“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . all who joy would win

Must share it.  – happiness was born a twin.”

                                                                                                Byron

A few boys and girls were playing in the street.  The laggards from school were still going by.  Willie scanned every approaching figure, hoping for the sight of one boy who was more closely related to his own world of youth than any other of his many friends on the block – Sol.

Several teachers went by, including Miss Archer, from whose class Willie had just been promoted.  He touched his cap in respectful deference to authority, and was rewarded with a pleasant smile.  Eugenie M. Archer was an eminently capable teacher, one of many – like Mr. Jonap, Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Abelson – whom he would always remember kindly and with gratitude.

To boys who passed on the other side of the street he waved a friendly greeting, or tossed a word of youthful banter.  One, on his own side, he tripped with his foot, a form of familiarity reserved for intimates.  Another, he pretended to ignore.  It was a boy to whom he was currently not talking, and to whom the affinity of recognition was, therefore, not due.  But Willie was too full of good will on this golden afternoon to sustain a pretence of animosity engendered by a quarrel already forgotten.  “Tell him,” he said, addressing a purely imaginary third person, “how does he like vacation?”  He blushed, the deadlock was broken, the feud was dissolved.

He reacted physically to his self-consciousness by scaling the raining of the areaway (called airy) where the garbage cans were kept.  There were spikes on the railing, which he had to clear to avoid injury, or, what he considered worse, tearing his pants.  An injury could be hidden from his mother, but not a rip in his pants.  He reflected with satisfaction that Frenchy was the only other boy of his size who scaled that airy.  He had first scaled it on a dare from Frenchy, a nimble boy who lived next door to Sol.  What was keeping Sol?

Robby Hilsky, one of the Up-the-Blocks, was coming down the block on a pushmobile, wearing his cap with the peak facing backward, like Barney Oldfield.  Willie watched him make a run to get up speed and then hop aboard for a coast that would carry him down to First Avenue.  The name STUTZ was crayoned on the body, a box mounted on a shaft of wood to which the two halves of a roller skate were nailed, front and rear.

Willie thought of his own pushmobile down in his family’s coal bin, named BLITZEN BENZ 4. Then he thought of Rusty’s, which was BLITZEN BENZ 1.   Rusty’s was equipped with a footbrake, a steering handle and a horn.  Its name was formed with letters carved from thin strips of wood, tacked neatly on its streamlined body.  Rusty was going to be an engineer, and he was particular about the way he built things.  He said that the world’s record for an automobile, 135 miles an hour, was made by a BLITZEN BENZ.  Willie’s pushmobile was a flimsy affair, nailed together in a hurry.  It was numbered 4 because Harry Treu and Jamsie had beaten him to numbers 2 and 3.

He glanced up the street for the twentieth time.  Sol’s house was one of three, similar, five-storied tenement houses in the middle of the block, steam-heated, and with fire-escapes in front, on the south side of the street.  Willie’s house was on the north side.  He liked living on the north side.  It was the sunny side.  After a shower, his sidewalk dried first.

Robby was coming back up on his STUTZ, named after the white car that Ralph De Palma drove in the races.  He had learned that from Rusty, who was an authority on automobiles and could name all the cars as they passed by on Firth Avenue, either by the shape of the radiator, the hubcaps, the headlights, or some other hocus-pocus mark of identification.  Despite a lack of any real interest in such things, Willie had come to recognize a few of the more common makes:  Packard, Pierce Arrow, Rea, Hudson, Hupmobile, etcetera, etcetera.  The etceteras were the makes he kept forgetting.

Up in the middle of the block, in front of the Jewish Temple, a boy even smaller than himself was bouncing a ball.  Willie could tell that it was Little Jinx by the way he handled the ball.  He knew, too, that the ball was a Spalding High Bouncer, because Little Jinx owned one.  A High Bouncer cost ten cents up in Rappaport’s on Third Avenue.  Willie had owned a cent’s worth of the one they lost down the corner sewer a week ago.  He had chipped in with six other kids to buy it.  He wondered how Little Jinx was able to buy a ball all by himself.

