When I was growing up on the Northside of Chicago as a kid I remember many sights and sounds that have long since disappeared. Let me share a few with you and maybe you'll recall these sights and sounds.
There was the horse-drawn junk man. Now you must realize this is not his hay-day (pardon the pun) but actually the last couple of years that any one would hear, "Old Rags and Iron" or as we kids would say "Old Rags Alion." He was usually along driving his horse up and down the alleys looking for just about anything thrown away to pickup and put on his big dirty wagon. You could always tell he'd been by because of the road apples left behind.
There was also another horse-drawn wagon. The fruit and vegetable man. Now I don't know what happened to the junk man, but the fruit and veggie man became motorized and soon he was doing his route in a truck with the same old metal scale for weighing things, but much cleaner than that old wagon loaded with baskets of vegetables and apples, oranges in wooden crates. It was quite a surprise to see the change. I mean one week he had a horse-drawn wagon and the next a big truck! Progress!? It was this same man who a couple of years later actually opened his own "supermarket." This was only a few blocks away.
We would wait patiently for the veggie man because he would give us the empty orange crates. Believe me this was better than finding an empty quart pop bottle (worth 5 cents deposit at any store. The smaller 8 ounce pop bottles were only worth 2 cents). With this empty orange crate we used our imagination and created numerous playthings. The one that really stands out is the "Roller Skate Box." Let me try to describe this work of art.
You take the orange crate made of wood and found an old 2 x 4 piece of lumber and some nails. The 2 x 4 would be nailed to the box at the bottom to form kind of a scooter. Then you would take one old roller skate and if you remember these were operated with a roller skate key to fit your shoe and the skate would come apart into two sections. One section nailed at the front of the 2 x 4 and the other at the rear. Now this is more than just a scooter because you had the big orange crate that could carry numerous things (like old pop bottles). To the top of the crate we would attach "handles" which would give us some steering ability. If you had it, you could paint your new vehicle, but for the most part (except for "block parades") we were ready to go and go we did.
People could hear us coming down the sidewalk over a block away. Lucky thing we lived on side streets so we were able to ride on the "tar" which would be much quieter! But, of course, not quiet enough. I still to this day don't know how…after building and riding all day and coming home to dinner; listening to our favorite radio shows; going to sleep and waking up the next day our "scooters" would be gone! Lucky thing roller skates came in pairs and orange crates were plentiful!! (I guess as kids "we just didn't get it!) That was the Christmas I got my first bicycle. While true it was a girl's and had a "buddy" seat over the wide rear tire, it was still MY BIKE.
That didn't mean I knew how to ride it! Too bad Christmas comes in the Winter. I had to wait almost two months before learning how to ride. Just about everyone where I lived learned the same way, unless you were a sissy. The sissy's had training wheels and were a couple of years younger. WE learned the hard way.
You go into the back alley and lean up against a fence or telephone pole and push-off! Chances are you would go a couple of feet on two wheels and then down you go on your knees and rip go the Levi's. If you had to learn to ride in the summer as some of my friends you would end up with bloody knees. After a couple of days you were on your own and riding all over the neighborhood; exploring places we've never seen before. The bicycle, what a great invention; next to my first car definitely the greatest!
Hey, does anyone out there remember?
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