would ever see it. Junk with a chance for re-sale went to rummage sales at Protestant churches and recreation centers and the Salvation Army.

After supper women would be seen sitting on their porches chatting with next-door neighbors. On rainy days little knots of children would occupy the same places and play Parchesi or Chinese Checkers or Monopoly or little card games like "Fish" or "War" or "Old Maid." The girls would have tea parties. Boys would flick baseball cards. There was never "nothing to do."

In the evenings kids would play in the street and the alley. At a reasonable time mothers would call their portion of the roll. That was reasonable to adults who wanted the volume of exterior commotion reduced. We, kids, saw the curfew as premature. If your name was called first, it was a sour sound in the air followed by some snickering by comrades who were relieved that their names hadn't been called. And then, from the infectious first call, other mothers would appear to echo the bad news that the day was over. Go home. Unanswered summons were followed by daddies sent on a search by mommies with low limits of toleration.

Night , at a reasonable time, turned the street into a monastic pathway. There is a time for everything. Our world was at rest. The lovely cacophony of the street melted in the dark.