In 1954 I was walking through the vacant lots to get to Marshall Street School from Booth Street where I lived in Hempstead, NY. I was 6 and in the first grade. I saw a small thick birch branch that was on the ground that had a perfect "Y". I grabbed it and hid it in some bushes. I grabbed it on my way home.

I made a fantastic slingshot out of that thing by using balloons and/or rubber bands for thrust. I snapped a lot of targets and kids with that piece of birch.

I wish I still had it. I wish kids were still doing stuff like that instead of poking a twitter twatter keyboard and going on Screwbook and places like that. When I was a kid we had girls playing ball with the guys, going on bike hikes with us, and sweating between innings.

I suppose now a boy and a girl can't meet unless there's a keyboard or a twitter twatter finger punch into a machine involved.

Sad.

What about ringolevio, handball and stickball? This was the holy trinity of games that I played as a kid. I still play handball to this day. Sometimes I play with "old men" that play handball weekly; these guys are in their 60's and are in great shape. These are sports of the people and not of the TV oligarchs. Too many people follow sports that nobody plays outside of organized leagues.

With our street sports we just go to the park call next, break balls and play a great game. No couch potato sloth or commercials to watch or fantasy bullshit to waste our time with this game. I'm glad that my family withstood the ethnic cleansing and I got to grew up in the city and not the suburbs. The suburbs has ruined a few generations by isolating people and subverting culture via technology e.g. TV or computers. Now when people talk about sports it is something distant and on TV. For me sports is something to do.

Funny I was thinking about how 40 years ago I would spend an afternoon..Baseball season is upon us so there is a good chance my "posse" and I could be found on 104st and Park lane South manicuring the summer stadium "Ole Wether Weed"..My parents still live there and there is no sign of what it once was. We would work tirelessly to get it ready for the season..It was a patch of grass at the end of Forest Park that we would transform into a stadium of dreams.By the end of the summer you could actually see the basepaths from the endless pounding not to mention an area around each base worn from sliding.Danny was our Stats Man. Our avererages were tallied everyday.Stadnings argued over every morning. Rain meant we would simply find a dry spot and wait for it to stop..There was no xbox or PS3..Today I coach LL I asked a 12 yo why he did not slide on a close play his answer was he did not know how!! By 6 we were sliding experts..By 10 we were foolish enough to slide on pavement..I took my kids to see where I spent my summers and they looked at me like I was crazy..Within 5 minutes they were too bored to ask anything. It was time to head back home so they could IM friends..There was no discussing the slide and splash pool or the magic wrench that opened fire hydrants or the special nozzle for water balloons. Skelsey would not even enter their mindshare. A day of melting crayons into bottlecaps to create the perfect killing machine would be looked at as lunacy.