The Last Posting

For 25 postings now I’ve mused about what the high school years (1954-58) meant to me. It’s been a wonderful ego trip, and I’ll let you know when I sell the movie rights. I’m holding out for either Helen Bonham-Carter or Sandra Bullock to play me.

My daughter Brenda introduced me to blogging several years ago. As a yoga instructor, she started the blog Grounding Thru the Sit Bones in response to her students’ request for instructions they could practice at home. You’ve seen Brenda’s comments at the end of some of my postings. I think she feels bad that others have rarely commented—not the response common to bloggers of a younger generation who expect to be encouraged, flamed, or otherwise reacted to.

I keep telling Bren that she shouldn’t expect we members of the Silent Generation (as those who were born in the years 1925-45 just before the Baby Boomers have been labeled) to stick our necks out or demonstrate much attention-seeking. We were raised to listen to parents and authority figures, follow leaders (such as the avuncular war-hero president Ike), and get with the program. Various books have been written about us: William Whyte’s Organization Man (1955), Sloan Wilson’s novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (made into a movie starring Gregory Peck in 1956), and David Riesman’s sociological classic The Lonely Crowd (1950), which coined the term “other-directed” to describe slavish attention to peer pressure. Riesman's book argues that although other-directed individuals are crucial for the smooth functioning of the modern organization, individuality is compromised.

Amidst the apathy and earnestness we’ve been accused of, some have been mavericks who stood out more easily in the 1950s than later in the 1960s when rebellion was rampant. The Rebel without a Cause was portrayed by James Dean and Elvis Presley, by the Beat Generation of writers and poets (e.g., Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and artistically by William de Kooning in painting, John Cage in music, and Merce Cunningham in dance.

Because we reached adulthood at the beginning of the 1960s, we occupied a transitional position. We were not 30 yet (and could therefore still be trusted), and we could become rebels with causes. We could have marched from Selma to Montgomery, joined the hippies in Haight-Asbury, burned our bras, or shouted, “Hey, hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?”—as our peers, now married and employed in the business or military of the country, watched in horror during the TV news.

No, I wasn’t expecting many comments at the end of my postings from my contemporaries. But I was very happy when people emailed me anecdotes about themselves that my recollections had stirred up. When someone wrote: “This is a personal message....copyrighted and protected...not for republication!!! Simply some musings to my friend.....” then I knew I had better watch my step!

My Love Affair with the Computer

When Bill Young began planning for a reunion, I offered to help with the computer side of it. I wasn’t sure how many classmates were as enthused as I about email, websites, digital images, and such. According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 35% of Americans age 65 or older use the Internet. As it turned out, a much higher percent of the NAHS Class of 1958 have email accounts: 88 people (60% of the class now numbering 147). More than half of them registered at our Class Report website. I’m sorry that 59 class members were excluded from the fun, but I hope they will soon see the advantages of becoming computer literate, too.

I’ve spent most of my working life at universities where computers started popping up on our desks in the mid-1980s. We were receiving and sending email messages by the 1990s. Now that home PCs and laptops are available everywhere, they have proved to be a wonderful resource for all of us. We don’t need to spend money on postage or film or airfares. We might get to see a picture of our newest grandchild the same hour he’s born. In fact, thanks to Skype, we can talk to children and grandchildren while seeing them on the screen (and unfortunately, they can see us, too, if we turn on our webcams).

I was reminded of the interconnectedness of today’s world when news of the Iowa floods was carried on the media everywhere. I received thoughtful messages of concern not only from other states, but from old friends in Canada and Latvia and former students in South Korea and New Zealand.

Generous members of our class have contributed to the maintenance of our Class Report website (http://www.NAHS1958.com) until November 2010!—and we can easily extend it leading up to our next reunion. Please keep visiting it. I can promise a slide show of informal photos after the reunion—I’ve already packed my Nikon, and I hope other people will be snapping away, too. Keep in touch with your friends in the class by email. Add to “Class News” when you’ve got something to report. Leave “Messages.” Update your biographical profile if you change your email address. Post photos on Face Book and put in a link for us.

Now I’d better pack my bag and be going. Thanks to all of you who have written, encouraged me, contributed remembrances about teachers, humored me by filling out my job questionnaire, and just visited “My Senior Moments” sometimes. No one enjoyed the trip back to 1958 more than I did. To all of you, as Bob Hope would sing, Thanks for the Memories.

All in a Summer’s Work

…Sha na na na, sha na na na na….,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na….

---from “Get A Job” as sung by The Silhouettes (1957)

Now that most of the Class of 1958 has retired from the labor force or is thinking about it (or even wondering if they should rejoin it as the economy has soured), I wanted to search the collective memory about the beginnings of our working lives. In Summer 1958, an occupation, a life work, or more likely a minimum wage money-maker became a reality for many of us.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual unemployment rate for civilians (age 16 and over) in 1958 was the highest in 10 years at 6.8%. It remained the leanest year for the next decade and a half until unemployment really spiked in 1975 at 8.5%. Of course, the unemployment rate of “the youth labor force” (aged 16-24) just starting out is normally much higher. Although I don’t have figures for 1958, for the past two summers it’s been around 10.8% as we’re seeing harder times again.

