Over time, I will be posting a nostalgic series of vignettes exploring my youthful days in the Osceola Park neighborhood of Pittsfield, Massachusetts during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such tales will describe my adventures when I was seven to twelve years old.
In the summer, our Osceola Park days usually began when the sun rose and ended when it set. I don’t remember when I started visiting the Park regularly, but it was probably around age seven.
Our dog, Lady, often accompanied me on the two-minute stroll to the swing sets. I would pick our raspberries and pull a few garden weeds as we moved through my yard to “adventureland.”
My friends and I had a contest to see who would be the first to arrive at the Park and sit on the swings. There was no known reason for this, and no actual prize, only our belief that it was important to get to the Park by 8:45 a.m.
In addition, we also wished to have front-row seats on days when the inter-park baseball game was scheduled. We would then be able to watch in awe at the auspicious arrival of our elder ballteam members parading about around 9 a.m.
Some would drive to the Park in their high-torqued hot rods. They doused their hair with Brylcreem, shaved with Gillette razors, and used Barbasol shaving cream. Their car radios blasted out the latest rock-and-roll hits from Albany-area stations WPTR and WTRY. While we drank Coke and Pepsi, they sometimes had more interesting beverages.
Okay, let’s give them some credit and assume they were at least 16 years old, which was the legal driving age in Massachusetts and within a few years of the legal drinking age.
Several of these “model citizens” caused a stir when they played in our inter-park baseball contests despite there being an age limit of 12. These guys didn’t mind “bending the rules” a little, as one might imagine.
I was about 10 years old, played second base, and was about four-and-a-half feet tall. Our big first baseman, dubbed “Quiet Joel,” stood nearly six feet tall. He used to catch all the hard-thrown balls to him bare handed. He saw no need to wear a baseball glove. What a tough guy!
While we drank water during these games, our left-fielder, Ray Ray Hesser, was often seen going to his car between innings and secretly sipping out of a brown bag. His breath gave off a smell that was neither Coke nor Pepsi.
I can still hear the opposition players grousing and asking our park directors to disallow these rowdy rule-breakers from our team. None of these errant players were ever banned from our team, however. And we never worried about them being over-aged and over-sized, or for acting like delinquents, because we had a secret weapon.
This weapon altogether dissuaded our opponents objections, while also reducing them to fear. Stay tuned for next week…
