Throwback Thursday: Studying for the New York bar exam, Summer 1985
If this gives you chills, then you’re probably a lawyer! (Photo of BarBri bar review book: DY, 2014)
During any given summer, thousands of newly-minted law school graduates are reaping the rewards of their toil with one final “gift” of a test: The bar examination of the state in which they intend to practice. With a few exceptions, one’s ability to practice law in a given state is dependent upon passing a grueling two or three day examination, consisting of batteries of brain-frying multiple-choice questions and essay questions that pose factual scenarios densely packed with legal issues to be analyzed.
To prepare for the bar exam, which most people take during the summer, one typically signs up for a bar review course. This is a crash course that features over a month of lectures and practice exam questions, interspersed with hours of studying legal rules and principles. Most bar review courses start right after graduation season and finish a few weeks before the bar exam itself, with the remaining time spent drilling and memorizing.
Every summer I encounter law students lugging around the thick paperbound law summaries published by bar review courses. As the weeks go by, their faces look more drawn and tired. Many of the men stop shaving and even the more fashion conscious women trudge around in sweatpants. They make for a pretty motley crew by the time exam week hits.
I remember that time oh-so-well. Twenty-nine summers ago, I was studying for the New York bar exam, reputed to be one of the toughest in the nation. The biggest challenge in studying for the NY exam was the vast number of legal subjects potentially covered on it. We had to stuff a lot of law into our heads and hope that it remained there at least through the two days of the actual test. For people like me, who assiduously took classes of intrinsic interest rather than courses that tracked the bar exam subjects, there was added misery in tackling subjects avoided during law school.
Furthermore, earlier that year, I had accepted an offer to work for The Legal Aid Society in Manhattan. I would be handling appellate-level criminal cases, which meant that the areas of law I needed to feel comfortable with boiled down to a handful of subjects. My motivation to learn, say, the rules of New York gift & estate taxation, was practically nil. (Especially with the salary I’d be earning and the people I’d be representing, neither I nor my future clients had much use for the subject.)
I spent the first few weeks dutifully going to the bar review lectures and trying to study each day, but I found the whole deal to be quite excruciating and my attention span wandered. As the weeks ticked down, however, I came to grips with the fact that I didn’t want to take this exam over again, so I’d best buckle down and give it my all. That I did. During the weeks preceding the exam, I basically camped out in the law clinic offices at NYU, where I had spent so much time in my final year of law school.
Of course, I also spent hours on the phone with law school classmates, sharing supposed insights on how to prepare for the exam, as well as gallows humor about our chances of passing. Many of my best friends from NYU were going to other states to practice, so I ran up a much higher phone bill than was prudent for a soon-to-be public interest lawyer.
I was assigned to take the exam in the ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. By then I had moved out of NYU housing and was sharing an apartment in Brooklyn. I didn’t want to risk a subway delay, so I rented a room at the Vanderbilt YMCA, a manageable walk from the hotel.
The exam itself was every bit as challenging as I had imagined. My head was spinning throughout the two-day test, and when I finished, I honestly had no clear idea of whether I had passed or not. (One of the essay questions was about New York gift & estate taxation, and had I not spent an hour the night before with a one-page summary prepared by one of my law school classmates, I probably would’ve sat there in a stupor.) But I didn’t feel horrible about it, so I figured my chances were okay.
After the exam, I celebrated by going to Barnes & Noble and buying two books, the titles of which I recall to this day: William Shirer’s The Nightmare Years (the journalist’s account of being in 1930s Nazi Germany) and Tom Clancy’s first thriller, The Hunt for Red October. I treated myself to an extra night at the YMCA to read my new books in solitude. In the weeks that followed the bar exam, I was basically in a haze. Thank goodness I had that time to recoup before reporting for duty at Legal Aid after Labor Day.
***
In November I learned that I had passed the bar exam! It was good news all around in my office; all 12 or so Legal Aid colleagues who sat for the exam that summer also passed. I called the elementary school in Indiana where my mom taught kindergarten, and they gave her the good news over the intercom.
