i am in awe of the berg collection of orange st photos...are there any of central ave?
i grew up living between both aves.
moved to belleville in 1951.
we roamed all over the neighborhood, going to central,tivoli,and plaza
movies and of course to SRL every sunday...i was thirteen when we moved i have a lot of stories also....would love to see central ave also..it has been years....
Like Marilyn, we too used to roam all over the extents of Roseville. That included the Central theater and riding the trolley cars from one end of the line to the other. During WWII, there was a corner soda, newspaper type store on Central Ave., across from the Packard dealer, where us kids could go to get caps for our cap pistols. Not too cheap (.05 per roll) or legal, but unobtainable elsewhere.
Yeah John, it will be interesting to see the Berg Central Ave. pictures also.
Were caps illegal? I didn't know that.
We used to buy them regularly, unless you are referring to a type that I never saw. I'm talking about the red roll/strip of paper with the dots that lined up with the hammer on the toy pistol. I also remember getting hit in the eyes with sparks from the cap explosion.
Speaking of hammers, I used to take a whole roll of the caps, stand it on end on the curb and hit it with dad's hammer. BOOM. Pretty exciting for a little kid.
I imagine that today's soccer moms would get a tad upset over this sort of fun...
No caps weren't illegal, but they probably are now -- matter of fact I am pretty sure they are now. Those red tapes had small spots of fulminate in them. And yes, I remember the hammer trick, as well as making a flame thrower out of a can of cigarette lighter fluid. I actually ordered a real rifle through the mail and it came to my house on 11th street when I was 13. And we are none the worse for wear.
:-)
The caps we bought were indeed the rolls and they were sold from 'under the counter' after you had to ask for them. I believe it was only in recent times that NJ made it legal to sell them. As many of you will recall, we also got our hands on firecrackers and they were illegal also.
As an alternative to making noise, we used to take two bolts and one nut, put a match head in the nut between the bolts, and then throw the whole thing down against the sidewalk. A lot of work, but what the heck, it made noise, we had fun, and they were reusable as long as the parts didn't scatter beyond sight.
Another alternative to caps, was a toy pistol that used a roll of paper (we used both newspaper and strips of cut-down writing paper). The gun created a blast of air when the trigger was pulled and blew a hole through the paper, making a noise like a cap. Cumbersome, unwieldy, but never-the-less, fun.
Like it's said, "Those were the days". BTW, I still have mine and it still works.
The caps we bought were indeed the rolls and they were sold from 'under the counter' after you had to ask for them. I believe it was only in recent times that NJ made it legal to sell them. As many of you will recall, we also got our hands on firecrackers and they were illegal also.
As an alternative to making noise, we used to take two bolts and one nut, put a match head in the nut between the bolts, and then throw the whole thing down against the sidewalk. A lot of work, but what the heck, it made noise, we had fun, and they were reusable as long as the parts didn't scatter beyond sight.
Another alternative to caps, was a toy pistol that used a roll of paper (we used both newspaper and strips of cut-down writing paper). The gun created a blast of air when the trigger was pulled and blew a hole through the paper, making a noise like a cap. Cumbersome, unwieldy, but never-the-less, fun.
Like it's said, "Those were the days". BTW, I still have mine and it still works.
Of course Father Flusk taught us to shoot real guns in the CYO rifle club in 1957-58. We shot .22 rifles at the range in the Roseville Avenue Armory. Other club members I recall off the top of my head were the late Brian Bowler, Tom Donoghue, Danny Moore and John Sause. The best shot, though, was a girl, Louise Merrill. :-)
Think about the horror that would be expressed at such a thing in this "postmodern" era. :-)
The instruction did come in handy for me a decade later however. :-)