So we 1958 high school graduates were lucky if we could find work, and most of us realized we better buckle downand get the job done. None of this “rewarding internship experience” stuff back then.

The most common job categories of the 22 people (14 women, 8 men) who responded to my class poll were either the same as me, (a) doing clerical work in an office, or (b) they were counseling or looking after other people’s kids. Next came retail sales in local stores. Others were engaged in manual labor, outdoor maintenance, food service, or construction. One was learning how to survey and another how to play golf.

Life as a “Stripper”

I worked that summer and the next two in the offices of the Otto Milk Company at 2400 Smallman Street in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Strip District long before it became cool. In fact, on a hot summer morning, nothing smelled worse than sour milk wafting from the concrete floor of the dairy operation I had to pass through on my way up to the office. In those days the Strip was dingy, industrial, and if you wanted to go out for lunch, you needed to have a car. None of the female staff went outside much for anything other than to visit the bookie and play the numbers at the joint across 24^th Street.

My mother had somehow wangled the job for me. There were no equal opportunity hires in those days; “pull” was likelier. Our Ingomar neighbor and vice president of the company, Tom Otto, was my benefactor. He was a gentle giant whose willingness to employ me went a long way toward financing my higher education. The first year I was disparagingly referred to by veteran office workers as “Tom Otto’s little friend,” but after I relieved them of some of their more tedious tasks and filled in during their vacations so they weren’t swamped when they got back, I was accepted as part of the summer landscape. I learned that a dairy operation had lots of characters, cliques, and office politics to observe.

The first assignment happily foisted upon me was receiving all the envelopes the drivers brought in from vending machines dispensing 8 oz. cartons of milk. The grimiest coins came from the steel mills across the river. I had to fish out the pennies and slugs and place the rest of the nickels, dimes, and quarters in a sorting machine that also counted them. Once tallied, they dropped down into canvas bags to be tied up and sent to the bank when the Brinks truck came by.

Once when I forgot to put on the canvas bags before I turned on the coin counter, I spilled the vendoland change all over the floor. I was scrambling around on my hands and knees for an hour wrecking my pantyhose and scuffing my white sling-back pumps. Of course, I never balanced that day.

Otto Milk (not to be confused with the cousin’s Otto Suburban Dairy on Camp Horne Road that delivered glass bottles of milk several mornings a week to our homes) went out of business long ago. The old building (above left) had originally been the Phoenix Brewery (est. 1873) and is now considered an architectural gem slated to become condos starting at $200,000 for young urbanites anxious to live in The Strip these days.

Other Jobs

Others commuting to office jobs in the city were Millie Halboth Sutter, who was bookkeeping at Pittsburgh National Bank (now PNC), and Connie Stevens Wilson, who filled out stock certificates, did other office jobs at her Uncle Charlie’s stock brokerage firm, which she says has influenced how she’s looked at investments ever since. Pat Cook Wisniewski and Ruth Ann Slack Scuticchio worked in offices in the North Hills: Pat for the home builders Brown & Vaughan on Perry Highway, McCandless doing secretarial and payroll duties that let to her full-time career; Ruth part-time in the office of the W. T. Grant store in Pine’s Plaza. Afterward, she shifted plans from nursing to attending Robert Morris Business School.

Down at the other Grant’s in the McKnight Mall, Janet Gilleland was selling yard goods for most of the summer at the 5 & Dime (how's that for an outdated department and an outdated store category?) to save money to go out to Chicago and visit Karen Rudolf. She recalls: “One strong memory are two songs that Grant’s played on the overhead system. One was Volare (or Nel blu di pinto di blu) and the other was Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White. Another sales clerk and I would dance in the aisles (when the supervisors weren’t looking) every time one of them came on. [Click on titles to hear them if you feel a mambo coming on now.] Yard goods, which were not located in a high traffic area of the store, required folding and refolding and refolding….”

Pete Thurston was also clerking at the mall for a family-owned hardware store, where he earned the princely sum of $1 per hour (10 hours per day, 6 days per week, and no overtime). He enjoyed stocking and learning about hardware items, but especially disliked sweeping up the parking lot in the dark after the store closed.

Tending Kids

Up in Butler County some college-bound grads were staffing scout camps. Marge Downer Arciniega and Jami Hart (née Donna Osterwise) were counselors at Girl Scout Camp Redwing near Renfrew. Jami taught camping skills, crafts, and nature. As dramatics counselor for the two dozen 10- and 11 year-olds in Brookside Unit, Marge claims she perfected a skill that served her well in college: “Sleeping as late as absolutely possible and getting dressed really fast.”

On the Connoquenessing Creek nearby, Eagle Scout Bob Beilstein was working at a new camp, Semiconon, where he taught the boy scouts axmanship in the morning and in the afternoon, the use of a 22-caliber with bird shot to shoot clay pigeons. Although he was warned in advance that the campers might not dig axmanship, Paul Bunyan had nothing on him: he mesmerized them with his trick of swinging the large double-headed axe to light a match (a feat he might demonstrate at the reunion if the Sheraton can provide a match and an ax).

