earth: a guide for aliens

Spaldeen

This, my friends, is a “spaldeen”. Officially it’s called a Spalding Hi-Bounce Ball. But when I was a kid growing up in New York City, we simply called it a spaldeen. And all you needed was one of these—and a little imagination—and you could concoct the most amazing assortment of games. Enough to fill a childhood. Games like punch ball, box ball, hit the penny, king-queen-jack, stoop ball, off-the-point, handball, and of course stickball, which required that you swipe one of your mother’s old brooms, saw off the handle to use for a bat, then slip out the door when she wasn’t looking.

Actually, this is the core of a tennis ball…without the fuzz. You see, the Spalding Company used to take the balls that were rejected at the factory for one reason or another, dye them pink and sell them through candy stores and five-and-dimes to thousands of baby boom kids who played with them in the schoolyards, playgrounds and streets of big cities like New York.

I was one of those kids, as were my two close pals, Johnny Nolan and Eddie Genaro. Johnny was a smallish kid; his ears stuck out a bit; he had a quick tongue that sometimes got him into trouble; but he had an arm like a slingshot. I mean, he could put spins, dips, curves, and pure smoke on this ball you wouldn’t believe. Then there was Eddie. We called him Cap, because he had this unusual talent for opening soda bottles with his teeth. He would just grab the thing and—cheesshh!—it was open. And this was in the days before twist-offs. Cap was a bit pudgy and kind of slow, but he could hit a spaldeen a mile.

On a typical summer day I would first call for Johnny. Now, when you wanted your friend to come out, you didn’t just go knock on his door. Heck, he could be five flights up. So you had to know how to fetch him. You would stand in front of the building, put your fingers to your lips (or not, depending on how you did it) and let out a loud whistle, followed by the explanatory shout “Hey Johnny!” Three or four heads would pop out of different windows since there were always a few Johnnys in each building. The correct Johnny would come down, we’d go pick up Cap, and then spend one of end of a summer day to the other playing ball with the other kids on East 88th St. in Manhattan, stopping only occasionally to buy sodas, with Cap, of course, opening his (cheesshh!) with his teeth. At the end of the day, when the ball was all dirty, grungy, maybe cut up a bit, and we didn’t want it anymore, we would what we called “roof” it. That simply meant try to throw it over the roof of a typical five-story tenement building. Which is not an easy thing to do. First of all, you’re in this narrow street, and you really have to get it up there high…well, it was difficult for an adult much less a kid. I only managed it once or twice in my life. Cap never even came close. But Johnny, he was amazing. Small as he was, he’d somehow get under himself, fling that spaldeen up there, and more often than not it would go flying over the roof.

One day—and I remember it was a really hot day in June—we were playing stickball in a rough neighborhood a few blocks north against some older kids who had challenged us to a game. And we were killing them. Cap was hitting these tape-measure jobs two-and-a-half, three sewers long. Johnny was throwing stuff I’d never seen before. He had these guys twisting like corkscrews trying to hit the thing. And the ones they did hit, I was making these circus catches of balls bouncing off buildings, or venturing out into Third Avenue traffic to haul in long drives.

We were having a fine time, showing off and flirting with their girls. I can still see them so clearly now, sitting on the stoop, scarves covering the curlers in their hair, singing along with the radio to Linda Scott’s “Don’t Bet Money Honey.” Everything was going great, until Johnny makes this comment that calls into question the sexual orientation of the guys we’re playing against. Well, they chased us for three blocks before we were finally able to shake them.

We get back to the neighborhood, it’s the end of the day, and we’re dirty, sweaty, tired, and happy. Johnny takes the spaldeen and says “I’m going to roof this baby.” He fires the ball up there, but he must have been worn out because it hits the overhang at the top of the tenement, and bounces back into an alley between two buildings. Now, the alley is closed off by a tall iron gate, whose bars are about six inches apart, with spikes on top, barbed wire curled around them, as if to say, “don’t even think about climbing this fence.” But Johnny’s annoyed because he wants to roof that ball. So he grabs the stickball bat, reaches in between the bars as far as he can…but the bat falls just short of where the ball is lying. To gain that extra inch or two, he slips his head through the bars, stretches out his arm again, and is barely able to tap the ball once…then tap it again…and the spaldeen comes rolling into his hand. Great. But now, when he goes to remove his head, no dice. Those ears that slipped in so easily one way don’t want to come back out the other. As hard as he tries, Johnny simply cannot get his head back through those bars.

