Howell, kids and forts

Howell Township, New Jersey is where I grew up, from the time I was about 5 years old until 9 years old, after which time I was first put into a military academy (1972-1977). At the time, the 61-square-mile rural community was largely farmland and horse farms, with the only real signs of industry going on around the immediate vicinity of Route 9, which cut through the municipality and joined Freehold Township (Monmouth County) to Lakewood Township (Ocean County). In all, there were about 20,000 people there then, so neighbors were scarce in some parts.

THE MANASQUAN RESERVOIR: At about the time I left for Admiral Farragut Academy, in Pine Beach, NJ, the town elders were talking about a county plan for flooding the woods not fat from Town Hall and creating a reservoir. I thought it sounded ridiculous. The kids in the town loved the woods. Every one of us was darn near a Daniel Boone by the time we were 8 or 9. Nevertheless, it was done. And, the Manasquan Reservoir turned out to be a pretty good idea by the county Board of Chosen Freeholders of the day. Later on, I found out a future acquaintance of mine was the principal person behind the plan, long-time and late Freeholder Director Harry Larrison. Harry is in some of my stories, so I won't beat it to death about him here.

SPORTS: I didn't care about any of that public building and creating junk at the time, though. I was a kid. And, having endless woods everywhere is what kids love. Technology was not that big of a deal back then. There was none. We played sports: baseball, football, basketball, some tennis and stickball. We played them all the time. Each kid had their favorites, but all the kids played all the sports -- or they were just bored out of their minds. Seeing as Howell also seemed to be a pot-growing and smoking Mecca of the day, as well as a party hub also, it was better for kids to play sports.

I didn't have a great family situation, but I had some friends and liked sports, particularly baseball. My father also enrolled me in boxing classes at the YMCA in Lakewood with one-eyed barber (and former professional middle-weight fighter Pat Spataro). Pat had to be the absolute worst barber that ever received a NJ barber license. The first time I met him he accidently cut my ear in the back leaving this big permanent scar. But he was a nice guy and knew his way around the ring, and how to deal with kids. My neighbor, Paul Jones, and I both attended his sessions. I think Paul quit after like 3 of them. But I was for anything that kept me out of the house so continued to go. I also played Little League Baseball at the Howell North Little League near the Freehold border behind some firehouse that had fields.

AWESOME TUNES: Great Adventure in nearby Jackson Township was just starting to be built too, though bands had already started playing in this ad hoc outdoor auditorium that was set-up. I didn't go there all the time, but sometimes some of the older kids would give Paul and I a lift out there to hang out in the parking lot (which was really popular then). There would be like a hundred kids, mostly older but some younger, hanging out in this large dirt parking lot; smoking pot, drinking and flirting with the batches of girls that showed up there to do the same thing the guys were. And, we could hear the bands from the stage perfectly clearly. It stands out that I remember hearing "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick, and Meatloaf singing his famous "Bat Out of Hell" album live: Awesome in the first degree.

THE SUMMERS, THE PARTIES: The older kids smoked a ton of pot. It was the 1970s: free love, unprotected sex, lots of booze (the drinking age was 18 then) and no sense of responsibility by a lot of younger people. I was envious but always said to myself, 'One day, that's going to be me.' Well, it never was because by the time I was 17 and really able to be taken serious by a girl back home I was already in the military and the drinking age was raised to 21. Not only that, but the outbreak of AIDS pretty well put the brakes on the free love thing. House parties were large and epic. Parties with bonfires in the middle of the woods were large and similarly epic. But I only witnessed what the older kids did. Well, I did until Danny Hunter from across the street turned Paul and I onto drinking, pot and amphetamines. I think I was eight years old.

It was an old story and not the one I want to tell here. I want to talk about Howell, with the perfect summers -- just the right amount of hot (about 91-degrees F tops by day and 75 degrees-F by night). The summers began promptly at the end of April. Fall began immediately in mid-September (and I mean a real Fall, not the kind we have now, which is Winter). Yes, we always got snow right after Halloween, but Spring always showed up right at the end of March. The weather was perfect. All the kids played outside until their moms called them home for dinner, which was usually when it started to get dark. There was endless bike riding, wrestling and sporting matches of every kind. Far from thinking girls were "icky," boys and girls were going out by the time they were 8 or 9. But, no one thought about sex: Kissing? Sure. Sex? No.

SOFTBALL, NOT THE SPORT OF KINGS: There was this nice softball field behind my father's house on Crest Drive, and every Saturday during the Summer dozens of softball players would be playing hard-fought games while literally dozens of people, mostly young women swooning over the teen-age, male players (there were quite a few). How many neighborhood romances began after some 19-year-old player hit a home run to win some meaningless game on an unofficial field. But, the fact the players played so hard even though their games would never be counted in some book or league standing is precisely why those games were the very best. This was sport in he purest form to me.

Neighborhood girls who were juniors and seniors in high-school would sometimes walk around in string bikinis that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Herds of us smaller, younger boys in primary school would breathlessly and silently stare in awe as these goddesses walked by. None of us knew what sex was, but all of us were sure that girls like that had something to do with it. And, at that time of the world, the Daphne Lemmings of the world (Daphne was my favorite goddess. lol) were able to walk around like that because even though it was not a wholesome idea to do what she and her girlfriends did, no one was going to attack her either. Kids had respect then, for adults and for each other. There is no such thing anymore, and the world is poorer for it, in my opinion. Even if we did not like our mothers and fathers (and many of us didn't for very good reasons that were personal), we still respected them and would never dream of throwing them "under the bus," so to speak. We just waited our time until we were adults and could relegate that family to the occasional telephone call.

