If you had the good fortune of growing up in The Bronx in the late 50’s and the early 60’s, you would already understand the significance of the title of this essay.

This quartet of magical instruments provided hours of fun for the fifty or so children that resided on Leland Avenue in what was known as postwar America.

Unlike comic books and baseball cards, which were equally gratifying in their own way, the toys mentioned above kept us moving and outside of our apartments and our mothers’ hair.

The automobile had yet to take over the streets of the Bronx, so while fathers were not home from work, Leland Avenue was our field of play to which we put good and extreme use. In addition to the physical enjoyment provided by each, a spark of genius was engendered as we thought of new ways to enjoy ourselves while employing these wondrous and relatively inexpensive treasures.

The Spalding (most often pronounced SPALLDEEEN) perhaps was the perfect toy of that era.

In addition to stickball, enjoyed on many a summer’s afternoon, the pink Spalding rubber ball was the medium for many of our street games. It was cheap, twenty-five cents, the purchase price often funded by five investors willing to give up a nickel.

Added to stickball was a long list of games for utilising this marvel of modern sports technology.

There were: I Declare War; Hit The Stick; Ace King Queen; Three-Box Baseball; Four-Box Baseball; Off The Wall; Triangle; Stoop Ball; Curb Ball.

I am sure I left a few out, so maybe you can add to the list.

Roller Skates also provided hours of fun on the smooth tar surface that was Leland Avenue. Potholes hadn’t been invented yet, and while Con Ed was advising “Dig We Must For A Greater New York, their unsightly digging took place elsewhere than on the streets of the Bronx.

Creative games utilizing roller skates included drawing the outline of a super highway with pastel chalk (another great outlet for the creative-minded in our group.)

This highway had on-ramps and off-ramps and areas of rough terrain where you had to walk as you skated and some where you had to jump over an obstacle represented by a thick pastel application.

These skates were not the type that employed laces on a boot with wheels affixed to the soles. Rather, you wore your shoes or sneakers to slide the skate on and tighten clamps on the front to hold the skate to your shoe. This required you to own the ubiquitous skate key that often hung on our necks, ready to be called into service at any moment your skate slipped off the front of your shoe while still tethered to the back via a strap, making walking cumbersome at the least.

As the skating season wore on, so did the wheels on your skates, which often developed “boxed wheels.” But while these made skating less enjoyable, your old skates could now be affixed to a plank of wood to fashion a scooter, which would then be completed by nailing a milk crate or fruit crate to the front of your street transport.

While stickball and the other Spalding-related games, as well as roller skating, did not have defined seasons during which we adhered to (or maybe the candy stores where we bought them forced us to) for Tops and Yo-yos.

Tops always appeared in the fall. No sooner did school start than the first box of tops appeared in Hock’s Candy Store. Tops came in two varieties: there was the ball-bearing top, which had a ball-like tip. They were often bigger and easier to spin; the other variety was the “Digger,” which sported a needle-like tip and was usually smaller in girth than the ball-bearing variety. The Digger was especially useful in playing “crack-top,” where you purposely aimed your top to hit your opponent, knock it off its spin, and perhaps take a chunk of wood off it as a collateral victory.

Then there was the Yo-yo, more specifically, the Duncan Yo-yo.

Duncans came in three models, each with a distinctive look but all seemed to offer the same yo-yo experience. There was the traditional wooden model to which we all gravitated. But then Duncan introduced the Buttlerfly and the Imperial yo-yos.

The Butterfly merely had its components reversed, so the edges flared out a bit and may have enhanced your ability to Walk The Dog. The Imperial, on the other hand, was Duncan’s premier offering. Made of plastic and coming in a few colors, this was by far the costliest yo-yo; for this reason, I never owned one. It never made sense as I was able to do the same tricks with my Butterfly as I would be able to do with the Imperial.

I could do Around The World, Loop Deloop, and Walk The Dog. The one trick I could never master was The Cat’s Cradle. Lacking the dexterity to quickly form the cradle, my cat had long lost its spin by the time my cradle was ready. It’s something I’ve had to live with for a very long time.

Playing with these toys not only provided opportunities for safe exercise and a healthy dose of fresh air but also helped forge lifetime memories and lifetime friends.