Nannies

Karol Kress Freburg, Marilyn MichalkoVelkey, and Grace Sherman spent some or even all of their summer caring for small fry. Mickey was a live-in nanny for the children of a pair of social butterflies in Monroeville, Grace was helping with a family of six children (age 12 and younger), and Karol (when not working in her dad’s Swap Shop) babysat two in Longvue Acres (across from NAHS). Although their father had suggested that Karol read the Bible to the children while they ate their dinner in silence and afterward have them write and draw about the lesson learned, she instead turned the radio to a rock-and-roll station. She didn’t know (until the father learned of her insubordination) that the radio was turned on only during breakfast when Dad wanted to hear the weather and driving conditions.

Mickey got taken along with the family to Jersey Shore for a week—but was only free to enjoy it early in the am. Grace escaped to the popcorn stand at West View Park, which was a lot more fun, especially those nights when big-name entertainers played there and she got to assist. Her only mistake was taking her lunch break on the roller coaster until finally the manager told her that it was making the paying customers ill to watch her eat a sandwich and drink a milkshake during the ride!

The Great Out of Doors

As an 18-year-old, I thought an outdoor summer job would be heavenly. Out in Bradfordwoods, Pat Henke Sexauer was selling pop, grilling hotdogs, and taking admission at Windwood Swimming Pool—while admiring the head lifeguard. Sounds pretty cushy—until you hear about Paul Mahoney’s job at the golf course in North Park. He mowed greens and fairways, cleaned picnic groves, painted guard rail posts—while receiving free golf lessons from the pro. He confesses that Democrats got all the best summer jobs Allegheny County had to offer, and since his dad was a ward politician in Pittsburgh, Paul held onto this plum for four summers.

In Ingomar, Tom Brunt was assisting Robert Becker, a registered civil engineer and surveyor (receiving $1.25/hour plus free gasoline for his 1930 Plymouth). He learned how to use a transit, draw maps, and do land surveys including the work for the Ross Township sewer system then being installed. It was good experience for the engineering degree Tom was already planning to pursue at Lehigh University in the fall.

Several classmates worked for or with their fathers. Ray Wick was mowing yards and being a handyman for folks when he wasn’t busy helping his dad on the farm. Arthur P. Brandt, Jr. was working for Brandt Paving, as he had since age 13. In 1958, Arthur P. Brandt, Sr. (known to his crews as El Toro) expanded his son’s responsibilities to include running heavy equipment and serving as crew foreman. Unlike those who enjoyed working outdoors on a summer day, Pete claims he prayed for rain so he could get a day off.

Despite various screw-ups, he says, “The one that forever endeared me to my fellow workers occurred while paving streets in Zelienople. We were in the final process of preparing the street late on a Saturday afternoon. We had a big dump truck loaded with #4 stone (the big 4-inch, hard-to-shovel bastards). We were shoveling them off the back of the truck and placing them where needed. Easy to do while in the truck on the flat hard steel dump body. It was time to pull the truck forward and being Super Driver, I jumped into the truck, started the engine, and pulled forward. No problem, except I had the dump hoist in gear and ten tons of #4 rock landed on the street at 5 pm. It took about three and a half hours to shovel them back into the truck. After the initial "THAT BOY DON'T KNOW, HE JUST DON'T KNOW" not much was said. I do know I shoveled more than my share, got home about 9:30 pm, was glad my dad was not there for the interrogation, and went to bed very early.”

More Manual Labor

Several other guys toiled away in plants. Ron Huch, at E. G. Smith’s in Emsworth, was also under the watchful eye of his father, who, he says, “was constantly embarrassed by my incompetence.” Ron answered the question “What did you learn from the experience?” succinctly and in words a number of us could second: “Physical labor was not for me. I knew that I needed to do well in college.”

Bill Vestal left home to spend the summer in a small plastic insulation plant in New Castle. In addition to the common experience of long hours, low wages, and exhaustion he had the experience of living on his own away from “Ingomar environs, feeling adult.”

Restaurants

Sue Sutter Mascia was head cashier at Howard Johnson’s on the Pa. Turnpike at Warrendale during the era “when you counted out change without the benefit of a calculator and computer” and of course, the cash register had to balance with the receipts at the end of the day. Sue learned what stress was when double lines of customers formed to pay their bills. “It was such a fast-paced job that when I worked the evening shift and then went home to sleep, I couldn’t because I kept counting change in my head,” she says.

Karen Rudolf Jones waited tables starting at 6 am 5 days a week at a breakfast and lunch café in her new hometown of Geneva, Illinois. Along with most of us, she learned a lot about working with people from that summer. Indeed, numerous skills were being thrust upon us: taking responsibility, arriving on time and working late, managing money (our own and other people’s), handling job pressures, cooperating, keeping our mouths closed, being discreet, and keeping our dreams alive while enduring some boring duties.

Adulthood was staring us in the face!

* * *

There will be one more posting before I leave for the reunion on August 20.

