My Senior Moments

The Last Posting

2008-08-19T18:54:00.007-05:00

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

2008-08-14T13:44:00.010-05:00

…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

2008-08-08T13:49:00.007-05:00

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…

2008-08-02T15:07:00.006-05:00

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

2008-07-30T15:40:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-27T11:23:00.016-05:00

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

2008-07-20T15:40:00.017-05:00

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.

From Victory Garden to Tang—and Back?

2008-07-12T15:32:00.018-05:00

During my grandchildren’s visit, I was rummaging among Little Golden books in the basement and came across a cookbook of my mother’s (left)—some 800 recipes from the members of the Ingomar Woman’s Club, assembled and sold as a fundraiser sometime in the 1950s. Mother, who was not a particularly inspired cook, contributed a few: Cold Pickles (first ingredient: 3 quarts of vinegar!), Corn Fritters, Date and Nut Bread, and Macaroni Loaf Casserole. The latter was scrumptious; a slightly altered version can be found in Irma Rombauer’s classic Joy of Cookbook (p. 187, 1963 ed.) That casserole requires at least 45 minutes of chopping, grating, cooking and stirring, then 1-1/2 hours in a 325° oven. With that sort of time commitment on many of the recipes, no wonder the cookbook migrated to the basement.

It started me remembering the way we ate at home in the 1950s. (The advent of eating out will be saved for another day.) Shortly after my parents moved from the city to Ingomar and WWII heated up, they planted a Victory Garden on their second acre of land. They created an orchard with about a dozen fruit trees, a berry patch, and in the rest, lots of beans, cabbages, corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Posters (right) had encouraged planting by those on the Home Front to lower the price of produce needed by the War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military. According to U.S. historians, nearly 20 million Americans answered the call and produced up to 40% of vegetables consumed nationally (1943-44).

My mom had grown up a Logan in the wilds of Pine Township and really relished tilling the soil; my dad was a city slicker from the North Side—read “clueless but dedicated farm laborer.” Their garden’s bounty went toward great Corn Roasts in the backyard for relatives and friends and later, much preserving of jam, apple butter, tomato juice, and bread-and-butter pickles.

By the 1950s though, the garden had shrunk to just beans, tomatoes and cukes. The fruit trees, no longer sprayed, required major worm removal. Corn now came from trips to the farm stands on Wexford flat (Shenot’s, Brooker’s) or Brandt School Road (Soergel’s). Mom was reluctant to go “in the highway” to the supermarkets that began to appear, since the village of Ingomar always had either a general store (B. Dale Dixon’s) or what would later be known as a mom-and-pop’s (Flanek’s) before Shop N Save arrived in the 1960s.

Roy, the Otto Suburban milkman, delivered our glass bottles of milk and coffee cream. The best butcher (between Cole’s in Wexford and Shindel’s in Perrysville) was John’s, just a half a block from us on Ingomar Road—home of the area’s best chipped ham. When real baked goods were required, we had to drive in to Vogel’s in Perrysville before Barcus’ arrived at Pine’s Plaza. At least one Ingomar ATWT classmate remembers the Vogel cupcakes I brought to school for my birthday—each topped with a sugary frosting rose.

A scan of the Ingomar Woman’s Club cookbook suggests the inroads convenience foods were starting to have. I wasn’t surprised by the number of ways lime jello and Philadelphia cream cheese could be combined (often with crushed pineapple) into sweet treats—I confess, that was about all I knew how to make until I graduated from college. Other name-brand standby’s mentioned in the book: Bisquick, Miracle Whip salad dressing, Campbell’s Condensed Tomato (or Mushroom) Soup as the binding to hold casseroles together, Eagle Brand condensed milk, Marshmallow Fluff, Mother’s Oats, and of course, local favorite H. J. Heinz tomato ketchup, mild mustard, vinegar, and pickles.

Recipes with multiple versions included tuna noodle casserole, Rice Krispie bars, chiffon pies (Knox gelatin, eggs and heavy cream), and desserts laden with dates, raisins, or bottles of Maraschino cherries. Shortening (such as “Spry”) was the fat of choice in baking, although a couple of times recipes mentioned “Oleo” as a substitute for butter. A recipe of Mrs. William B. Rodgers called “Sailors Duff,” sent me scurrying to the dictionary where I learned it was “a stiff flour pudding boiled in a cloth bag or steamed”—when I’d thought it was rather unappetizingly just another name for a butt—as in “Get off your duff.”

The Ingomar ladies no doubt only contributed their special “company fare” to the cookbook not deeming to mention everyday things like iceberg lettuce, Velveeta cheese, Reddi-wip, Bosco (chocolate syrup to add to milk), Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce, or that GIs' fave brought back from the war, Hormel’s SPAM (which stands for Shoulder of Pork And HaM and has been immortalized by the Monty Python sketch, worth looking at again by clicking on this You Tube link). My frugal grandma had her own version of SPAM that I dearly loved. She made stuffing from onions and the stale ends of Braun’s bread, placed several spoonfuls of stuffing between pairs of thin slices of SPAM, tied them into neat little packages with kitchen string, and fried these gourmet gifties in bacon fat. Yum! (The best part for a kid was sucking on the string afterward and gnawing the little tidbits that clung to it.)

After 1953 on bridge nights, my mom sometimes resorted to those amazing aluminum trays of Swanson TV dinners (turkey with gravy, cornbread dressing, frozen peas, and mashed sweet potato with a square of butter was the original combo), which cost 98¢ and took 25 minutes in a 425° oven. By 1958, a lot of convenience foods were added to supermarket shelves, among them: frozen French fries, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-a-Roni, Sweet ‘n Low, Cocoa Puffs, Lipton’s instant tea, ramen, and the breakfast orange drink Tang (later sent into space and used by me to make "Russian Tea" or to clean the dishwasher, as Heloise suggested).

We were well on our way to an addiction to time-saving, consumer-targeted processed concoctions that Michael Pollan refers to as “industrial eating," in his latest book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin, 2007), about Americans’ approach to the politics, perils, and pleasures of our nutrition. I was not too surprised recently to come across a website “Revive the Victory Garden for victory over global warming” (click here). It suggested planting the vegetables you will consume in a season amongst the flowers in the front yard, put tomatoes in containers on the patio and sprouts on the kitchen windowsill. Hmm. Cucumbers next to the tiger lilies (also edible)? I’ll have to think about that.

P.S. For those who were disappointed by the small group photos in my last posting about ATWTs, I've now remedied the problem with a link to a web album. See below. Also check out the three comments by clicking on "Comments."

Hail to the ATWTs

2008-07-04T08:26:00.014-05:00

(pronounced “at-wits,” it stands for All The Way Throughs!)

It’s a holiday weekend and my office is being occupied by Superboy (left). Trips to the computer are restricted to hasty peeks. So I’m just going to give you some photos to study. I wish they were bigger, but this blogging program only allows 300 pixels. To see larger versions of the three group photos, click on this link and select "Slide Show". Some of us still marvel that we went through all 12 grades in North Allegheny schools. We’re the equivalent of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution or the Signers of the Mayflower Compact—to give it a patriotic spin on the Fourth.

My thanks to fellow ATWTs Bill Young, Marge Downer and Helen Yingling, who supplied photos and names. I regret that I don’t know who went all the way through from Marshall Township; I understand kids in our class from the Peebles district of McCandless, with its tiny old school, were transferred to Espe (according to Priscilla Kerr). Several non-ATWTs from Franklin Township (Connie Stevens and Janet Gilleland) tried to help, but since neither was around at the beginning, they couldn’t supply a class photo and could only guess at names. I would be happy to add ATWTs from the other elementary schools in the North Allegheny district at a later date (and before the t-shirt order gets placed).

The Borough of Bradford Woods

According to Marge Downer, BW’s school was the only public building in town and was used for everything. A big folding wall divided the two classrooms that opened for Sunday services, before the church was built next door. The first four grades were on one side, grades 5-8 on the other. As she writes, “With four grades in one room, the teacher had to keep us all silent for most of the day. We had no special subjects either, which meant Mrs. Weinman was with us from nine to four with an hour break for lunch, when we all went home. Once she took us to her place for a field trip. She and her husband had a mink farm. I don’t think anyone got a finger bitten off.”

Geographically, Helen Yingling, who lived close to the rest of the Yingling clan on Sunset Drive in 1946, should have been a classmate of mine at Ingomar. But since her family was going to be moving the next year, her dad insisted she should commute everyday to school in the wilds of Bradford Woods. She hitched a ride in a U.S. Postal Service truck driven by Jim DeZort (who smoked stinky cigars) along with huge canvas bags of mail.

This photograph of Bradford Woods “little room” (called that not because of its size but because of the younger kids in it) was probably taken in spring 1947. Class of 1958 ATWTs are first graders in the front row. Recognizing them, in boldface, from left to right: 1. Pat Henke, 2. Mildred Walters, 3. Grier Cooper 4. Helen Yingling, 5. Peter Young, 6. Jack Sramek, 7. George Gunn, 8. Marge Downer, 9. Susan Chapman, and 10. one second-grader, Margie Theurer (’57).(Contact Helen if you want to know the older little people in the back rows.)

Out front is Teddy Downer, Marge’s dog, who seems to have been a fixture in BW school photos.

Espe Elementary, McCandless Township

Largest of the first grades, Espe had at least 13 ATWTs (maybe more?). This photo also contains Sue Sutter and Marilyn Michalko, who recognized their error early on and departed for Ingomar School in time for second grade. (Sue then moved on to Pine Township School until she rejoined us at NAHS in 8^th grade.) Notice how Espe separated the girls, apparently finding them delicate and seating them on those extremely uncomfortable wooden folding chairs in the front row. Front row (left to right with some names missing): 1. Kathie Boyer, 2. Dolores Fike, 3. Sue Sutter, 4, 5, 6. June Blystone, 7, 8. Donna Osterwise (Jami Hart), 9. Edrie Apple, 10. Marilyn Michalko, 11. Janet Heim, 12. Mildred Halboth. Back row: 1. Bill Young, 2, 3. Calvin Hartman, 4. Richard Sass, 5. Chuck Richards, 6. Warren Bald, 7. Ron Huch, 8, 9. Gary Diamond, 10. Harry Hipwell, 11. Ron Carpenter (?), 12. Regis Gschwind, 13. Billy Rogan, 14, 15, 16. Bob Beilstein. Teacher: Miss Stansbury (see Mickey Michalko's remembrance in the comments).

When I asked if Bill Young if he was really wearing knickers, he replied, “Of course they are knickers. At age 6, I was a slave to fashion. Fortunately, I outgrew that problem. Kneesocks had powerful elastic bands which probably cut off circulation. The bottoms of the knickers also had extremely strong elastic bands. At the end of a day wearing that combination, my legs really hurt. Gosh, the sacrifices we make to look good.” Darn it! I wish you could see his outfit better--the bowtie, the Fair Isle vest.

Ingomar Elementary, McCandless Township

Well, I saved the best for last. We Ingomar kids were clearly a happy-g0-lucky lot compared to the rather rustic B-Woodzers and proper Espians. Girls are mixed in with boys, and no one needs a chair. Actually, I’ve cheated a little by providing the second grade photo (1947) in order to include some stellar class members who are not quite ATWTs—Brandt, Roessler, Schleuning, and Roth. (At left I’m setting off for the first day of first grade, Sept. 1946.)

Front row: Ted Matoka, Henry Ford, Arthur Brandt (who later departed for Espe), Richard Sinewe (‘59), Philip Lane, Billy Campbell, Jack Miller, Ernie Roessler.

Middle row: Margie Behrens, Karen Ringeisen, Linda Schleuning, Barbara Sweeney, Joyce Kuhlman, June Blystone, Sue Sutter, Patty Nutter (’59), Ruth June Gross, Mike Lake.