I celebrated by going to Barnes & Noble and buying another book, Mark Girouard’s Cities & People, a beautiful volume about urban social and architectural history — and a perfect complement to the love affair I was experiencing with New York City as a broke-but-happy Legal Aid lawyer.
Heaven is a used bookstore
Brattle Book Shop, downtown Boston, exterior (Photo: DY, 2014)
Over the weekend I made an extended pitstop at the Brattle Book Shop in downtown Boston. I was reminded once again how used bookstores have been a place of happy sanctuary to me, going back to my early adult years.
The Brattle, pictured above, is one of America’s oldest bookstores, and it’s one of my favorites. Inside, you’ll find two floors of used books and review copies, plus a top floor of rare books. Outside, at least when the weather is okay, you’ll find shelves and carts of discounted used books, marked at $5, $3, and $1. Lots of the $5 books are quality volumes that would be a boon to many a personal library, and there are plenty of great bargains among the $3 and $1 offerings as well.
The discounted books outside draw me in. The weekend stop, for example, started with a discovery from one of the $3 carts, The World of Charles Dickens (1997), a colorful, illustrated guide to Dickens’ works and times, by London popular historian and Victorian crime expert Martin Fido.
But then I went inside. Uh oh. Let’s just say that the books I found on adult education and on psychology ran up the bill to considerably beyond three dollars. They may have been real “bargains” as measured by their original prices, but they lightened my wallet nevertheless.
Favorite haunts
Especially with the decline of brick & mortar bookshops, I’m delighted and appreciative that Greater Boston still supports used bookstores. In addition to Brattle, Commonwealth Books, Raven Used Books, and the basement level of Harvard Book Store are among the stores that offer plenty of used book treasures.
Elsewhere in the U.S., the Strand in Manhattan, Powell’s in Chicago, and Moe’s in Berkeley are favorite haunts. (Not surprisingly, all are within close proximity of one or more major universities.) During a recent trip to New Orleans, I was delighted to find several used bookstores in the French Quarter. And on those fortunate occasions when I’ve traveled to England, I’ve always been on the lookout for used bookstores.
New York
New York City’s used bookstores hold a special place in my heart. By the time I moved there, its famous “Book Row” on 4th Avenue was no more. But during my years in New York (1982-94), the Strand was a classic, creaky, and vast used bookshop. I visited regularly as a law student, and during my stretch as a perpetually broke Legal Aid lawyer, I would make pilgrimages there on paydays when I felt (very temporarily) flush. The Strand has done some upscale remodeling in recent years and now sells a lot of new titles along with its storehouse of used books. Nonetheless, it remains a standard stop during my New York visits.
Another favorite was the Barnes & Noble Annex on 5th Ave. and 18th Street, across the street from the original B&N flagship store (which recently closed). The Annex was a multi-floored wonder, full of remaindered and heavily discounted new titles and used books. B&N would shutter the Annex sometime after I moved to Boston. I recall that when I discovered it had closed, I felt like a small piece of my New York life was gone too.
Book sale in a tent
The origins of my enjoyment of rummaging through piles of used books trace back to the summer after my first year of college. I was spending the summer at home in northwest Indiana, and my mom had clipped from the Chicago Tribune a small notice about a big used book sale in Wilmette, Illinois.
Later I would learn that the book sale was an annual, week-long fundraising event organized by the Chicagoland chapter of the Brandeis University women’s committee. It was legendary among many bibliophiles across the country, some of whom would rent camping vehicles to drive there and load up on good books for the year.
Anyway, I did the 90-minute drive to check it out. When I arrived, I could scarcely believe my eyes. The sale — offering some 250,000 used books(!) — was held in a huge tent that covered a big stretch of a mall parking lot. I spent just about every bit of spare change I had to my name. I filled several bags of books, and a few days later I would return to buy even more. Though I felt too silly to call it as such, this marked for me the beginning of a personal library.
Apparently some form of this book sale survives to this day. Hopefully others are deriving the same pleasure of visiting it and loading up on great discoveries. Maybe, like me, it will fuel a lifelong devotion.
