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Highlights of My Young Days |
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Your
correspondence about early memories has brought to my mind a number
of highlights of my young days:
As Alan mentioned the lead soldiers, it was in that very room,
the back room, that we made root beer ("we" were my
older brothers, I just watched).
Using a folded soccer ball bladder, we filled it with stove gas
and then squeezed it into a balloon. Repeated two or more times
the balloon would become full. We tied identifying post cards
to the balloons and released them from the back yard by the garage.
In one instance we got a call from Webster Groves about a half
hour after we released one of them. One that Gwynn released went
550 miles, the family record, landing in Wisconsin.
In the house, we would add a piece of clay to the bottom of a
balloon to make it float level...then we would release it and
watch it move with the air currents....usually ending up at the
door to the cellar.
We would also fill balloons with water and toss them down from
the porch roof onto the front walk...right in front of somebody
if circumstances permitted.
There was a lot of model airplane building. Dan made one that
used an egg beater tool to wind up the rubber band. He let it
go in the big field on Geyer Road up by Manchester. It flew on
and on....the longest flight I ever saw from the planes in our
family. I remember him chasing it through knee high grass.
Gwynn made a non-flying model of a commercial aircraft. It was
so professionally done that the craft store on Kirkwood Road asked
to put it in their window.
We made a lot of kites. Gwynn won a contest at school with one
consisting of a large oak leaf....controlled by a thin thread.
Joan and I made one out of brown wrapping paper with bamboo strips.
It was 6' high and we flew it from Kirkwood Park (Argonne and
Geyer). We let it out with almost a thousand feet of string and
we had the impression that it was over downtown Kirkwood but in
retrospect that doesn't seem likely.
Take a wooden match and with a razor put a notch at its end. Put
two pieces of paper in the notch and bend them to make a four
fin tail. Put a straight pin to its other end...wrapped securely
with thread. Throw this dart around the house...preferably finding
a target it could stick to. Two or more guys follow each other
trying to get as close to the first thrower as possible (I don't
remember how you determined a winner).
Take a large strike-anywhere match, make a four fin tail and throw
it down from the front porch roof onto the sidewalk where it would
burst into flames. You could also light the match before you threw
it and it would make a nice trail of fire....especially effective
at night.
Take a shirt cardboard from the newly delivered laundry bag and
cut it into little sleds that fit the railing of the stairs. Push
them to get them started and see how fast you could make it go.
Try different designs to find which were best
Straddle the railing with your legs and slide down backwards.
Lie on the stairs belly down and slide down headfirst. Sit on
the stairs and slide down.
We made wax record recordings of a great range of ideas....many
silly but some ingenious. When Bill Ewald brought his wife to
the house in 1948 I asked him if he would like to play some for
her. He was horrified. When Bob Harper came to Aiken a few years
back with his wife I told him that Glenna had made cassette tapes
from some of them and would he be interested in having his wife
hear them He was horrified. I remember that once we made a record
it was almost impossible to destroy it....we tried cutting with
knives, stomping on them, etc.
We played cork ball by the north side of the garage. Hank Dizney,
Bill Hoeman, and Mac were some of the regulars. Anything hit over
the street was a homerun..there were only a few. Mac hit the longest..over
the Osage tree and up into the Priest's yard.
In the play room we would build towers of 2x4x8 lumber blocks....I
think Al Evers made them....we would hide under a card table and
pull the towers down by knocking out one of the base pieces with
a stick. Sometimes the blocks would hit the card table.
We played a lot of ante-over...over the garage and over the house...usually
with a tennis ball. A very tense game with surprises as the enemy
came running around into your territory....especially when we
used the house.
We took over the vacant lot on the northwest corner of Washington
and VanBuren. It was perfect for a place to play ball. When we
were digging around to level it we found a white piece of porcelin
showing a chick coming out of an egg...so we called the lot the
"Broken Egg." Hank Dizney and Bill Hoeman were regulars.
We had a lot of good games there and every now and then a stout
lady would appear on the porch of the house to the north. Once
or twice she scolded us for making too much noise...it wouldn't
have been bad language because we didn't use any. It was Mrs.
James and when any of us saw her on the porch we would call out,"Look
out, there's ol' lady James."
The lot also had remarkable, deep trenches caused by erosion.
It also had tall, 5 or 6', stiff weeds that were perfect as lances.
When you pulled one up with some dirt on the root it was easy
to throw. We had war games with people jumping in and out of the
trenches.
We had a season when we bet on horses. We would read the racing
page in the paper carefully....and I think we understood the language
and symbols. We would select our favorite horses and the next
day we would pay off the winner with play paper money. Hank ,Bill
Hoeman, and Bob Shepherd were active in this.
We played a lot of croquet....in the north yard. Mac and I devised
a golf-croquet game which went around the house....wickets were
strategically placed. The course required crossing the front sidewalk
once and the driveway twice. Mac set the record of 29 strokes.
In the winter Washington Avenue would sometimes get a lot of snow
and with the cars going over it we'd get packed snow-ice for good
sledding. The street sloped from East to West and from Harrison
Avenue we'd run and flop on the packed snow-ice. We'd go nearly
half the block before we stalled.
We would blow big bubbles. Up on the front porch roof we would
let them go and the wind would sometimes take them up high in
the air.
We built a horse shoe set up behind the garage. With the help
of Al Evers, we set up two lights, one over each stake....the
power must have come from the garage. I'll never forget throwing
the shoe up until it got lost in the dark and then it would become
visible as it descended into the light.
Of course the big lot between our house and the Hoeman's was the
central location for football and softball.
That was where most of our athletic activities took place.
We did a lot of bike riding up and down Harrison Avenue right
within our same block. And then we played a lot of hockey...roller
skates...on the street. We would play until dark and we hated
to go in for dinner.
Sometimes we would take a short piece of hose down in front of
the kindergarten....have a string tied to it...and place it by
the sidewalk (at night). We would hide and when someone would
be walking near we would pull the snake across in front of them.
Nobody ever jumped in fright but they would stop and look around
in the grass.
We played a lot of cards especially in the summer and often in
the cool damp basement...in the room with the shower. Michigan
seemed to be our favorite game.
Dad was studying the Foucault pendulum and decided to build one
in the front room. Al Evers made a bracket that had a real sharp
metal point resting on a hard metal plate. Dad fastened it to
the ceiling of the front room....it had a heavy weight on a cord.
At ten or eleven in the night he began swinging it...we got up
about seven the next morning and there it was still moving...slightly...and
moving in the different plane we expected. Dan didn't appear surprised
or excited...he just said, "See, it's in the different plane."
To investigate all of Dad's experiments and inventions would take
the space of a book..and would have us take leave of this topic.
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