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In the summer of 1950, Washington Avenue was one
of those streets that seemed, in the eyes of a ten year-old, as
big as the yet to be built Garden State Parkway. I mean, it was
a street that actually went somewhere. It connected downtown
Chatham, New Jersey-the center of civilization as we kids knew
it-with Chatham Township, the frontier. It was a tree-lined
street-dogwoods and oaks, as I recall-of two-story houses from
which commuters caught the 7:46 or the 8:17 to New York each
weekday morning. The Lackawanna station was just a mile from our
house, which was on Greenwood Avenue, at the foot of Washington
Avenue. From there the-world opened up. You could get anywhere
from the foot of Washington Avenue. Strictly speaking,
Washington ended just beyond Greenwood at Longwood, a
half-paved, half-dirt road. Beyond Longwood were large stretches
of fields and woods, with paths here and there. One of the paths
led to an abandoned farmhouse that we all knew was haunted. We
made several trips to the farmhouse that summer - my sister and
I and any number of our neighborhood friends. Sometimes we'd
take our lunch, and canteens of water, all of us knowing that we
might never return.
Probably a couple of dozen kids lived on that
last block before Longwood, and the summers were filled with the
adventures and games that kids back then created for themselves.
The long summer days were divided into three parts by compulsory
breaks for lunch and supper. Everybody had supper back then-not
dinner, except on holidays. We would play all morning, or
canvass the neighborhood on our bikes to see who might have good
ideas for what to do that day. At noon, when the siren went off
at the firehouse downtown, everybody rode home (or lunch. As we
pedalled (sic) into our driveways, we'd yell to our
friends, "See you this after!" "This after" was the star t of
the day's real activity, sometimes the result of careful
planning during the morning. Over the summer, there were
ballgames, circuses, rodeos, war games, cowboys and Indians,
house-under-construction explorations, expeditions into the
trans-Longwood wilderness, and, occasionally, dog shows.
Everybody
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had a dog, so the list of entries was always
extensive. That summer we had a dog show in our back yard. Signs
were made and nailed to the telephone poles on Washington.
Ribbons were made for best in show, biggest, smallest,
cutest-and shortest legs. This last prize was created for Teddy
Gleichmann's dog, Tippy, because we all knew that Tippy would
never make it as a show dog. There were no losers at our dog
shows.
Our dads got home at 6:09 or, if they were late,
at 6:28 or 6:46. We kids would ride down to the station with our
mothers to pick up our dads, and would crowd the railing to
watch the train come around the curve into the station. The
train was always on time and always stopped at precisely the
same spot on the platform. and my father - like, I'm sure,
everybody else's father - always came out the same door of the
same car. Probably all the fathers always sat in the same seats.
This was a marvel that I didn't really appreciate at the time;
later. I decided that it had something to do with male
territoriality.
When supper was over, the neighborhood kids would
congregate in the dusk at the Gleichmanns' mound, on the corner
of Washington and Greenwood. The Gleichmanns' mound rose about
two feet higher than the rest of the Gleichmanns' lawn. It was
about ten feet wide and about fifteen feet long, and was flanked
by two enormous oaks. We would tell ghost stories on the mound
until it got dark and the street light at the corner came on and
we were called home-first by our moms and then, ten minutes
later, by our dads. Great stories were often ruined by hastily
fabricated endings.
The best of the ghost-story tellers was Jack
Shepherd, who lived just three houses from Longwood. He was a
few years older than I was, and was the acknowledged leader of
most of the neighborhood activities, but in my mind he was,
above everything else, a great athlete. Jack-had much to do with
organizing the neighborhood boys into a "hardball" team. He
would arrange games with teams from other parts of town, and -
we'd all bike down Washington to the high school for our big
games. Jack even had real canvas-covered bases. Nobody knew just
where this equipment came from, but everybody knew that when you
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played our team you got to play with real bases.
If you turned right on Longwood and went about a
quarter of a mile, you came to Mr. Cole's farm, on the right.
The property stretched way back from the road. None of us really
knew a lot about Mr. Cole. He was not a commuter; he was a
fanner. You didn't see him much, and if we cut across his land
on any of our expeditions we did it stealthily. I remember that
my friend Skipper Johnsen and his sister got a chick at Easter
that year and named it Henrietta. Over time, Henrietta grew
rather large, and used to run around their yard pecking at
everyone. She really wasn't much of a pet. One day Skipper's dad
took Henrietta up to Mr. Cole's farm, because Mr. Cole had
chickens. Whatever Mr. Cole did with Henrietta, the Johnsens ate
chicken that night. Word got around that we had a neighborhood
ball team, and, the next thing you knew old Mr. Cole offered us
part of a field off Longwood for a diamond. One Saturday
morning, the neighborhood dads were mustered by Mr. Cole with
the threat that if you didn't help out, your kid couldn't play.
The thought of their sons' being ostracized, and perhaps even
missing a chance at baseball immortality, was more than any of
them could handle. A corps of dads armed with steel rakes, and
Mr. Cole with his tractor, descended on that field like the
invasion of Normandy, raking and levelling (sic) until
every rock down to the size of a pea had been removed. A
backstop was made with chicken wire, a plywood home plate was
nailed down, the baselines were drawn, and Jack Shepherd's bases
were put in place. It was two o'clock, and game time. Our
fathers were proud, and we were ecstatic. Mr. Cole said that if
any of us broke one of his windows he'd give that boy a quarter.
We never did, and I don't think DiMaggio could have, either.
The field is gone now-probably serving as rock-
free back yards for a couple of the half-million-dollar three
bedroom ranches in the development that sprang up a few years
later. In 1953, the Little League arrived in Chatham. We all
played, but the home-field advantage was lost forever.
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