“The Big Lift”: World War and Cold War meet up in Berlin
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the victorious Allies divided the city of Berlin into zones controlled by the Americans, British, French, and Russians. The first major international crisis of the Cold War was triggered by a 1948 Russian blockade of Western goods and supplies into Berlin, and resulted in the Western countries joining together in the Berlin Airlift, a massive airlift of food, fuel, and other necessities for a German populace still suffering from the ravages of the war. The blockade was lifted in 1949, with Germany divided into separate Eastern and Western states.
The Big Lift (1950) is a raw, authentic, fascinating movie built around the Berlin Airlift. Montgomery Clift leads the cast as an Air Force sergeant who becomes involved with a Berliner, played by German actress Cornell Borchers. Paul Douglas, in a lead supporting role, plays an American sergeant who carries deep anger and contempt toward the Germans. All other military roles were played by actual members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The Internet yields mixed reviews for this movie, mostly due to supposedly uneven plot lines. However, I find the personal stories to be smartly layered into the time and place, and both lead and supporting cast members deliver convincing performances. The film’s interactions between the Americans and Germans are emotionally and politically complex, capturing how tensions fueled by both the Second World War and the Cold War shaped personal relationships.
But the real star here is post-war Berlin, where most of the movie was filmed in 1949. Some four years after the war ended, Berlin was still rebuilding from Allied bombings, and much of the city remained as piles of rubble. The movie wholly captures that reality. In addition, the aerial shots of Allied supply planes flying into and taking off from Berlin’s Templehof airport are like a documentary from the era. Scenes in the Berlin subway and city streets are gritty and real. You feel like you’re watching history.
The movie was produced as a portrayal of a major international event, but now it serves as a unique, remarkable time capsule. The Big Lift gets my vote as one of the most underrated historical dramas ever. I just finished a repeat viewing, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time.
***
Go here for a version posted to YouTube.
Go here for the Wikipedia article on The Big Lift (spoiler alert on the summary)
Go here for the Wikipedia article on the Berlin blockade.
“Grand Central”: Postwar stories from one of the old familiar places
I’ve just started reading Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion (2014), a newly-released anthology of short stories by ten writers, with the iconic train station playing a role in each one. Last night I read “The Lucky One” by Jenna Blum, author of two very successful novels, Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers. I count Jenna among my dear friends, so perhaps I’m biased, but if her contribution is a harbinger of things to come, I’m in for a treat.
I began with Jenna’s story because, well, I saw it as sort of a test. WWII. Train station. Love and reunion. In the wrong hands, such a collection could easily become a soggy nostalgia fest, conjuring up images of a couple having a final embrace before the one left behind runs along the departing train. Because I’m a big fan of Jenna’s work, I figured her story would give me an idea of what to expect.
Jenna’s “The Lucky One” is about a Jewish concentration camp survivor who works at Grand Central’s famous Oyster Bar restaurant. He sees a customer who looks like his late mother. . . .
Enough said. I’ll simply opine that “The Lucky One” is a superb, knowing, heartfelt contribution from a writer whose ability to tell a great story with nuanced emotional intelligence is one of her distinguishing gifts. It also is the work of someone who learned about the Holocaust by interviewing survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah history project. Jenna has infused a lot of historical understanding into her short story.
Okay folks, I know I’m betraying my own limitations when I confess that I cannot recall ever diving into a volume of short stories with a cover showing a couple kissing in a train station! But I will be the loser if I don’t spend more time with this one. And I have a strong feeling that the next time I step into Grand Central Station, some of these tales will come to mind.
Summer means…football pre-season magazines!
Especially after I whined about the brutal winter we experienced here in Boston, it may seem odd that the summer months fill me with anticipation for the start of fall football season. But I can’t help it — I’ve been a football fan since junior high school — so around this time of the year I start checking the magazine stands for the usual rush of pre-season pro and college football previews.
I’m more into the pro game than the college game, but I load up on pre-season mags for both, as well as a fantasy football guide or two.
