Abstract
My start with pigeons goes back to my early boyhood days growing up in the borough of the Bronx, New York City. During the war years, most everyone living in the big city lived in large apartment buildings. It was an era when Frank Sinatra was becoming a big star in the entertainment field. Your Hit Parade played the number one songs in America every Saturday night. A time when Major League baseball lost many ballplayers to the military draft and almost suspended play, but carried on through the war with wartime ballplayers. The war brought on the rationing of sugar, coffee and gasoline. Radio was the next popular thing in many homes. Television wasn't too far in the future. Many people worked in defense plants. With all of this going on, my life revolved around a fantasy world. I went to school, played ball, and took care of my father's pigeons.
My father kept about 75 pigeons of all varieties on the roof top of our apartment building. It was my job to feed, water and fly them after school. I received 50 cents a week for this chore, but I would have done it for nothing! Weekends, in between playing ball, I was up on the roof chasing the pigeons in the sky.
The fun in flying pigeons in those early days was in trying to catch the other pigeon keepers' birds. Sending your flock into the air, they often mixed with the other guy's pigeons and you wound up trying to catch each others birds. Of course, it was all done in friendly good humor. If you lost a bird, you had to pay 25 cents to get it back. (The sport of pigeon flying, called Tiganieri, originated in Modena, Italy around 1300.)
My love for pigeons continued until it was temporarily halted by my induction into the U.S. Army Signal Corps. After being stationed stateside, my orders read Boblingen, Germany, a small town outside of Stuttgart, Germany. I spent 18 months in Germany, and while there, I had the opportunity to visit some fanciers - mostly famous for racing pigeons.