Originally Posted by missmay

I grew up in the 1940's in Brooklyn, a part of New York City which at that time had at least 3 million people in it. We tended to stay in our neighborhood and play on our street, Patsy (hotscotch), rope jumping, marbles. Sometimes the man delivering ice would chip off a piece or two for us to share. I'm the oldest of 7 children so I spent a lot of time babysitting my younger brothers and sisters and keeping them amused. Sometimes I had to hang out the laundry so I strung a little line for them to hang small items like socks and dishtowels to dry. Summertime meant card games on the front stoop of whoever had a deck of cards, playing baseball with a spaulding ball and a cut off broom stick for our bat. When it got very hot we would go to local playground that had a shallow kiddie pool with sprays and later we would dry off on the swings. On our street the older boys would turn on the jonny pump (fire hydrant) and put a barrel over it to create a spray so all the kids could cool off. Hide and Seek after dinner, one time I hid so well that no one found me so they all went home to bed while I kept hiding. I remember playing Monolopy a lot but we never finished a game mainly because the younger kids would get bored with the game. Every once in awhile we would take the bus to the municipal swimming pool and spend the day there. We kids spent may days exploring the Prospect Park, creating secret paths through the bushes and trees, crossing over little streams and laying in the grass watching the clouds. I don't think our parents ever worried that someone would harm us as the park is huge and some days we walked for miles. Very few of us had bikes but they could be rented for rides in the park. As soon as we went back to school in Sept. out came our roller skates. There weren't many cars in those days so we skated in the street. After dinner on Sundays we would go to the movies, double feature with cartoons, newsrell and serial chapters. Some summer Sundays our parents would fill up the car with kids and lunch and we'd all go to Coney Island beach.
Gee it's been fun remembering some of the things we did all those many years ago. Not a single electronic item involved, LOL!