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| Artie Peters & Tommy on #6 train, 1969 |
I thoroughly enjoyed many World
Cup games this past month in Brazil. I was a big fan of the NHL as a kid and
quickly understood the importance of precision passing, tight defense and sharp
goaltending. A 1-0 game can be a brilliant contest if those three aspects of a
hockey game were executed well. The same goes for soccer. A low scoring game
does not necessarily mean boring. But an NHL hockey rink is 85 feet by 200
feet, and a soccer field can be as large as 300 feet by 390 feet. In hockey if
you don’t have a man advantage it’s usually not easy to keep the puck away from
your opponent, the size of the rink encourages engagement. In soccer, a sharp
passing team with a goal or more advantage versus a weak defense well they may
as well be playing Salugi.
What’s that’s? Salugi is a keep-away game in
which children throw around an object with the aim of keeping it away from a
particular child (often the owner of the object).
In 1969, I was spending half my
time in Yorkville, and half my time in Sunnyside, Queens. This was the same
year Panasonic came out with a $39 portable record player/radio
combo. Well, Tina Fridheim had one, and Artie Peters and I thought it
was a great idea to play Salugi with it
on 83rd Street. Unfortunately, we started the game near my
curfew. I had to be home in Sunnyside by 11pm. We moved the game off
the block and started working our way up to the subway stop
on Lexington and 86th Street with Tina and her
girlfriends trailing after us trying to get the record player back, but we’d
have none of that. Throwing it back and forth, nice and high, over the
parked cars we almost dropped it several times, impressing the heck out of each
other with tremendous catches.
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| Ginny, Norma, Sharon on 403 E 83 St stoop, 1969 |
At the subway station we went down the
stairs to the local #6 level and I passed it to Artie one last time. After
putting my token in the turnstile, I went down one more flight of stairs so
I could be half way between the local and express platforms. Waiting
there, I was semi-aware Artie was still playing the game without me - running
away from the girls chasing him around the token booth. Once or twice, he
faked throwing the record player down to me over the railing. And then he’d
disappear out of my sight. I heard an express train coming and flew down
the staircase. Behind me, I heard plastic and metal exploding as the
record player hit the concrete platform. Artie did not fake that
time. What could I do?
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| Tina's record player |
Tina called my grandmother from
the Chapman’s house (the other girls with Tina), then my grandmother called my
Mom and let her know what we did. The next Saturday, I worked 12 hours for free
for Milton and Marty at the Corner Pharmacy on 79th Street and York. My
earnings, twenty bucks, went towards half of Tina’s new Panasonic portable
radio/record player.
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