Back row: Ray Blystone, Dick Fink, Virginia Grosick, Marilyn Michalko, Mrs. Reed, Judy Roth, Marilyn Sarver, Jimmy Quickle, George Crawford. Missing from the picture, but also Ingomar ATWTs: Audrey Bergman and Marilyn Grupp.

Pete Brandt has remarked rather enviously that he wishes he could have worn a striped jacket like Jack Miller, clearly our GQ fashion candidate. Good thing he didn’t know about the Prince of Fashion, Bill Young, yet.

Any miss-identifications? Let me know. Next week I should be back online.

We’ve Got a Contest Winner

2008-06-28T15:44:00.013-05:00

Without the aid of his yearbooks (back in Gibsonia) while still down in Florida, Pete Brandt nailed those football players mentioned in my poem “A Has-Been” (see posting for June 14). I’ve since realized the grand prize, the gold and black pencil, is from the first football season (1955), which no doubt enhances its value on the collectibles market, although the poem was written about the 1956 team. That was the second year when we finally started to win games and play at home. Winner of the consolation prize (a program from the NAHS vs. Darlington game (a 28-0 win for NAHS) is none other than Bill Young, currently known to us as Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Classmates. The correct answer (tricky because there are two possible Bobs):

Bob Good or Bob Richard
Andy Sohngen
Stan Cleva
Wally Barker
Randy Brandt
Jack Chotta

An Overdue Thank You

Well, I’m still on a music kick this week. To get you in the mood, click on the title to go to a YouTube link of the Clemson University band, playing the Dixieland classic, “Tiger Rag,” as its fight song. (And remember to shout “Hold ‘em Tigers” at the right times.)

I’ve always loved bands, especially in parades. But since coming to Iowa, I now know just how passionate people can get about them. Meredith Willson, who created “The Music Man,” hailed from Mason City, Iowa. His musical, which was a huge hit on Broadway in 1957 (then a movie in 1962), is about the reverence in which marching bands are held throughout the Midwest as the citizens of River City demonstrate. The promises of traveling conman Professor Harold Hill to solve their problems by creating a boys’ marching band are gullibly believed. And when the kids miraculous strike up “76 Trombones,” Hill is taken in by River City, too (particularly Marian the librarian).

Members of my immediate family have each had their band experience. Including my own cameo performance playing George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway” on the glockenspiel in the St. Patrick’s Day parade (March 1955) along Fifth Avenue. Janet Gilleland and I joined but soon resigned from the Perrysville Fireman’s Girls Drum and Bugle Corps after that appearance. My husband spent his junior high school years in Lancaster, Pa. playing a sousaphone (left). He was the only kid big enough to haul it around, although the uniform trousers suggest the school wasn’t expecting anyone quite so tall. He soon grew tired of removing various detritus—such as pieces of hotdog and bubble gum wrappers—from the bell after every football game. Our daughter Lia seemed to be striking a blow against male dominance of the trombone by taking up that instrument for a couple years. When she got braces it proved too painful to continue playing—by then, the spit valve on her second-hand instrument was sticking way too frequently anyway. Our most successful musician, Brenda, played clarinet throughout high school and opened my eyes to just how important the band was at Ames High both for camaraderie among the members and its role of representing the school in parades, pep rallies, and athletic events. Both of my sons-in-law also took up wind instruments in school. Alas, none of us continue to play—but we all learned to appreciate what making music as part of a group entails.

Looking through NAHS yearbooks of our era I’m struck by how little attention those stalwart members of the Tiger Marching Band received. Although the six majorettes and drum major rated a two-page spread, the rest of the band (58 strong) also rated only two pages in 1958. And unlike the majorettes, whose names were listed as captions to both photos and again mentioned in the accompanying blurb, the band members remain anonymous (except for the color guard and the officers). I looked back to previous yearbooks; in 1957, again the band rated a 2-page spread but no names, and in 1956, they only rated one page but without even a group picture, much less names.

The Midwesterner in me cries “Unfair!” I talked to Bill Young about this the other day. He was in North Allegheny’s band from the beginning and quite serious about music. He remembers all the practicing individually and during band class, the half-time shows, the bus trips to Shaler or Hampton for Friday night football games. According to him, NAHS’ band teacher, the late Robert Testa, was “a prince” and one of those talents who can play every band instrument and listen with great patience to all those sour notes that novices inevitably make. Bill remembers once after a French-hornist made a gaff, much to her embarrassment, Testa stopped the band and demonstrated just how easily it could happen. By changing the angle of the mouthpiece very slightly, he showed how you could to be off-key in 5 or 6 different ways.

So today I want to bring NAHS Tiger Marching Band of 1958 back for an encore. We didn’t give you the credit you deserved for all your hard work and wonderful contributions to so many school activities, but you guys rocked. Let me name and thank each of you:

Karl Aveard, a drummer who really did continue to play in rock bands after graduation
Bob Benjamin, another drummer (captured in the photo right with Karl)
Chuck Gruber, sousaphonist (who no doubt has his own detritus stories) and band vice president
George Gunn, drummer (and timpanist with the orchestra)
Bill Young on saxophonist, initially entered college as a music major but could not see himself becoming another Mr. Testa so changed to chemical engineering. (See these three in left photo)
The three Benny Goodmans of the class were Richard Sass, Pete Thurston, and Bill Vestal (photo left). Bill also served as NAHS’ first drum major (1956-58); Bill Young enviously recalls Vestal’s trousers actually tailored for a smart fit—unlike the rank and file. Also the memorable piano-tuner routine Bill pulled off at one musical assembly.

I sadly regret that it's too late to thank Mike Thurston, trumpeter and band president in 1957-58 (right).

To fast-forward: If you’d like to see a video of the huge North Allegheny Marching Band entering Newman Stadium in August 2007, click here.

And Finally, a Postscript

After that earlier posting “When NA was the new high school” (4/12/08), I had this note about the NAHS school color from Bob Beilstein: “I was on the committee in 8th grade charged by Dr. Vonarx with coming up with the colors, and we had three choices—green/black, green/white, or red/white. Tom Maxwell was the faculty adviser and he said that after he went to Pitt, he always liked their colors, black/gold. To appease him, we added black/gold to the colors voted on by the school. (Of course, none of us, including Tom Maxwell, realized that Pitt's colors were blue/gold).

As is well known, black/gold won the student vote, only to be challenged by the juniors and sophomores coming out from Perry High. Vonarx then said we would have another vote, but prior to that vote, he arranged a special pep rally out on the football field where the band came marching out onto the field followed by the new football team—all in their new black and gold uniforms. Spectacular! Black/gold won the second vote hands down.”

Strangers within Our Gates

2008-06-21T11:35:00.008-05:00

That biblical phrase, used in the fourth of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:10 and later in Deuteronomy), is a theme that began for me in 1957. What reminds me of it is a program in my scrapbook for my last piano recital on an evening in June 1958 at the home of my piano teacher, Marlen Geier. I played Chopin’s “Polonaise in A Major”—wish I still could.

Marlen was special. She, her parents, and older brother had been transplanted from Germany to Ingomar shortly after the war (WWII). I always wished I knew their Coming to America story. The family seemed serious, silent, and rather sad whenever I came to their house for my weekly lesson. Marlen was then a student at Carnegie Tech’s College of Fine Arts (in music) when I first started and later a vocal music teacher for 7^th and 8^th graders at NAHS. She chose very hard classical pieces for me to learn and seemed to think I was more capable than I did. I liked the fact that she never praised me on weeks when I really hadn’t practiced enough and was trying to scrape by because I was a good sight reader.

That sight-reading skill had come in useful when someone needed to accompany hymn singing at Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings or for Junior Choir practices. During the 1957-58 school year, Marlen offered me a paying job (50¢ an hour, I think) to go over to Gumbert School for Girls one evening a week with her and accompany their chorus, which she would be directing. I jumped at the chance to get to know her better on those rides.

Strangers in suburb paradise?

Gumbert was located on a bluff overlooking McKnight Road where the Ross Park Mall is today. It was Allegheny County’s female counterpart to Thorn Hill School for Boys, which was located out on a farm in Warrendale. Since Thorn Hill closed in 1980, some former JDs have written fond memoirs about the farm and the practical skills they learned there. I don’t think anyone has rhapsodized about Gumbert. It was cramped, drearily institutional, and when we arrived at 7 pm, always smelled of overcooked cabbage. The adolescent girls who made up the chorus had the unhealthy look of too much starchy food and were forlornly dressed in the castoffs of older people. What I liked about them though was that they were high spirited and happy to see us and to sing their lungs out.

In fact, they would mob me, wanting to touch my clothes and admire whatever I wore. At first, I felt uncomfortable, but since they seemed anxious to see what a teenager from the outside world might be wearing, I began dressing for the occasion. I tried to wear something different every session. Then one wintry night, things got out of hand. Girls who at first were just running their hands over my fur-blend sweater set, started to yank on my scarab bracelet, grab the kilt pin on my pleated skirt, and pull my pageboy-ed hair. They were at the point of striping me by the time some of the school staff intervened and roughly dragged the ringleaders away—as I stood all askew, shakily watching and not knowing what to say or do. That ended the weekly fashion show. My attempt to entertain had only gotten them in trouble.

As for their singing, this group was not a knock-off of the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir. Or, although most were of a similar skin shade, the Silvertones of Barbados. Vocal timbre was sadly lacking. Sometimes they shouted and bellowed or when miffed, made no sound at all. I don’t think they ever considered listening to each other and attempting to blend voices. Two-part harmony—sopranos and altos—what was that all about?

So Marlen struggled to get them just to sing in unison such old standbys as “The Ash Grove,” (Welsh folk song—click on titles to link to audios of these songs) “The Happy Wanderer” (originally “Der fröhliche Wanderer”) and “For the Beauty of the Earth” (she had to sneak in her countryman J.S. Bach, too). Something with contemporary appeal was “This Old Man” (with a knick knack paddy whack, give the dog a bone), made popular in 1958 because of Ingrid Bergman’s movie “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness”—and afterward Mitch Miller got a hold of it.

That June the parents of the Gumbert School Chorus were invited to a year-end concert to hear what the girls had been practicing. It made me terribly sad. Not many parents showed up, and those who came didn’t look much better off than their daughters. These families (likely dysfunctional) were the strangers within the gates of the North Hills. Those girls, isolated up on that bluff, were completely alien to the lush green hills and woods that surrounded them. Local realtors had an unwritten understanding about selling homes to “colored people,” as they were then called. It was still a decade before Fair Housing legislation prohibited redlining. Did a single black student attend NAHS while we were there? If so, he or she was very much alone.

Ingomar's Diversity

In those days Ingomar had a black population of one: Thomas “Tug” Seymour, who lived in the basement of the Ingomar Volunteer Firehall and did odd jobs for people. Tug was from the South; he was relentlessly cheerful and obliging and could play a mouth organ, banjo and kick drum at the same time—the epitome of an Uncle Tom. As a kid, he fascinated me, and I took every chance to talk to him. I loved to listen to that accent. Probably I recognized in him the only other African American I “knew”—Uncle Remus in Walt Disney’s “Song of the South (1946). (Click on title to hear "Zip-A-Dee-Do0-Dah.") And I never had an inkling what life was really like for Tug or what he really thought.

As I reflect back on a Pittsburgh suburb of 1958, I know that I can’t impose and judge it based on my current views after the sea change in American society since then. But my discomfort, more likely dismay, at the vanilla-ness of the place still haunts me. It had a lot to do with my efforts in the 1960s to get as far away from home as I could, to make friendships with people as different from me as possible, to marry a bookish European who had spent his childhood in a DP camp in Germany (and whose family initially reminded me of Marlen Geier’s). In the photo below, taken in Karlsruhe, Germany (1949) he's the kid on the left.

Perhaps the desire to escape the familiar is part of growing up for many. But my quest went even farther: to become a stranger myself, the alien within some Other’s gates.