On the pro side, I’ve been devoted to the Chicago Bears since I started to follow the game, over a decade before the awesome, wondrous 1985 championship season. When a Bears game is televised here in Boston, I make every effort to watch it. I still get psyched when they win, and I get a tad down when they lose. Since moving to Boston in 1994, I’ve also become a fair weather New England Patriots fan. It’s easy to root for the Pats when they are Super Bowl contenders practically every season! I don’t know what I’ll do when coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady call it quits, however.
On the college side, it’s Notre Dame for me. Growing up in NW Indiana, I couldn’t help but gain an affinity. Although I’m neither Catholic nor a Notre Dame alum, I’m drawn into the whole Notre Dame football mystique. I also root for the University of Hawaii and Navy, even though I have no official connections to either of those schools! Fandom is not logical.
Personally, I’ve never attended a big name football school. Valparaiso University, my undergraduate alma mater, is known more for its successful mid-major basketball program than for its football team. New York University, my law school alma mater, hasn’t played the game in decades, although early in the last century NYU had a significant football program.
On the fantasy football side, my Jamaica Plain Storm won its league in 2012 and generally has been pretty competitive. I pay moderately serious attention to my fake football team. Such are the priorities of willfully prolonged adolescence.
Throwback Thursday: First Manhattan visit, Summer 1982
Thirty-two summers ago, I paid my first visit to New York City. The main occasion for my trip was to check out New York University, where I would be starting law school that fall.
While it may sound odd in this day and age for someone to say this, I had accepted NYU’s offer of admission sight unseen, based largely on its overall reputation and strong support for students who wanted to enter public interest law. You see, I also was pretty broke, and I didn’t have the funds to visit the law schools to which I was applying. Having opted happily for NYU from a distance, I wanted to preview the situation firsthand, so I scheduled a late June visit to New York City.
I reserved a room at the Vanderbilt YMCA on 47th Street. It was like staying in a youth hostel, reminiscent of my semester abroad in England the year before. Another adventure begins!, I thought to myself.
During my short trip, I spent a lot of time around NYU and its Greenwich Village surroundings. I discovered some of the cheap local eateries that would get a lot of my business during the years to come, I did some hanging out in Washington Square Park in the heart of the Village, and I paid my first of hundreds of visits to the remarkable Strand bookstore.
Of course, I also checked out NYU, including Vanderbilt Hall, the main law school building, and Hayden Hall, the residence hall where most first-year law students lived, both located right on Washington Square. I could feel the butterflies churning in my stomach in anticipation of what was to come, and a little voice inside me wondered if I was in over my head.
I did standard tourist stuff as well. Going up the Empire State Building. Taking a guided tour of the United Nations. Becoming bewildered by the city’s labyrinth of a subway system. (If you’ve ever been lost in the Dante-esque middle level of the West 4th Street stop in the Village, you know what I mean.)
My NYC recon trip confirmed that in terms of sophistication, I was a babe in the woods. I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with big cities, having grown up in northwest Indiana right outside of Chicago and having spent chunks of time in major European cities during my semester abroad. However, New York seemed overwhelming to me, ranging from its apparent vastness (in actuality, Manhattan is a mere island!) to its exorbitant prices. (Upon my return, I would report breathlessly to friends and family that a fancy ice cream place called Häagen-Dazs was charging one whole dollar for a small cone!)
Nevertheless, I also had a gut feeling that I was making the right choice. I knew that New York would fascinate me, and — nerves notwithstanding — I had a good feeling about my decision to attend NYU. My instincts would prove to be right. New York and NYU were the right places at the right time for me.
I didn’t take any photos of that visit, but I’ve held onto the guidebook I used to traipse around Manhattan. In Frommer’s 1981-82 Guide to New York, author Faye Hammel writes:
You should be advised that there is one dangerous aspect of coming to New York for the first time: not of getting lost, mobbed, or caught in a blackout, but of falling so desperately in love with the city that you may not want to go home again. Or, if you do, it may be just to pack your bags.
That quote captured how I would feel about New York for years. As would this song:
With the Sunday paper in a Boston café
(Photo: DY, 2014)
Before heading into the office today to pick up some work (I’m one of those academicians who embraces quirky work hours), I stopped by the Boston Common Coffee Company, a downtown café, for a late lunch. It is there, while enjoying a sandwich & greens, iced coffee, and part of a cookie, that I realized how weird I have become. No, it’s not that I’ve changed all that dramatically over the years. Rather, it’s how the world has changed around me.
