Thanksgiving Memories - final part

Here is part 1 and here is part 2 and here is part 3. Now for part 4:

So we were all awake by 5:30 or so. We didn't need alarm clocks, it was better than Christmas morning and you just wanted to be up.

Some of us had instructions to wake up our parents and some of us had instructions definitely not to wake them.

We'd pull on our warmest clothes and take an elevator or a staircase and make our way outside as quickly as possible. And in the street-lit darkness we'd find all of our old friends (Dino, Elsie, etc.), and new, blown to twenty feet high outside our doorways. And we'd shuffle around until some other members of the "gang" (no, not that kind of gang) would come out as well, and then we'd go as a pack across the stretch of the American Museum of Natural History, past the workers and the clown suits and smaller floats to 81st St. (the posh block I mentioned earlier) and we'd stare in rapt wonder at the beauty of the floats. The boys would be clustered by the inevitable pirate ship, and the girls would be lost in daydreams by the princess castle. Plus, another very important thing about 81st St.: we'd find out which celebrities would be part of the parade that year, as the signs for the floats were always prominently displayed in front of each float. So we'd oooh and aaaah over the thought that Carol Burnett; or the cast of the Partridge Family; or Marcia, from The Brady Bunch; would be there in mere hours. Standing, maybe, right where we were standing.

Exploring everything between 81st and 77th took a good couple of hours, because being New Yorkers, there was always a lot of need for commentary and debate. Was it as good as last year? Was the Cinderella float looking a little shabby? Would they retire it? Was Underdog gonna hang in there even though his TV show was off the air?

By 7 or 7:30, it was time to stake your place for the parade, if you were really dedicated parade-goers. And we were. And the parents would come streaming out of the buildings with step ladders and blankets and kids would perch on the rungs (unheard of today, but back then everyone understood that the little kids would get first priority), and we settled in with thermos cups of hot cocoa or coffee. And people were actually nice and in a good mood, so you could save spaces if your Mom had to run upstairs to baste the turkey, or your dad had to run with your kid brother because he had to go.

By 9:00 anticipation was running high - the Parade Leader on his big pedestal would be screaming orders into his bullhorn every couple of minutes, and we strained our ears to catch every word because these hints would let us know what fun was coming in which order. We played clapping games, jacks on the sidewalk, and talked to the policemen who were almost as excited as we were.

The only drag about 77th St. was that the bands, etc., wouldn't do their first routines until 62nd St. or so, but that was okay by us - we'd run upstairs the second that Santa had waved us off with his prerecorded, "HO! HO! HO!" and we'd run upstairs to turn the TV to channel 4, where we'd see all the band routines and acts by the Broadway and movie stars in front of Macy's downtown. Around the time the parade was leaving 77th, the beginning of parade would just hit Herald Square.

So we'd watch our parade, minus the acts, surrounded by the love and happiness of our entire neighborhood, excitement staving off the cold, and take in the best that New York had to offer.

Magnificent.

Thanksgiving Memories, pt. 3

Here is part 1 and here is part 2. Now for part 3:

We saw clusters of kids like ourselves, wrapped in the warmth of our moms, dads or siblings, walking in a sleepy haze with cups of hot chocolate supplied by the Block Association.

We saw Snoopy's nose, 5 feet high, and maybe the tip of his 15 foot snout. So that's how we knew where Snoopy was. Earlier in the evening, on the way home from Chinese or the pizzeria, or from a friend's party (and there were lots of them that night), we'd look at whatever balloons had been partially or completely unrolled on their tarps and we'd make guesses. We were often wrong, but those of us who were true, old-timers could usually make pretty good guesses at the regulars.

The regulars included Elsie the Cow, from Borden's Dairy Products, the Sinclair Oil Dino the Dinosaur, Underdog, and Mickey Mouse. Snoopy was newer, as were an ever-changing cast of the latest cartoon characters. In later years there were Muppets, Smurfs, etc.

I never liked watching Mickey Mouse being blown up. His ears weren't solid like the rest of the balloons. They had thick rims but thin membranes for the middle. And I was sure those membranes were going to burst in the wind. Underdog's ears were similar, but they didn't have anything holding them still, like the rims of Mickey's ears, so I figured if they blew off, no one would get hurt.

I was scared of that Mickey Mouse.

Usually two balloons would be going at a time, and we were only allowed to stay up for one balloon to be completed, which usually took around an hour. We always hoped that one of our favorites would be going at the time we were awakened. Sometimes you got to stay later if your mom was part of the hot chocolate crew, because, let's face it, the dads wanted to be out there as much as you did, and they'd let you stay out later.

The balloons would be blown up in sections. It isn't like you send in the helium tanks and it starts at one end and is a smooth progression - a hand would be blown up, then maybe a tail, a snout or a head, and finally, the torso would generally be last. Then the weighted nets would be placed over the finished products, because these babies were huge, and would take several folks with them if they took it into their rubber heads to blow away.