Now it’s getting late, and we’re getting worried. A few grownups pass by and ask what’s going on. Before you know it the police are called…the fire department is called…reporters start showing up…and this big drama is unfolding on East 88th St. Finally, as dusk falls, these two guys show up with blow torches. They cover Johnny with a piece of heavy canvas…put the torches to one of the bars…cut through it…pry it apart…and at last Johnny’s head is free. Boy did he catch it from his mother that night.

Our childhood flew by. The three of us remained close friends. Before you knew it, I was going off to college. Johnny, who was a smart kid but never put his nose to the books, couldn’t get into college. And Cap, well, his family just didn’t have the money to send him. This was the time of the Viet Nam War. Johnny and Cap knew they were going to be drafted anyway, so they decided to join the army under the buddy system, which meant if you signed up with a friend, they would keep you together for most or all of your tour of duty.

Viet Nam was a war that divided our country. On one side, people were saying “We have to fight communism and stop this evil form of government from spreading across the world.” On the other, they were arguing, “What are we doing in this horrible war thousands of miles away, sacrificing the lives of our youth?” But you know what? Most of the young people of that era—at least the ones I knew—weren’t lining up to go off and fight communism. Nor were they burning their draft cards and running off to Canada. They were just kids, really, stuck in the middle, willing to go if they had to, but just wishing the whole thing was over so they could get on with their lives.

And that’s the situation in which Johnny and Cap found themselves, in Viet Nam, where one day their company was ordered to capture a steep hill that was being held by North Vietnamese regulars. There was a machine gun nest at the top, and every time the Americans tried to advance, the enemy would open fire, cutting some of them down while the others scrambled for cover. And there were Johnny and Cap, hunkered down behind this rock, bullets flying everywhere, wondering what the heck they were doing there, just trying to stay alive…when Johnny feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns, and there’s Cap holding up a hand grenade. He looks at Johnny and says, “Roof it!” A smile spreads across Johnny’s face. And suddenly that steep hill is a tenement building on East 88th St…the explosions all around him the sound of trucks rumbling up Third Avenue…the shouts and screams of the wounded soldiers the cries of kids at play.

Johnny says to Cap, “You pull the pin, I’ll throw the grenade.” And at this Cap has to laugh, because when we were kids watching war movies at the RKO on 86th and Lex, the hero always pulled the pin out with his teeth. Which, in reality, is not an easy thing to do. Unless, of course, you spent your childhood opening soda bottles with your teeth.

So Cap puts the grenade to his mouth, yanks the pin out, and slips the weapon into Johnny’s waiting hand. Johnny rears back and hurls that spaldeen of metal and menace as far and as high as he can. And the entire company watches in awe as it sails cleanly and sweetly over the brow of the hill. The explosion came moments later. And the machine guns were silenced. The Americans rallied, stormed the hill, and after a fierce battle they captured it. Thus, Johnny and Cap lived to see another day.

But there wouldn’t be many more days for Johnny. A week or two later, while he was on a scouting mission in the dense Vietnamese jungle, his party was ambushed and Johnny was killed.

A few months later, Cap was home on leave for the holidays and came over to visit. We reminisced about Johnny and the great times we’d had together as kids. Suddenly, we got this crazy urge to play stickball, right then and there. So I scrounged up an old broomstick and a spaldeen I had stashed away somewhere, and we went over to the schoolyard. It was cold and it was night, but we didn’t care. A lamppost cast a warm glow. We had a wonderful time that night. And although we couldn’t see him, we knew Johnny was there. We could feel it.

Not too long ago, I was going through some old things of mine and I came across this brown-edged piece of paper. It was the front page of the New York Daily Mirror from June 21, 1961. And right there on page one was this big picture of a kid, his head stuck between two iron bars, his ears sticking out, and he’s looking up with this big grin on his face. In his hand he’s holding a spaldeen.