08.08.08 – My Lucky Day

I’d hoped to finish my posting about summer jobs before this special day arrived. But I didn’t, and before 8:08 p.m. tonight, my children and grandchildren will all arrive and the Olympic torch will be lit at 2015 Cessna Street in Ames. We have four birthdays to celebrate, the Iowa State Fair to visit (the one the musical was written for-- not Texas; that was the movie version’s corruption), Thomas the Tank Engine and the Boone scenic railroad to ride, and kid’s day at Iowa State U’s athletic department to take in. Whew!

Oh, and of course, we’ve also got to root for our local gymnastic sweetheart, Shawn Johnson of Des Moines, as she goes for gold in Beijing.

As the last crop of rhubarb turns into a pie and the beds are freshly made up, I’m thinking of my blog and hoping, dear readers, you’ll check back next Thursday, at which time normalcy will have returned and I’ll have a new posting.

Office closed

For now, I have gone fishin’, figuratively. I’ve been looking for a way to use this image that Carol Kress Freburg sent me last month.

She went fishing a lot with her father, Bill Kress, who owned and operated the Swap Shop on East Street. Among many other things, he sold fishing and hunting gear. (Guess where Carol was working in summer 1958?)

Meanwhile…

I’m passing along a message (already on the class website) from Pete Brandt about one of our NAHS teachers:

PLEASE SEND MR. CONWAY YOUR BEST WISHES

Bill Young gave me the assignment of contacting several of our teachers to invite them to the reunion. The other night Mr. Duane “Jake” Conway called from North Fort Myers, Florida, to thank me for leaving a voice mail message inviting him to our party. He regrets that he can’t join us; he had been away from home when I called getting chemotherapy.

I asked him for his address, and he willingly gave it to me. At the time, I was thinking of visiting him when we return to FL in October, but on second thought, I think now is the best time to communicate. If others who remember him as fondly as I do would drop him a note of encouragement or a card, I think it might please him. He had kind words for members of the Class of 1958.

His address:

Mr. Duane Conway

5620 Captain John Smith Sloop

North Fort Myers, FL 33917

Always Remember…

A hasty posting this week as far-flung family members just arrived for a visit. Actually, I’m reheating a class project I did in graduate school about 15 years ago. In my field of linguistics, the use of the computer for corpus research was all the rage back then. It was finally possible to scan collections of naturally occurring language into the computer and create an electronic data base that could be studied empirically and analyzed in various ways.

The frequency of words, phrases, syntactic constructions, and semantic meanings could be counted. No longer could the strict grammarians insist they knew better; it was possible to show them how real people used language for real purposes. Well, since this was only a small-scale project (to practice entering data and using software), I chose to study the language used in the inscriptions that teenagers wrote in my three high school yearbooks (1956-58).

If you’ll bear with my geekiness, I’ll give you an overview that might be mildly interesting. I hope it reminds you of those days when we handed around our books—sometimes hoping that the signers would reveal their high opinion of us, sometimes with trepidations, sometimes because we were asked to sign their books and it might hurt their feelings if we didn’t express an interest in having them sign our books, too.

Directions for Writing a Yearbook Epigraph

1. Use safe language.

In my study I had complicated tables with word counts, phrase counts, clause patterns, and other technical analyses that make linguists salivate. I’ll just give you a striped-down table of the most used open-case words. (Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are open case. Excluded were prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and particles.) If you getting the feeling that when Mrs. Mary Letzkus asked me to diagram a sentence on the board I jumped up joyfully, you’re right.

CORPUS OF YEARBOOK LANGUAGE: HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS

NOUNS

LUCK
GIRL, GAL
YEAR(S)
TIME(S)
CLASS(ES)
PERSONALITY
PLAY
FUTURE
FRIEND(S)
SMILE
SUCCESS

VERBS

REMEMBER
KNOW, KNOWN
HOPE
DO/DID
GET, GOT
KEEP
SEE
STAY
DON’T/DIDN’T
WISH
SUCCEED

ADJECTIVES

REAL
ALL
GOOD
LOTS, LOADS
BEST
SWEET(EST)
FUN, FUNNY
MORE, MOST
NEXT
GREAT
JUNIOR
NICE(EST)
SWELL
CRAZY
MUCH
WONDERFUL

ADVERBS

ALWAYS
REALLY

What this table omits is the actual number of times the most popular words were used. By far, the top 10 were (1, most popular) remember. (2) good/best, (3) luck, (4) always, (5) all, (6) real/really, (7) girl/gal, (8) loads, lots, (9) year(s), and (10) time(s).

Therefore, you had mastered yearbook-speak if you wrote: “To a real sweet girl, Always remember all the good times in homeroom [or wherever you happened to be signing this book]. Lots of luck next year, [your first name, year].

2. Know the formula.

Clearly such inscriptions were formulaic. One must begin with some form of address. Usually it was just the book owner’s first name, but sometimes a prepositional phrase: To a(n) [adjective] [noun],

Examples: “To a swell kid,”

“To a wonderful senior, who I’ve known a long time,”

“To a real crazy gal,”

“To the little girl from Ingomar who makes you flip your lid,”[Is that a compliment?]

And my favorite, written by someone tired of platitudes:
“To a good kid from a better one.”