If you were a teen, you might stay later. But probably not. You would have been up, and after your pizza you would have drifted from one apartment to another, with an occasional wake up run through part of Central Park. You would have stayed up straight through balloon time. But you'd be out there, along with everyone else. And you probably weren't too grown up to accept a cup of hot cocoa from Mrs. Mendez down the street.

But all fun comes to an end, and young or older, you wanted to be in bed by 1:00 or so - early for a holiday night for the teens, but you knew you'd be up at 5:30 and out by 6:00 the next morning, when the streets would belong to just the neighborhood for the last time.

Tune in tomorrow for the last part of this neighborhood tale...

Thanksgiving Memories, pt. 2

So here's what it was like:

The longest three hours of the year were from 8:30 to noon when we had school that day. The entire city had school until noon, always ended by a Thanksgiving concert or production of some sort, and then everyone ran from their prisons institutions of learning with hysterical relief. It was the first "real" vacation of the year - a four and a half day weekend. And everyone was more than ready. Especially on 77th street.

The street was closed down by about 1 pm or so. From 1 until 5, we kids had free reign of that wonderful, smooth pavement. No cracks, no textured cement, just smooth sailing for our skates, roller hockey, bikes, etc. We ran and played like spirits possessed - we never knew how long we'd have, so we had to take advantage of every possible second.

Around five or so, folks from Macy's would start arriving and shoo us back to our apartments. They'd spend the next five plus hours laying out the tarps and the flattened balloons.

Upon returning to our apartments, TV dinner or spaghetti smells would hit us like warm breath. We were ravenous, starving after four to five hours of serious outdoor play, but our mothers always admonished us not to eat too much - "save room for the turkey tomorrow."

As I got older and our neighborhood got more varied and safer, the TV dinners and the pots of spaghetti generally went by the wayside. More business appeared around the corner on Columbus, and as a junior high kid, I could usually be counted on to join friends for a slice of pizza a coke at the pizzeria around the corner, or sometimes my parents decided to go out for Chinese on 72nd St. One particularly memorable Thanksgiving Eve, we went to dinner and my brand new boyfriend was invited along. I remember taking his arm and feeling very sophisticated on our five block walk downtown.

As a younger child, though, I'd inhale my plate of spaghetti and be pushed into an early bedtime, for the fun was still to come. Around 11:00 p.m. a mysterious phone chain was started after some telltale sounds from the street, and mothers throughout the entire neighborhood would wake their sleeping children - children in footies, children in flannels, children in Cinderella or Raggedy Anne nightgowns, and we'd put on our slippers and a coat and we'd trundle down to see what was there... and for what we saw, tune in tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Memories

New York City in the 60s and 70s was truly a great place to be a kid.

There were no worries about September 11, poisoned water or subway systems. The tallest building in the world, for most of that time, was the Empire State Building.

Museums were free.

I rode the bus alone, from age 7 on, to my rounds of ballet lessons or in going back and forth to school. I had a "bus card" and kids could ride anywhere just by showing that magic piece of colored paper.

Yeah, there were problems. I was mugged several times by the time I was 11. There was a time in my life when I became scared to go outside alone. My old neighborhood is "oh-so-posh" now, but it certainly wasn't that way when I was growing up. There used to be a pretty rough bar on the corner and a welfare hotel down the street that housed junkies and former (or current - we weren't sure which) prostitutes, who would comment on our outfits as we passed by, or give us advice that we were too young to understand. Kids I knew from the neighborhood spent time in juvie. The "smoke shop" guy around the corner dealt drugs, and we all knew it. There were teen pregnancies, overdoses, kids who were beaten by drunken dads or moms.

But all of those events were stuck away in the corner of my mind, where I tried not to touch them. I was lucky enough to go to a private school, so my days were orderly and I learned well; my apartment was clean; my building was safe; my parents were educated and caring and had dreams for me beyond the neighborhood.

One time of the year, however, all of us - kids of all stripes, backgrounds and sizes, moms of all ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds, dads who worked in factories, dads who owned factories, and dads who couldn't find work - all came together for the best night of the year: Thanksgiving Eve.

Now, there was no actual holiday called Thanksgiving Eve, but there was if you grew up in our neighborhood. Because my block was the block where they blew up the balloons for the Thanksgiving parade. My block was the block where the parade started, where the bands were lined up and stretched down Central Park West for what seemed like miles, where the parade leader would shout over the megaphone: "Odessa High School, step lively behind Goofy, please!" "Rockettes, take your positions!" "Diana Ross - Miss Ross, are you on your float?" And my friend Kate's block, the truly nice block on the other side of the museum, well, that was where the floats were assembled, creating fairy castles and Santa's workshop, giant turkeys and Gingerbread Houses overnight.

But in the interests of getting my turkey done, and not creating a long post when many of us have too much to do today to read long posts, I will return tomorrow to how this all played out each year...