School Years
I started school in 1923 and went to the Adelaide Avenue School for
grades 1 to 3. I attended the old Union School, where the YMCA is now
located, for grades 4 through 8. I attended High School at the Academy
on North Main Street. My first two years of high school were
uneventful. In my Junior year Ken Montanye and I were on the baseball
team and from then on all we could think about was baseball. Ken was
so crazy about playing that he would stay for practice after school
and then have to walk all the way home to Cheshire.
Being able to run so fast, I might have been very good on the track
team or at soccer. All the meets would come on the same day so I had
to choose just one and baseball was my choice. One time they needed
someone to run the hundred yard dash in the sectional meet at Geneva.
as there was no baseball game that day, they showed me how to use the
starting block and away we went! I came in third place about three
feet behind the winner so there is no telling what I could have done
with training and practice.
Clarence bought me a cloth jacket and I wore it all four years of high
school. By the time I graduated the cuffs and collar were almost worn
off. These were the years following the Depression and there was
little money for clothes. I remember getting my first suit for
graduation. It was Oxford Grey and cost $26. I bought it myself and
made the mistake of getting it too small and it was outgrown in about
a year.
The boy next door and I would walk to school together and had one
thing we loved to do. We would save firecrackers from the Fourth of
July and in the winter time, going up Main Street, we would put a
firecracker in a snowball, light it, throw it up in the air over the
kids walking on the other side of the street. We were real proud
because we were the only ones with firecrackers. We also would build
forts of snow in the lot behind our house and then put firecrackers in
snowballs and throw them into the front of the enemy's fort, trying to
blow it down. We were just lucky that no one ever got hurt during
these pranks.
I never had to much homework in school because I could remember
everything I read. History dates and Chemistry formulas were easy for
me although sometimes I didn't know what they meant. English, math and
algebra were almost impossible for me and I barely passed. I got only
52 in Latin and didn't know why anyone would take that subject anyway.
I had a small part in the Senior Play and the night before the
performance the male lead came down with acute appendicitis and went
to the hospital. They wanted someone else in the play to take his
place and they would prompt him from side stage. I knew all his lines
by heart and I could have played the part with no prompting at all.
But, to my utter dismay, the hero had to kiss the heroine!! She
naturally was the prettiest little girl in the whole school. I
realized that kissing her would be a whole lot different than playing
baseball and I couldn't take the chance. Imagine turning down the
chance of the lead in the Senior Play for a stupid reason like that!
Three or four years later I began to notice girls and wished that I
had taken the lead part.
In 1936 I took a post graduate year just so I could play baseball
another year. Ken Montanye was in his senior year so he would be
playing too. I hadn't decided what kind of work I was going to do, so
thought that I might as well go to school. I took just morning
subjects, Physics and Chemistry because I liked the teacher so well. I
had gotten 91 in Chemistry my Senior year and took it over again to
try to raise my mark. When I took the Regents Exam at the end of the
year, they gave you three hours to do the exam. The Chemistry and
Physics exams were both the same afternoon. I completed both in 1 1/2
hours before anyone else had finished even one. I got 96 in Chemistry
and 99 in Physics. This was about the only good thing I did in high
school.
On St. Patrick's Day in 1936 we had a very bad ice storm and the big
trees in our front yard were hit hard. Big limbs about one foot in
diameter were coming down. They sounded just like cannon shots and
kept us awake most of the night. One big limb was laying across the
roof and we had to get up there and saw it in pieces and patch the
hole in the ridge. Every time I go by the house I can still see the
indentation in the ridge of the roof where the tree hit 50 years ago.
The winter pear tree in the side yard by the driveway is still there
and bears fruit as it did in the 1920s. There was no traffic on the
road during that storm as the roads were filled with trees. I started
for school with my lunch bag in hand, and going up Main Street the
only place to walk was about six feet wide in the center. I got almost
to the Academy when I met kids coming back who were saying there was
no school. I started for home and stopped at the bridge over Sucker
Brook on Chapen Street. I went down under the bridge and ate my lunch.
My father and brother spent the next three days cutting up the trees
in our front yard. We kept warm because of the coal furnace but had no
electricity for days.
I still believe that we had more snow in those days than we do now.
One time we made a tunnel out from the back door about fifteen feet
before we got into the open and used it that way until it melted.
Another time Jack VanBrooker's car was stuck up on Thad Chapin and the
next day we went up to look for it digging holes in the snow until we
found the roof. My lunch time during my Senior year was an hour long
and I would run all the way from the high school to the west end of
Chapin Street, get a sandwich and run back to school. I ran down Main
Street and cut through Wilcox Lane, near where the Palmers lived,
across the railroad tracks and through the swamp where the Elementary
School was eventually built, then over Pearl Street. It was almost two
miles each way so if I had been on the track team I would have done
well. That swampy area below the tracks had enough water in it in the
winter time to make a hockey rink if you didn't mind a few bushes
growing up here and there. I was on a hockey team and played there a
couple of winters. Sometimes we would also play hockey on the lake by
Kershaw Park.