One lengthy inscription that began “To a real cute gal…” ended with this post script: “When I got handed your yearbook, I thought it was Sue’s. SORRY!” That left me wondering if the entire message was intended for Sue. In fact, I began to wonder if other inscriptions written around the same time that didn’t begin with my name might also have been for Sue!

I got my comeuppance the other day, however, when a certain fellow whom I held in extremely high regard even in 1957, repeated to me how I had begun my inscription in his yearbook: “Good luck to a great girl and outstanding athlete.” How’s that for a major faux pas!

Some goofs in my book include just the three words “Barb, Do you”—I hope that was unfinished since no question mark followed. And “Best wishes to a swell.” Or did they really mean I was “someone fashionably dressed or socially prominent” as the dictionary offers as one informal meaning for the noun “swell”?

3. Revisit the past.

Next the writer needed to take a historical perspective and order you to “Always remember ______.” That command had become so common that many writers (especially poor spellers) saved effort and the limited space on the page by using “Rem.” for “remember.”

Examples: “Always rem. the Jr. play and how I scratched your back.” [Really?]

“Always remember those basketball and football games we went to (even though we lost most of them).”

“Rem. Mrs. Beall’s parting words. Well, they go to you now from me.” [By now I don’t recall either Mrs. Beall or any of her words.]

“Remember me in your old age.” [Who was Vella Hinkle?]

4. Offer advice on future behavior.

Somewhere the writer had to stick in a phrase or two that showed authority, issued a command, or appeared wise and prophetic.

Examples: “Stay as sweet as you are and you’ll go far.”

“These kinds of things always stump me for words, so remember me.” [A blunt but honest man]

“To Comrade Barb, Stay as swell as you are till the FBI catches both of us.” [What was that all about?]

“To a girl I’ve heard a lot of things about. Don’t change though.” [What sort of reputation did I have, for heaven sake!]

5. Close with good wishes.

Once writers had shot their wads, they would end with one of the standard bromides.

Examples: “Lots of luck and success in the future,”

“I wish you all the luck in the world,”

“Good luck to a good kid. J. O. Bolvin” [Yes, sometimes teachers signed books.]

“Have fun next year,” “Never forget me,” “You will really go places,”

My Favorite Inscription

I must confess one unusual inscription has always been dear to me. Partly it was because it was a compliment that didn’t involve niceness, sweetness, swellness or craziness. Partly it was because the writer was an upperclassman and one of The North Star editors. We were in the same journalism class, and he noticed my efforts. Maybe he doled out such compliments liberally, I never knew, but now 50 years later, I still bless him for the encouragement he offered to the insecure adolescent that I was:

“To Barb, The girl who will become the best writer to come out of our class.
Good luck, Larry Palmer ‘57”

* * *

And Now for Something Completely Different:

Next week, in my penultimate posting, I want to write about how the Class of ‘58 toiled in our first summer after graduation. I’ve already received many interesting replies. If you haven’t returned the survey yet, there’s still time to get it in. If you lost or never received a survey, I’d like to hear from you. To download the survey, click here, paste it in an e-mail, and send to Sniper.Sweeney@gmail.com.

ADDENDA

I had a serious memory lapse when writing the current posting about the CCC (below), and I’m thankful someone caught it. After championing the cause of unsung NAHS musicians a month ago, I proceeded to overlook the wonderful swing band, The Mello-Tones, who played many times for our CCC dances. They were so good we tended to forget they were local lads.

Thanks to Bill Young, I have a list of the members (and if you can fill the blank, please let me know):

Jim Wagner, Perry Class of 55, Alto Sax
Jim Pannier, NA Class of 56, Alto Sax
Joe Ford, NA Class of 56, Trumpet
Bill Fiddler, Perry Class of 55, Piano
Butch Blumenschein, NA Class of 56, Trumpet
George Geisel (sp?), NA Class of 57? Trombone
______________, Class ? Bass (Viol, not Guitar)
Bob Brier, NA Class of 56, Drums
Bill Young, Class of 58, Tenor Sax
Tom Regan, Class of 56, Tenor Sax

Bill remembers that at some point during the evening, Bob Brier would perform a drum solo, and says, “Whenever he started, someone would turn on all of the lights, which I believe completely destroyed the effect.”

* * *

Three of us girls in my 7:30 am Yoga class here in Ames are going to our 50^th High School Class Reunions this summer, and we’ve been comparing notes about it (after Savasana and Namaste). Today Jackie reported that last weekend she took her mom to her 69^th class reunion somewhere here in Iowa. Fourteen class members attended—along with their 14 chauffeurs! Jackie said, “I got to listen, when I came to pick up Mom, as they made plans for their big 70^th reunion next summer.”

Anyone want to hazard a guess in what sort of vehicle they may be conveying us when we gather in Wexford in 2028 for our 70^th?

Cumberland Filled the Gap

What’s the first thing I think of when I hear the word “Cumberland”? It’s that beautiful stretch of US Route 25E where Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee all come together and the Appalachian Mountains spread apart to let you pass through on the old Wilderness Road of Daniel Boone: The Gateway to the West, Cumberland Gap.

