The Hollywood Bowl: The Children’s Paradise Across From Peterson School
During my years at Peterson (1962-1970), lunch was from 12 pm to 1 pm, and nearly everyone left the school — there was no cafeteria. Students could bring a bag lunch and sit in a teacher-supervised classroom for 30 minutes and then go out to the playground, but few students ate at school.
Lunch was essentially a bonus recess where students could play in the playground. Before returning to the playground, however, students regularly stopped at a magical storefront at 3346 W. Bryn Mawr, directly across from the playground, known as the Hollywood Bowl.
Imagine this tiny space full of kids, all jammed up against a glass display counter loaded with candy, waving their hands in their air and shouting to grab the attention of Helen or Joe, the couple who owned the business. There was a sense of urgency because we wanted to get to the playground in time to play before the bell rang to “line up.” In those days, entering the school building was a formal process, boys in one line and girls in another line and classes were assigned to designated entrances.
Penny candy literally cost a penny a piece. If you had a nickel or dime, of course you would select five or ten different kinds of candy—things like Bazooka bubble gum, grape gumballs, fireballs, licorice records, pixie stix, wax lips, flying saucers, stips of candy buttons, Mary Janes, bull’s eyes and too many others to list. It was a big decision for a young child, and I don’t recall ever seeing parents at the Hollywood Bowl. Helen and Joe patiently filled orders, putting pieces of candy into small brown paper bags and making sure the bigger kids didn’t push the little ones out of the way.
Candy was the only thing I ever bought at the Hollywood Bowl, but others have told me about things that were sold at the Hollywood Bowl besides candy: softballs (12 or 16 inchers) and bats; the pink Spalding balls used to play pinners; black handballs for sidewalk handball playing; the hard rubber baseballs used for playing fastball pitching against the brick walls outlined for the strike zone; and packs of baseball trading cards—five to a pack, plus a paper-thin sheet of bubble gum, for a nickel. Which reminds me, trading cards were used for a game I am told was called lagging that I forgot to mention in my exhibit about the playground.
The Hollywood Bowl didn’t do much for my teeth, but it did introduce me to money management at a very young age and, more importantly, to appreciate simple pleasures.