The Floods of 2008--and a Contest for Blog Readers

2008-06-14T11:45:00.011-05:00

Sorry, friends. This week I’m just too preoccupied with the present—and future—of my adopted state of Iowa to write much about the past. My husband and I here in Ames, as well as our daughter and her family in Wisconsin, are not suffering as so many Midwesterners are right now. Yes, we mopped up a few leaks after the torrential storms that have dropped about 8 inches of rain in this area over the past two weeks.

On May 29, Ames got 5 inches overnight, and the next few days were when most of the damage was done to homes, businesses, parks, and student’s cars left in parking lots anywhere near our two creeks—Squaw and College—and one river, the Skunk. Ames got skunked all right. This past weeks other parts of the state got socked—Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and Des Moines especially.

The other curse has been the tornadoes that flattened the town of Parkersburg in May and destroyed the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in the loess hills of western Iowa this week. I’m continually proud of the Iowa spirit of fighting back: hundreds of people filling and preparing levees out of countless bags of sand; the boy scouts, who soon proved that they indeed were prepared (click here for one scout’s story); and all the people who followed instructions of state and city officials to help, evacuate, or even just follow the jingle drummed into our heads when driving our cars in flash flooded areas—“Turn around, don’t drown.”

One hundred miles east of us in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, where both of our daughters and sons-in-law have studied (and later two of them taught), summer school classes were canceled on Friday. Every able-bodied student, faculty, and staff member was needed to fill sandbags and protect campus buildings. The photo (right) shows part of one of the “bucket brigades” set up from the basement to the third floor of the library that were formed to hand up, a few at a time, all the books and dissertations stored in the basement—over 100,000 volumes. To read the story, click here.

Well, that’s the Iowa I love. And as I said at the beginning, I’m worrying about it right now. (Photos from Des Moines Register)

On a lighter note…

Enter the Senior Moments’ Contest!

Readers ask me how I remember such minutiae about North Allegheny in the mid-1950s. I have to confess, it’s not that I possess a photographic memory. I’m a packrat; I’ve kept scrapbooks and saved mementoes that probably should have been chucked long ago.

When looking for something else the other day, I came across the January 16, 1957 edition of The Cardinal News, published by Wauwatosa High School (NW suburb of Milwaukee, WI). Its exchanges section contained a poem by one Barbara Sweeney.

I didn’t recognize it at first, and thought I must have saved it because someone else had my name (I’ve already discussed the multiple-Barbara problem). After reading the first line (with raised eyebrows), I realized I had written it for The North Star in December 1956.

A Has-Been

By Barbara Sweeney

I’m just a “has-been” at N.A.H.S.
The boys used to love me, I freely confess.
Just ask Bob or Andy—you’ll certainly see,
They once enjoyed spending their evenings with me.

Lots of other guys liked to be with me, too—
Stan, Wally, and Randy, to mention a few.
They took me out often on Friday night
And in their strong arms would hold me tight.

September, October, in lots of ways,
Were really wonderful “Courting Days!”
When I passed by for all to see,
A lot of strange boys made a play for me.

I was only with Chotta now and then,
But one pass from him had me hooked again!
I was dropped and kicked—but ‘twas all in fun
For I knew they loved me, everyone.

Things are different now.
They don’t see me at all.
Because, you see,
I’m just a
FOOTBALL!

(Hope you didn’t miss my sophomoric cleverness in shaping the lines to look like a football)

So here’s the contest: Without looking at your yearbooks, can you tell me the full names of the six gridiron heroes of 1956 who are mentioned in my poem? The first to email me the correct list will receive (if they come to the reunion) the authentic black-and-gold pencil sold by the 1956 NAHS football team to earn money. Consolation prizes will be programs from NAHS football games—the 5 we actually won that year. Winners to be announced 28 June 2008.

Eligibility Rules: To enter this contest you must be a member of NAHS Class of 1958 but not a member of the aforementioned football team. (That would be like shooting fish in a barrel, after all.)

A Commencement Address for the Slackers

2008-06-07T09:55:00.002-05:00

In summer 1986, my elder daughter, Brenda, had just finished her freshman year at the University of Iowa and decided that she really liked art history courses better than journalism. At the time, Donna Chase, a Pittsburgh friend of ours, had a major role as visual arts coordinator for downtown Pittsburgh’s annual outdoor extravagance in Point Park, the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Donna invited Brenda to serve an internship with her for the month of June, helping with the set up and wrap of the exhibit and serving as a go-fer during the 2-week run. While Brenda learned a lot about artists and the public’s perception of modern art, it was a nice excuse for my husband and me to spend a long weekend at the Oakland apartment on loan to her.

Meanwhile, the youngest son of my long-time Ingomar friend, Carolyn Kummer Gaus, was graduating from high school during our visit. Carolyn asked me to join her and her husband Don for the ceremony, which was held outdoors at the football field of North Allegheny Senior High School in Wexford. In 1977, NAHS eliminated the student speeches in favor of a newer tradition (perhaps my vapid 5 minutes had contributed to the decision but more likely it was the growing number of successful alumni). As the program stated, “It is a distinct privilege to select a commencement speaker from our many accomplished graduates. As former North Allegheny students, our speakers bring a unique relevance and authenticity to the program.” Already back in 1980, Bill Vestal had a return engagement as a commencement speaker as part of that new tradition. (Later, in 1991, Bob Beilstein, then a member of the North Allegheny school board, gave the address at his daughter Laurie's graduation).

Let’s Skip to the Chase…

Imagine my surprise, upon arriving at the ceremony, to find the Distinguished Alumni Commencement Speaker for 1986 was none other than an old friend from the Class of 1958, Dr. William K. Bauer AKA “Skippy.” He was last mentioned in this blog on May 24 (re favorite teachers, when he told of his brush with plagiarism and the life-altering counsel offered by Mr. Conway) in case you missed it.

After 1958, Bill had earned academic degrees from Slippery Rock, Chapman College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Having begun his career as a teacher, he had gone on to hold administrative positions with the Community College of Allegheny County. The previous year (1985) he had been appointed President of the Community College of Beaver County. He was also the father of three NAHS students—Jay (Class of 1988), Ann (1989), and Ken (1990). But his presence alone wasn’t what made the evening memorable. He gave a commencement speech that I’ve never forgotten. It was perfect! After I called and congratulated him on it the following day, he kindly sent me a copy.

You see, my mother had a role in Bill’s career. I had come home in tears one spring day in 1958 because Bill had just received the letter from Slippery Rock rejecting his application. Mom believed this was a major blunder on some admission director’s part, and “the Mayor of Ingomar” (as she was affectionately known around our house) never hesitated about righting anything she perceived as an injustice. She immediately got on the phone to her friend Dr. Thomas Carson, N. Allegheny district’s supervising principal. Through some intervention on Dr. Carson’s part, Bill was allowed to take several summer courses at Slippery Rock with the understanding that if he passed them, he would be conditionally admitted for the fall term. Well, the rest is history; he actually finished his bachelor’s degree in three years. Although, by 1986, my mother had lost her sight and was in failing health at a nursing home near me in Iowa, she must have asked me dozens of times before she died to read Bill’s speech to her. She always smiled and laugh in the right places, too.

Please click on the underlined phrase to go and read Bill’s speech. I promise you, it’s a gem. Because it’s online as a Goggle Document, it may take a few seconds to download so please be patient.

The Day We Graduated: June 5, 1958

2008-05-31T15:35:00.007-05:00

If you need to get in the mood, listen to The Four Freshmen sing “Graduation Day,” (recorded, 1956) by clicking on the highlighted title.

9 A.M.

The last week of the school year and liberation is in sight. That Thursday morning, John Bolvin, one of the faculty advisers to our class, gives us a pep talk before the rehearsal, where we will practice marching down the aisles to the strains of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstances,” played by our classmate Christine Ferguson. I remember Mr. Bolvin telling us that it had been a pleasure to advise us, and that our class had an interesting mix of students, a balance that the two earlier graduating classes hadn’t had. I think he meant that all of the various high school types were represented (leaders, brains, athletes, artists, hard-workers, hot-rodders, and law-breakers).

We didn’t know it then, but he, too, was about to graduate from high school POD teaching and enter the world of higher education. Dr. Bolvin is now an emeritus professor in the Department of Psychology in Education and the former dean of the College of General Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. In fact, the CGS awards a scholarship annually named in his honor.

The baccalaureate service had been held on the previous Sunday evening, but not everyone had attended and we had only filed in together minus the pomp. For tonight’s graduation ceremony, we need to practice the hesitation step. The girls (who would wear white gowns, heels, and caps with the tassels secured by bobby pins) catch onto the rhythm pretty quickly; most of the guys (to wear black academic robes and mortarboards with tassels clunking them on their noses) never do. As I recall, some drill sergeants (Mmes. Fulmer and Bowman, maybe?) are posted on each side telling us when to turn and how much space to leave before following the preceding graduate as we enter from the foyer at the back and come down the side aisles of the auditorium.

8 P.M.

It is still quite bright out that evening as commencement begins, but, of course, it won’t be over until after 10:30 pm. After we march in, Rev. Luther Fackler of St. John’s Lutheran gives the invocation before we sit down. Dr. Thomas Carson, Supervising Principal, utters a few words in educationese; and Ed Florak, class president, welcomes the assemblage.

Back in mid-April, tryouts were held for commencement speakers. We had to present a 5-minute speech on the general theme “What we owe” before a panel of teachers. Those selected, who were now sweating profusely up on stage, spoke in this order: Bob Beilstein, “What we owe to parents and faculty”; Marjorie Downer, “What we owe to our friends”; Peggy Peterson, “What we owe to our country”; Barbara Sweeney “What we owe to ourselves”; and Bill Vestal, “What we owe to faith.” The audience was requested to please reserve their applause (otherwise the thunderous ovations likely to erupt after each of these talks might have seriously delayed the proceedings).

Aside: The other day I read my speech, typed on 3 x 5” cards, and marveled at its vapidity. Originally it had been too long, but I seem to have cut out all the best parts, and what “we owe to ourselves” came out prescient of the age of me-ism, to arrive a decade later when the Baby Boomers came of age. I was ahead of my times. I wish I could have left in the quotation I liked from my favorite play, “Our Town,” when Emily discovers that people don’t really perceive life passionately enough as they are living it. Darn.

Next we, the senior class, sing “The Halls of Ivy” in unison—which seems a little odd upon reflection, since it’s about an ivy-covered college. Were we led by Miss Werner? I can’t remember much about what happened right after those speeches, still recovering from the adrenalin rush. I don’t think any of us knew where that song came from. Actually, it originated as the theme song for an NBC radio sitcom by the same name, which became a TV series (1954-55). It was sung at the beginning and end of each program by what I imagined was the Princeton men’s glee club. Remember the words?

"Oh we love the halls of ivy
That surround us here today,
And we will not forget,
Though we be far, far away.

To the hallowed halls of ivy
Every voice will bid farewell
And shimmer off in twilight
Like the old vesper bell.

One day a hush will fall,
The footsteps of us all
Will echo down the halls and disappear.

And as we sadly start,
Our journeys far apart,
A part of every heart will linger here.

In these sacred halls of ivy,
Where we've lived and learned to know,
We'll meet again at twilight
In the sweet afterglow."

9:30 P.M.

Next, the new NAHS principal, Robert Grine, presents some scholarships and awards from local organizations. The grand prize goes to Anne Kiley for being a National Merit Scholar. By coming in 5^th for the whole country in the Exceptionally Able Youth Tests, Anne also earns a full scholarship to Duquesne University. Other award recipients include Marjorie Downer, Marilyn Michalko, Phil Lane, John Allardice, Ted Sprys, Janet Heim, Peter Thurston, Richard Sass, Peggy Peterson, and Regis Gschwind.

