The dusty field at Githens Avenue where my boyhood pals and I played baseball had a basketball court nearby. We used it from autumn till spring. We'd play winter football in the baseball field's outfield, sometimes touch and other times tackle. If it snowed heavy, we'd gather at night for tackle football with no need of lights or padding. Snow provided both.
Githens Field was bordered along third base by raised railroad tracks. In summer, the tracks' slopes were thick with poison ivy, into which we'd wade seeking a foul ball. Worse were fouls that spun off threads while arcing into ivy. Play ceased until someone fetched electrical tape to re-wrap the yarn. We'd use the same tape plus screws to fix our bat when it broke.
Alas, one by one my pals fell away from sports as jobs, cars and girls entered our lives. Slick went so far as to bring his newfound girlfriend to Githens. They arrived walking, arms around the other's waist. Slick hadn't come for hardball. They watched us play from a splintery bench, chuckled at our youth, then walked off snuggling. I should've been envious but wasn't. Playing sports mattered more.
Lucky for me, my job at Lourdes Hospital provided new teammates. I got it via high-school classmate Johnny Egan, who was already employed there and told me they needed more janitors. He and I were the only white guys on Lourdes' softball team. Black teammates lived in downtown Camden, as did Johnny. Their neighborhoods weren't as rough as they'd soon become. It was 1963, before hell broke loose.
In summer, I'd replace the janitor on each floor while he took a two-week vacation. Franciscan nuns ran the hospital. The one section they wouldn't allow me to work in was where mothers give birth. The nuns said I was too young to see that although they didn't mind me cleaning body parts from the terrazzo of ER and OR.
Next to the hospital was a ten-story dorm and teaching college for student nurses. The janitor assigned to clean that was in his forties, and eventually was fired for hitting on student-nurses. Some had been classmates of mine at Camden Catholic High School, yet Mother Corina appointed me to replace him there among those unwed young women. Not for naught did CCHS classmates vote me Shyest Senior Boy.