You see, while sitting at a small table with my food, drink, and a few sections of the Sunday newspaper, I looked around and realized that among the 20 or so people in the café, I am the only one reading a newspaper. In fact, I’m the only one reading any kind of hard copy material at all. Just about everyone else, whether alone or in a small group, has a gadget or laptop out.
Of course, it was a younger group of customers, as befits a coffee place located among buildings of two urban colleges with dorms full of summer visitors. So the generational thing certainly was at play. By contrast, when I was in law school at NYU some 30 years ago, on any given Sunday you could go to a neighborhood coffee shop and see students trading sections of the Times, Daily News, and Post over a (usually late!) breakfast or brunch.
Though I get a lot of my news online, spending time with a hefty Sunday newspaper remains a treat for me. There’s a small sense of adventure in flipping through the sections to see what awaits me. And when coffee and a bit of good food are added to the mix, it makes for an extraordinarily pleasant way to spend part of a day.
Throwback Thursday: Volunteering for the 1980 Presidential campaign of John B. Anderson
Yup, that’s me, speaking at a 1980 presidential debate sponsored by the Porter County, Indiana chapter of the American Association of University Women, wearing my best polyester suit. Note the cigarette smoke appearing in the photo!
As the boxes of papers in my condo unit storage area attest, I tend to save stuff! This stuff includes a small pile of mementos from the first Presidential candidate I ever supported and voted for, John B. Anderson of Illinois. I spent countless hours working as a volunteer for Anderson’s 1980 independent campaign, and it is one of my most memorable college experiences.
I’ve written earlier that during college and law school, I had every intention of launching a political career, so much that I was obsessed with the machinations of campaigns and elections. During this time, and especially through college, my own political views were very much in flux. I started college as an independent-minded Republican and finished as an independent-minded Democrat. But it’s also safe to say that my positions on issues were more knee-jerk than principled and well thought-out. regardless of whether I was leaning right or left!
Since then, my views have usually come out on the liberal side, but as to individuals I admire and respect in public life, I find myself drawn to people of character and integrity in ways that may transcend political partisanship. This may signify that I have come full circle, because John Anderson had those qualities in abundance.
In a way, my own political journey tracked that of Anderson, who for most of a long career in the House of Representatives was a strong conservative, rising to party leadership positions and representing a Rockford, Illinois district that returned him to office time and again. But in the wake of Vietnam and the social upheaval of the 60s and early 70s, Anderson began moving to the left, to the point where he entered the 1980 GOP primaries as a “liberal Republican,” a designation that would be virtually impossible today.
Anderson made a splash in the primaries and was gaining a following that cut across political lines, but he knew that his chances of winning the nomination — eventually secured by Ronald Reagan — were practically non-existent. So he decided to mount an independent Presidential campaign. He engaged in the arduous effort to get on the ballot across the country, and he picked a running mate, former Wisconsin Governor Patrick J. Lucey, a Democrat.
Although polling data showed Anderson with double digit support through the summer of 1980, he faded in the fall and garnered 7 percent of the November vote, far behind Reagan and the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter.
I served as the Northwest Indiana coordinator for the Anderson/Lucey campaign, an area covering Lake and Porter counties, two fairly heavily populated areas of the state. My position signified the degree to which the campaign had to rely on green volunteer talent. I coordinated a small organization of volunteers, served as a representative to the statewide campaign committee, participated in a couple of local debates, and even did some local radio interviews.
Mementos from the 1980 independent Presidential campaign of John B. Anderson
Some of the mementos pictured above are self-explanatory, but let me say a bit about three of them:
(1) The ALL CAPS letter on the left is a mailgram sent by Vice Presidential candidate Patrick J. Lucey to core Indiana volunteers, thanking us for a furious and ultimately successful petition effort to put him on the state’s November ballot. Lucey had been added to the ticket as Anderson’s running mate after petitions for Anderson had been submitted, so the Indiana courts required us to mount a second petition effort to secure his place as the VP candidate on the ballot.
