Explorer at Heart
If I seem to bark sometimes, perhaps there is an explanation buried somewhere in my childhood.
When I was about five or six years old, during the early 1940s, my family lived at 51-01 61st Street in Woodside, Long Island, New York, in the area we would ordinarily identify today as Queens.
I was apparently a rather independent and rambunctious little boy. I liked to get out and explore the neighborhood, and on more than one occasion I managed to get out of our backyard without my mother knowing exactly where I had gone.
My mother already had plenty to keep her occupied. My younger sister, Cathie, had been born February 2, 1941, so when I was five or six she was still a very young child requiring considerably more attention than I did.
A Mother's Work in the 1940s
Running a household was also much more labor-intensive than it is today. There was no automatic washing machine into which you simply put the clothes and pushed a button. Our washing machine had a wringer on top. There was no clothes dryer, either. Clothes were taken outside and hung on lines stretched between two T-shaped poles in the backyard.
Preparing meals took more work, too. Fresh vegetables and other foods required considerably more preparation, and we even had a garden—something that deserves a story of its own.
So my mother had a young daughter, a household to maintain, meals to prepare, clothes to wash and hang outside to dry—and a young son who had discovered that there was a much larger world on the other side of the backyard.
And apparently I intended to investigate it.
Our house was at the end of a row of houses. Behind the houses were alleys used by automobiles and by the garbage collectors. I remember a low wall, probably about two feet high, perhaps slightly higher, that was just enough of a barrier for the bumper of a car.
It was not necessarily enough of a barrier for me.
I learned later that there were several occasions when I had escaped from the yard and wandered into the neighborhood, leaving my mother to wonder where I had gone and what I was doing.
My solution, apparently, was to explore.
My mother's solution was considerably more practical.
A Practical Solution
I distinctly remember that on a few occasions—not regularly—I was put into some kind of restraining harness or device. I don't believe it was actually anything intended for a dog. I cannot reconstruct exactly what it looked like after more than eighty years, but I remember something going around my body, with an attachment somewhere around the upper part of my back.
That attachment was connected to a line or rope that apparently ran through the backyard, probably associated with the same two poles used for the clotheslines.
The arrangement allowed me to move around and play in the yard, but it did not allow me to leave it.
In other words, my mother could attend to my little sister, do the washing, prepare food, and take care of everything else that a mother had to do in the 1940s without suddenly discovering that Ernie had disappeared into the neighborhood again.
Looking back on it today, I think it was actually a rather intelligent solution.
I don't remember feeling that I was being punished. I don't remember being tied there for long periods, and I certainly don't remember this happening frequently. What I remember is simply the unusual experience of occasionally being attached to that line in our backyard because otherwise there was a reasonable possibility that I would take off exploring.
A Different Kind of Childhood
The neighborhood itself was quite different then. It was not nearly as built up as it is today. Across the street was a Victory Garden, where there are buildings today. There was a cemetery farther down that can still be identified today. I also remember ponies being brought into the neighborhood occasionally so children could ride them. Those memories—and the garden—deserve stories of their own.
It was a different time and a different kind of childhood.
My mother wasn't trying to restrict my curiosity. She was trying to raise two young children, run a household without modern conveniences, and keep one particularly independent little boy from wandering away while her attention was somewhere else.
More than eighty years later, I can still remember being attached to that line in the backyard.
And in retrospect, I give my mother credit.
She knew her son.
So if today, every once in a while, I seem to bark a little—
perhaps now you know why.
My Early Career as a Wanna-Be Garbage Picker-Upper
This happened when I was a little kid in New York, and as my mother told me later.
Somebody called my mother and told her that Ernie was several blocks from his house.
I know I didn't cross the street that ran along the side of our house, but I must have gone around the other end near the cemetery, or on the sidewalk and followed the garbage collectors. They must have driven in a loop at the top and then at the bottom of each row of houses.
I must have been fascinated by it. I don't remember if they had to shovel garbage out of something or whether there were garbage pails or how that happened, but for some reason, I was fascinated by it and followed the garbage collectors down several blocks.
I don't know how I got home or whether my mother picked me up or whether the lady took me home.
That was my first go- around at being interested in a garbage career. Funny enough, Ernie's son David is a bit of a garbage collector as well.
I have written another story from about 5 years later, titled "The Sheeney Man," when I also got into the garbage business.
I wrote this to explain an event in a day in the life of a extroverted five year old on Long Island, NY., during WWII.