2001-07-18 - 09:55 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Arc Light Roulette

There was a time in my memory, an era, maybe mentioned briefly by me before, which spanned a few years of my boyhood.

In the summertime, nights in our town there were the arclights at each neighborhood intersection, and dark in between. We had our own stage to "do our things," when released from durance vile by our parents.

The activities were varied among the different age groups. "Kick The Can," "Red Light, Green Light," various hide and seek games were played by the older kids. All had a space in the light to play their games without harassment. Girls seemed to gather by themselves and quietly gossip or whatever little girls do. Some of the boys would do, "Feats Of Strength," or nimble agility to show off what they had learned, practised and perfected.

Boys and girls reached a stage back then wherein they eyeballed each other while pretending to ignore each other. Once in a while a boy and girl would head off into the dark amidst taunts of, "kissy kissy," boldly returning after a short time ignoring the ensuing blather.

At different times during the evening the call for Billy, Jenny or whoever would be heard from the respective homes when it was time to go in. Sometimes the calls were put off with the excuse of not being heard. But when a bellow for a kid rattled the tree limbs, reluctant footsteps headed home with, "so longs," from friends.

A block up from our arc light was the street car line and the corner drugstore. The older boys would be hanging around waiting for the opportunity to pull the trolley on a street car, incognito of course, their escape being rapid. Various activities of boys razzing each other and swapping brags could be heard. The littler kids getting often unreal education on sex by lurking and listening.

The drugstore was the magic castle of youth, there was a soda fountain to lure those with the coins required, magazines, novelties, candy and cigarettes. The bigger kids were envied and admired by the younger kids as they made their purchases. We little kids would often present a note to the druggist written by someone's big sister saying in effect, "Please send home two packs of Lucky Strikes with my son Johnny," we could buy Bull Durham and Golden Grain roll your own tobacco at the grocery store. Later on down the road a few years we would pool our chips and give a wino enough to buy us the forbidden booze and a bottle of Muscatel for himself.

The "Juvenile Underground," on the sly would get the things that made us feel like sophisticated adults and the young probably still do.

Some times in the evening those of us who had the fare and a little over would catch the street car and ride on downtown to the Tramway Loop where the streetcars would turn and make their return journey to the suburbs. In between the two sets of rails was a narrow building which had overhead out door shelter for those awaiting their streetcar and inside a lunch counter and a few novelties as well as magazines. We would get chili or whatever our stomachs hankered for. Look at the magazines and idly chatter among ourselves. The group might break up a few at a time, the younger ones heading home to get in under the parental curfew wire. Heaven forbid that anyone should let a parent know that any of us was downtown at night on our own - "Juvenile Underground" operating once again.

I guess that unsupervised by adults, activity was a part of our growing up, conducted in secret by us - always. But we did learn the common sense way to live without harming others or ourselves with a degree of self respect unknown to those kids who were, "Sheltered From The World," by the straight laced parents in our neighborhood.

One thing lacking today I think, is the parental training given to us in knowing and using just plain old common sense. Most of us automatically knew the commonsense limit to our activities and lived much in our imagination where any fantasy activity could be entertained without penalty. Things we would never do in real life.

So for a few short years we grew up playing Arc Light Roulette . . . . . .

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