Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1928-01-06
published by special ARRANGEMENT with The
Chicago Tribune 5yndicate)
IN TWO PARTs-PART ONE

IN THE DIRECTORY it has an official
name-which nobody ever hears
being listed among the thoroughfares
OF the lower East Side. 1t is as old as
New York, and 1t etched itself on the
early maps when the city was Inhabited
by the good Dutch burghers and called
New Amsterdam.
1t seems to have followed a destiny OF
its own. In its beginning, in the regime
of choleric old Governor Peter Stuyves-
ant, 1t was q meandering COW path lead
ing to the river and a favorite place for
trysts and lovers Journeys. And now,
after three hundred years. 1t has kept
the promises and borne the fruits Of ro-
nance and young love. New Workers
know 1t as THE Street of Children"
The Street of Children is nc longer
idyllic. A pastoral poet, assigned to paint
It's rustic beauties at so much a foot,
would starve to death because all traces
Of nature, other than human, have been
obliterated and buried.
The footprints Of lovers and the noof-
prints of cattle are entombed together
beneath eight-inch cobble stones. Where
in the city's youth, stretched gr%eensward
and meadow. and fen and wild lush grass
studded with maple and oak. hickory
and poplar trees, there now appear in
frequent vistas of piled up garbage, de-
funct vegetables, and the disused i'm
pedimenta OF primitive households.
The borders of the street, where once
grew wild thyme and daisies, buttercups
and violets and sweet grass, are shut in
relentlessly by the solid, dirty faces Of
brick tenements. These faces are
adorned with rusty but vigorous fire.
escapes. They look like old harridans
hung with cheap and furnished jewelry.
The tenements are modern towers of
Babel. They house the newcomers from
the old world. From their vitals issue q
c%acophony Of all the tongues Of Europe;
the brogue of the Irish, the determined
shrill Pile of the Russian Jew, the ex-
cited liquid Of the Italian, the gutturals
of Poles and Lithuanians, and the YER
bose vowels of the eastern Mediterranean
peoples.
You can hear them all plainly about
IL o'clock of any summer night, when 1t
is too hot to sleep unless you are a play
wearied child, because they move from
the inferno of the interiors and sprawl,
whole families, on the fre-escapes, gasp
ing for q breath of pure, sweet air-and
never getting it.
The street itself, in the last twenty
five years or SO, has tried heroically to
break itself of it's century-old habit OF
rambling. For three full blocks 1T pushes
toward the river in a magnificent at
tempt at directness, like a runken man
trying to walk straight. And for these
three blocks 1t achieves an Illusion OF
breath. From the narrow space OF blue
sky there pours into the well OF the street
the suns rays concentrated as though by
a burning glass.
Here settle the push cart men in the
early morning to vend their wares all
day; fruits, vegetables, household uten-
sis, dress goods, cheap ornaments, laces,
knick-knacks, everything that a possible
purchaser could want.
And here swarm the children, dropped
down from the ugly human warrens to
play in the street IL thousands. While
they play and fight II raid the ped
oilers, they get the slant that is to de-
termine their place when they are grown
up; rich man, poor man, beggar man
thief, doctor lawyer, merchant chief
mother or street walker, sister or trull
actress, singer, writer, or waitress. But
his is SO In all of childhood. Think
back and remember the children you
grew up with.
The boys play every game that boys
play everywhere in its proper season;
prisoners base, duck On the rock, caddie
mibs, and baseball. They march in dis
orderly array to battle with rival gangs
and the air is full Of flying stones until
the police break up the fight.
The girls, more decorous, indulge II
JhChS dllQ JQiliPillS IOPCo, aAAd liiAAAabals
domestic dramas in which "all the mer
are at work." the women" are dressed
in strange and wonderful medleys o.
cast-off grownup garments, and rebuilt
dolls are featured, SO shapeless and ben
and broken that only a mother coulc
love them.
If you did not know the existence o.
the Street Of Children. 1t would reach ou'
to you when you were six blocks from 1t
Il ~ 49, ~ a drNnn o. NJ hoo,
swarming, and as you came nearer thu
t drone would rise an octave until 1t be
came the shrill sustained note of excited
children.
i So thick Is the swarm n in sucf
: possession of the street that an edict ha'
+. gone forth in the form of a city ordin
! ance closing 1t to vehicular traffic be
tween the hours Of 7 o'clock in the morn
ing and IL o'clock midnight.
This ordinance, for the most part, i
strictly obeyed. New York's traffic court
mete out swift punishment. But oncG i
a while a truck driver, pressed for time
will guide his leviathan steed through
{ the maze of playing children, praying
: that he won't be caught.
1t is a gorgeous place in which to play
a Juvenile world and, like the real world
: an unheeding place. Sometimes a chile
dies, having accomplished his time upol
> this earth. His funeral halts play for
moment because 1t Is a pageant. Hi
: late playmates crowd and cape while tn
. proud and grief-stricken family step int
momentary prominence and the automo
bile funeral coaches" and follow the lit
tie coffin to the grave. But the surviv
. ors are deep In play again before tn
{ cortege has turned the corner. Their
( are SO many left.
Benny Mishkin, the little cripple
~curly-headed Jewish boy, sat with hi
/ crutch beside III and his club foo
! hanging, on an overturned box near hi
fathers push cart n gazed through
haze Of shimmering heat up and dow
the Street Of Children.
1t was a hot Jun morning, one C
those sitting days when moisture hang
fintolerably Just above the earth, and tn
. sick and the aged and the feeble die c
what the newspapers call humidity"
The rakish old tenements seemed I
droop in 1t. Broad hipped mothers c
many children painted and perspired @
they leaned on their pillows on windo'
stills and watched their offsprings' list
less play in the hell Of heat below then
The children swarmed in the roadway.
The push cart men blotted the swee
from their fcreheads n necks wit
dirty bandane handkerchiefs and curse
or prayed for rain according to their ns
lures. Heat like this was bad for bus
. ness INC rain cooled things of.
Benny neither cursed nor prayed. H
body protested against the e and h
crfppled leg hrObbed But the digcOu