(2) The newspaper article at top is a summer 1980 piece by the Gary Post-Tribune, featuring our small band of Anderson volunteers. It was one of my earliest press interviews about anything, and I recall how nervous I was speaking to the reporter! The article mentions an older couple, John and Kim Glennon, who served as den parents to our young volunteer group. Mrs. Glennon had attended law school with Anderson at the University of Illinois.
(3) The letter on the right was sent to key Anderson supporters after the November election, thanking us for our efforts on behalf of the campaign. I didn’t know if Anderson personally signed it or whether a robo-signing machine was used, but it was nice to receive the letter after working so hard for the campaign.
The 1980 election will forever be associated with President Reagan’s election and the nation’s rightward political shift, but I believe that Anderson’s story also symbolizes that change. After many years as a Republican loyalist, Anderson’s politics were moving left as his party’s positions were moving right. Anderson’s campaign platform was a mix of liberal social positions, strong support for workers’ rights, and moderate-to-liberal economic policies. His departure from the GOP anticipated the sharper ideological divisions that continue to confront America today.
In the years following the election, Anderson did a lot of teaching and lecturing, eventually becoming a law professor at Nova University in Florida and serving in leadership positions for various advocacy groups. He’s in his early 90s now. I’m not sure if he is still active as a teacher and advocate, but I hope he knows that his campaign made a strong impact on those of us who were fortunate to be a part of it.
Derby-Pie, baseball bats, and a Gatsby-esque hotel in Louisville
Featuring Scott, Big Al, and maybe a ghost or two (photo: DY, 2014)
I was reminded how travel is one of the benefits of my work when I made a quick trip to Louisville, Kentucky to speak last Friday at a continuing legal education program sponsored by the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law.
It was my first visit to this historic old riverboat city, and I hope that I’ll be able to return for a longer one.
Seelbach Hotel
The conference was held at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in downtown Louisville. I’m sufficiently clueless about interior aesthetics that I rarely notice much about hotels I stay in, but the Seelbach is a beautiful place with lots of history. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent time there and was so taken by it that he used the hotel as the setting for Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s wedding in The Great Gatsby. Prohibition era gangster Al Capone was a frequent visitor as well.
And as befits any classic old hotel, ghost sightings have been reported at the Seelbach. Local history expert Nicholas Howard writes:
The first ghost sighting was in 1987 when a cook spotted a woman in a blue dress with long dark hair walk into the elevator and disappear; the catch was the doors were closed the whole time. A maid spotted the same woman the same day. With some investigating, it is believed she is the spirit of a woman that died there in 1931. . . .
A guest in 1985 also called the desk saying she felt something rubbing her legs when she got into her bed; nothing was ever found in the room. There are also reports of guests TVs being turned on in the middle of the night, the air conditioners coming on and reports of an old woman roaming the halls.
Baseball bats
I believe the first time I ever heard of Louisville was in connection with baseball bats. You see, “Louisville Slugger” is the name of an iconic brand of baseball bat, and the company still has its headquarters in the city. Walking along Main Street, you’ll see Louisville Slugger plaques and baseball bats making for the “Walk of Fame.” As a baseball fan, I got a big kick out of this!
Honoring Hall of Fame outfielder Billy Williams, one of my favorite Chicago Cubs (photo: DY, 2014)
Derby-Pie
The conference organizers hosted a lovely dinner for program speakers at the Bristol Bar & Grill, and the highlight for me was a local dessert known as Derby-Pie, which I can best describe as a sort of walnut & chocolate chip pie with a flaky crust.
From derbypie.com
Derby-Pie is one of the best desserts I’ve ever tasted! On a plate in a dimmed dining room, it looks like just another dessert, but after one bite…
Throwback Thursday: Playing baseball and discovering “dinosaur bones” on Baring Parkway
Baring Parkway, Hammond, Indiana (Cropped & magnified version of photo originally taken by Edwin Rivera — thanks Edwin, and blame the blurs on me!)