Mr. Grine then presents the entire class as having completed the necessary requirements to graduate. Ivan Hosack, the North Allegheny Joint School president, announces our names alphabetically as we stand, cross the stage, shake his hand, and get our diplomas. According to the list in the program, 169 are given out.

Now the pace picks up with the singing of North Allegheny’s alma mater by the Boys’ Senior Quartet (John Allardice, John Brownlee, Mike McKay, and Ray Wick). And then a benediction by Rev. Fackler before we march out a lot faster than we came in—and with no hesitation steps.

High school is over for us. The Class of 1958 is history.

I’ve got more to say about graduating—but this play-by-play is enough for one posting…

Lord Jim

2008-05-24T11:32:00.014-05:00

“He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, appareled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler's water-clerk, he was very popular.”

So begins Joseph Conrad’s novel about an accident at sea and the complex character whose error in judgment haunts him for the rest of his life. Today I’m thinking about another Jim, also complex and who somewhat fits the description above (except that he was several inches over six feet and was not appareled in white): one of my favorite high school teachers, Jim Wall. As you will see from the quotations below, I am not alone in my affection for Mr. Wall. But he had the added dimension to me of being, first, our next-door neighbor on Ingomar Road soon after he and Joanne were married, and then, the neighbor four doors up from us as the babies began to arrive. Five kids, four boys. Having just spent the past week with two small boys, my admiration for the Walls’ ability to keep their sanity—cheerfully—only grows.

I had one disagreement with Mr. Wall in 11^th grade English class, however, and that concerned the readability of the novel he assigned: Lord Jim by that linguistic paragon Joseph Conrad, born Josef Teodor Konrad Kurzeniowski (1857-1024). Conrad was a Pole who wrote 20 novels and many short stores always in English, his third language. He’s the guy we ESL teachers hold up as a role model to our struggling students. (I admit I took fiendish pleasure in reading recently that although Conrad became a master prose stylist in English, he never spoke our mother tongue fluently.)

Clearly Mr. Wall saw something in Lord Jim that remained impenetrable to 16-year-old me. I read and re-read the first two chapters in confusion. Who was telling the story? What had happened and when? And to add to my frustration, it was about the British navy and their sailing ships, a subject that completely bored me. Why couldn’t Wall have assigned Jane Austen or one of the Brontes?

Finally, I told him that I just couldn’t stand this book. He did not seem too surprised at this confession, and generously suggested a substitute: The Nigger of the “ Narcissus,” another Conrad sea novel! So I swallowed hard and wearily slogged through it.

Four years later at Allegheny College, I butted heads again with Joseph Conrad. This time I was required to read Heart of Darkness for a Comp Lit class—and I loved it. Thanks to developing some maturity and learning that a story doesn’t have to be plot-driven or told in a linear fashion, that developing the psychological state of a character is one of the things that makes literature an art, I “got” Conrad. (Maybe it helped that the setting was a jungle, no ships.) Anyway, I’ve always regretted that I never told Mr. Wall I finally appreciated his favorite writer. I realize now he was trying to stretch our brains and make us work to appreciate sophisticated fiction. Perhaps he also wanted us to realize that our idealism would eventually have to be tempered by the hard realities of making mistakes and dealing with the consequences. In the words of Marlowe, the principal narrator in Lord Jim:

“It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.”

* * *

This week I asked some 1958 NAHS classmates about their favorite teachers. I hope you’ll enjoy reading their responses as much as I did. And I would welcome any other class members to offer your testimonials about teachers you liked—either by clicking on “Comments” or by sending an email to Sniper.Sweeney@gmail.com.

Did you have a favorite teacher at NAHS?

Bill Bauer: “In our junior year, I was enrolled in Mr. Conway’s social studies class. Toward the end of the term, there was a major paper due and I, of course, had given the matter no attention whatsoever. On the morning of the day that the composition was to be submitted, I somehow secured something that had been written by, I think, Georgie Richard’s older sister two years before. There were, you will recall, no copy machines save those god-awful mimeos. So I, in a display of inventive genius, cut nearly an inch from the top of the title page to eliminate reference to Ms. George and in very close proximity to the top of the shortened page, typed my name. I was reasonably sure that Mr. Conway would not notice that the new first page was 8- 1/2 x 10 inches in size and that the font employed in spelling out my name was different from that used in all of the other words contained in the treatise.

I was wrong. At the next session Mr. Conway did not return a graded paper and asked me to stay for a private discussion after the bell. To my great surprise, he didn’t lecture me on the evils of plagiarism or sloth. Instead, he reminded me that fellow students would routinely listen attentively when I delivered a silly rendition of some hastily gathered news article during the “current events” portion of our class time. He asked if I had given any thought to what I might like do with my life after high school. When I stared at him blankly, he suggested college. Then, to my absolute amazement he proposed a thing that I greatly, greatly yearned for but couldn’t reveal, even to myself. I might, he said, pursue a career in education. I might, he said, be a teacher. Duane Conway was a caring, considerate and helpful person. And, to its credit, the District recognized those qualities and made him – I’m pretty sure – its first full-time counselor.”

Kathie Boyer Schellhaas: “Of course I had a favorite teacher, and friend for many years as Bill and I would see him at the [class of] 1957 reunions and around town. He was so personable, had a good sense of humor and was interested in all students’ achievements. Mr. Wall, who unfortunately has since died.”

Joe DeVitto: “Are you really asking me to go back 50 years to remember some people? I have a tough time recalling what happened last week. Well, here goes. A great favorite was Mr. DeAugustino, who was in charge of drivers’ education. He had a lot of patience. Wow, that's how we got our driver’s license then.

I also liked Mr. Cicero, our Spanish teacher. I didn't remember any Spanish 20 yrs later, but his classes were always colorful, informative and enjoyable. Mr. Burton was great. He showed me how to make my first tack hammer in machine shop. It looked like a chrome statue after all the polishing. I took it home and told everyone it was a trophy.

Mr. Drazenovich always had a coaching way of getting me through gym classes. He had me lifting weights and jumping all over the place. I remember the horses, parallel bars, trampolines, wrestling, and all that good stuff that I couldn't do well.

A real favorite was Mr. Keller, who always talked in a monotone and put me to sleep in trigonometry class. I can remember asking him one day how the Russians put Sputnik in orbit, and his answer consumed the rest of the class period.

I think my favorite was Mr. James Wall. He was a great teacher and had a lot of patience. He was the kind of person who took so much, and then Pow!, put you in your place. I respected and admired him for that.”

Henry Ford: “I have to say that my all-time favorite teacher was Mr. Wall. I also liked Coach Drazenovich, Mr. Matthews, Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Costello, and Mrs. Dancer.”

Mildred Halboth Sutter: The teachers I admired the most were Mr. Chipley, Mr. Wall, and Mrs. Letzkus--they were all excellent.

Ron Huch: “It was actually Coach Drazenovich who had the most influence on me. I was not an athlete, but his gym classes and the way he treated me stand out in my mind. I remember one time when he decided to make the class do calisthenics, but said anyone who did not think it was fair could walk out. I walked out, looking over my shoulder to see if anyone else was following. No one was. You can imagine what I was thinking. A while later, Coach called me in, as I expected, but what he said I did not expect. He congratulated me for walking out and gave me an A. What a wonderful lesson that was for someone who, at the time, had so little confidence in anything I did. I always appreciated Coach’s sense of humor and his genuine caring about students, but from that class onward he was golden in my memory.”

Paul Mahoney: “My favorite teachers are Joe Drazenovich, Lyle Fox, and Jim Wall. Joe and Lyle were my football coaches, and they taught me the importance of working as part of a team. Jim Wall for his great sense of humor; it made his English class one of my favorites.”

Terry McMahon: “I played basketball for NAHS for four years and that first year with no seniors we got killed. Didn't win a game, didn't even come close. But yet there was a silver lining for me. I got to play as a freshman and Chuck Horne, our basketball coach, took me under his wing and really shaped my future. He would pick me up at my house everyday during the
summer for three years at seven in the morning, and we would go to his friend’s house somewhere around Perry High School. This guy had a basketball court in his backyard, and [Coach Horne] would teach me to play all day long.

As a consequence, I received a free ride to Geneva College, where I played for four years. Believe it or not, I'm still playing. My granddaughter, Danielle, is in ninth grade at Central High School here in York PA. She is their starting center. She called me up when she was in sixth grade and asked if I would teach her to play basketball. Again history repeats itself; we practice every nice day all year long. Now I'm still teaching, only my group has grown to four other girls as well. Since I love to teach basketball, the more the merrier.”

Nancy Meier Reeder: “My favorite teacher was Miss Warner, chorus, she was very, very soft spoken but a no nonsense teacher. She was very talented and made everyone want to use their musical skills to the fullest. I really enjoyed her class every day.

I also was very fond of Mr. Fulmer. He was a very dedicated teacher and made you want to learn. I had the good fortune to become reacquainted with him and Mrs. Fulmer when his youngest son, Tim, played little league baseball with my son, David. Hope this information is helpful to you. Of course, everyone loved Mr. Wall.”

Marilyn “Mickey” Michalko: “Your inquiry sent me straight to my high school yearbook to the Teacher Section. I had never noticed or realized how young a lot of them were nor how many of them had their Master’s. I guess I would have to say that my favorite teacher in high school was Mr. Cicero, the Spanish teacher. I remember taking an English grammar test on the first day of class and anyone who did not pass was not allowed to take Spanish. His reasoning was that if the student did not understand the grammar of his mother tongue, the student would not be able to comprehend the grammar of a foreign language. The second day of the class and that day forward, he spoke only in Spanish unless he was explaining the intricacies of Spanish grammar. He was strict, explained things well and ran an orderly classroom. I did major in Spanish with a minor in business in college, but then spent the next 15 years speaking only English to my kids, so I lost a lot. When I taught ESL as a volunteer to Hispanics in Mississippi and California, I guess I used Mr. Cicero’s method—speaking English and using non-verbal ways of communicating what the words meant.”

Jack Miller: “I am writing about my Spanish teacher Mr. Cicero. Hard to believe but by being in International Rotary, I have had house guests from Spanish-speaking countries. Also I had an exchange student for one year from Chile. A little bit of Spanish was helpful. ¡Sí, Senora!”

Bill Young: “One memory which is still quite vivid is Joe Wissinger’s Geography class in 8th grade. I think he was forced to teach Geography because there were no classes in Biology to teach that year. Neither the class members nor Joe were very enthused about Geography. Probably half a dozen or so times that year, someone would ask him, “How does corn reproduce?" or "Why do some people have blue eyes?" He would ask if we were really interested in the topic. When he received a resounding YES, he would cover the blackboard with data, and he showed his true passion for teaching Biology. I probably would have no idea today about how chromosomes effect reproduction if he had not made it so interesting.”

Where Have All the Carols, Janets, Nancys, and Barbaras gone?

2008-05-16T10:00:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday’s Parade Magazine listed the 10 most popular U.S. baby names for 2007. Heading the list were Jacob and Emily. A branch of linguistics that’s always intrigued me is onomastics—the study of the origins and forms of proper names. Maybe it’s because I’ve had issues with my own first name, Barbara. My parents (more likely my mother) chose it for me in 1940 because they liked it, not because it was a relative’s name or for any specific reason.

In those days they sure weren’t alone in their choice, because I grew up in a multiple-Barbara world. (Other Babsies might want to visit “our” website, The Barbara Page). Parade used the website “Popular Baby Names” (click here to view it) for their information. It’s operated by the Social Security Administration and ranks the 1,000 most common boys’ and girls’ names since 1900. They should know because these days every newborn is assigned a social security number, whereas we got ours around age 14+ when we needed a work permit for our first job.

On the Baby Names site you can look up specific names and track their status over time. Barbara was the 3^rd most popular name for girls for two decades, the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1960s, it had slipped to 6^th (despite the introduction of Barbie dolls in 1959), and by 2007, it had dropped like a rock to 633rd place!

