I received a call from my friend and colleague, Dr. John Larounis last week. We both had dental practices in Jamaica, NY. and now we are both retired. He claims he woke up one morning and all the foods and games of his childhood years attacked him and he phoned me. We started to enumerate them and we realized that they are all gone, never to be revived again.

These are some bygone things we remembered (in no particular or sensible order):

Foods -

Two cent plain - a glass of bubbling seltzer for two pennies.

Charlotte Russe - in a cardboard cup - pound cake on the bottom - topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry.

Egg Cream - ingredients were chocolate syrup, whole milk and seltzer. Many heated discussions over which of these ingredients goes into the glass first, second and third. Making an egg cream with the proper foam head is an art form. Salted pretzels were an accompanying treat with egg creams.

Sno-Cones - shaved ice and gooey syrup were an absolute treat on hot summer days in the city.

Mickies - kids would steal (borrow) potatoes from their homes. They would make a fire and throw these potatoes into the flames. The results were blackened objects that tasted like charcoal.

Street Games -

The Immy Season - on a given day, for no sensible reason, the "Immy Season" began. Each marble (immy) had its own name - a) Jaloppo, very large; b) Purie single-colored, transparent; c) Steelie, looked like ball-bearing.

Johnny on the Pony - one chubby kid would act as "the pillow" to prevent the leapers from crashing into the brick building. Kids would bend down while other nutty kids hurtled over their backs.

War Games - During World War II, we played "Three Steps to Germany" and "I declare war on ..." Somehow, I have forgotten the finer points of these games.

Gutter games - Ringalevio - Kick the Can and Hingo Seek (actually hide and seek). These games were played interspersed between passing automobiles.

Games with a ball (Spalding was the pink ball)

a) Punch Ball; b) Hit the penny, first person to hit the penny 21 times was the winner. If the penny turned over you got two points; c) Box-ball, a game of infinite skill on the sidewalk squares; d) Stoop Ball, hit the ball off a building corner and each bounce was a single, double, triple and four bounces was a homerun. e) Slug, the opposite of handball. The ball had to hit the ground before it hit the wall.

Other games were -

Skelly, played on a chalk-marked sidewalk square - bottle caps filled with wax, played on your hands and knees.

Baseball cards, flipping them required great skill

Card game, Knux (for knuckles) - for every card remaining in the loser's hand at the end, you would get whacked with the 52-card deck on your knuckles.

My head is hurting trying to remember the experiences of my city youth. Please, my reader, delve into your past memory file and send me some of your experiences from the sidewalks of New York.