Grown-Ups

We were invincible, at least to our own view of things. Otherwise we would have never done anything. We could climb giant trees...and fragile ones, too. We could run forever. We played games that were dangerous enough to give our elders pause, or leave them breathless. For a time we were without care or responsibility.

But it wasn't always life in playland. We were being prepared for other things. When orders were barked by grown-ups they were generally heeded. Little miscreants caught at bad deeds surrendered to most of those who caught them. They fled from some and then spent a lot of time worrying. If a kid got caught, he'd be punished.

Adults were looked upon by us as powerful. Their presence, if challenged, usually put us at a disadvantage. If we outwitted them word of our indiscretion would surely get back to our parents who would not be pleased. Evenso, as we got "older" we would test adults for weakness. Mischief was the way. We had the advantage because we usually could outrun our pursuers. If we outwitted them, word of notoriety would spread among our peers. We might be admired by troublemakers. Brighter sorts would avoid the company of nit-wits who didn't obey anyone.

It seems that somewhere between the advice offered in catechisms written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Baden-Powell children would be exposed to criminal behavior. There were, and are, great temptations. Grown-ups who are civilized are foils against these things getting out of hand.

Little kids play at (or is it work at?) being nuisances. It's a probe directed at the family. Parents can be reduced to exasperation when small children are encouraged by other adults who think that their antics are cute. Those people don't have to face a barrage of whining and demands afterward.

There were places where we weren't allowed. This rule wasn't made to spite kids. It's a matter of other peoples need and right to privacy or for protection against harm. We didn't understand that and the rule would be disregarded if something tempting lay on the other side.

Dr. McFarland's apple tree was his, and not ours to raid. McFarland didn't sit at the trunk to keep the apples on their branches. He surrogated his collie for something that was both task and game and the dog kept kids on the other side of the wall that kept Presbyterians out as well. When we appeared on the church lawn next to McFarland's yard in apple season the dog went to work barking until we gave up our quest. The doctor sometimes kept the dog inside, maybe on dull days when no patients visited. The raiding party was alert to this. Up the tree to pluck a few pommes. Some days we could have them. On others the dog would be set loose while we were in the branches and the doctor would call him off after an hour or two, And on others he'd let us get to the wall before opening the door.

The railroad dicks were more serious about the enforcement of rules. Most people looked at other people's kids in their yards as nuisances. The railroad people had more to lose. If a kid lost a leg — or his life — that would be a shame, but that's an impersonal tragedy forgotten tomorrow. If he wrecked a train the railroad dick could lose his job. He was there to save trains, not legs. If you got caught on the railroad the dicks would beat the hell out of you. They were grown-ups who could run faster than kids. We thought they were unfair because they let the hobos alone. We didn't understand that. We were kids.

Disrespect is an art. It wasn't tolerated when most of life was controlled by the home environment. All the neighbors were sort of foster-parents to everyone elses kids and if you bad-lipped a lady up the street your mother would soon be notified and corrective measures would be forthcoming. If not, it was soon circulated that you had lousy parents. Kids can't be insulated forever from wise-asses and school and adjoining neighborhoods are full of them. Any place away from parental control will loosen inhibitions of that sort. Kids, in thirst for heroes, chase after the repulsive. I got punched out by a guy I never saw before when I called an insult that, to nine year olds was a misapplied sign of bravado. This guy wasn't amused. Neither was my father and his response was best described as unsympathetic to me, his son. A back of the hand and a stern admonition was what I got.

Graffiti was not endemic in our society. It's an old practice. During the war it was popularized by a guy named Kilroy. He was everywhere. In Sicily and Saipan, in Papua and Paris, in Tunis and Tarawa, he wrote his epitath: "Kilroy was here." There was precedent to this. Scribblings have been found in caves, in the pyramids, in the bowels of the Coloseum, the sands of Araby: "Abdul was here." The riff, jealous of their betters, wrote their lesser immortalities on uncommissioned space. Small-time Hillarys painted their names on the small cliffs they climbed. Love-struck boys carved initials in trees that their objects of affection never saw. Small-fry printed their Christian names in newly poured sidewalks. The deranged wrote their phone numbers in men's rooms. The genesis of widespread vandalism, signature graffiti, came later and might have gotten its inspiration from the walls of Derry and Belfast where slogans were cancerous. The invention of spray paint gave the demented a weapon and they could scrawl obscenities galore on other people's property.

But that was later. In our time we carved our names on trees we climbed. We coupled our intials on trees with those of girls we hoped to love. And in the autumntime we'd buy a nickel box of chalk for use on chalk night.

