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Hank Brandli grew up in Roslindale, MA and now lives in Melbourne, Fla. He will be sharing his memories of his hometown with Transcript readers over the next couple of months. He can be reached at hbrandli@spacey.net

June 13, 2002

Collecting bacon fat once a great fundraising trick in Rozzie

By Hank Brandli / Guest Columnist

In the materialistic world kids live in today, it is refreshing to recall those simple pleasures we enjoyed so much in the ‘40s. Who remembers the summer jobs required to earn the little spending money kids needed in those long ago days?

Those were the days of no television .. a phonograph might have had a crank on it. Not even portable radios was around. The radios in those days were as big as a slot machine, and they were the entertainment center of every home. " Superman " at 5:30 p.m., " The Lone Ranger " at 7:30 p.m. Sunday afternoons during inclement weather, we sat on the floor and listened to " House of Mystery, " " Nick Carter " and " The Shadow. "

If your mother let you stay home from school because you were dying, you could tune in to soap operas like " Our Gal Sunday, " " Young Doctor Malone, " " Stella Dallas " as you slurped your Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

To acquire the goodies of our era – comic books, baseball cards, Popsicles, high bounce balls – you needed some capital. Few kids had an allowance. Your father was happy he had a job. The odd jobs available to kids were the same in those days as now – yard work, babysitting, running errands, washing cars and doing windows. Back then, people up north always needed help with the old storm windows.

If you were really ambitious, you could get a paper route. My mom wouldn’t let me try one. She never said why, just no. Good advice?

When my son was 10,he got a paper route on our military base in Florida (with my permission.) The weather was ideal, better than Massachusetts and his customers were close. Good job? Wrong. Paper distribution from the newspaper company was unreliable. Customers’ payments were inconsistent, some times nonexistent. It was a pain. I would often have to get up real early and drive him. My mom was right.

Nowadays, parents pay their own kids to do their own lawn and cut their own hedges. We used to fight for the right to use hedge-clipper. I have a neighbor in Florida with three, grown teenage boys, one of whom had a lawn service business for a year. Well, he sold all the lawn equipment and now they have hired a local lawn service. What is that all about? I watch their boys playing basketball as hired help mows their lawn.

Even more interesting were the fundraising schemes of the times in the ‘40s, such as selling bacon fat. That’s right bacon fat. You got paid by the pound for this white, creamy substance. Most people kept bacon fat in odd containers in their kitchens and were willing to give a youngster any surpluses.

After you made the rounds of these charitable people, off we went to the Nationwide store on Washington Street near Metropolitan Avenue to sell our fat for 5 cents per pound. Once, we made 55 cents. An unheard of amount for a kid under 10.

Speaking of bacon fat, I not only sold it, I ate it. By mistake, of course. While poking through my Aunt Mil’s kitchen, I spotted a pudding dish with what I thought was custard. My aunt always made sweets for me as a surprise. When a sick surprise I got when I took a huge tablespoon full. I still can relive that terrible, terrible taste if I put my mind to it.

All kinds of containers were used to store this valuable commodity.

My buddy Art and I used to go to Rozzie Square once a week to look in stores such as Kresges and Woolworth’s, but most of all we wanted to look in the coin return slots in the 10 or so payphone booths in the square. We had a little routine of jiggling the receiver, tapping the sides and front of the payphone near the coin return. Once in the Liggett-Rexall Drugstore, seven nickels tinkled down.

We also had several friends in two-story apartment buildings that had front, wooden porches that coins could fall through. We, with permission, would dig entrances to these money caves and find a few coins, mostly pennies once in a while. Of course, we always checked street gutters especially Washington Street as we walked along always looking for surprises.

Another local scheme for making a few pennies was the magic show. Joe, age 9, was the local magic man and puppet master. My garage on Walworth Street was the auditorium for the one-cent-a-head show. Joe would split the proceeds with me since I, as a barker did all the hawking of neighborhood youngsters – good exposure to show business on a small scale..

Of course, collecting tonic (soda or pop in other places) bottles was another surefire way of picking up some pennies. Now, I don’t know what the going rate is, but we got 2 cents an empty. Do kids do this anymore? Kids today get enough spending money – allowances, gifts from grandparents.

Tonic bottle paradise was the local picnics. Munchbacks and Swede’s Pond groves had all the nationality shindigs: the Greeks, Germans, Polish and Armenians. As a kid living close to these extravaganzas, I had access through the golf course or the woods to these affairs. The music, chaos, noise, dancing and exotic smells were worth the invasion. Bottles were everywhere and bottle returns were at a premium, sometimes as high as 5 cents for any bottle, tonic or beer.

We circled the raised dance floor below the people, very away that every bottle – empty or not – on the floor next to or between peoples’ legs was gold. One Sunday, Dave and I struck it rich with $ 1.65, all in nickels. What a haul. I can still see us counting those nickels next to the rock cliff near Swede’s Pond. And, we even checked the dates and mint marks.

The summer season brought youngsters’ big event – the Fourth of July at the local schoolyards. Races, prizes, games, storytelling and Hoodsies were the highlights of the day. The free Hoodsies had secret Hollywood stars’ faces on the inside lids, after licking the vanilla or chocolate off the thin paper cover. Kids collected these covers like they collected baseball cards and bottle caps. How much would these collectibles bring today? Most of the bottle cap covers were fastened to a hat called a beanie because it looked like the beanie Jughead wore in Archie comics.

When we were a bit older, another Parkway summer job that was very common for boys was caddying at the local golf courses. No carts, electric or otherwise, were available. Of course, a lot of golfers carried their own bags.

For some reason, I got sick of this early in life – like that first summer. The golfers were invariably bad and the time to caddy 18 holes seemed like an eternity.

Most of my financial rewards as a kid came from finding and selling golf balls at the George Wright Golf Course.. Premium brand new golf balls such as Titleist, Dunlap, Max-Fli and Spalding cost $1 each.

Finding them was the best part, of course. I searched around the rough near the fences lest I get caught by Bill Hackett, the course policeman on his silver, Harley-Davidson motorcycle with its sidecar. I usually found most of my golf balls in the pouring rain accompanied by my black-and-brown wire-haired terrier Skippy.

My mom showed me how to clean them (soap and warm water – no bleach) and organize the balls in old fashioned four-by-three egg boxes.

" Not all new ones, some with cuts, " she would say as she rotated the balls with the best side up.

" Don’t give them to buyers until you get their money, " she told me.

" And show them through the golf course fence, " she would say.

Some golfers would take the balls saying, " You probably stole them. "

My mom taught me my first experience in the world of business, marketing and merchandising world.

" Hey, mister. "

" Want to buy some golf balls, like new? "

" Three for a dollar. "