Little Jinx saw him and waved to him to come and join him, holding up the ball as an invitation.  An ice wagon, drawn by two stout horses, was coming up from First Avenues.  Willie waited until it was passing, hopped aboard the tail step, and jumped off when it came alongside where Little Jinx was waiting.  Little Jinx tossed him the High Bouncer, underlegged.  Willie returned it with a fancy toss made behind his back and over his left shoulder.  Little Jinx pretended to throw it hard at Willie from close up with his right hand, but flipped it lightly to him with his left hand.  Then they drew apart from each other and threw the ball back and forth like their heroes in the Big Leagues.  Willie imagined he was Larry Doyle of the New York Giants.  Little Jinx was trying hard to be Artie Fletcher.

Four other boys appeared and joined them in the game of Catch.  They were Jamsie, Herman Brost, Shoolum, and the new kid from up the block, Shendy, who was a friend of Fat Simon, the grocery boy, who liked to Indian Wrestle, especially with kids smaller than himself.  Five of the players formed a circle for a game of Sloojy, throwing the ball rapidly from one to another, but keeping it from Shendy, who, being new on the block, was declared It and placed in the middle.  The object was for Shendy to get his hands on the ball, if he could, whereupon whoever had touched the ball last became It in his place.  The area of play shifted with several wild throws and brought them close to where several girls were skipping rope, Double Dutch.  Jamsie, who was It at the moment, tried to get inside the two circling ropes, which were turning in opposite directions like the blades of an egg beater, became entangled, and returned to being It amid the derisive laughter of the girls and the , “Sissy!” from the boys.

An automotive dump truck came lumbering across the street car tracks beneath the elevated railroad on Second Avenue.  It was loaded with blasted rock from the excavation for the new subway on Lexington Avenue and headed for the East River.  The sound and sight of this behemoth set up a cry, “Here comes Bradley!” and there was a race of several boys on roller skates to be first to meet the oncoming truck to hitch a ride.  Harry Treu, on of Willie’s close friends, was in the van.

Sloojy players and rope skippers readily yielded the right of way to the truck and watched it go by, hauling the skaters with it, their hands joined to form a human chain, chanting “Deedle-deedle-deedle, deedle-dum-dum-dum!” and bobbing up and down on their skates to the rhythm of their chant.  Bobbing and chanting was a part of the fun of a ride on the back of a Bradley truck.  Bradley’s drivers never chased them off, which made the name of Bradley an honored one among the kids on the block, albeit that gentleman was unaware of a prestige accorded him beyond the normal scope of this contracting business.

The interruption broke up the game of Sloojy,  and someone suggested that they play Short Bases.  This was a game introduced by Georgie, Willie’s immediately older brother.  It was an adaptation of a game he had played in Mr. Deegan’s class at P.S. 158 a couple of years before.  In the classroom game no ball was used.  The batter clapped his hands to signify hitting the ball, and simultaneously called a number to identify the fielder to whom it was hit.  That fielder clapped his hands to signal handling the ball, and the imaginary ball was conveyed to the first baseman in an established progression of call=s and claps in a race with the batter.  The base paths made a circuit of the room.  None but Four Eyes (as young George “Specs” Toporcer was then called) knew exactly how to play the classroom game, but every boy on the block knew how to play Short Bases.  It ranked second only to Handball, the predecessor to Stickball, in popularity on that block.

Short Bases was really a condensed version of Handball.  The vases were not more than thirty feet apart.  The pitcher was required to deliver the ball to the plate with an underhand toss, on one bounce.  The batter could either punch or slap the ball.  He was out if he hit it on a fly onto either sidewalk or beyond second base.  This forced him to try to hit a ground ball through the infield, and the action of the fielder in getting the ball to first base ahead of the runner had to be fast.  Georgie, who ultimately became a Major League infielder, and who stall later was key man at Rochester in the establishment of a double-play record that still stands, was the supreme past master at this.  Bunting was prohibited, as was hitting sharply downward to make the ball bound high in the air to delay the time until a fielder could get his hands on it.

