Chapter 1 of Tales from the Cage: Growing Up in 60s Suburbia
by, John Ebbecke, Class of 1972
Editor's Note: Thank you to John Ebbecke, Class of 1972, for granting us to permission to publish Chapter 1 of his book, "Tales from the Cage", about growing up near Woodland Avenue. The book talks of his lessons learned from the schoolyard cage where he spent a good amount of time. The book is available on Amazon or B&N Digital.
Chapter 1 "From the Crib to the Cage"
When the greatest generation got home to New York City, they quickly had money to spend and hormones to satisfy. In the early 50s suburbia began to mass produce kids, as well as developments like Levittown, NY. My parents bought a house in a neighboring hick town built amongst the potato farms outside the Big Apple. It was literally called "Hicksville".
My parents would have four wonderful children, but in 1954 possibly their greatest event was the arrival of me. It was also the year they bought their house, and the year my dad began a 34 year career at Grumman Aircraft. The firm would later build the LEM that landed on the moon. For the young-uns out there, America was there back in 1980. It's not a new place we are returning to forty years later.
1950s-60s Hicksville was a great place to grow up. Every house pretty much had a wise cracking kid. Neighborhoods actually working together. Adding soon to be hopped over hedges, cement landscape to ride and play on. Suburban legend was overheard during evening gatherings of moms on lawn chairs in driveways. But for this episode, I'd like to fill you in on the center point of my youth. The schoolyard two blocks away and specifically, "The Cage".
Our school was Woodland Avenue which was odd in itself because as quickly as the next, and our development became connected, that street ceased to exist, because it became the extension of Ketchams Road. I guess Farmer Ketchams threw that in the contract when they sold the potato fields from whence the development came. There we would have street football games, that were supposedly touch, not tackle. You know, go down to end of the neighbor's house, push off their driveway curb, bounce off the parked Studebaker, and catch the pass before getting road rash from a fall on the asphalt. Oh and watch out for the German Shepherd at the corner house that likes to hop the three foot cyclone fence.
Passing cars would interrupt games. Often we would yell, "whadduh ya think dis iz, Grand Central Station", which makes no sense at all, since that was and is a train station. But since we were just dumb ass kids playing football on asphalt, maybe not much made sense? But I digress. Some drivers would ask for directions to extinct Woodland Avenue. We would respond by saying there is no Woodland Avenue but there is a school two blocks away with that on the sign. For those driver minds, it certified their impression of us as dumb ass kids.
Sometime around 1960 or so, Woodland made an addition to our schoolyard, "The Cage". Yeah, we already had a big skinny slide that was like three times higher than the park ones. We routinely climbed up the slide backwards on that nice hot curving sheet metal. Maybe a couple broken arms from falls on the hard dirt but don't think any broken necks. And of course, we had high monkey bars to hang and flop from. Again, don't think anyone was killed on them. Or maybe the kid down the street didn't just move to another town like Mom said?? I mean she did tell us when our first dog "King" got too big, they brought him to a "farm"?? But I digress again.
Anyway, "The Cage" was added and quickly became the center point of many a Woodland youth including me. It was about a twelve foot rectangular cyclone fence that enclosed two basketball courts. It was blacktop with a raised bump the entire length of the fence, and slightly sloped towards a middle drain. Our kid suburban legend was that those two last features were designed in winter to enhance formation of a ice rink. But again, we were dumb ass kids. It most likely was designed to enhance drainage. Ironically, besides countless variations of 11 hoops, full court and half court, games of Horse and 21, it was also home to street hockey. And to games of "automatics" baseball. And glorious hours of myself being a ruthless dodge ball king!!
More importantly, there was one gate out or in!! This personified our youth. While The Cage was a world inside protected by cyclone fencing, once you entered it to enjoy its playground joys, you also had to remember there was one way out. To get to that gate of the outside world, you had to wade thru the growing pains of your fellow kids. Sometimes by being cool. Sometimes by being street tough. But always great memories to wade thru.
Excerpt Chapter 1 courtesy of: Tales from the Cage: Growing Up in 60s Suburbia
Copyright © 2023 by John Ebbecke All rights reserved
