This Used To Be My Playground

Friday afternoon on my way home from work, I saw some boys playing in one of the school playgrounds. They seemed a little old for playgrounds, maybe 11 or so, but I was remembering the Billy Lombardo book I just finished, in which the Wallace Playlot plays a prominent role in the neighborhood boys’ lives. The Wallace Playlot actually existed in Bridgeport, and it was where the boys played softball, and more importantly, where they grew up. Nobody realized the impact the Wallace Playlot had on their lives–maybe not even the boys themselves–and one day, the playlot was gone, ready for a “new development.”

Lombardo’s book is a series of short stories, most of which are about Petey, whom I take to be a rough approximation for Lombardo’s own boyhood. The stories start when Petey is about seven and follow him into young teenhood. The Wallace Playlot disappears when Petey is maybe ten or twelve, and suddenly, the next story shows him smoking pot and hanging with a rougher crowd. The implications are a little heavy-handed for my tastes, but the point still rings true: the Wallace Playlot was where boys learned how to be boys, and once gone, they were thrust quickly into manhood.

As I walked down 59th Street on Friday, these boys were playing some variation of a “fortress” game. Three were standing on a piece of wooden playground equipment, and three were standing on part of a building (a windowsill, maybe) a little ways away, and they threw small objects at each other, trying to duck and throw at the same time.

I thought how great it was that even in Hyde Park in 2006, these boys had found their Wallace Playlot. And then I hear, “Y’all muthafuckers cain’t throw for shit! Ha!”

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current book: still on Sweet Thursday, still undecided.
current music: saw Canasta live on Thursday night at the Subterranean, where the played a great (if a little short) show.
current socks: I totally wore the watermelon socks with my green Keens on Friday.