Short Bases was usually played with nine players, three of whom were batters.  There were no outfielders.  When a batter or base runner was retired, he became the last fielder, which was third base.  The third baseman moved over to shortstop; the shortstop took over second base; the second basemen went to first; the first baseman became the pitcher; the pitcher went behind the plate; and the catcher became the third batter.  There was an exception to this progression:  if a fielder caught a fly ball he automatically became third batter, and the ex-batsman took his vacated position in the field.  A good hitter, like Georgie, surfeited with running around the bases and wishing to become a fielder, would sometimes deliberat4ely make out by hitting the ball out of bounds, or would hit a fly to a fielder he favored.

Before a game of Short Bases could be started there was the problem of establishing the initial positions afield and at bat.  This was done very simply, with everybody yelling at once, and priority being decided as follows:  whoever yelled “Up Second!” first (or perhaps loudest) was second batter; and this progression of yelling first continued on down to the position of last fielder.  Little Jinx, being sole owner of the ball, took no part in the yelling, having the proprietary right to be a batter.  Modesty might impel him not to be first batter.

The game was in progress about fifteen minutes, and Willie was a runner on third base, when a loud “Whoo-oo-p!” sounded from the direction of First Avenue.  It was Sol, coming up the street on the run.  He carried a book in his hand and held it triumphantly aloft, like an Indian waving a scalp.  Willie rightly guessed that the author of the book was Joseph A. Altsheler, whose series concerning the adventures of Henry Ware, Shif’less Sol, Tom Ross, Jim Hart and Paul Cotter in virgin Kentucky were the most popular books among boys in the two local public libraries.

Willie scored on a grounder by Shoolum.  The ball passed between the shortstop and the third baseman and bounced down into the basement behind them, which limited Shoolum to a double.  The time it took one of the fielders to retrieve the ball gave Willie an opportunity to examine Sol’s book, THE BORDER WATCH, the last in the Henry Ware series.  Its colorful hard cover depicted Henry in a tree, scouting on four Indians who were grouped about a small fire, only a stone’s throw distant.  Willie eyed it with fascinated interest, while Sol’s broad grin expressed his satisfaction with having procured such a prize.  He thumbed through the several colored illustrations inside, each of which made him hunger to devour the entire contents with one mental gulp.  The frontispiece showed Henry lying in a thicket, clad in fringed buckskins, Kentucky rifle in hand and powder horn suspended at his side, watching two Indians, clad only in breech cloth and moccasins, who were studying the ground for sign.  He read the caption eagerly, “He saw two warriors, and he lay in the bushes while they passed only twenty yards away.”  Another picture showed Henry and his comrades grouped at ease in a forest glade, captioned, “Something was bubbling inside Jim Hart’s coffee pot, and sending out a glo9rious odor.”  A third picture showed Henry, his arms tied behind him, being led through an Indian village, the cynosure of savage eyes.

“I had to go on an errand for my mother,” Sol explained, “over on 79^th Street.  On the way back I ran into the Library to see if any new Henry Ware book was in, and I saw this.  The lady wouldn’t let me take it from the truck, so I had to wait until she put it on the shelf.  I waited a long time.  There were two other kids trying to get it, but I grabbed it first!”

Willie nodded, expressing both understanding and appreciation, his nose still in the book.  “Can you play now?” he asked.

“Sure, I’ll be right down,” and Sol was off on the run, the book grasped tightly in hand.  He was back down again in a minute, and the game made way for a new third baseman.  Willie came to bat, made a deliberate out and replaced Sol at third, who moved over to short, right alongside his playmate.