Lito joins the Boat Lane Bombers

The Boat Lane Bombers were a gang in the sense that Spanky and Our Gang were a gang in the Little Rascals. The Bombers formed when I was in elementary school living on Boat Lane in Levittown, New York on Long Island. Levittown was specifically planned for GIs returning from WWII to give them an inexpensive avenue to home ownership. Every house on Boat Lane had multiple children. The next street over was Bucket Lane. All the kids from these two streets played together. Games such as football, baseball, stick ball, basketball, and more home-made games such as Ringolevio ( like capture the flag),
kick the can, hide and seek,buck buck,
and freeze tag. Sometimes groups of children from other streets wanted to compete with us. AND that is when we decided to name ourselves the "Boat Lane Bombers". One of the most grueling games between "street gangs" was called "Buck Buck". One gang would line up like a conga line and make a sort of long bridge with their bodies and other gang would run and jump and land on their backs trying to break the bridge without falling off. Another name for "Buck Buck" is "Johny on the Pony" it's a cross between leap frog and actually trying to break someone's back. This was a game of skill and endurance. In this picture of kids playing Buck Buck the kid flying is wearing Converse sneakers which is what I wore ALL the time.

These kids from other streets were different in the sense that we didn't know them very well, we didn't know their parents, and some went to different schools, not Summit Lane Elementary school where WE went. So the Boat Lane Bombers selected a captain who would negociate with kids from the other streets to determine a place for the competition; typically football. Some of those kids would play rough but we in turn would rough it up as needed. Have you heard of the expression of "having some skin in the game"? I left plenty of knee and elbow skin behing during these games as we often played tackle football on asphalt streets. Some of the names of the Boat Lane Bombers included: Lance Barnett, Pete and Vinny McNamara, Robbie O'Boyle, Clay and Lance Cullen, and occasionally some tough kids at the end of Boat Lane from the Welsch family.

So, we'd have our competition and get our minor scrapes and bruises. We typically could hold our own and often win. Winning was extremely important for the Boat Lane Bombers. We loved to play and we loved to win. WELCOME TO THE MEAN STREETS OF NEW YORK.

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