Down past the hill at the end of Braintree St, if I turned left, instead of going to Stephanie’s or Fred’s houses,  onto Newton Ave, I would be only about a hundred steps from the entrance to the West Albany Pocket Park. It wasn’t completed when we moved there in 1976, because I remember it opening, but it must have been very soon after, because I simultaneously remember it being there the entire time. It had the usual fields for sports: the Pop Warner football team played there every fall. It had batting-ball fields, though I don’t think I ever played on the baseball diamond. By the way, my recollection is that the baseball Little League’s were all affiliated with the Catholic Church in Colonie. That can’t be right. Clearly just selection bias on my part, but I would happily take input from someone on the subject.

For all it’s amenities, if it was a local hangout for the kids in my neighborhood, it wasn’t when I was around. I can’t remember ever meeting friends down there to throw a ball or ride a swing. I guess I disconnected from the neighborhood scene fairly young, now that I think about it, and tagged along with Jim when he’d go visit his friends at their parks or driveway hoops.

I have two really strong recollections from the Pocket Park. One makes a decent story.

The other is this one: When the park opened, it had the most magnificent slide. It was built into the slope of the landscape (I’m sure all the earth was moved to make the slope actually) so it could be simultaneously dangerously tall from top to bottom, and never more than 6 inches above the ground. There were no stairs/ladder to fuck around on and fall off of and break your arm or neck. Just railroad ties on grass you’d ascend to the top of a hill, and a 6 foot? wide metal slide down the other. It owed it’s design inspiration to a good sledding hill or ski jump. It’s the kind of thing northerners would design, in my opinion.

To a little kid it was a mountain. I’m sure it’s actually not that big. The first time I slid down it, it must have been facing just the right angle that the sun had been heating it up like a hot-plate. It was also perfectly dry, and I was wearing shorts. I recall the sensation of the back of my thighs being cooked by both friction and conduction by that metal, and reaching the bottom in excruciating pain. We learned to get handfuls of water from the water-fountain to cool and lubricate it before going down. That also apples for the slide we had in my back-yard pool. I may be conflating or confusing those stories. Either way, that slide at the park felt like it was as big as the Matterhorn.

The better story captures the fundamental essence of difference between my brother and I. Regularly, we would go down to the park to shoot hoops. If he could pick up a game with other kids he would, but he was perfectly happy to shoot baskets and play a game of H-O-R-S-E, where you have to copy the shot of the original shooter, or you get a letter. Loser is first to get the entire word spelled. So…me. Or play one on one. He’d spot my three, or five, or nine points, and we’d play to eleven. After I’d get tired of sucking, he’d shoot layups or jump shots or free throws while I pressed my face against the chain link fence to give my face a waffle texture.

One particular evening, he challenged himself to get 10 straight free throws before we left for home. I don’t know if it was before dinner, and I was hungry, or after dinner and it was getting dark. It definitely was after I was well and truly bored and before he was willing to give up. He’d get five or six in a row, and then miss, and start again. He must have gotten eight or nine at some point, or at least super close, because I know I popped up like a cartoon devil-on-the-shoulder, to advocate that whatever his achievement was, it was basically the same as his stated goal, and could we please go home and get a snack? That is so me. Close enough, let’s go. Now that I think about it, someone please have that engraved on my tombstone. “Kevin Glynn May 24th, 1970 – Close enough, let’s go”. I felt I made a strong case for popsicle time, but was he swayed? No. He stayed and shot that stupid ball, through that stupid hoop, while the stupid chain-link net made a jingling sound every time he made a basket. I really want to say the light got dim as the sun set as he practiced, but perhaps that was just ennui and low popsicle levels in my blood. I was young enough that I couldn’t walk home alone, so I was a captive to his perfectionism. I’m confident others may have similar Stockholm syndrome situations with him over the years.

I don’t know if he ever got all ten in a row so we could go home. We might still be there. It’s possible I’m hallucinating all of this from the park at the end of the hill, forever swinging around the metal pole holding up the backboard, while he’s stuck on nine.