The next thing I think of is the old frame St. John’s Church (c. 1895), built by German Lutherans to replace a log church of 100 years earlier. It served as the Cumberland Community Center (CCC) for over 20 years (1954-1977). Located on Cumberland Road, which connects Perry Highway and McKnight Road, it was just up the hill from what became North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School in 1954. In the graveyard surrounding the church are familiar ancestral names: Brandt, Espe, Grubb, Hartman, Sarver. When the Lutherans dedicated their new church building nearby in November 1952, the old one was renovated to become a social activities center for us kids—filling a gap in two ways: a) providing a place for recreation when nothing like it existed out here in the northern sticks and b) giving us some social skills during that awkward gap between childhood and adulthood.

Tom and Ruth Wiegman, who were also members of St. John’s, served as directors and organizers of CCC activities during our tenure. Their daughter, Lorraine, was a member of NAHS Class of 1956, the first to graduate from the new high school down the hill. She was quite a girl—an artist, a majorette, and probably the best dancer to grace CCC’s floorboards (although I believe Tom Regan rather than Mr. Wall was more frequently her jitterbug partner).

Pick Up Basketball

Although most of us remember the CCC dances, Pete Brandt reminded me that it was available to students for other activities as well. He writes: “We students could use it anytime we wanted as long as we were responsible, turned the lights off and the heat down, and returned the key by 10 p.m. to Mrs. Wiegman. I started an independent basketball team that played at CCC. Some team members were John Allardice, John Douglas, Jack Miller, and Mike and Pete Thurston for our class; Bob Goode, Bernie Kwalik, Bill Mulligan, Ken Altfather, and Wally Baker as well. I remember “The Boys” (Andy Sohngen, Paul Mahoney, Ed Florak, Mike McKay, Chuck Hannan, Arnie Huwar, among others) also had a team, and we played them once or twice. Someone told The North Star sports reporter our team was called “The Brandt All-Stars.” The truth is we never had a name; we only wanted to have fun.”

Saturday Night Dances

An early souvenir is this 2¢ postal card headed “CCC Canteen Schedule—Remember the dates!” Dances were alternate Saturday nights during the school year from 8 to 11 pm. We paid Mr. or Mrs. Wiegman 50¢ at the door and got the back of our right hand stamped. At the first dance on November 13, 1954, Mr. Koosz offered free jitterbug lessons at 7:30 before the regular dance began.

Other than the kids from Ingomar, who had been taking ballroom dancing lessons from Karl Heinrich for three years (learning waltz, fox trot, rumba, and swing), most of the NAHS males weren’t especially adventurous on their feet; a slow shuffle sufficed. One unnamed source has remarked, “…as I recall, the guys and therefore the girls would not attempt what was simply referred to as fast dancing, and there would be a mass exodus from the dance floor.” A ping-pong table in the next room preoccupied some of the shyest ones, who rarely ventured out on the dance floor at all unless it was the occasional “girls-ask-the-boys dance” or Sadie Hawkins Day (Feb. 29), when some brazen hussy might go in and drag one of them away from his paddle!

A particularly memorable evening called “Winter Wonderland” (Jan 1, 1955) was “a gala New Years dress-up dance with a surprise in store.” The surprise was a hypnotist. Folding chairs were arranged across the dance floor forming an auditorium set-up. After we all sat down, the hypnotist had us concentrate on pressing our hands together while he talked to us in soft persuasive tones, trying to convince us that our hands were firmly stuck together. This was his way of determining who among us were the most suggestible and likeliest subjects. He brought them up front and engaged them in a series of hilarious routines while they were still under his spell. It completely blew us away. It was a great hit.

Later on in 1955, I got to be chair for a Sock Hop. I remember my committee making big posters of stockings on old window blinds and hanging them around the room for decorations. That evening we all danced in our bobby socks, of course. (Sorry I don’t have a photo of that occasion, but it would have looked something like this one from a Midwestern school.)

Also in 1955, I recall getting in some trouble. I was lured away from the dance by some persuasive friends (Janet Gilleland, Bill Bauer, and Emil Schultz to be exact) to go out for a spin in Emil's brother's car and stop for a milkshake before returning me to the CCC. The Wiegmans had a rule that once you left the dance, you couldn’t get back in. Mr. Wiegman did allow me to call my parents and wait in the vestibule until they came to collect me. I was quite miffed at the time (since my mother asked too many questions), but I have real admiration and affection now for the Wiegmans. They took their in loco parentis responsibilities quite seriously. (I’m still glad though that no one found out that among the four of us, none was old enough to have a driver’s license yet.)

By 1957-58, the CCC Canteen had become so successful that separate dances were needed for “juniors” (grades 7-9) on alternate Fridays and “seniors” (grades 10-12) on alternate Saturday nights, 8-11. Membership cards were issued (see mine at right) and I could bring a guest as long as s/he was a tenth grader or older.

I’ve compiled a list of my favorites among the popular songs that we danced to at CCC–mostly slow to accommodate the shufflers. It’s been a labor of love faffing around to find videos of them on You Tube. If you’d like to listen and watch them performed, simply click on the title and turn up the volume on your speakers.