The beggars who roam the streets on Halloween might call "trick or treat" but the tricks were already done. Today damage is still celebrated on "mischief night." In our time it was preceeded by other observances: Gate Night, Soap Night, Chalk Night. Nervous adults hid behind the barricades. Smarter ones pounced on little rats who unhinged their gates or soaped their windows or scrawled zig-zags in chalk on their sidewalks.

In public school we got a good dose of the life of Moses. His biography was divided into two parts. First there was the baby Moses who floated into his adopted home in a box. He bobbed around in the bullrushes, we were told. Little kids liked stories about babies. When Moses was old, we were told, he got hired by God to lay down the law and all of civilization owed their construction of sensible order to the pact. The law was fair. "Thou shalt not steal." If you think about it you wouldn't want anyone to steal from you. If they did, you weren't at all happy about your losses.

Thieves fell upon me when I was a little boy. They stole my school bag and my lunch pail. They stole my scooter with the balloon tires. My father had to hunt them down because they weren't from the neighborhood. The scooter was retrieved and I was admonished to stay closer to home. The school bag problem continued until my mother moved me to another school.

Stealing apples was part of passage and the owners of trees winked at small time pilfering. It is generally regarded that things lost aren't expected to be returned. That's why rewards are offered. "Finders keepers, losers weepers" was a creed learned on the street and in the schoolyard and moralists weren't to be found to dispute that. Our parents were better than the moralists.

An example. We had gone to a restaurant for supper. Dinners out were a break for everyone but my dad. Mom didn't have to cook. My sister didn't have to wash the dishes. I didn't have to dry them. My father had to drive us to and then back from wherever she chose for us to eat. We had to behave. I had to wear a tie. Grown-ups would be watching us. I came to believe that there were people who went to restaurants to watch other people's kids trying not to be sloppy at a foreign table...and failing.

We had finished our meal and were a couple of miles on the way home when I remembered something. Kids want to please grown-ups, particularly parents.

"Look what I found on our table." I held a fistful of coins. It wasn't the kind of luck that deserves the arrogant "Finders keepers" boast. It was absolutely innocent. Tip? I didn't know about "tip."

Caught somewhere between mortification and hysteria, my mother ordered the driver back to the restaurant. It was an ugly experience for her because she had to explain her son's imperfection to strangers.

We might not understand that some things that we did were acts of theft. We picked wildflowers or daisies and pussy-willows and forsythia at the lots and sold them to ladies. They were pleased. A bouquet could be brightened with additives. Pick a few irises from Mrs. Wilkins' yard and sell them to Mrs. Diadoro. Pick some daffodils from Mrs. Lyons' and sell them to Mrs. Wilkins — all mixed with the wildflowers and pussy-willow and forsythia.

I was at the edge of crime at nine. The deed was innocent. However there was a suspicion of theft. In a gift store on Ocean City's boardwalk a machine dispensed post-cards for a penny. My coin got me fifty of them. An employee deduced, wrongly, that I pilfered them, that I tampered with the dispenser. He dragged me to a rear room and tried to exact a confession from me. I raised my defenses by crying and trembling. It wasn't enough. He would send for the cops.

"Don't think of getting away." He went out to call the cops, leaving me locked in the back room. A door emptied out onto a parking lot. It opened when I turned the knob and I was away running like hell down the steps and across the lot.

I heard his voice behind me bellowing "Stop" and "I'll get you" and maybe "Come back." Come back? He never left the doorway and from the great distance between me and the store on the boardwalk I couldn't be privy to what had to be a lot of laughter.

Stuckert was a crook. I've heard in later years that he went up the river. Later I heard he was out and back in jail again. Someone said he had died in jail. I don't know. When we were thirteen we were classmates. His desk was too close to mine and became an infection. We were pals. His hero was John Dillinger. One day he said he was going to steal a camera from a girl who sat in the aisle on the right side of the room. He did. I was an accessory because I didn't turn him in.

Stuckert invited me to go on a shopping spree. We went to Woolworth's, to Green's and a couple of other places and he shoplifted them all, undetected. He picked things off of counters with the skill of the Artful Dodger. I was his Oliver for a day. "Put these in your pocket, quick."

I bet he stole the bag that we put the booty into. It was dark when we reached the alley in back of his house. He had a hiding place for things like these and tucked it all away and said that he would bring it all to school the next day and split it with me. This would seal my position as his co-conspirator.

I liked the model B-17's, plastic airplanes. I started home but came back and grabbed the bag of stolen goods from its hiding place and took them all home. The next day he arrived at school totally crushed. He was indignant. "Somebody stole our stuff." He was cheated by thieves.

"You wait. I'm gonna tell my pop an' he'll beat you up."

