Chapter 1

 

                                   KID of the 50ties                                       

Chapter 1

Going back a few years, some of my exploits started happening around 1945 when the Family moved back from Boston to Drexel Hill Pa. Drexel Hill being a suburb of West Philadelphia. My Step Father Bill Smith was a Lt. Commander in the Navy during WW II. He took over being my dad in 1943, since my Father died in 1941. I love and remember Him to this day. Right after he met my Mom, He gave me a ride on the running board of his 1941 chevy. In 42 he was transferred to Boston and then went overseas to Hawaii for 3 years. He sent me two small cast iron jeeps for my 7^th birthday and I played with them outside for hours. That was also the year my brother told me there was no Santa Claus. I didn’t believe him for awhile. Don’t remember much about Boston. Just that it was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Right after we moved back to Phila. My stepbrother Allen and I were being bullied by the bigger kids in the neighborhood. There was a little real estate house on the corner with a horizontal fence around it about two ft. high. All the kids hung out there in the evening before dark. My older brothers, Hugh and Jimmy had spent the summer in Ga. Well one kid named Bates who was about 12 years old was picking on us when the local bus pulled up and my brothers got off. Well Allen and I told them about the bully and the next thing I knew Bates was laying on the ground with a broken leg. One brother got down behind him and my other brother pushed him. Ha ha , he went tumbling over the fence. Nobody ever bothered us again after that. My older brothers would fight with each other and tease us but they stuck up for us against others.

Some of the other things that happened in my early years were in 1945, right after the war a bunch of the older teenagers put a barricade across State road in Drexel Hill and charged ten cents to get by. We would go up to the cars and ask for a ten cent donation to celebrate the end of the war. Most everybody gave, but a few hollered no to us and drove through. There were about 20 of us in the group and we sure bought a lot of ice cream haha. Before New Years day almost everyone took there Christmas trees down and put them at the curb for trash pickup. Different groups of kids in the neighborhoods would collect them for bonfires on New Years night. But we had to guard them in yards at night because everyone tried to steal, all in good fun, everyone else's trees haha. we always had our bonfire in the vacant lot next to our house They were huge bonfires and were a lot of fun. We looked forward to it every year.