Part of growing up in South Philly was that when you were bored, you ended up using your neighbors as unwilling players in a form of participation sports. It was a strange way to pass the time and it could be fun, depending on what you did. Well, maybe it was for some young people, but definitely not for some of the neighbors, especially the ones who had repeatedly given us a hard time.
Back when we grew up in the 70's, we used a certain creative flair to kill the boredom; a kind of imagination that's not found with kids today. Now just about everything's electronic, whether communications or entertainment. With us, give us something as simple as a roll of monofilament fishing line and we were happy.
In this episode, we remember a neighbor named Dave W. who was really a good guy. He was the Coca-Cola employee that I mentioned in my post about neighbors sitting out together on summer evenings. His only grievance with us was yelling about our football playing. Other than that, he was, as we often said, good people. But Dave had an unusual problem. That being that he lived almost directly across the street from our house - a home with two young, sometimes bored boys. Oh yeah, and he had one of those heavy metal door knockers that made a loud bang when you knocked at the door. Those simple things turned him into a somewhat-perfect victim.
One evening, I came upon my brother and his friend Louie hanging around. They told me they had this plan to have some fun with our good neighbor. The plan was to take a spool of fishing line, tie it to his door knocker, throw the spool over a parked car and knock on his door. My brother and I hid behind the car while Louie, being the stealthiest and fastest on his feet, ran up to the top of the step. He tied the line to the door knocker, threw the roll under the car and ran to join us. When we were in place, the fun started. "Knock, knock, knock" came with the pulling of the line, and in a few seconds, Dave was out the door looking for the phantom that he heard, but didn't see at the door. He probably shrugged his shoulders before closing the door, because; oh well, no one's there.
A few seconds later, "knock, knock, knock". Dave springs out the door, again, no one there. I can describe the situation on and on, but I think you get the picture. After a few times, Dave didn't go back to the sofa. He waited at the door; you could see his hair, forehead, and eyes peering at the top of the door out the small glass panes. After a few minutes of nothing happening, he started back for the sofa. "Knock, knock, knock"... He had only gotten a few feet away from the door. This time he's gotta find out who's doing this. Dave springs like a tiger out onto the top step, and still, no one is there.
This may be a somewhat boring story if it ended there. Since we were kids with nothing better to do, we did it again the next evening. I had my fun and let it go there. My brother and Louie had other intentions. They kept going back over and over again. They made it too much of a good thing, and this went on for over 20-some evenings. There were a couple of other times I participated, but they usually had their own fun before joining friends for the rest of the night. Sometimes we hid behind the cars, other times they ran the line across the street and into the basement window. One can only wonder if Dave's sanity suffered tremendously. After all, he never knew who was doing this or how. To make this work repeatedly, Louie had to let things quiet down for the evening before cutting the line from the knocker. If they just broke it somewhere between, Dave would most likely see it when coming home from work or returning from walking his dog.
As they say, all good (?) things must come to an end. Doing this almost nightly, they became complacent and weren't watching. So after more than three weeks, another of our neighbors came walking down the street at the same time they did their knocking. She caught her neck in the fishing line at the same time Dave came barreling out the door. He followed it across the street and caught Mark and Louie. I wasn't around that night. You could say that I caught a lucky break and didn't get grounded along with my brother because I wasn't there at the time. Then again, you could say I missed out. I didn't get to see Dave's reaction when he came storming across Chadwick street and screaming about his sanity.
When I got home that evening from a friend's home, my mom, by then furious, said, "You'll never guess what your brother and that other no-good did." I could have said, "I bet they took a roll of fishing line..." but I'm not stupid. She went on to tell me the story, totally un-amused at my laughter. She didn't know that I was in on the fun, at least at times.
Dave's long gone, passing away in the early 1980s. Hopefully. he forgave us that mental torture, but I know he couldn't have forgotten it. I remember that he walked by us without even the usual "Hey boys" for a while when we saw him. But we did eventually start talking again. Hey, I didn't forget, and we're more than four decades removed from it.
Kids today don't do these things. Maybe that's a good thing. These are different times, and a simple act like that can be met with gunfire if you mess with the wrong person. If your kids do it and get caught and are brought home by an angry neighbor, don't be too upset with them. Or with me for that matter. I'm only telling a true story. They're responsible for their actions. But if they do it and don't get shot by neighbors who are more likely to be armed with large-caliber weaponry (get the hint kids?), be glad they did something besides sit at the computer or smartphone all day or play with their Play Station, Xbox, waisting instead of killing time. They interacted with a buddy and learned how to have fun. It might be something new for you, but you'll handle it. After all, you're a parent.
AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
* The way you would have fun tormenting the neighbors. Whether it was ringing and running or an ignited paper bag of dog poo, we all had our own way of getting some laughs.
* Something happening if you lived down this end of the block and not knowing who did it. It's true that we liked to have our fun, but we didn't do everything around here. We were accused of quite a few things and didn't do it, but because we were the only kids down this end of the block that weren't shy about it being known that we did something, we sometimes caught the blame. We knew a few guys who would really get punished - sometimes a bit too severely - if they did these things. They were really sly and didn't tip their hat to what they were up to.
Look at it this way: We remained good neighbors and friends and we turned out to be good, responsible citizens. Call it a statute of limitations. If we did you wrong, I apologize. Despite a laugh or asking "did they do that?", let's put it behind us.
* About a year or so ago, some kid rang my doorbell and ran. When I answered, another boy looked at me neorvously and said "He ran around the corner." I smiled, closed the door, and laughed. Somewhere in South Philly, there's a kid who's doing those things that we did when we were young.
No comments:
Post a Comment