Edgar, as kids growing up in Staten Island, we would save our money, then take the S.I. ferry for 5 cents and buy surplus helmets, napsacks, canteens, Eisenhower jackets and the likes then go home and choose sides and play war in the many wooded area in our neighborhood. We would even buy surplus demilled guns, enfields, springfields and mausers. for $5.00 with welded bolts and carry then down Broadway and Whitehall Street to the ferry and on the #2 Bay Street bus back home. All out in the open and no one ever gave us 9 and 10 year olds a second look. Try that today LOL.

As far as Mr. Dodge goes my Grandfather always said that if you took someone from the Temperance Society fishing make sure you took two of them otherwise if you took only one he would drink all your Booze. Thomas

Edgar, if I had known the surplus stores were there, I would have been all over them as a teenager.