Mischievous Activities

We were kids way back when we lived in Rochdale, and let's face it, kids will be kids.

We do things that often defy logic to any adult, but make perfect sense when you are seven or eight years old.

We all participated in some mischievous activities when we were kids, and some we were willing participants in, others, well, we were just almost guilty by association.

The most common of these activities was walking on the grass.

There were signs on every patch of grass in the community that read "Keep Off the Grass," and they weren't talking about anything other than that green stuff.

But we all walked all over it.

Living in Building 9, there was that big expanse of grass at the back of the building, and that is the path that we used when we walked to I.S. 72 and when we went to the first mall.

There was also a makeshift stickball court on the far side of the rear of the building that was near the fountains, so it was a big hangout place.

Beyond the grass, we also wandered into areas that we were not allowed access to.

One day, I remember that my friend Ricky Kaden and I found that the door to the bomb shelter that each building had was slightly ajar.

We had always wondered what was in that shelter, so we walked in.

We saw tubs of everything from crackers to water to other non-perishables, flash lights, everything that anyone would need to survive a nuclear holocaust.

We were in there for about two minutes, and then from behind, a few maintenance men literally grabbed us by the seat of our pants and threw us out of the shelter, and they were very quick to close and lock that door.

When my friends and I were new to the development--we couldn't have been more than seven or eight at the time--we were playing catch with a rubber Spalding on the top of the storage boxes in the building nine playground. About four of us were sitting there--Ira Dannenberg, Howie Efran, David Perrick, and myself, and there may have been others--and Arnie Epstein was throwing the ball back and forth to us facing the storage boxes.

Everything was fine, but then Arnie uncorked a throw that got past all of us.

We all turned around to see where the ball had gone. An elderly woman was sitting in back of the playground on the benches, and the ball whizzed by her head, but maybe 50 to 100 fee away from her.

She must have seen the ball coming near her out of the corner of her eye, she flinched, and lost her balance, falling to the ground.

She hit her head, and all of a sudden, a pool of blood started to form.

When we saw this, we dispersed pretty quickly up to our apartments.

However, somebody--the person shall remain nameless--told security who we were, and the next thing we know, we all were summoned to the executive offices of the development.

I know that I was as scared as I ever had been up to that point. I thought we were going to get kicked out of the development only a few months after we had moved in.

The only thing that I remember is that I left with a lollipop, and everything was hunky dory.

By the way, we later heard that the woman survived, but she did sue Rochdale.

That is all I know about what happened.

I can laugh at that incident now, but boy, as a seven year old, I was really shaking in my boots on that one.

Anyway, did anybody go to the top of the buildings and throw water bombs down to the ground?

Did anybody speak back to the rent-a-cops and make their lives miserable?

Did anybody go into the laundry room and learn to make the machines work even without putting in money?

You can talk about all of these memories at the Rochdale Reunion.

Just send your check to the address posted above.

Remember, the due date is Oct. 5, and don't walk on the grass getting to mailbox to send your letter out!