At least I wasn’t a ba-ba-bá-ba-Barbara Ann (remember the Beach Boy’s version of that annoying song in 1965?). My middle name is Ellen after my maternal grandmother (only in 74th place in 1940). In 1965, a month after I got married, changed my last name, and moved to Cambridge, Mass. where my new husband was in graduate school, I got a job with Harvard psychology professor Jerome Bruner. He had the chutzpah to ask me to change my first name because he already had another Barbara working for him—and there were two more Barbaras in the same research group anyway. So I suddenly went from being Barbara Sweeney to being Ellen Plakans. What an identity crisis that was! For those two years when I worked at the Center for Cognitive Studies, I was forever getting confused. If someone down the hall called out “Barb!” invariably my head whipped around.

During the past 4-1/2 years, my daughter Brenda (34^th in 1967) and her husband Jim (4^th that year) have needed to choose names for their two sons. I was surprised to discover that the fashion in naming these days is to look for monikers original and offbeat. This is the case with baby boys as well as girls, although boys’ names have usually tended to be more conventional. After running a frequency count of first names in the North Allegheny Class of 1958, I soon concluded that was not the urge driving our parents.

Most Popular Names among the Class of 1958

Let me show you my table. First I looked back to 1940 to see how many American kids were given our names and compared it with how many class members had those names. Even though we had 91 males (to 84 females) in our class of 175, the range of boys’ names was a little narrower (46 names) to girls’ names (49). That also confirms the onomastists’ observation that parents are more likely to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl than a baby boy (though for our parents, not very).

MALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	ROBERT	8	2^nd
2nd	JOHN	7	3rd
2nd	WILLIAM	7	4th
3rd	THOMAS	4	8th
3rd	RONALD	4	10th
3rd	GEORGE	4	11th
4th	RICHARD	3	5th
4th	CHARLES	3	6th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

FEMALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	CAROL	5	6th
1st	JANET	5	19th
2nd	BARBARA	4	2nd
2nd	NANCY	4	7th
2nd	SUSAN	4	36th
3rd	PATRICIA	3	3rd
3rd	MARILYN	3	25th
3rd	JEAN	3	29th
3rd	KATHY	3	40th
3rd	EMILY	3	164th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

The only really popular boys’ names not represented in our class were James (1^st in U.S. popularity in 1940) and Donald (9^th); we had one David (7^th) and two Josephs (12^th). Among the girls’ names, we had two Marys (1^st in U.S. popularity)—if we include Mary Ann, two Judys (4^th), a Betty (5^th), a Linda (8^th), a Shirley (9^th), but no Sandra (10^th). Still we can think of lots of friends and siblings with those names at NAHS in the classes surrounding ours.

What interested me more was the scarcity of unusual or offbeat names. A few occurred when boys were named for their fathers (Ernest, Merritt, and Bowman). Actually our Bowman (usually called “Bo”) had the first name of “Arthur.” Both of our Arthurs, were named for fathers, went by their middle names. The other was Arthur was usually “Pete” Brandt, except to the teachers, such as his aunt Mrs. Letzkus.

I’m don’t know about the origins of Justin or Vaughn. Actually “Justin” has risen in popularity and resided among the top 25 boys’ names from 1993 to 2003. In some places, Regis (we had 2, but it’s not on the chart) might seem exotic, but is there a Pittsburgher of our generation who didn’t listen to local radio phenomenon Rege Cordic? He was part of our morning routine.

The real outlier was Klaus, our foreign exchange student from Germany. I suspect his name might have been on the German baby list though, if one exists. Germany (as well as France and Scandinavia) have lists of approved first names. A baby must be given an approved name, or the child will not be legally recognized—so no Apples, Dakotas. or Jadens.

Can anyone think of an unusual name among the distaff side of our class? Winifred and Mildred were a trifle old-fashioned. The Babses may be history, but not the Emilys, a name that has been #1 for girls for 10 years and is still going strong. Others showing strength currently include Grace (20th), and of course Mary that "grand ole name" that held onto #1 for 46 years until it was supplanted for 6 years by Linda, fought its way back for another 9, then succumbed to the powerhouse of Lisa.

Perhaps we of the Silent Generation pre-dated the era of adventurous naming. According to an article by Peggy Orenstein The New York Times Magazine (7/6/03), “in the 20^th century, John, William, James, and Robert were, in some combination, the top three names for boys for more than 50 years.” Michael (we had 2) remains a perennial (2^nd place 2007).

This week I’m off to Wisconsin to catch up on my two grandsons—to the left, Eamonn, 3-3/4 years (off the chart for at least 50 years), and to the right Alexander, 8 months (11th in 2007). Eamonn’s spelling and pronunciation put him among the offbeat. Although Pat (3^rd place 1940) Henke Sexauer tells me she, too, has a grandson named Eamonn—thanks to his father and her son-in-law being really Irish.

Please let me know if I’ve miscounted or forgotten anyone.

Keds: Symbol for the Silent Generation?

2008-05-10T13:34:00.010-05:00

Haiku to a shoe:

soft canvas foot gloves

subtle, sturdy, stealthy, slight,

smooth soles hug summer

Mentioning “Keds” in my posting last week about the school picnic resulted in some comments from readers. They enlightened me about its several other meanings: (1) as an acronym for the Kendrick Extrication Device (KED) used in removing accident victims from motor vehicles; and (2) here in Ames, Iowa, home of the National Animal Disease Center, keds is the common name for louse flies, particularly the variety that can paralyze sheep.

Of course, I was referring to summertime inexpensive canvas shoes that have been produced in the U.S. for some 90 years—first by U.S. Rubber/Uniroyal and now by Stride Rite—the authentic sneakers, which live on despite competition from Nike, Adidas and all those pricey designer running shoes. In the 1950s, they were usually white with a small blue rectangular “Keds” trademark on the back of the heel. Wearing white anklets and brightening the canvas once a week with white shoe polish helped to conceal the worn spots over the big toes that appeared by late August after 3 months of wear.

Happily, Keds are still made. In fact, despite Wikipedia’s pronouncement awhile back that they are “dorky” and most wearers are from the age “40+ set,” the fashion industry has rediscovered my beloved shoes (now known as “Classic Champions”) for the Spring 2008 collections. In addition to their prominence in recent fashion magazines, models in the New York runway shows wore them (see right). So we’re cool again! In fact, I had trouble finding a new pair at the mall last week since the college kids have already grabbed them up (a steal at $25).

Although Keds were never as popular among the 1950s boys (perhaps overshadowed by Converse Chucks), my husband, Andrejs, recalls his first gym class in America in 1951. Fresh from a D.P. camp in Germany, he puzzled over the list of required clothing that included high-top Keds (with practical rubber-covered toes) and a white tee shirt—two items he’d never heard of. Eventually, the Latvian language (at least in the U.S.) added the noun “kedas” once all the young Latvian émigrés began wearing them. Their thrifty parents soon saw the advantage of outfitting their kids in kedas and džīnsas (jeans).

In high school, Andrejs became a standout in tennis, where Keds were the standard footwear. I remember the first day of my tennis lessons at Thelma Fansmith’s, before she’d allow us near her clay court, we had to show her the soles of our shoes. Those whose sneakers had patterned soles were sent packing.

To prove that I wasn’t the only Keds fan in 1958, see the yearbook photo of a posed looking basketball quartet (below) where three are wearing classic champion Keds—both seniors, Kathy Humphreys and Judy Roth (who seems to be seeking divine inspiration), and our phys. ed. teacher, Vera Brandt, a fashion plate in her tailored Bermuda shorts and argyle knee socks. Only our home ec teacher, Dorothy Drazenovich, has on the gym shoes (with the long laces) issued by N. Allegheny—to match the regulation gym suit. Perhaps it was out of loyalty to her husband, Joe, who may have had a hand in choosing the gym wear as NAHS’ first boys’ phys ed teacher.

THOSE ABOMINABLE GYM SUITS

Has any other article of apparel ever been designed that was quite as ugly and unflattering as those gym suits were? We tried to streamline them by tying the two ends of the self-belt in the back (tail-like)—as you can see Judy has done. And we rolled up those ridiculously long, flaring shorts (as all 3 wearers have done). My cousin Nancy Givens Williams reminded me how sometimes we tucked the flared shorts up around our underpants to create a bloomer effect. As Nancy says, “At first Mrs. Brandt forbid us to do it, but then she relented because it definitely looked better…not great…but better.”

Meanwhile, what were the boys wearing? White tee-shirts and green boxer shorts. Would it have been too indiscreet if we girls had worn that same outfit (minus the jockstraps, of course)?

If anyone still possesses a jolly green gym suit, could you please send me a color photo I can reprint? The color is hard to describe—and never existed in nature. Or could you bring your suit to the reunion Saturday night? And we promised, you wouldn’t have to model it!

This posting is dedicated to Eamonn’s and Alex’s wonderful mother, Brenda, my costume designing daughter, who likes me to write about clothes and who made me her mother about 40 years ago. And to everyone else’s mother as well, Happy Mother’s Day!

School Picnic

2008-05-03T11:23:00.011-05:00

As a kid, my three favorite days of the year were Christmas, my birthday, and the school picnic at West View Park. My friend, Joe Bullick, N. Allegheny’s local historian extraordinaire, says that when he attended Ingomar School (circa 1937), the picnic was in North Park. But all I can remember is how hyped up we were for that May day when schoolchildren from the entire district (and their teachers and janitors and mothers—fathers came after work) invaded West View. I believe we could get a ride down on a school bus; the drivers (like Pete Brandt’s Uncle Pat) enjoyed a day at the park, too.

A week or so beforehand the men from the park had come to school and sold us strips of tickets for the rides, which included an extra stripe of pink complementary tickets and maybe those 1¢ red tax tickets (whose bad idea were they?). Also I believe the school lavishly provided a ticket for a Dixie cup of ice cream during the afternoon.

Since its demise in 1977, many reminiscences about the old amusement park have been published, including a book (Goodbye, West View Park, Goodbye by Charles K. Jacques, Jr., 1984). Perhaps it’s just as well that I live far away so that my mental image of the park can’t ever blur. I’ll always visualize the drive down Perry Highway to include bumpety-bumping over the streetcar tracks and automatically glance to the right to see if a carload of screaming riders is about to make that plunge and snap around the hairpin curve of The Dips.

The park opened in May 1906 on 18-1/2 acres of swampy land in the newly formed borough of West View (more land was added throughout the 1950s). Not coincidently, the site was at the end of the Bellevue-West View trolley line. Streetcar companies were charged a flat fee for the electricity required to run their trolleys. Since there were few commuters on the weekend, the idea soon caught on (in other parts of Pittsburgh as well) of developing amusement parks at the end of the line as a destination (Kennywood still remains). Although Pittsburgh Railways Company didn’t own West View Park, they built a terminal facility and offered a special excursion fare. It was a Sharpsburg entrepreneur, Theodore Harton, and his associates who dammed up the stream running through the land to create Lake Placid with its fountain and various boats for rent. (I can still hear that park employee shouting through his bull horn that our time was up and we must bring that boat back immediately.) The narrow valley also had to be widened and pedestrian bridges built to connect the various hillside venues. That Pittsburghesque terrain that contributed to the charm of the place also hampered expansion, leading to the park’s downfall, I suspect.

The Dips was the first of its kind built in Pennsylvania. Among connoisseurs it’s known as “an out-and-back, wooden under-rail roller coaster”. My mother had a cast iron stomach and loved The Dips. I recall a number of her girl scouts—as soon as they were tall enough—asking her to take them on their first ride. And when I was 12 and such a scaredy cat, my Uncle Cy offered to buy me a pair of Keds (those white sneakers I dearly wanted) if I would go on The Dips, having master The Racing Whippets the previous summer. Again Mom obliged. She was good at filling up the seat so you felt there was no way to fall out.

