My Brooklyn: Three Sewer Man's Home Plate

While this panoramic view of the neighborhood is attractive, the interest for me are the dual man-holes in the immediate foreground. The area between them was home plate for our stickball games; three sewers is down the block, between the third car on the right and the stop sign at Avenue W.

Dreams of baseball and summer...and youth, eh Hank? Great shot and really nice series on your old homestead. Thanks for sharing these. Reminds me of the area on the north side of Chicago where I grew up.

Regards, Tom

Hi Tom. My first visit to Chicago was in 1976, on business; and I couldn't help but note how much Chicago felt like New York...except by the standards of the mid to late 70's Chicago was much cleaner and more friendly.

Thanks for joining me on this visit. I'll be posting more shots of "My Brooklyn," and I hope you like them as well.

Hank

This can be a picture in Belgium.... very nice ! Beautiful collection

Greetings, Jacques

I am delighted about your photos and descriptions. Actually I see you playing games! :) I love your enthusiasm, with which you tell about your boyhood! :) Lovely to imagine that in a big city like New York, kids were able to play on this road. It looks as if it was a quiet place with lots of space and trees.

Greetings, May

So you have been haunting the canyons of NY city lately, instead of the Grand Canyon, Hank. Must be quite a different experience. All the best in 2008. Happy trails.

Thank you all for the interest you are showing in these streets. Yes Jacques many of the world's cities bear great resemblances to one another. Where the U.S. falls short is when our streets are compared to 300 or 400 year old streets in European cities.

Bruce, I don't need a trail map or GPS to navigate these streets; otherwise your comparison is well taken and noted.

May, part of growing up in a place where the streets were also a playground were the unwritten rules. It wasn't all that quiet, but cars that wanted to pass didn't honk their horns either. They waited with the full understanding that we knew they were there, and would move out of their way, if we weren't already out of their way when they got to where we were.

The games played in the streets were different than those we played in the playground...I guess that stands to reason, though.

Hank, it wasn't so much different then from our life in the villages. We were quite safe on the roads playing in small teams and rope skipping - my favourite sports, I wish, I could still do it ;) Today the smaller roads in towns are blocked by big boxes with plants and blocks of rocks, so the cars just have to slow down to get around those obstacles. And of course there are playgrounds, which we didn't need before, since the whole village used to be a playground those days with wonderful hide-and-seek-places. - Greetings, May

A friend just sent me a link to a website for a new documentary film that is coming out called "New York Street Games". I don't know how long it will be on YouTube, but I found it fun to watch.

There are references, like this picture to our local national pastime, Stickball, but the most fun part was the video of a truly New York game called "Johnny On The Pony."

It was a team game (in Philadelphia the called it Buck Buck) where one team (the pony) must support the weight of the entire other team as they jump on, trying to break the pony's back. After each round, the sides change, and each time the mass of bodies collapses into a pile of laughing and howling kids. Great fun!

Hank

Ahhh, good old Brooklyn ! Love it. :)