THE SMALLER KIDS: At Halloween, kids used to Trick-or-Treat everywhere because we didn't think of the world as having a pervert behind every tree waiting to pounce. Sadly, though, they are. And, they were then only we didn't know about it.

I think we were all very busy trying to be the best athlete we could. It was nice, really. Local girls of all ages would come out and see the guys play ball -- which made us try to act like we were very cool. Often, though, girls would end up joining in the games and then, pretty frequently, finish the day by showing a lot of us up (me included...I sucked at football). I shouldn't say 'everyone,' though, because smart guys like Greg Schon (frail and sensitive) spent all of his time studying and with his parents. Of some note, Greg (who endured a torrent of abuse by other kids in the day) went on to become a big deal stock broker on Wall Street beginning in the mid-1980s. Last I heard he was filthy rich: Good for you, Greg.

A lot of kids had bad parents then, though. So kids made their own rules outside; their own society. In those days parents could do a lot to kids without anyone caring that much; people didn't get involved. Parents were a whole other thing then the life kids led among each other. And, no one was eager to talk about it to them.

Until we were 10, kids on my block were fascinated with building forts: above- and below-ground. It was a grand obsession that built up for years. Like anything that is practiced a lot we all actually got pretty good at it. Paul and I must have made our first fort together at like 6 years old, in front of the back door of my house. It was terrible but we were so proud. Just a few years later, we helped a couple other kids build one in the backwoods near the Prince of Peace Church, along Aldrich Road, that was probably 12 feet long and 5 feet deep and 6 feet wide with a respectable roof, wooden floor and camouflaged so it didn't stand-out unless someone was standing right up on it.

What did we do with all these forts? Well, little kids invaded other kids' forts and defended their own. We had fist fights over them and threw rocks at one another -- hard. Older kids who admired a group's fort would drink and smoke pot there, and sometimes bring their girlfriends there for private time. It was a little strange, thinking about it, actually. But it sure did develop our arms with all that digging. Sometimes the older kids left booze behind for us as a kind of thank you. It didn't last long.

About the rock fights (and they were plentiful); no one was trying to miss anyone with rocks. Literally, we were trying to knock each other out. I was hit many times by rocks in these moronic match-ups, and loved it every time (believing then it showed how tough I was). Of course, we were collectively and individually idiots for espousing this kind of game. But, espouse it we did. While I went home with more than the occasional black eye from some dumbass thing we were doing, I do remember my finest throw of a rock ever -- bar none.

It was the Summer of '76, after my family and I got back from seeing the Tall Ships in Boston, Massachusetts. It was dwindling to the end of Summer and I went over James Urig's house to play "All for All" Football Card Flip. This was an elongated game where two people literally flip every card they had in their collection until there was one winner (and the loser had no more football cards left). Well, I won James' collection and he did not like it. So, on the way out, he slapped my arms, filled with football cards, with many of them landing in a puddle (making them useless). I picked up the cards and walked away until, halfway down the street, I see rocks landing near me. James was throwing them. 'Well, OK, enough of this cheek turning BS,' I remember thinking. I put the armful of cards down and returned fire on James, who was about 30-40 meters away, as I recall it. I could not throw with any accuracy that far so I decided to loft the rocks high, giving them more distance. After an exchange of a dozen rocks or so I lofted one as far as I could. I was picking up another rock, in fact, when I saw James fall over, his feet flying into the air, and land unmoving onto the ground.

James had an older brother. Usually, John Urig and I were good but if he came out and saw his little brother laying dead with a rock in his eye and me standing down the street with a rock in my hand -- that could be awkward. So, discretion being the better part of valor, I scooped up my football card winnings and ran as quick as I could back to my father's house a block away. As a note, James was OK, but his pride was injured a bit. 

Meanwhile, this one kid, Jimmy Green, used to always build above-ground forts; really nice ones. Not surprisingly, when he grew up he became a contractor building houses. He became quite successful at it and today still lives in the house where he grew up on Woodland Drive.

Howell kids refined the art of staying busy while not actually doing anything of worth. It was like the township was an enormous park for our use. It was nice, really. Kids came home every day tired, dirty, worked out, exhausted from laughing or cursing like sailors for something or other. All the kids in my very large cul-de-sac knew one another, and for a long time. So when someone moved away a big loss was felt. It was a big loss because it was a nice place to live; and that is probably one reason why so many of those kids I played with are still there, watching their grandchildren doing the same things they did so long ago (minus all the rock throwing and fort digging, I hope). As for the homes most of us went back to, well, that is another story. Some of those stories were good and some of them were not so good.

It is common to blame parents for a lot and maybe they do deserve to get a knock for being a bad parent. At some point everyone's life becomes about them and what they do or do not do. Sure, no one wants a bad childhood. But, I doubt if a terrible childhood actually ever drove anyone to become some horrible person. It is a factor. One thing among many. Perhaps bad childhoods are just something to get over and forget. As anyone who has had one knows, though, it doesn't stop it from sucking all the same.