What's up with Roosevelt?

Why Roosevelt?

When I describe Roosevelt to friends of mine, I usually compare it to the fifties town of "Back to the Future." It had a bank, post office, five and dime, a couple of candy stores, a dairy, one movie theater, a bowling alley(42 lanes!), a synagogue, a church or two, a diner, a Western Auto, a teeny weeny library and that's about it. Roosevelt had a lot of one thing in particular and that was kids! There were a ton of kids to hang with all the time. In school and out of school. All you had to do was walk down your street (block) and there would always be someone outside looking to play a game of catch or better yet, build a fort or organize a small parade of `kids banging on anything they could find that would make a lot of noise.'

The fourth of July was an incredibly fun holiday for Gusto Lane and that's the street I lived on. You see, Gusto Lane was supposed to be named "Guasto Lane" after the Guasto family that built half of Roosevelt. They were kind of like the Levits of Levitown. A large Italian clan of carpenters, masons and hands on builders. It seemed like they could build anything including the home they lived in, which was on my block. A rather large, grey two family home, that was shaped like the liberty bell. At Christmas, their house was outlined with colored bulbs that accented the bell shape of the house. They also made the fourth of July into one hell of a big bash. All the families on Gusto Lane were in on this "event" and we knew that this was a rare window of opportunity for all the kids on the street. We could be destructive in plain sight of our parents! What's better than that? A few of the Guastos would pile into their cars and head down south where fireworks were legal (they sure weren't in New York) then make there way back home with shopping bags filled with all different kinds of mortars, explosives, roman candles, cherry bombs, ash cans and much more. It must've been like a scene from "My Cousin Vinny" with those guys driving into Virginia or the Carolinas. "You talkin' to me?"
Eventually, on the evening of the fourth, both ends of the street were blocked off with police cars no less. It seems that the Guastos had a few relatives that were cops (you see, not all Italians are involved with organized crime) and they made sure that our fourth of July celebration went undisturbed. Best of all, us kids got our own share of fireworks to blow off as well. We would light up a "punk" which was like a stick of incense and use that to light the fireworks. For hours, we had a green light to blow things up on the front lawn of the Guastos' home. It was pure bliss. The next morning, while all good parents were still asleep, Freddy Osfeld, Tommy Gallo and myself would be out there scavenging for fireworks that didn't go off. The street looked like it was covered in dust from a nuclear fallout. A thick gray blanket of ash seemed to cover everything in sight, like an early snowfall. We would kick around the streets until we uncovered the duds and then stashed them for some other future exploits.