That didn't work. If a kid said "You wait. I'm gonna tell my (big) brother an' he'll beat you up," it might happen. I didn't have an older brother to settle accounts so my scuffles had to be worked out alone. Fights were one-on-one affairs. The nastiest part of these occasional episodes was the presence of onlookers. Which was worse? His rooters or mine? Most fights were kind of even. They ended when one or the other combatants fell down and a reputation was ruined for a day or two. Go for the nose. Some blood makes for better descriptions of the fight.

A kid on Chew Street was the undisputed champion of fights in our age group and he relished the notoriety so much he moved from sensible participant to bully to enhance his reputation. He made the mistake of pushing the wrong guy around and got flattened by Jimmy Evans in front of a lot of his own followers. Word of his defeat spread instantly and he retired. People liked him better afterward.

Fights were usually a combination of punching and wrestling. Worse than losing, a ripped shirt would extend a bad day to unsatisfactory explanations at home afterward. Torn clothes had to be repaired by women who weren't fight fans.

Some fights were fought at "the lots" or over at the arboretum or in the schoolyard. Sometimes they were pre-arranged through messengers, friends of the guy who would probably win. No one rang a bell. There might be some dialogue first, certainly not toward peacemaking or compromising. Insults and threats would be traded — or attempts at intimidation followed by some pushing then some action.

If a guy was really itching for revenge he might stand outside his enemy's house calling for him to come out and "get it." The loser-to-be might go to the bomb shelter and hope his mother would shoo him away. If that worked there was no guarantee that things would be forgotten. He had to come out sooner or later and chances were that he would be nailed sooner. Spies let the aggrieved know the quarry was afoot.

Grown-ups felt compelled to interfere. That's why fights generally moved to the lots or up near the quarry. My toughest battle was with Billy McCann and we punched it out on the stairs at Roosevelt, two ninth-graders half bent on killing each other. We rolled down a flight of steps flailing the whole time and at the bottom we were both nabbed by old man Price, the Gym teacher. He promptly beat us both up then dragged us off to detention. We were forced to stare each other down till we cooled down. What was over was over until the awful moments at home when our mothers had to look at work ahead in sewing torn clothes into reasonable repair.

During the war we became aware of some dirty tricks played by our enemies. German children were instructed to report remarks to the authorities made by their disgruntled parents. They obeyed, we were told, and many children went off to live with aunts and uncles who were more patriotic than moms and dads who complained about the system and were sent into the shadows. The Japanese used a larger network of spies to eliminate those who questioned the order of things. I think those systems were borrowed from checks and balances in our neighborhood.

Girls were born to tattle. "I'm going to tell mom what you did. Yer gonna get it. Wait <@145>til mom gets home" They told mom. There were no idle threats when sisters decided to squeal. When they'd grow-up they would transfer the executioner role to their husbands. "Wait <@145>til your father gets home. He's gonna kill you." The conspiracy was widespread. All our sisters' girlfriends had the same line. "I'm gonna tell your mom." Our crimes didn't deserve what they wanted us to get for stealing their jump rope, crushing their jacks, kicking their dollies. When they annoyed us we couldn't say "I'll fix your apples. I'm gonna tell dad" (or "your pop"). That kind of complaint fell on ears that didn't want to hear it. "You're a boy. Stay away from girls." We were doomed. When the Kulp girl bit me, it was my fault. If I hit her I'd be threatened with reform school.

All through the known world grown-ups were poised to say "I'm gonna tell your mother — or father." Even if they didn't know who we were they would say it. Or, they might say "Where do you live?" ("Don't lie to me; I'll find out"). We weren't prepared to lie. If we thought fast we would commit a lesser sin and run away from the immediate mischief. But still an uneasy night in bed would be ahead, listening for knocks on the door by aggrieved strangers who found from spies where we lived.

At school girls who were pestered would make good the same adjunctum. "I'm gonna tell Miss Schmidt on you." They did and unpleasant consequences worse than the petty teasing followed quickly.

Our social habits were under severe scrutiny. Store keepers had lists of the banned and any nonsense would put a kid on it and he had to travel a little farther for ice-cream or candy. I was exiled from a pizza parlor, two soda fountains and a pool hall before I was seventeen. No matter that I was innocent (in three of the incidents).

Grown-ups were concerned with justice and tranquility. Hopefully their efforts would be successful if they were alert: sois pret, as it were. They were successful at toilet training so there was hope.

We were always making notes about behavior. Not our own, of course. We were oblivious to self-criticism and when adults had unkind things to say about our habits it was sometimes felt that they were picking on us.