Baring Parkway makes up two big rectangular plots of grass and trees in the Woodmar neighborhood of Hammond, Indiana, the small northwest Indiana city where I grew up. For me and many others during the late 60s and early 70s, it was our baseball diamond, football field, and — on one occasion — archeological dig.
Fields of dreams
Some of my best memories of those days are of playing pick up baseball games with improvised rules and teams made up of guys who showed up on any particular afternoon or early evening. It was slow pitch hardball; a batter could strike out but couldn’t wait out a walk. If we didn’t have enough players for full teams, a ball hit to an uncovered part of the outfield was considered an automatic out. There were no fences, so a home run had to be earned by hitting the ball far and running fast. (Umm, my home runs were few and far between.)
I spent chunks of five or six summers playing in those pick up games on Baring Parkway. When I started, I was pretty terrible. I could barely hit the ball, and my fielding skills were pretty bad too. Early on, if there was an odd number of players, I’d be designated the “official catcher,” which meant that I caught the slow lob pitches for both teams and didn’t get to bat. 😦 But I was becoming quite a baseball fan, so I stuck with it, enough so that I could hold my own at bat and in the field. Such improvements are the little things that can build a kid’s self-confidence.
Baseball was still America’s national pastime. Although I don’t want to over-romanticize those days, a love of the game was very much a part of the culture of this gritty little industrial city. Youth baseball leagues were very popular, and a fair number of future high school and even college standouts cut their teeth that way.
Our Baring Parkway games harbored no such sporting ambitions. We played for the fun of it, and by and large, the experience delivered. Furthermore, we mostly got along with each other, with only an occasional disagreement blowing up into fisticuffs.
The photo above shows a lush green park. Our makeshift baseball diamonds made Baring Parkway less picturesque, with carved out bases and basepaths pockmarking the landscape. But on a nice summer day, you could see kids enjoying themselves with a game of baseball, which I think was a good tradeoff.
Football was less popular those days, but occasionally we’d turn a stretch of the Parkway into a makeshift gridiron. We played both touch and tackle varieties, adding necessary rules such as minimum counts before a defender could rush the passer (“one Mississippi, two Mississippi…”). We usually played without safety equipment, but I cannot recall any injuries of note other than some bumps and bruises.
In search of dinosaurs
One early fall — I’m pretty sure as we were starting the 6th grade — a big utility company dug up much of the Parkway to do some work on the underground pipes. This meant a temporary suspension of its use as a playing field, but what we discovered there caused us to shelve our growing obsession with sports.
Unlike today, when fences, orange tape, and big signs will warn people (er, kids) to stay away, we could simply walk right into the work site. I cannot recall who first ventured into the excavation area, but I remember how quickly the news traveled among our small group of friends: There are lots of bones down there, as in bones from big animals.
And so we went, with small shovels and garden tools in hand, during early evenings and the weekends when the workers weren’t on site. And we dug up these big bones and all thought, whoa, I wonder if these are dinosaur bones???!!! We took bags of them to show & tell at our grade school, breathlessly speculating about whether they were the remains of giants that once roamed the planet.
Well folks, it turns out that none of our archeological discoveries will be found at your local natural history museum. Indeed, the fact that we also dug up rusty horseshoes at the site should’ve told us that we weren’t on the trail of a mighty T-Rex. But our excitement over this discovery allowed us to suspend disbelief, and also would make for a good childhood memory along the way.
Kids and unstructured time
Back in the day, a childhood for a someone born into America’s emerging middle class or robust working class came with free time, especially during summers after the school year ended. Sure, for some there were activities such as scouting, church groups, organized sports, and the like, but overall our days didn’t seem quite as packed as those of today’s young folks.
Although I’m not a parent, I understand how modern child raising often involves a lot more structured, adult-supervised activities than we saw with earlier generations. Still, it saddens me a bit that the kind of self-organized play that we engaged in on Baring Parkway is less and less of a typical kid’s experience. This was an era when parents (usually moms) could tell their kids to go outside and play, and about the only mild concern was whether you’d be home in time for dinner. Yup, times have changed.
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