Living at 7th and Schiller in L.R. was a lot of fun. The family next door had a son my age and we became good friends. We also lived near Lamar Porter Field and i got the chance to play some baseball. Not really good at baseball but in my career i only recall two errors i made. One i fell off the bench and the other was spitting in the water bucket. One of our passtimes was catching slow freight trains coming out of union station and grabbing on and riding to the 14th street viaduct and jumping off as they begin to gain some speed. We always welcomed big rains so we could swim in the drainage places at the train station. Our neighbors a block away were good friends also. They were African Americans and owned a little eating cafe called Kidds Place. A 16 0unce Town Hall drink and burger cost a quarter and boy did they have good fried pies. Their boys played ball with us cross the street at a vacant lot. Also cross the street on the south side was a mattress factory and i would go in there occasionally and watch. I recall the day that Mr Smith who owned the place hung himself inside the place and it never operated again. All these places have disapeared over the years and all this now is state capitol grounds. We lived 21 blocks from Main St and in those days we didn't think anything about walking that distance to see a 10cent double feature at either of 3 different movie theaters.
My brother Bennie got me my first bicycle. It was a Schwinn and boy if you had one of these you had something. I think he bought it from someone he worked with. Anyway that bicycle became a very important part of my life. I will tell more about it in the next post.