The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1901-02-09
CHILDREN IN OUR ALLEY
Jersey City Has All the
Setting for the Vel
low Kid.

In spacious back yard in York street,
between Washington and Greene streets,
the rear of an old tenement building with
a history, many children of the tenements
OF the neighborhood gather daily to play.
Hogans alley with its yellow kid isn't
even circumstance alongside of this real
playground of poor children. Boys and
girls from the age of toddlers up to
youth almost merging into manhood and
womanhood may be found almost any
hour, excepting school hours indulging IN
various sorts of games. The most VEN
turesome may be found climbing to the
top of clothes poles and hanging about
in such attitudes as they think likely to
attract attention. A rope suspended
from a beam nailed to a clothes
line pole and the side of the house IS.
one of the principal features of the play
ground. 1t is used more as trapeze
than as swing. Several truck owners
and grocers rent space for trucks and
wagons. The delight of some of the chill
dren is to mount the truck with swing in
hand and fly into space after the manner
of a trapeze performer Even the small
kids indulge in this sport.
Recently a regular prize fight ring was
roped off and would-be Sulliyans. Fitzsim-
monses, Corbetts and Shareys battered
royalty with gloves and with all the de-
tails of Marquis of Queensberry rules.
Regular huts have at times been con-
structed in which the girls set up house
keeping, after the most approved meth
DDS copied from their mothers. Many Of
the boys own air guns and some of then
possess kakhi uniforms. They form
hunting parties, organize armies of Am
ericans and Spaniards and participate in
imaginary battles. Of course they don't
shoot one another, but many a broken
window pane in the buildings surround
ing the big yard bears silent testimony
to the carelessness of the owners of these
toy guns.
A recent acquisition is a full-fedged to-
boggan slide. 1t is built at the far end
of the yard and starts from a height Of
about ten feet down an incline of al
most forty-five feet. The head is reached
by step ladder. The foot leads across
the yard into door of the basement of
the tenement house. All during the past
week, when there has been at least a
suggestion of snow and ice this minia-
ture toboggan slide has been the Mecca
of all the children of the neighborhood,
and fond parents peered down upon the
merry sport, from myriads of windows,
with countenances that echoed the prayer
of the poet, who wrote:-
Backward, turn backward, Time in thy
flight,
Make me a child again!''
Every day, summer and winter, the big
yard is crowded after school hours. The
sports vary with the weather. Even rain
does not always keep the children away
from this playground In gossamers and
rubber boots they gather, and on one oc-
casion recently during, or rather just
after storm, indulged in a search
among old piles of lumber for victims of
an imaginary Galveston storm disaster.
They keep abreast of the times. Either
they read the newspapers themselves or
thy listen intently to a discussion of the
days news by their parents or elder
members of the family. For scarcely a
prominent event of Importance is record
ed that does not find some sort of re-
hection in the play of these children
in Jersey City's "Hogan's Alley.''