I think my awe of going to the school picnic was greatest between 1948 and 1952 when West View Park seemed a fantasyland. By 1958, I was starting to notice its imperfections. The Midway was pretty dirty. Usually by afternoon several kids had lost their cookies after riding The Tilt-a-Whirl, but no one had cleaned it up. Cotton candy left a gritty taste in your mouth and when you went to get some water from the drinking fountains, it smelled like rotten eggs. There were rumors that on opening day a nest of snakes had been found by a rider on The Caterpillar. And clearly the prizes in the Penny Arcade were pretty crappy (although I always cherished that pen-shaped flashlight and the fortune that said I’d be in the movies).

We each have memories of the old park, many of them connected with our five senses: the sound of the cymbals clanging as the calliope played and the horses rose and sank on the wooden Merry-go-round; the view from the top of the Ferris wheel; the burnt rubber smell of the bumper cars in The Dodge’em (a good ride when it started raining); the sticky taste of Cracker Jack; and of course, the furtive kisses in the pitch black tunnel at the start of The Dips (not with my mother, however).

In my scrapbook I found a 1957 scorecard from the park’s miniature golf course. No more than 3 could play, and my opponents were Carol Kummer Gaus and Arnie Huwar. I guess I kept it because I beat them with a score of 51. That sounds pretty good until you notice that par is 40. And as someone who believes, along with Mark Twain, that golf is a nice walk spoiled, I know it was definitely the pinnacle of my career on the links. I even got a hole in one on the 10^th hole--“The School House.” We all bombed the 2^nd hole—remember how you had to swat the ball hard enough so it would go up through The Windmill and make the blades turn?

On a visit home around 1975, I took my two girls, Brenda and Lia, to West View Park along with Mom and my cousin Patty Orr. At ages 4 and 6, the kids enjoyed themselves but probably tired of hearing the adults extol the wonders of the place. At least on the ride back to Ingomar, one of them asked, “Next year will we go to Disneyland?”

Our Remarkable Wexford Neighbor: Dr. Jonas Salk

2008-04-26T15:47:00.007-05:00

I’ve spent most of this week in the hospital. My husband was having hip replacement surgery, and I was his head cheerleader and go-fer. He was released yesterday and is gamely learning to master the crutches, sleep in an unnaturally straight-legged position, and deal with the pain. Because of my preoccupation with medical matters, I thought I’d write this week about the worst epidemic in our young lives. And how it was successfully vanquished a little over 50 years ago--in our hometown of Pittsburgh by a man living in our midst.

In my posting for April 12, I reprinted the Allegheny Journal article mentioning that the famed virologist Jonas Salk spoke at the dedication of North Allegheny High School in October 1954. Last year I read Jeffrey Kluger’s book Splendid Solution (2004, Penguin paperback) about the conquest of polio by Dr. Salk and his research team at the University of Pittsburgh. Ames Public Library had selected it for a book club discussion led by a local physician. Knowing about the connection between N. Allegheny and Salk, my curiosity was whetted. A big crowd attended the discussion, and I was fascinated by the stories people of around my age told about surviving the disease or watching their siblings suffer from it and their parents deal with the aftermath.

The fear poliomyelitis (aka infantile paralysis) engendered in my family those summers of my young life (1947-1953) is still a vivid memory. It must have been especially hellish for new parents to see their infants, who were quite healthy one day, develop fever, chills, labored breathing, and eventually useless limbs in a matter of hours or days.

An Egyptian tomb carving from the 18^th dynasty of a boy with a dropped foot, an atrophied leg, and a walking stick suggests the disease may have been around for 4000 years. In the U.S., 1916 was a particularly bad year in eastern cities. Afflicted children were taken from their parents to isolation facilities where they stayed until they either died or recovered and returned home once they were no longer a danger to anyone else.

In 1952, my husband’s parents, who had recently arrived in Lancaster, Pa. from a displaced persons camp in Germany, were so worried about the safety of their young sons that they sent them out to the country for the summer to the farm of a fellow Latvian, where they thought the air would be better. Water was also suspected as the carrier of the polio virus (enlarged at the right). One summer when several classmates at Ingomar School got sick, my mother nixed all trips to North Park swimming pool for me, believing Windwood in Bradford Woods to be less dangerous.

Of course, the “poster child” for polio wasn’t a child at all, but the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. He contracted polio at age 39 in August 1921 after visiting a Boy Scout jamboree during a vacation at Campobello Island. Until 1945, when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, he never regained the use of his legs; his struggle with the disease contributed to public awareness and to financial support for polio research from the March of Dimes (over $2.5 million). FDR's personality also aided the perception that polio could be conquered.

Those photos of the poor kids consigned to iron lungs with only their heads visible were poignant images to me. “Iron lung” was just the common name for the negative pressure ventilator that mimicked the physiological action of breathing: by periodically altering pressure, it caused air to flow in and out of weakened lungs.

The Local Angle

Kluger’s book traces the life of Jonas Salk (1914 -1995). He was born in New York City, the eldest of three sons of Russian Jewish immigrants from Minsk (Belarus) who were garment workers. An intense, no-nonsense boy, Jonas attended City College of New York and NYU Medical School in pursuit of a career in medical research. After graduation and an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, he spent 5 years in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan developing an influenza vaccine in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Francis (who received most of the recognition for this achievement).

This slight rankled Salk, and when he was offered a position in virology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Medical School, he accepted immediately. The salary of $7,500 a year was 50% more than he had been paid at Michigan. It was also his chance to build his own lab. He didn’t decide to focus on creating a vaccine to prevent polio until after he started in autumn 1947.

What amazes me was the decision by Jonas and his wife Donna to rent a house at the intersection of Perry Highway and Maple Drive in Wexford. Jonas had his heart set on a home in the country with his own vegetable garden. In those days how many New York Jews chose such a gentile stronghold as the northern suburbs as a place to settle? And why would someone who spent 12+ hours per day in his lab in Oakland want to take on that commute? (Remember in those days there wasn’t even McKnight Road, let alone Rt. 279.) It wasn’t for the school system because Salk drove his sons to Sewickley Academy in his Studebaker on the way to the lab. And when would he have time to tend a garden anyway?

Although the cases of polio in the U.S. more than doubled between 1945 and 1946, the summers between 1947 and 1951 were even worse. Finally 1952 broke all records—57,879 cases reported. That summer things were so bad in Pittsburgh even attendance at Forbes Field dropped. But Salk and his team were closing in on an effective vaccine. He was confident enough of its safety that among the first children in the entire country to be inoculated were his own three sons—Peter (9), Darrell (6), and Jonathan (3). Salk brought his kit bag of syringes home and the first administering of the wonder vaccine occurred inWexford.

After 6 years, in autumn 1953 when the demands of the lab were especially heavy and field trails of the vaccine were underway, the Salks left Wexford and moved to a house 7 minutes from the lab. Still, Salk had a soft spot for his old neighborhood. Despite his grueling schedule, he agreed to be dedication speaker for our new high school.

I recommend Kluger’s book if you are interested in the details of how medical breakthroughs are made and the personalities and politics involved. Throughout the course of vaccine development, the rivalry between Salk and the older, imperious researcher Albert Sabin is described. Eventually Sabin’s live-virus vaccine administered orally supplanted Salk’s killed-virus injections. In 1962, Salk left Pittsburgh and moved to La Jolla, California, where he established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (taking some of his Pittsburgh colleagues with him). There he worked until his death (age 80) in 1995 on more polio vaccine research as well as studying multiple sclerosis and AIDS.

In 2000, after his death, the Center for Disease Control ruled that to eliminate the final lingering cases of polio in the U.S., Sabin’s vaccine would be phased out and replaced by Salk’s more effective killed formulation. The polio virus is nearly extinct today, and those scary epidemic years of our childhood now a dusty corner of medical history. (Incidentally, Jonas never received a Nobel Prize but he was rewarded by his three adoring sons all becoming physicians. They still live and work on the West Coast.

NAHS’s Contribution

My husband’s recent hospital sojourn made me think of the women in the Class of 1958 who chose nursing as a career. It is a vital, care-giving service rarely portrayed adequately on TV hospital series like “E.R.,” “House,” or “Chicago Hope,” where doctors, residents and interns dominate the speaking roles and nurses occasionally provide love interest but that’s all. We hear of the nursing shortage, the lack of proper funding for nursing schools, and the baby boomers will soon require more health care.

I knew early on that I was not made of the stern stuff that is required to tackle such a career, but I am deeply grateful to my classmates who were. I want to salute them: Norma Darling Goettmann, Carol Dingfelder Renner, Pat Henke Sexauer, Kathy Humphreys Oswald, Karen O’Connell Loeber, Judy Roth Morris, Grace “Rusty” Sherman, Ruth Ann Slack Scuticchio, Lois Sloan Mounsey, and Susan Tate Hurley. (Please let me know if I’ve forgotten anyone.)

The Moviegoer

2008-04-19T12:49:00.008-05:00

Fifty years ago today was my 18^th birthday. It seems all week I’ve been hearing about birthdays—on the 15th, Harry Potter’s friend, Hermione (Emily Watson) turned 18; on the 16^th, Pope Benedict XVI turned 81, on the 17^th, Bob Beilstein celebrated his 68^th, the 18^th was Conan O’Brien’s 45^th, and the 19^th, moi. And according to today’s newspaper, tomorrow on April 20, Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, the world’s oldest person, will turn 115. The same newspaper also carried an AP story about recent sociological research revealing “the happiest Americans are the oldest.” That should help me keep my longevity in perspective.

For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly how I celebrated on April 19, 1958. Probably the best present I received that week was the letter from the Allegheny College Admissions Office letting me know I was accepted. That year April 19 also fell on a Saturday, so a good guess is that I did what I most enjoyed on a Saturday night: I went on a movie date.

Getting dressed up and going into downtown Pittsburgh to a first-run theater— now that was really a first-class evening in my book. I fondly remember those movie palace’s: the Stanley, Fulton, Loew’s Penn, and Warner—the Loew’s Ritz on 5^th had closed a few years earlier, and the Art Cinema was far too risqué in those days (although I did sneak furtive looks at its posters on shopping days on my way down Liberty Ave. to the Harmony bus station).

I loved those early 20^th-century facades on the theaters and the absurd decadence of the interiors: ushers wore maroon uniforms; there were red plush chairs in the lobby, marble staircases led to the balcony (remember Loew’s Penn?), crystal chandeliers, and vaulted ceilings with ornate designs in the plaster. Even a trip down the thick carpeted stairs to the restrooms provided more opulence. When I was inside those theaters, I always felt I was born too late and had missed out on the decades when Pittsburgh was really voluptuous. (Little realizing that 50 years later none of these cinema's would even exist as I knew them. They would either be gentrified into the Benedum Center (Stanley), Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Byham (Fulton, see interior photo above), Heinz Hall (Loew’s Penn), or totally wrecked by a 2-story shopping center sold at sheriff sale in 2005 (Warner, see below). Ironically, the former porn peddler, the Art Cinema (at the right), has been refurbished by Pittsburgh Filmmakers as Harris Theater now showing arty films.

I also liked waiting behind the cordon of gold braid while the last audience filed out from the movie we were about to see. I watched for their reactions: tears, smiles, and chatting to each together was good, if they stared ahead blankly, I feared the worst. Then we entered the magic darkened world, my eyes riveted to the big screen, and the totality of escape from everything else began for a few hours.

I’m not sure which movies would have been playing in Pittsburgh on April 19, 1958. We might have gone to “Bridge on the River Kwai,” which had recently won 7 Oscars or “South Pacific,” released in March. I know I saw “Gigi” that summer (at the Warner—after they finally gave up showing those plot-less Cinerama features). Other films on my list that year included Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” “Auntie Mame,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Long, Hot Summer,” “Sayonara,” and “Three Faces of Eve.” I doubt we went to “Peyton Place.” I’d sneaked home a copy of Metalious' novel the previous year (probably in a paper bag to avoid my mother’s scrutiny), and I knew they’d sanitize the movie.

