Yeah, the rubber chicken... I remember that thing. I remember all of it -- buying it at the novelty counter at the Avenue I Flea Market in Brooklyn. Grandly introducing it at awkward moments. Firmly establishing my geek-credentials even in the tender years of seventh grade.

That was the late 70s. There are television comedies today that focus on the ridiculous aspects of the 1970s. There should be a show about 38th Street in the late 70s. It would be more tragi-comedy. With a touch of noire.

Joey already mentioned the apartment buildings on the corner that seemed to be in flames every other week -- a community event like no other that brought out the whole neighborhood to gawk at the flames and watch the firefighter lazily battle the blaze.

Those weren't the only fires we saw. Stolen cars were rugularly dumped, stripped and torched on our street or under the tracks on 37th Street where we could still see the flames quite clearly.

Not completely unrelated to the fires was the fire hydrant, which was opened on hot days to allow delinquent teens to cool off even while lowering the local water pressure to dangerous levels. In more bucolic environs you can judge the heat of the day by how long the crickets chirp; on 38th Street we listened for the sound of tin cans scraping against the concrete (by shearing off both lids of a can, you'd have a tin tube that you could stick in the water stream and aim water at your cohorts). The city tried repeatedly to get the locals to use a sprinkler cap and even botled one on uder a thick metal brace. Neat trick: once ripped off, the brace became a handy-dandy wrench for turning the non-standard five-sided valve at the hydrant top).

And finally, there was the after-hours entertainment. Home grown acts included bongo-playing marathons; high-tech parties called for stereo sound systems. Remember: this was the 1970s, and the idea of portable hi-fi had not yet been perfected. So when the neighborhoos kids wanted to enjoy dance music al fresco, they rolled up a giant console-furniture style stereo system. It was indeed a curious site. And when we saw the behemoth arrive we wondered, briefly, how they would power such an appliance from the edge of a city playground.

But they were way ahead of us. These brave geniuses opened the service plate at the base of the lamp-post and cut the power to the light. They then plugged in their stereo and boom boom boom, there was disco all night. Really loud disco. All night.

Yes, living on 38th Street was an interesting experience -- one that others have a hard time appreciating. In fact, I remember starting seventh grade and being assigned the perennial favorite: "what I did on my summer vacation."

What I did? Well, I watched all that crap transpire on my street. So I wrote it up and submitted it.

I got an A. But my teacher circled the part where I had described the feat of pluggging the stereo into the lamp-post. In the margin she wrote: "You have quite an imagination."

In short, she didn't believe me. I was devastated. That was probably what drove me to my life of geek-ery.