Arlington Hts. Stories: Those lazy, simmering summers

Coco-butter suntans, filling the Flit gun to pump-spray the porch free of mosquitoes and black flies, the creak and slap of screen doors and the billow of bleach-smelling sheets flapping on the back yard clothesline — summer days had smells and sounds that linger ghostlike in memories.

Kids were everywhere. They gathered in bands, clutches, pairs and loners beneath trees, their noses in books, sailing on their imaginations to the four corners of the world. While adults searched for order and organization, kids scattered to the parks, the open spaces, farm fields overgrown with grass and anywhere the dirt could be scraped level for a game of marbles, or a cluster of trees transformed into a fort surrounded by howling Indians.

Schwinn bicycles coursed in whirring packs up and down the streets and stacked in tangles in front of the candy store and drugstores in town where root beer floats left wet rings on the marble soda fountain bars. A suspiciously casual handful of teens stood near the Northwestern railroad tracks, trying not to look like they had just lined up a dozen pennies on the steel rails for the big steam locomotive and its six passenger cars to flatten into copper discs. With their booty in hand for trading, the next stop was the Sunday baseball doubleheader down at the field just off Northwest Highway where the Arlington Redwings were playing.

You could hear the crack of the wood bats as the teams practiced. Both teams had covered dugouts and the crowd — virtually the entire village showed up — found places to sit in bleacher seats that ringed the field. Some had a dollar to sit in the roofed-over grandstand facing the first baseline. The structure was erected using money Mayor Flentie “negotiated” with the providers of slot machines and punch board gambling in the local businesses. The gambling machines could stay, but the village got a rake off the top of bets collected. At the height of the Great Depression, the village had to be creative to pay its bills.

An announcer was paid $5 a day to call the batting order and the ball and strike count over a loudspeaker system. People brought picnic lunches, or bought from Mullers chilled soda pop that sat in a tub of ice, and spent the afternoon cheering on the Class A semipro teams of guys in their 30s and 40s who played professional-style baseball.

Recreation Park next door to the field had its Olympic-size swimming pool and inside, the park district set up a youth center called “The Ramble Inn.” Older guys and the usual cluster of female friends sometimes adjourned to the city dump by Northwest Highway where a demolition derby track had been scooped out. The evening breeze carried the clatter of fenders, squeal of tires, and crunch of door panels as the jalopies ran in a circle, sending up clouds of blue exhaust and grit while spectators cheered. Losers became part of the dump and winners chugged and shivered away to race again another warm summer day.