* * *

I realize I have a lot more to say about other movie memories (those Laurel & Hardy’s we watched in Ingomar School when we weren’t in ballroom dancing class. The matinees of oaters at the Girard and Perry Theaters. And those pits of iniquity, the drive-ins—Starlite in Wexford, Ranalli’s on Route 8, and Brookside down in the Franklin Twp. valley). But, hey, it’s my birthday and I need to go celebrate!

Just in parting, I’m providing a link to a cute poem "The Land that Made Me Me" (author unknown) that Marge Downer Arciniega sent me (click here). Hope you like it as much as I did.

When North Allegheny Was the New High School

2008-04-12T15:21:00.007-05:00

Classmate Terry McMahon reminded me of one of the things that makes the class of 1958 so special: When we graduated from the 4-year-old North Allegheny, we were the first class to go the whole way through. We never got shipped from “the country” to attend high school elsewhere. Terry says once when he told this factoid to his daughter, she asked if the school had dirt floors! Terry quickly set her straight—that North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School (as Dr. Vonarx never ceased to call it) was more modern than the school she was then attending.

The first two NAHS graduating classes (1956 and 1957) spent one or two years at Pittsburgh’s Perry High, still located at the corner of East Street and Perrysville Avenue looking much as it did in the 1950s. Before Perry, North Alleghenians were bussed down Perry Highway to West View High School, which was closer but became too crowded to take the country kids by 1951. In fact, Ross Township and the borough of West View built North Hills High School on Rochester Road shortly after NAHS.

The post-war boom led many families to flee the cities and move to the suburbs. Not until 1947, after war production ended, did Pittsburgh start to enforce smoke control ordinances. My parents bought a 1910, foreclosed house on Ingomar Road as a fixer-upper with a homeowner’s loan. They could never have afforded it before the Federal Housing Agency was created in 1934. The first day I skipped across the street to Ingomar School, my mom threw herself into PTA, Girl Scouts, and all manner of civic endeavors. I still remember the 100 dogwood saplings filling up our driveway one April. The PTA was selling them as a fund-raiser, the brainchild of my mom, who believed they would eventually turn Ingomar into a springtime paradise.

Near the end of the 1940s, the semi-rural communities 12 miles north of Pittsburgh began talking about cooperating to build their own high school. Eventually, the townships of McCandless, Franklin, and Marshall and the borough of Bradford Woods established a joint school district. (Since then, some municipal structures have changed: it’s now the borough of Franklin Park and the Town of McCandless.) Originally, Pine was included in the plans, but after a vote among that township’s citizenry, the kids from Pine and Richland continued to attend Mars High School. (The consensus was the location of the new high school in McCandless was just too far from them.)

In Spring 1952, ground was broken for the new high school across Cumberland Road and down the hill from St. John’s Lutheran Church (both the old—soon to become Cumberland Community Center—and the new), as this photo from The Allegheny Journal recorded it.

Caption: “BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the scene (left) was snapped just 2-1/2 years ago from almost the same spot as the view of the completed North Allegheny High School. It shows the crowd gathering for the groundbreaking ceremony on March 22, 1952, when the present site of the high school was a virgin blackberry patch.”

By then, local grade schools were bulging at the seams from the postwar baby boom. We 7^th graders from Ingomar and Bradford Woods were bussed over to Franklin Elementary for a year when our schools could no longer hold us. The following year, construction of the new high school had proceeded to the point where 7^th and 8^th grades of the entire North Allegheny school district could be housed together in the unfinished building—consisting of part of the main hall and three ramps farthest from the auditorium, closest to the shop. During the 1953-54 school year, we shared the construction site with carpenters, plasterers, electricians, and other workers who were building the school around us. Today OSHA might never have allowed it—or at least might have required us to wear hard hats and safety goggles.

The new school’s grand opening came early in the 1954-55 school year. After being cocks of the walk for the previous year, suddenly we were lowly 9^th graders. The intruding 10^th and 11^th graders arrived from Perry (while the 12^th graders from the district remained to graduate at Perry). It must have been quite a hiring fair to interview, screen, and select so many new teachers at once. Many of them were fresh from college and proceeded to energize the place. Did we really appreciate what a great opportunity this was for us?

Some of Our Perks

As Terry also remembered, “being part of a new school, we got to pick school colors, black and gold, and a school mascot, the tiger. I remember
the voting was between those chosen above, and black and green as school colors, and the alligator as mascot.”

A new school anthem had to be written (“We hail North Allegheny, its colors black and gold. Its modern beauty fills us with a joy that’s yet untold…and pledge our loyalty, etc.”) and a fight song for sports events (Tiger Rag). The names we gave to the newspaper (The North Star) and yearbook (Safari) continue today.

Terry says, “I played basketball for NAHS for four years, and during that first year with no seniors, we got killed. Didn't win a game; didn't even come close. I think we were like 22 losses and zero victories. But yet there was a silver lining for me: I got to play as a freshman, and Chuck Horne, our basketball coach, took me under his wing and really shaped my future.”

Lucky Us

G.B. Shaw is supposed to have said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” When I think of our good fortune in attending such a magnificent, state-of-the-art school, I fear we were not nearly grateful enough. In part, it was because we hadn’t spent any time at another school and had nothing to compare it with. The thought that soothes my conscience is imagining how our parents probably felt, how proud they must have been of this accomplishment. They are the age cohort that Tom Brokaw has called “the Greatest Generation,” because they came of age and endured the Great Depression, contributed (either in uniform or at home) to the World War II effort, and devoted the post-war years to building a stable country for their children (us).

Under the headline from the October 21, 1954 Allegheny Journal “North Allegheny School Ready for Dedication,” the lead article (excerpted below) captures some of their earnest pride. (Incidentally, reporter Peg Sweeney, my mom, wrote the story.)

Dr. Jonas Salk, famed discovered of the polio vaccine, which today offers such high hopes to parents everywhere, will be the principal speaker at the Dedication Services of the new North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School on Sunday afternoon, October 24, 1954, at 2 p.m. Dr. Salk has just returned from the International Conference on Polio in Rome, Italy, where he gave a paper before medicos from all over the world. It is seldom that his full schedule will permit of Dr. Salk’s speaking to lay groups but his interest in education is keen and the joint efforts of these North Allegheny communities to build a superior high school captured his imagination during the period of his former residence in this area. Dr. Salk moved into Pittsburgh from Perry Highway less than a year ago.

Dr. Thomas E. Carson, supervising principal of NAJSD, will preside at the dedication exercises. Although others have made great contributions, it has been said that Dr. Carson has probably done more than any other one individual during the past 6 years to make North Allegheny High School the splendid reality that it will become officially with its dedication next Sunday.

Others to appear on the platform on Sunday will be James A. Mitchell of Mitchell & Ritchey, Architects, will speak briefly on “Planning and Designing a High School.” Authority President Roy S. Thomas, Sr. will comment on “Building a High School.” Ivan Hosick, president of the Joint School Board, will point briefly to “A High School in Our Community.” Dr. A. W. Beattie, superintendent of Allegheny County schools, will touch on the aspects of “A New High School for Allegheny County.” M. Wayne Vonarx, high school principal, will discuss “The High School and You.”

The address by Dr. Salk will conclude the formal service, after which groups will be guided through the building by members of a committee consisting of 20 teachers, 20 parents, and 20 students. Mrs. Mary Letzkus is general chairman of the committee. Mrs. Robert van der Voort is chairman of the parent group. Building visitation will continue from the close of the ceremony until 6 p.m.

The dinner on Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. has been planned and sponsored by the Parent’s Association. …Tickets are limited to the seating capacity of the Cafeteria where it will be served. [I’ll skip the details other than to mention that the social chairman for the event was “Mrs. Don Rudolf, PE 4-8660,” Karen’s mom.]

Open House observances will continue through Tuesday and Wednesday evenings between 7 to 10 p.m. so that all interested persons will have an opportunity to see the new school—and maybe go back and take a second look if they can’t cover it all on one occasion.

The Boys of Summer in Ingomar

2008-04-05T14:08:00.009-05:00

“In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe!—George Carlin from his stand-up routine about the merits of Baseball versus Football (if you’d like to hear him perform it, go to YouTube; or if you don’t have sound, you can read it at www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml

“Play Ball!” cried umpires across the country this week, and my thoughts, like the first pitch, curved low and outside to a home plate long ago. My sincere enthusiasm for America’s National Pastime doesn’t extend to the professional leagues—not in 1947 and especially not in 2007. In 1947, my parents took me to my first baseball game at Forbes Field. The Pirates were playing the first-place Brooklyn Dodgers. I wasn’t savvy enough to appreciate then the historic figures I was watching: for the Bums, Jackie Robinson at 1^st base (Rookie of the Year), Peewee Reese at short, and Duke Snider in the outfield, while the Bucs had home-run slugger Ralph Kiner in their lineup.

The Pirates got trounced (no surprise in those days), but the thing that impressed me most about the game was when someone hit a high flying foul ball up into the stands. Suddenly, my dad and the men around us were on their feet. Daddy was holding up the felt hat he worn to the park and shouting, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Chaos reigns while I slouched down in my seat, and in the melee, my mom said in a rather annoyed tone, “No. I got it.” The ball had clunked her on the bean before ricocheting into Daddy’s hat.

Uncle Cy, who was listening to the game back home on the radio, told us later that the announcer had reported, “Now the man’s giving the baseball to the little girl, and the medics are escorting the woman to the first aid station. She seems to be walking without assistance.” My mother eventually came back clutching an ice bag to her temple, and the rest of the game was uneventful. Out of the experience I got an official National League baseball—white with hardly a scuff to the leather— and a lifelong fear of foul balls. Ever afterward whenever I’d hear that certain crack of the bat and see the first baseman looking skyward to his left toward the bleachers, I instinctively ducked.

But I do love the amateur game of baseball where youngsters learn teamwork and strategy while developing a combination of athletic skills—throwing, catching, and hitting a ball; running, sliding, stealing bases, and of course, spitting. If you’ve heard George Carlin’s routine about the difference between football and baseball, you’ve heard some of the reasons I prefer the latter.

My partiality for baseball is because it was so much a part of everyday life in my youth. Our house was directly across the street from Ingomar Elementary School and its big ole clay baseball diamond. My mother cursed the dust that blew over from it and coated living room furniture during dry spells. Few evenings in the spring or summer didn’t have a league game, a practice, or at least 3 kids playing One Old Cat, as my uncle watched from the front porch glider.

In the early 1950s a phenomenon swept the neighborhood, thanks to a short Texan with tall ambitions and amazing stamina named Addison A. Vestal (and known to us as Bill’s dad), who rapidly created an empire, the Ingomar Athletic Association. Little League baseball arrived, and soon we were seeing organized leagues for all ages over at the field: Little (age 9-12), with its minor division (7-11), Pony (13-14), Colt (15-16), and North Allegheny Prep (15 and older).

In 1953, the first year of Little League play, Mr. Vestal asked me to keep the score along with his daughter, Gwen. Perhaps he was experiencing early feminist stirrings (nowadays I believe Little League has a girl’s softball division). We served an internship that year under the guidance of E. G. Roessler (Ernie’s dad, sometimes referred to as “Big Ernie”) since our judgment was not immediately trusted to record the finer details of errors, unearned runs, and sacrifice flies.

