I shot marbles where grass and even the weeds did not grow on available dirt in vacant lots, or in front of the old, two-story, private houses that lined the leafy side streets. I collected marbles and stored them in small brown paper bags. Plastic bags did not exist. I traded many of my ordinary, multi-colored marbles for what we called purees. I used these clear, sometimes large marbles as a “shooter.” The object was to move as many marbles as possible into a circle in the middle of the box we played in. I held the shooter in the crook of my index finger and with my thumb. Then I sent the marble on its way in a straight line by pushing it forward as strongly as possible. It may not seem so, but it was a skill developed over hours of practice.

I carried a knife. We all carried knives. Mostly these were pen knives that we kept closed in a side pocket. It made no sense. Not really. I did not need a knife. Yet, there were practical reasons. The game of War or Territory was one of them. You flipped, tossed or dropped the knife into a square box carved into the earth. After the knife landed in an upright position – no other position counted — you cut off a piece of territory in the direction of the blade until one of you had more land that the other. The kids who flipped their knife the best usually won the game.

Speaking of knives, though we all owned penknives, for some reason many of us also owned switchblades, knives that opened with the push of a button. Mine had a three or four inch blade and the handle was dark pink plastic. I bought mine for a few bucks from a kid in school. In the late 1940s, switchblades were a big deal. We all had to have one. They cost a couple of bucks, money that I saved from tips I got delivering prescriptions for a local drug store. I kept it with me at all times. I slept with it under my pillow. My parents did not know I owned that potentially lethal weapon. Occasionally when we stood on a street corner in the early evening I would open and close the knife and listen to the clicking sound of the blade as it released from its spring. I never sharpened my knife and it served no useful purpose, but I had one, as did my friends, because it was a thing to have. Gangs did not exist in my neighborhood. I knew where they were but I never ventured into their neighborhood. We were too smart to go looking for trouble beyond our own neat borders. But we had switchblades because we thought we were hep, the word of cool in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the days after World War II, youth gangs were getting a lot of attention. Homemade weapons called zip guns were frontpage news. Some kids made their guns in shop class from iron pipe. These guns could kill. Other kids in shop carefully tooled their guns from solid pieces of wood. We made our version from the wooden joints of orange crates. The gun had a wood handle, a nail on the wood barrel and a nail on the front of the barrel. We took strong rubber bands from our homes. For ammunition, we used sharp-edged pieces of discarded linoleum that we cut into one-inch squares. We fitted the linoleum into the stretched rubber bands and then released the square into the air. Where it would land was anyone’s guess, but land the square did and often with devastating effect. The linoleum ammo sometimes cut a guy’s face. Other times it caused a gash in someone’s arm. Zip guns of whatever make were dangerous weapons and other than some youthful macho thing, I have no idea why we made these, let alone shot them at each other. But we did, and no one got badly hurt, at least in my neighborhood. But there were many stories of the more serious zip guns used in gang fights and even in robberies.

We were not budding gangsters. We stayed where we were and never strayed into trouble. We were harmless, not fighters, would-be lovers — how we hoped — and good kids. Yet, my friends and I felt drawn to the other side. Perhaps it was the mystery. Knowing nothing of the concept, the outlaw was a daring figure, at least in movies, especially in Westerns. The outlaw was someone beyond the normal boundaries of good, a concept preached to us as uplifting and redeeming. Mainly I think it was the idea of a life different from the one we were leading. It reached beyond our stable existence. Most of my friends and I did nothing but dream. We never acted on our impulse. A few of my friends did and became petty criminals. A few even turned into junkies. I never came close.

Instead of beating up people, we continued playing many different games. We played stoopball by slamming a ball against the steps in front of any house that had a stoop. We tried to hit an edge of the step with the ball and send the ball as far as possible out into the street and away from the opposing fielder. We played curb ball on the street. The idea was to hit the corner of the curb to see how far the ball would travel. If we placed the ball anywhere but the corner of the curb it did not go far, the other player would easily catch it and become the next batter. We played punch ball in the street where you tossed the ball into the air and then punched it as hard and as far as possible. If someone caught what you punched on the fly, you were out. The bases were parked cars, sewers in the middle of the streets and another sewer for home plate unless we had chalk and could mark a real batter’s box on the blacktop.

We played these games with loosely configured teams and no referees or umpires. We refereed and umpired ourselves. Sure, we argued decisions. Sure, we growled and yelled, pushed and shoved. But we never went to the mat over what we thought was a bad decision. We liked to think we were in charge. Only weaklings allowed other people to control their destiny. We were strong and young – though we never thought about it too much — so we made our own decisions. Referees and umpires would come later in our lives, and when they did, having them around took away the fun we had judging ourselves.

As most kids, I had a pair of heavy metal roller skates. The skates had cheap leather straps that went around my ankles, and a metal cup for my toes that I tightened with a skate key to make sure the skates did not come apart or fall off my feet while skating. Some kids played street hockey if they could afford a hockey stick. The hockey sticks I had often shattered during a game. It took the fun out of street hockey. Instead, I skated as fast as I could in impromptu races on the streets.