“Earth Angels” The Penguins (1954), unexpected do-wop success on a flipside

“Only You” The Platters (1955), followed 4 months later by

“The Great Pretender” (1955)

“Love Letters in the Sand” Pat Boone—with his whistle (1957)

“Memories Are Made of This” Dean Martin (1956)

Now a fast one: “At the Hop" Danny and the Juniors (1957)

“You Send Me” Sam Cooke (1957), founder of soul music

“Diana” Paul Anke (1957), a Lebanese Canadian who was so young--only 16 at the time

“All I Have to Do Is Dream” (1958) Everly Brothers

“I Want You, I Need You, I Love You (1956) Elvis Presley, and later that year

“Love Me Tender” (1956)—then he went in the army and it was all downhill

Get ready for a mass exodus: "Rock Around the Clock" (1956) Bill Haley and the Comets

“Allegheny Moon” (1956) Patti Page—a Pittsburgher’s gotta like it

“Chances Are” (1957) Johnny Mathis

“Tears on My Pillow” (1958) Little Anthony and the Imperials

“That’ll Be the Day” (1958) Buddy Holly and the Crickets

“Who’s Sorry Now” Connie Francis (1958)

Connie’s boy friend, Bobby Darrin had a fast one “Splish Splash” (1957)—(His “Dream Lover” wasn’t until after we graduated)

"Little Darlin'" (1957) The Gladiolas (they did it before The Diamonds and I still like their version better)

“Young Love” (1957) Sonny James

“Silhouettes” (1957) The Rays

“It’s All in the Game” (1958) Tommy Edwards (did you know the melody was written by Coolidge's veep, Dawes?)

“No, Not Much” (1956) The Four Lads

“You Don’t Know Me” (1956) Jerry Vale

“Que Sera Sera” (1956) Doris Day, from the Hitchcock movie

"Sixteen Candles" (1957) The Crests

As 10:50 p.m. approached, I believe Mr. Wiegman would slip “Good Night, Irene” on the turntable. That indicated the evening was nearly over. It was the signal to boys who wanted to be dancing close to a particular girl (and have a good chance of taking her down to Delney’s or maybe just driving her home before her curfew). They needed to start peering around in the dark. And for girls, it was the signal to come out of the restroom or wherever they might have wandered, move away from any clusters of other girls, and make themselves conspicuous if there was a particular boy. Then, always, there were The Spaniels (1954) singing, “Good Night, Sweetheart,” and possibly a quick kiss and a last embrace.

(Did I forget your favorite? E-mail me!)

A Sad Ending

On January 9, 1977, in the same year that the new North Allegheny Senior High School would open out in Wexford, Cumberland Community Center burned down. Only the bell and a stained glass window remain from the building, now just a grassy space in the cemetery.

R.I.P., dear CCC.

When Eating Out First Came In

Today’s posting is dedicated to my grandson, Eamonn, who turns four years old this week. If he’s like his mom, someday he’s going to want to know what it was like to be a kid back “in olden times.” He may not believe that someone could grow up never having clambered around in Playland at Mickey D’s or eaten a Happy Meal (with a Transformer toy in it) —not that he gets to do that very often himself.

Once, a long time ago, when Gram was a teenager, there was nothing called “fast food” or “super size” or “McNuggets.” Cars didn’t have cup holders, and food scientists hadn’t gotten busy creating finger foods that required no utensils to eat them straight from their wrappings. In fact, in the 1950s we didn’t eat away from home much at all.

But the first time I did, I dined elegantly, like a princess. In 1946, my mom took me on a train trip from Pittsburgh to New York City to see my new baby cousin. We ate in a Pennsylvania Railroad dining car. It would have passed muster with Sir Topham Hatt [for those who don’t follow the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine and his Friend, Sir Topham is CEO]. There were snowy white linens, silver-plated sugar bowls, and extremely attentive black waiters serving carefully prepared food.

During our NYC stay, my aunt took us for lunch to Horn & Hardart, the automat that didn’t exist back home. We selected our lunch from a wall of glass windows. You put some nickels in the slot, slid open the window, and removed a sandwich, salad, or piece of pie, whatever you chose. The windows were filled from the kitchen behind the wall, and everything was freshly made and more appealing than what we extract from vending machines nowadays. In the 50’s, vending machines usually held bottles of coke, “Refreshment the whole world prefers” was the 1958 slogan. But, I digress…

Perhaps the ambiance of the dining car was why someone got the idea back in the 1920s of turning obsolete dining cars into diners, small short-order eateries. After World War II, as the economy returned to civilian production and the suburbs boomed, diners spread beyond the eastern seaboard cities along suburban highways. They frequently had stainless steel interiors, large windows, and booths. The grill, on which most of the cooking was done, was behind a long counter. The sassy wait staff was responsible for a whole new lingo for common foods. For example, BLT, mayo, the blue plate special, Joe, OJ, over easy, hashed browns, cackleberries (eggs), sunny side up, sinkers (donuts), Zeppelins in a fog (sausages and mashed potato), graveyard stew (my grandma’s cure for everything, it was white toast sprinkled with cinnamon sugar sitting in warm milk). “Pittsburgh” was even used as an adjective to tell the cook to char the meat on the outside while leaving it red in the middle, just like Jones & Laughlin at night. Eberhart’s out in Wexford is the one diner I remember. The specialty was chicken-in-the-basket with French fries. Deep fried, of course. Cole slaw was as close to a green vegetable as it got. That was where my parents might eat out on a special occasion when I was just a kid.

