Eighth Street Urchins

We all came from families of no less than four children and upwards to eight. We were bound together like a gang of warriors whose territory smelled like grass, melted asphalt, Double Bubble chewing gum, dirt, chlordane, and sweaty kids. There was always steady din of kid clatter that never let up; it was background noise, which became a soothing lullaby to newborns birthed into our world.

That was a time when red PF Flyers were the footwear of choice that insured that any race you were running in would deliver victory. It was standard fare on a kid infested street in East Meadow, NY, to see six street urchins standing in a line getting ready-set to go. On Eighth Street were no less than 150 children between the ages of two and twelve. We spent the summers performing in self-produced plays, riding rusty bikes with baseball cards clothes pinned to the spokes, swinging like Tarzan from the branches of large oak trees, playing kick-ball, ring-a-levio, and tag from when the sun came up, until the night-cap round of Pied Piper ice cream at 9:00 pm. Our block was a world unto its own; going around the corner could be likened to traveling from Staten Island to Brooklyn today. If you ventured to Lancaster Street for instance, the territory was as unfamiliar as being in a foreign country.

The ethnicity of the tribe was mainly Irish Catholic and Italian.  Those nationalities made up the bulk of the herd, sprinkled with an occasional German here and there. I remember the oddity of a British family that moved in, which caused quite a stir for days. The family from Liverpool became instant celebrities. In our crowd, they were the nearest thing to an actual Beatle that any of us would ever encounter; in fact, in our eyes their oldest son became our own personal Paul McCartney.
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