What's The Password?
If I saw a big cardboard box left at the curb for the trash collectors I might drag it home to the backyard or over to The Lots. The backyard was the better place if mom was tolerant. If I could have my way the yard should soon look like a copy of the Anacosta Flats at the height of the Bonus Army Encampment. The box would become a clubhouse. My penknife, used to whittle wood and to draw boundaries in games of "land" and to carve initials in trees and to play for advantage in "mumbly peg" now would be put to work carving out windows and doors in the clubhouse. Friends would appear. We'd crawl inside and hide-out.
Kids get involved early-on in The Law of Possession-"It's mine!" "Mine!" That could also be called early greed. But when we set up a box-clubhouse we were involved with possession without a danger of an infection of greed. Popularity might be enhanced, but that's a different matter.
The box was a clubhouse. You can't have a clubhouse without a club.
Members would be invited in. "Wanna join...?" Members would be recognized. What's the password? That's the stuff for kids and for guards at the perimeters of army posts. "What's the password?"
Some people take this attitude into later life beyond playtime and securing the fort against enemies who want to kill us. Secret signs and passwords and other hocus pocus will get you into the room full of members(only) of lodges and fraternities. They're not in there for fun or survival as much as ulterior motives-including greed.
When I was twelve I joined The Boy Scouts, a not very secret society that had a special hand-shake, a salute and a creed. Almost any boy could join. Only atheists were excluded.
Enthusiastic types try to recruit the rabble to strengthen their clubs and causes. When I worked as a delivery boy at The American Store, I was approached to join The Orange Lodge and The DeMolay. These were societies full of Methodists and Presbyterians and maybe some Baptists. I had nothing in common with those churches. The American Stores Company was founded, I'm told, by two Orangemen, Messers Crawford and Robinson, and it was said that they screened employees to keep Catholics out. Delivery boys seemed to have been overlooked. Customers, too, I'm sure because a lot of Catholics bought their veggies and meat at the orange painted stores found all over Philadelphia.
It's nice to be asked to belong. "Wanna join my tribe?" There are benefits, I suppose. When I was a freshman at highschool I was invited to "pledge" in a fraternity, Pi Rho Sigma ( ), but declined. Rumors about the initiation scared me away. DeMolay was for boys who were Methodists and Presbyterians who would eventually go up to the Masonic Temples and learn passwords and elaborate rituals and hocus pocus. I noticed a lot of these people ridiculed Catholicism largely over its "ritualistic rubbish" and hocus pocus.
I'm not anti-social. I already belonged to a religion that had elaborate ritual and hocus pocus so I didn't need (nor exist in) a vacuum that needed to be filled by a competitive lodge. I joined a club that had a password but was too mature to need initiations and veritable pooh-bahs. The Owl Club was the most realistic answer to a need to belong. (It did have a password though and that was excusable.)
When you join a club or a lodge there may be residuals. The Masonic Lodge gets you through a lot of the right doors if you are ambitious. They're in the right places. Let's face it. You don't see Masonic Temples on skid row or in slum neighborhoods.
The brothers in clubs stick together and tend to share whatever glory comes with the purpose of their coming together. That's why gang members find themselves in jails or early graves. One of our teachers had got involved, when he was young, in a young-communist league or front and when the political climate changed twenty years later, those without a sense of humor were in charge. He lost his job and wasn't allowed to teach algebra anymore. You have to be careful what club you join.
We built our last clubhouse in The Lots when we were fourteen. On the property next to The Lots, the Presbyterians were building an addition to their church. Stone masons erected a lot of scaffolding and workers came over to The Lots and dug a hole to accommodate what polite people call a bathroom. It wasn't a bathroom. We knew there were no tubs in "bathrooms" at gas stations and diners and when someone said they were going to the bathroom they were being polite. In mixed company civilized people don't announce that they are going to take a piss.
Our gang was as excited about the construction of the church as those who were members. For us it was not for the same reason but for lumber and wood scraps and for the "bathroom" door. From this source we built a substantial bunk, our word for a clubhouse.
We didn't use passwords anymore. "Who's there?" The answer would be "me." If those inside were silly enough to ask "What's the password?" they might expect threats. "Password? Open up or I'll knock it down."
Substantial is relative and our bunk was stronger than cardboard. Soon enough idiots set it on fire. We didn't know who they were and we weren't going to build another clubhouse for them to burn down.
The sympathetic Mrs. Pira saw our loss of a clubhouse as a tragedy. She proposed that her son's gang could use the front room on the third floor of their house. She was one of those "neat" moms like Mrs. Wallen and Mrs. Bertman and Mrs. Sandrow and Mrs. Wagner who would let kids hang around the house and occasionally feed them.
The offer was accepted. We were in our let's play poker for pennies phase. We put up a card table. And a dart board. And some gambling apparatus: a roulette wheel, a dice pit, a horse-race device with eight tin steeds pushed by ball-bearings.
We went up there to play games illegal this side of Las Vegas and to puff cigars and drink soda pop. Members only: What's the password? That part was unnecessary. Strangers would be turned away before they could get to the foyer downstairs.
We kept some of our collective collectibles up there: things we found when we picked trash...junk to others. All chemicals (powders) found were placed in a big clay pot that some day would be taken to The Lots and ignited, hopefully to explode. We figured it would because Jerry Weaber contributed much of it. He and Charlie McCullough had reputations with ordinance. Art work was limited to a campaign poster of Thomas E. Dewey, Republican candidate for president. Any kids who might like Harry Truman kept objections to themselves. Piras were Republicans. As kids we weren't activists for politicians. I was satisfied to wait until I would drink beer and vote Republican...well, vote Republican.
Our private club couldn't be locked-up. Mrs Pira didn't want us in a pig-pen. I'm sure she tidied things up a bit. Neither she nor Mister Pira ever came up the stairs while we loafed 9around up there. We were still at the "no girls allowed" age. The one concession was Bill's older sister, Katherine who afterall lived there and we accepted her as a buddy of sorts because her visits were infrequent.
One Sunday afternoon Mrs. Pira's brother and his family came to visit. They would stay for supper and club members in the third floor were advised to make a graceful leave before four o'clock. That gave us about an hour and a half.
Mothers are smart. Mrs. Pira was cooking for eleven people..
Children shouldn't be underfoot. They're better amused somewhere else away from the kitchen.
"Show them (your cousins) your clubhouse." Suzie and Judy and Tony were led up to the third floor by Bill.
Knock, knock, knock.
"What's the password!" I sounded like an authority.
Pira mumbled something unintelligible. That was good enough. They entered our clubhouse and looked things over: the gaming devices, the dart board, Tom Dewey's picture. We couldn't tell if they were impressed or indifferent.
We lit some candles. That impresses people because ritual might follow. I lit a couple of candles and threw the match into the clay pot by the window.
There were no cameras there to record the catastrophe. There were cameras at Lakehurst when the Hindenburg blew-up. I guess it's better though not to record disasters. The damage in Pira's attic was limited, thank God: a shattered window, some smoke. Downstairs there was some confusion by those civilized people who were quick to assess what accidental things were and simply got it cleaned up.
We weren't banned from our hideout but we would soon lose it for other reasons. Bill's grandmother and aunt would move in to the house on Washington Lane and his older sister would have her quarters on the third floor. The room simply reverted to its intended use and we, who never viewed it (like our bunk) as our possession, didn't feel dispossessed.
