Memories of Lawndale at Age 13*

The address was 430O W. 14th Street. Corner of Kildare and 14th Street. The year 1937. The two-bedroom, five-room apartment on the third floor. Facing east and south. East is Kildare and south is 14th Street, and there stood Franklin Park, the large outdoor park. I was living in that apartment with my mother and father and my eight-year-old sister Lillian. The surrounding neighborhood was called Lawndale. The city, Chicago, Illinois. The area about 85% Jewish. This was the height of the Depression. Ninety percent apartment buildings and the rest houses that dated back to the late 1890s.

Few supermarkets. Mostly mom-and-pop grocery stores. No credit cards. Just cash and food stamps. No refrigerators, just iceboxes on the back porches. The sightings of milkmen delivering milk in the early morning and placing dairy products in that icebox that opened from the outside and from the inside. The young and not-so-young matrons in their housecoats awaiting their delivery each morning. And the milkmen, eagerly hoping to view a slightly opened bathrobe or pajama top worn by those women waiting for those deliveries or requesting products to be delivered the next day.

The neighborhood was alive with people. No television, just radio. Daytime soap operas. Nighttime news with H. V. Kaltenborn and Walter Winchell. Not too many cars parked anywhere because it was the Depression and none of the apartment buildings in the area had a garage. Public transportation was plentiful. Streetcars, buses, and the El (elevated railway). Streetcars ran on rails in the middle of the streets of Chicago. What is called a trolley car in San Francisco is what was called a streetcar in Chicago.

Games we played: Marbles on the ground next to the sidewalks. Me with my soft cloth bag containing my big shooter, the marble that would be able to hit many marbles rather than only one out of the center of the circle containing all those marbles.

Pinner baseball. A game probably only played on the West Side of Chicago. (The West Side of Chicago was another name for the Lawndale district of Chicago.) We used a soft rubber ball and hit it on the sharp edge of the brick entrance to Franklin Park. If hit the correct way, the ball would sail across 14th Street. We called it “pinner baseball” for we would play one or two-person games. If the ball was hit past the first player it was a double. If it went past the second player it was a home run.

Then there was “Kick the Can,” where the player kicked a metal can and ran somewhere to hide.

The roughest game was “Buck, Buck, How Many Fingers Up.” This game was played with three, four, or five guys. The first guy would hold on to that brick entrance pillar to Franklin Park. The other two, three, or four guys would bend over and hold onto the rear of the guy in front of them. Picture a bunch of guys holding on other guys’ rear ends as if a train. Then one at a time, the opposing team members would take a running jump and try to land on the farthest bent-over guy from where the jump started.

When all of the opposing team members were sitting on the bent-over guys, the captain of those sitting would raise one of his hands and hold a number of fingers up. He then would yell, “Buck, buck, how many fingers up?” The captain or the spokesman of the bent-over team would yell out an answer. If right, his team would then be the jumpers. If wrong, the guys on top would get off and repeat the jumping and question parts. (The guys had to be strong because some of us were a little hefty for our age.)

Another game was to use a rubber ball and have a penny in the middle of two squares of the sidewalk. Each of the two players, one on each side of a square, would throw the ball at the penny to see if he could make it turn over. I forget how many times it took to be called a winner.

Naturally there were characters that came into the neighborhood. Tony the knife sharpener would show up with a stone sharpener hung in front of his bicycle. All the women in the neighborhood would hear Tony yell out his arrival. The women quickly came out in droves to have their worn-out knives sharpened and watch Tony pedal that grinding wheel around and around and then test his finished product on a piece of paper. Satisfied, he would then charge a nickel or a dime.

Then there was Pete, the organ grinder guy. With his live monkey sitting on top of his small musical organ, he would stroll through the neighborhood and make music loud enough for a crowd to soon gather. The crowd members would enjoy Pete’s version of some Italian music, and for Pete they might throw a few pennies into his tin cup.

Not to outdone by Pete’s voice was the voice of the alley peddlers: “Rags and old iron.” That from the junk collectors who with their horse and wagon would ride through the alleys singing that refrain and hoping to collect all the stuff you wanted to throw out of your apartment. Here was this guy who might be willing to give you a few pennies for that pile of nothing you wanted to relieve yourself of. (I am not talking about your husbands.)

Then for us kids it was the watermelon man. In season he would visit almost every week, yelling out, “Watermelons!” This brought every kid in the neighborhood to get a sweet-tasting sample that the watermelon guy would give to each of the kids. We then ran to our mothers to tell them that the watermelon guy was in the alley and that they should go buy a large piece of watermelon.

And let’s not forget the Good Humor man with his truck bells ringing out his arrival. No free samples given out. I loved the coconut chocolate ice cream bar.

Franklin Park had three softball fields. Sixteen-inch baseball was played on those fields. Sixteen-inch baseball was only played in the Chicago area. Nowhere else. No gloves are used and it is slow pitching. The ball was 16 inches around and wooden bats were used.

The park in winter time was frozen over with ice for skating. There was a clubhouse for various games including checkers and, of course, gambling games like poker, gin rummy, and my favorite, “Hearts.”

There were also two swimming pools for the summer. One the kiddie pool and then the regular pool for swimmers.

The stores I remember: One was Pinsel’s grocery store. I had a penny charge account there. You must remember that the candy bars of today were much smaller in size in 1937. Those days the candy bars were only one cent each.

Then there was Kharasch’s drug store on that 14th and Kildare corner. That’s where we filled our prescriptions. Standing big and round on the sidewalk outside of that drug store was a United States Post Office mail storage box where the local postmen picked up their route mail to be delivered.

Then the most well-known of all the stores was at 1345 S. Kildare Avenue – my Uncle Jake Zimbler’s delicatessen. Known far and wide as the best place to get the biggest and best corned beef sandwich on the entire West Side, Zimbler’s corned beef sandwich on delicious Rosen’s rye bread cost 20 cents. A chocolate phosphate to drink with that sandwich cost three cents. And to complete the meal a crisp sour pickle. You were supposed to use the wooden spoon to take the sour pickle out of the barrel, not your own hand, to dig down deep to find the most crisp pickle.

Our nighttime activities included the potato roast. A few of the guys would hunt down some tree twigs, some cardboard, and old newspapers. We combined all these and started a small bonfire on the street curb in front of Zimbler’s deli. We each would bring our own small potato and throw it in the fire for enough time to bake it through. Then we used a stick with a nail on the end to retrieve our own delicious baked potato. Butter was not included.

Fond memories, gone but never to be forgotten.

*This is a true story from the author’s life.

Albert Zimbler is the 93-year-old author of six humor short story books on Amazon of which MORE DATING AND MATING SECRETS OF SENIORS AND OTHER HUMOR SHORT STORIES is the latest. He also teaches senior improv.

Click here for a video of the presentation by Al Zimbler on the inspiration for his humorous stories given to the MEL (Men Enjoying Leisure) group in Chicago to which he belongs.

Click here for an interview of Al Zimbler on “The Daily Author.”