Apparently it worked out well enough because in future years, I continued to be a scorekeeper along with other teenage girls, sitting behind the batting cage for a good view of the diamond while recording the game details (in pencil) in the official scoring book. I remember among my scoring colleagues were Carolyn Kummer, my Ingomar best friend of all times; Suann Lively; Janet Gilleland; and Nancy Hannan. I don’t believe Ingomar field ever had a scoreboard with runs posted for all to see. That came later when Mr. Vestal built the Little League field down by Pine Creek. At Ingomar, if you wanted to know the score, you just asked whoever was already sitting up on the grassy bank to the right of the field. Benches were few and most were not good vantage points. It was never a problem. Mrs. Hannan (Chuck’s mother) always knew the score.

When thinking about those sandlot games, invariably I see not just Nancy and her ever-present mom, but the entire Hannan family. They were (and to my mind, still are) the perfect baseball family. Bob Jr. (catcher) and Chuck (shortstop) were great team players, always picked for the all-star teams; their dad, Bob Sr., was the unflappable coach of the Wexford Pony League team and later manager of North Allegheny Prep League Indians (coached by NAHS’ Lyle Fox). Brothers David was a few years younger and little Billy served as batboy when he was not much bigger than the equipment he was dragging around. The Hannons epitomized good sportsmanship, calmness, and devotion to the game. I think the only time I ever saw Mr. Hannan lose his temper was when he was coaching our 1955 Prep All-Star team; the opposing side was Munhall, where the game was played. As I wrote in my scrapbook afterward, “We lost to Munhall, who became world champs (chumps). Will always remember the umpire who was a ‘homer’ and Mr. Hannan getting kicked out of the game when the Munhall management refused to turn on the lights during the last 2 innings.”

The “Boys of Summer” were the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers in Roger Kahn’s book by that name. Below I’m listing my boys of summer (c. 1953-58), but only those from the NAHS class of 1958. Many more had their hits, runs, and alas, errors recorded in my scorebook. Please tell me if I’ve missed anyone:

Little League (1953); Chuck Hannan, Ernie Roessler, and Bill Vestal (who always batted 4^th, for good reason).

Pony League (1954): the first-place Wexford team had Chuck and Ernie plus Paul Mahoney, Bob Richard, and Bob Schmieler; Ingomar had Bill and Arthur "Pete" Brandt; Fairhill had Chuck Gruber and Arnie Huwar; and Highland had Ron Huch.

Colt League (1956): in addition to those already mentioned were Bob Beilstein, Tom Brunt, Ed Florak, Mike McKay, Jack Miller, and Ken Nagie.

Many of the guys above also played for the Indians in the North Allegheny Prep League, plus John Allardice and Ron Sutter.

Pink Carnation Time

2008-03-29T17:09:00.012-05:00

“A white sport coat and a pink carnation (do-wah)
I'm all dressed up for the dance (bom-a-bom-bom-bom)
A white sports coat and a pink carnation (do-wah)
I'm all alone in romance (bom-a-bom-bom-bom)

Once you told me long ago,
To the prom with me you'd go
Now you've changed your mind it seems,
Someone else will hold my dreams

A white sport coat and a pink carnation (do-wah)
I’m in a blue, blue mood.”

According to his son, Marty Robbins got the idea for this rock ’n roll hit as he passed an Ohio high school where a prom was going on in spring 1956. He and his group recorded it in 1957—just in time for our Junior Prom on April 26, 1957. Do you remember if Baron Elliot’s orchestra played it for us?

I thought of that dance and song yesterday as I raked leftover leaves in the front yard and witnessed an unusual sight: a skinny, young guy parked across the street, got out of a black Jeep Commander, and knocked on a neighbor’s door. He was wearing a black tux—it had baggy pants and was much too loose through the shoulders. (Have you noticed most teenage boys haven’t developed necks yet—and, of course, their grandfathers no longer have necks?) I first thought funeral or choir concert, but it was 5 in the afternoon. Then the neighbor’s son came out—in similar gear—and the two drove off. Ah yes, it was junior prom night as Ames High. Either the two were picking up their dates and going to dinner,—or maybe they were each other’s date.

Nowadays dinner before the dance is de rigueur—and not at the likes of Eberhard’s Diner (on the Wexford flat) for chicken in a basket or Delney’s (on McKnight) for a cheeseburger and fries, as our options would have neen out in the wilds of northern Allegheny County in 1957! No doubt these prom-goers were heading for Ames’ new Fuji Restaurant for sushi or something even grander 30 miles south in Des Moines.

I was impressed that they were wearing black dinner jackets and bowties. Dressing up in the 50s was a large part of the fun for me. I loved planning and sewing my own prom dresses, which began with a trip into Pittsburgh to Kaufmann’s yard goods department (half of that floor in those days was filled with bolts of wonderful fabrics). And picking out a sophisticated Vogue pattern made me feel haute couture and really hot stuff! I hadn’t yet realized that I was sewing because my folks couldn’t have afforded to buy me some frothy tulle creation off the racks at Joseph Horne’s.

My husband laughs at how I remember what I was wearing when we talk about events from our past, like Martin Luther King’s March on Washington (Summer 1963) or National Honor Society initiation (1957, which was supposed to be a surprise).

The Junior Prom dress was my all-time favorite. The Kodak photo (left) doesn’t do justice to that full-length dress, shimmery and pale blue. Of course, it required at least 3 of those highly starched, crinoline petticoats to give it the right drape. As I recall, male escorts only had to wear suits and ties to the Junior Prom but formal wear to the Senior Prom (May 9, 1958). And that dress (right) made from red satin with a flowered silk accent accompanied me to college for a year or two. (What was the photographer thinking when she posed me next to that yellow Monticello wallpaper!)

Below is a link if you’d like to see a video at You Tube while listening to Robbins’ sing about that Pink Carnation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_IH0Zw6Syo

And those dance programs (from top to bottom) are from the Senior Prom 1957, Junior Prom 1957, Senior Prom 1958, and Junior Prom 1956.

The Beep-Beep-Beep Heard Round the World

2008-03-27T12:02:00.007-05:00

Most of the time I’m not very serious—nor so long-winded, but in this posting I want to write about the most world-altering event of a lifetime. It occurred the fall of my senior year.

On October 4, 1957, the eve of my taking SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test), the high-stakes college admission exam, the startling news broke: the Soviet Union fired off a rocket in Kazakhstan powerful enough to launch the first satellite into orbit. Sputnik I was a 184-pound shiny metal basketball that emitted beep-beep-beeps for 3 months as it circled the earth every 90 minutes. Little did we test-takers realize that in the aftermath this space shot our lives would change dramatically.

Initially, it was just an oddity when the night sky was clear. Sputnik I could be seen—or so we thought. Actually, it was the spent booster rocket’s second stage that we were watching. And the next month (November 1957), Sputnik II followed--with the first living creature in space, that poor dog Laika on board, who died from the heat within a week

I only vaguely remember Sputnik being mentioned by the carload of us high school seniors making the long drive from the North Hills to the campus of Carnegie Tech (now Mellon) where the 3-hour, multiple-choice College Boards were administered.

Sample questions from analogy section: Cat is to dog as oak is to:

a. acorn
b. beech
c. rosebush
d. none of the above

Since we were sleep-deprived after cramming vocabulary words and hitting the road so early, this phenomenal event hadn’t quite sunk in. The Cold War was at its height in the 1950s, and here was the US’s fearsome enemy, the USSR, leading us into the space race. Weren’t we invulnerable, and weren’t they backward, repressive, and technologically inferior? We seniors couldn’t quite believe it had happened, nor could we envision the huge changes in math and science education that lay just over the horizon. Some of us would change our college plans, choosing aeronautical over civil engineering or astrophysics over biochemistry. Younger siblings still at North Allegheny High would now be urged to excel in harder advanced science and math courses in Sputnik’s wake.

To mark the 50^th anniversary, the Air Force Space Command website [click on underlined name to link to it] provided a succinct explanation about why Sputnik beat Explorer, the first US satellite, and what has been the long-term significance of the launch—if you’re interested in more detail.

Actually, Sputnik didn’t change my trajectory. I managed to do well enough on SAT to get admitted to Allegheny College up in Meadville and become (sigh) an English major. Nearly 10 years later, I had my only brush with outer space. Since publishing was my field, I was a part-time editorial assistant, when my daughters were small, with the Astrophysical Journal, which had an office at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Since SAO was headquarters for the world’s satellite tracking network, I had the privilege of buying my coffee outside at the same Mr. Snack truck with one of the most eminent scientific brain trusts of the 1970s.

Fast Forward 50 Years

But here we are in 2008 and the Sputnik spurt has splashed down, according to a recent Associate Press story:

The aerospace and defense sector is bracing for a potential brain drain over the next decade as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. The problem: almost 60% of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 are 45 or older….

Not only did our generation (and the next) answer the call to put the US into space and onto the moon, but in the flight they provided the whole world with electronic marvels that still amaze. The impetus came in February 1958 when the US Department of Defense established its greatest success (in my opinion): ARPA (the Advanced Research Project Agency), responsible for funding the development of new technology for use by the military. In the 1960s, huge amounts of funding flowed from federal agencies to universities allowing basic science researchers to be creative. What did they produce? Computers, robotics, artificial intelligence, lasers, faxes, GPS, WiFi, etc. And the most wonderful technology of all (originally called Arpanet), which allows grandmas like me to publish our thoughts and fire them off to anyone in the world of cyberspace willing to read our blogs--the Internet superhighway leading to the World Wide Web!

How ironic. Because of the technological success of our generation, US universities are awarding 2-1/2 times more engineering, math, and now computer science degrees than they did 40 years ago. But the best and brightest young scientific graduates are taking jobs with Google, Microsoft, Dell, Apple, and Verizon. They sure aren't going into teaching math and science. So philanthropists like Bill Gates are sinking some of their largesse into improving high school science and math programs. Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor and producer of sophisticated hardware, is sending it employees into elementary schools as volunteer tutors. What goes around comes around.

Of course, today the kinds of degrees and career paths graduates are following have mushroomed, which reminds me of the nuclear cloud that was the specter on that 1958 horizon of ours. I’m not sure there is any propellant in 2008 as powerful as that was.

# # #

I intend to blog on a weekly basis about My Senior Moments from the 1950s with the hope of jogging some memories. Please! Chime in with your thoughts by clicking below on “Comments.” Did Sputnik change your plans? Do you have computer fixation, too?

Welcome, especially Class of 1958

2008-03-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

The first time I heard someone say, “I guess I’m having a senior moment,” was about 10 years ago. My cool sister-in-law uttered it when she had someone’s name on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite remember it. Since then, I have had countless senior moments over names, misplaced glasses and keys, and trips to the pantry where I stare at the shelves trying to remember what I came for. People tell me to write things down, and I now have several lists, 3 appointment calendars strategically placed around the house, and post-its on my computer desktop. Of course, they often get lost, too—except for the post-its, which I must log-on to see.

But even if memory too often fails me nowadays, it also manages to store odd detritus from the past (some quite useless). For example, I remember where my high school locker was, do you? I know all the words to musical jingles, such as “We are the men of Texaco, we work from Maine to Mexico… ” from the commercial at the beginning of Milton Berle’s 1950’s TV show. Now why is that?

Sometimes in the midst of daily activities, I’ll have moments of remembering pleasant things from the past. Writing about that Texaco jingle, sung by that quartet of guys dressed in service station attendant uniforms, reminds me of the time when not only was gasoline cheap, but the guy who pumped it for you also washed your windshield and asked, “Shall I check the oil?”

I started this blog to remember some of these things, moments when we were high school seniors (or at least during that decade of the 1950s) as my contribution to the Class of 1958’s golden reunion year. Next week I plan to blog about Sputnik, which also celebrated a 50^th anniversary this past fall.

I welcome your comments, and I’ll try to add a new posting at least weekly. So please bookmark me and check back. To add comments, click on “Comments,” which will take you to the "Leave Your Comment" page. That way I can read and even comment on your comment before posting it on the blog. (Or if you just want to comment and not have it posted, I’ll honor that, too.) Everything goes to my e-mail account first.