Without their constraining influence we would soon be adrift. But then, we weren't always obedient to every adult who wanted us to do their bidding. If that was so a lot of kids would not survive.

Either way, the presence of adults or of other kids would have unpredictable effects on our lives. Decisions had to be made. Suffering might follow. If mistakes were dollars, we'd be millionaires.

Soon we would grow up. What's that like? Well, we can't go into that stage of life unprepared. There were no classes at school on "How To Act Like a Grown-up." There's no standard. A lot of adults acted like children. Others were monsters.

At fifteen or sixteen we get clues. Puberty was already killing childhood. Instead of emulating the kindergarten set we watched grown-ups. We watched our peers, too; they were clued. Older kids became the first level of heroes. Their condition would be ours very soon.

When parents ridiculed the social pattern we were developing (copying, phasing through, experimenting with, inventing), we might have or supposedly resented what we thought was interference. But when peers criticised our actions we were sensitive to their opinion. It's important to please them lest we lose favor. They were watching us, you know.

The simple phrase, "childish acts," would be looked at three different ways. When parents got accusatory we ignored them. What do they know? When we had co-conspirators and a happy audience, these things were acceptable; they fueled our immaturity. When word got back to us that important people (as we defined them) thought that we were idiots, we might change our course or risk spending a lot of time alone.

If I was asked what I thought a grown-up was, I would be unsure. Old? That's true, but there's a lot more than that; that's a partial answer. You don't get good marks for partial answers. When you get married? Not really! Jerry Weaber got married at sixteen and he was a kid. Some of my teachers at school weren't married and they were older then my parents. Having power? Mickey Rooney and Princess Elizabeth and the kids in the "blood gang" went through childhood with different kinds of power attached to their reputations. Wisdom? That's tricky. At different times we had different perceptions of what we thought was sage, if we thought at all. Even among adults, opinion varied; to some a wise man, to others a fake-if not a numb skull.

I suppose we have to equate grown-ups with another word: adult. Adults have privelege and that comes when they show their credentials. When I become twenty-one I'll be an adult and I'll be allowed to drink beer at a saloon if I want to and I'll be allowed to vote for presidents and governors and dog-catchers. You see, that's the difference that makes people grown-ups. We knew kids who were married and they were likely to hang around grown-ups. We also knew adults who still played with toys. They flew kites and built sand-castles and built model boats, but they weren't kids. If they wanted to play games with us they made the games uneven and unfair.

We had a better excuse when we wanted to do things that adults did than grown-ups who wanted to regress. It was because we anticipated growing-up that they became role models. We might get mixed-up and they are called mole rodels.

Pira and I saw tobacco as a passage into adulthood. We puffed cigarettes. We bought corn-cob pipes: good ones that were made in Missouri. We saw old Italian men smoke crooked black cigars, so we went to McCall's store and bought a pack of crooked black Giglis. After a couple of puffs we gagged. They were terrible. We moved on to chewing tobacco and found a pouch of choice and infected others to chew.

You like indians? There's a chewing tobacco named "Red Man." I don't know how the tribal nations felt about that title but indians didn't have much clout when their likenesses appeared in front of the public, for better or for worse. I liked it over other brands I sampled and I convinced a few pals in our crowd that "Red Man" was the best chew. For my effort I didn't get any commission from the company that made it and I'll bet the indians didn't get royalties.

Dave Wagner liked it. He was a natural because he played baseball for an American Legion team. Dave was one of my closest friends who would exert a strong philosophical influence on me in a later time, but not yet. We belonged to the same church but our parishes were very much unalike. In a short time I would abandon mine for his. On another matter, he was going to grow up to register to vote as a Democrat. Not me. When I would celebrate my twenty-first birthday I would drink some beer in the saloon and vote Republican the following November.

Those things could wait. We were pals and politics and other externals wouldn't separate friends. Besides, we both chewed tobacco. We had credentials.

In Wyndmoor, near my grandmother's house and in back of her niece Elizabeth's house, there was a field that was transformed into a fairground for a week every summer. The Wyndmoor Fair benefitted the local firehouse. Amusement rides, a motley of entertainment, fair food (hot dogs, cotton candy, pop corn, clams, peanuts), and games of chance were orchestrated to raise money to buy little things like fire-engines and hoses so that the town would be in less danger of burning down. The known world would be safe if it didn't rain all week when the fair was held. Raffle tickets were sold in the weeks prior to fair-time and I suppose the fireman asked Father Lorenz and Pastor Hill to pray for a one-week drought for the cause. Other pastors might have been asked by farmers nearby to invoke God to water their crops because of earlier droughts that probably were affected to insure the successes of other fairs that supported fire-houses.