The North Hills Develops

More restaurants opened in the North Hills as the population grew. Among the better known were Pat McBride's, McSorleys, Rebel’s Corners, Carmody’s, Tu-Deck’s, Dolly’s, and Pine Valley (where baseball banquets were held). There must have been some spaghetti places (Flamgletti’s, Baldini’s [right]), but not many ethnic places ventured our way. I don’t believe my dad’s and Uncle Cy Logan’s favorite tavern, The Fox Trot Inn (near the intersection of Perry Highway and Ingomar Road), served pub grub as it does now. When Cy died in 1975, Mother asked the brothers who then owned and tended bar at the Fox Trot to serve as his pallbearers—a nice touch I thought.

An odd place on Route 19 in Wexford was The Convict Inn, which probably folded by 1958, lacking a faithful clientele (of lifers). The most notable feature of this restaurant was a line of inmates in horizontal black and white bee-striped prison uniforms marching along the roof ridge. Inside the jail theme continued with cells, iron bars, opened shackles, and tin serving plates. It was the decor, rather than the food (what besides bread and water?), that I remember from my only visit. Who could have dreamed up such a depressing, unappetizing joint! Much more popular was the Howard Johnson's that appeared in the vicinity somewhat later.

Generally eating out was just stopping somewhere for ice cream—Raupp’s or Taylor’s (left) on Kummer Road at the edge of North Park, Isaly’s on McKnight Road, and Tastee Freez on Perry Highway. Frozen custard and soft-serve variants were also available. The obelisks of homemade vanilla ice cream balanced on the top of waffle cones were dished up by Martha Raupp. (She was the stern wife of Frank, McCandless’ lone police officer in the 1940’s, who used to bring small boxes of candy each Christmas to us Ingomar School kids). What made the Raupp’s ice cream particularly memorable was the dexterity required to eat it without having it topple off the cone and into the cinders in the parking lot outside their store! Again, I digress.

By the time I turned 15 and started cruising around in cars with boys, drive-in restaurants with curb service sprang up on Routes 8 and 19, and McKnight Road. I remember the first McDonald’s meal I ate when the golden arches appeared on McKnight Road. The burger was not much bigger than the quarter it cost and came on a large bun with two pre-assigned blobs of mustard and ketchup. Period. The little sack of French fries and the thick milkshake were much better.

My memory gets fuzzy here, but I think the McDonald franchise became Delney’s (for the partners, Delligatti and Sweeney—no relative) and moved farther north on McKnight Road. I believe both partners had NAHS teenagers, who were younger than us. It was a popular spot for North Alleghenians of my era to stop after sports events, movies, and Community Center dances. We went not because the food was “fast,” but because it was a place to sit in a darkened car with our dates (and not have the McCandless police shining their flashlights into the window). According to the McDonald website, the Big Mac (not offered “system-wide” until 1968) was “the brainchild of Jim Delligatti, one of Ray Kroc's earliest franchisees, who by the late 1960s operated a dozen stores in Pittsburgh.” I’m impressed!

But in 1958, Big Macs as well as most of today’s fast food franchises were unknown. Although Dairy Queen went national right after WWII (1947) to be followed by Colonel Sander’s KFC in 1952, and McDonald’s in 1954, Burger King didn’t expand beyond Miami until 1958, the same year as I-HOP. Pizza Hut and Subway developed in the 1960s, and Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s in Columbus in 1969.

My favorite was always Eat ’n Park, a mostly Pennsylvania chain that started in the South Hills in 1949 and came to McKnight Road in the 50s. Among its claims to fame were the carhops and the Big Boy hamburgers, which had a particularly good sauce, similar to Russian salad dressing.

In 2005, I was flummoxed when visiting the art museum at the University of Iowa to round a corner and find a 12-foot Big Boy statue in the Sculpture Court. The adjacent plaque described it as “a monumental found-art sculpture by John Freyer”. Huh? Freyer caused a stir back then when his master’s thesis (later a book) was a performance art project. He sold all his earthy belongings on eBay (including an opened box of taco shells, half a bottle of mouthwash, almost all of his clothes, and, his sideburns), then talked about it on NPR and wrote a book, All My Life for Sale. Freyer successfully conned the U of I Museum into buying this piece of fiberglass. As a curator said in an interview in for school newspaper, The Daily Iowan, “There may be those who question the object’s validity…. The exhibit aims to provoke people to question their presumptions of art, creating a dialogue between artist and viewer about the eternal artistic question: What is art anyway?”

Which reminds me of Professor Harold Hill, The Music Man (mentioned in my posting of June 28), who gulled a different group of Iowans. And, dear Eamonn, it suggests that you need to hear Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Note: I would appreciate any corrections/additions concerning North Hills’ eateries since my recollections have come from my memory without written sources backing them. Special thanks go to Anita "Doll" Bauer (Bill’s mom) for contributing names of most of the restaurants.