When I was little I saved my pennies for fair-time. I begged some more from my parents. Every night I went home broke and satisfied. Because of people like me the town was saved. Everyone might not be happy; my uncle's barn burned down in August 1947. Was there a drought to benefit fairs?

The Wyndmoor Fair was small pickin's when it was compared to the Flourtown Fair, just a little west of there. At Flourtown, the fire department held an extravaganza. A midway with high-tech amusements drew in throngs of people. Acrobats performed on a high-wire. Crupeiers manned tables and wheels and the prizes weren't restricted to cupie-dolls and teddy-bears. A big tent housed a side-show of freaks.

— — -

In 1950 I wasn't going to summer fairs with mommy and daddy. I was with Pira or Wagner, guys who chewed tobacco and who didn't want to go home while there was still action to be had.

Dave and I went up to Flourtown. We watched the high-wire act, partly in awe and partly wondering if we would witness the artists falling into the net that would save them from becoming squash. We went into the big tent and saw the menagerie: BoBo the dog-faced boy, the alligator woman, the human skeleton, Tiny the fat lady weighing in at six hundred pounds or so. She had ankles bigger than our chests. Barkers excited the gawkers with their pathetic displays. All this cost us twenty-five cents. What a show!

Down at the far end of the Big tent ( on the left side) sat a second ticket-taker. Behind the flap was another attraction for another twenty-five cents. You had to be twenty-one to get a ticket. Ah, when I grow up (at twenty-one) I can drink beer, vote Republican and be allowed (for twenty-five cents) to go behind the flap to see displays not permitted for the eyes of sixteen year olds. Maybe at seventeen, or certainly at eighteen, I could go to Korea, recently turned into war-grounds.

"Half-man, half-woman" the ticket seller called to the curious. "A medical phenomenon. See her (him-them, whatever) with your own eyes. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. You must be twenty-one. Etc Etc Etc. Not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach. Yatta Yatta Yatta."

The pitch went on. "Brought out of the jungles of Peru..." Fairs are built to be successful and all the guys who wanted to see the acrobats fall off their wire and the caged motorcyclist daredevils turn into omelettes lined up to see the "morphodite."

We're sixteen, not long after trying to get into movie houses at half price by lying and telling the cashier we're eleven. That's good sometimes <@145>til we're fourteen. Ticket takers aren't high on ethics. A thirteen year-old makes more money for the house if he pays full fare so the cashier does well to make him pay "adult" price. The guy that has to say no-one can be admitted unless he is twenty-one, does so because the law and Protestant ministers and ladies clubs insist, but they don't come out and stand next to him like moralist bouncers.

We had wads of tobacco in our cheeks and feigned being baritones. We thrust our quarters in front of the ticket taker. He saw the money and we passed through the flap where only grown-ups were allowed to go.

The room was dimly lit, perhaps for effect. An entrepreneur spoke about the subject, a small woman who sat dumb on a raised platform. He spoke pseudo mumbo-jumbo. All eyes were on the "morphodite." After so much introduction to heighten our anticipation the overdue peep was at hand.

We had put ourselves in a favorable position up front close to the lady from Peru. She wasn't very good looking, we agreed, but then we weren't in this place to look at faces. You can look at faces for free outside. We paid a quarter to stand with other curious rubes hoping to get a weird thrill.

What's the difference between those who watch the tight-rope walker because he might die while they are there and those peeping-Toms crowded around the little lady from Peru who, on cue, will lift her skirt and reveal her mixed-up plumbing to them? Some disappointment, I suppose, considering the value of curiosity.

When she pulled up her dress there were no cheers. I might have swallowed my tobacco juice. Dave might have, too, but I don't remember. When we left the big tent we had a glass of clam-juice to wash away the shock.

The Flourtown Fair was closed a few years later because of pressure from religious loud-mouths who targeted gambling as immoral. There was a great fuss and a lot of bad publicity in the newspapers. I think The State Police made raids. I guess fire engines and hoses are bought from revenues raised by taxation of the masses rather than willing contributions by happily-fleeced visitors to fairs, these days. The urge to gamble has finally been recognized by the state and it doesn't waste its time with small pickin's. Lotteries tease people into a chance to be millionaires, not cupie-doll winners.

They've expanded the definition of "grown-ups" these days. To drink you must be twenty-one. Voting is at eighteen. Casino gambling is by credentials. It's all mixed up. Pale attempts were made to keep boys out of burlesque houses and the part of the side-show tent where the "morphodite" flashed her-his-its wares. Today six or eight or ten year olds can get a lot better peeps, via television, at things most adults never saw when I was a kid.