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.
Chapter 4 After School 1936-1940
After High School 1936-1940
During the summer of 1936 I tried working as a grocery clerk on Main Street. The people who traded there were mostly Italians and most spoke very little English, so I couldn't understand them. At that time you had to get each item for the customer and after two days of trying to figure out what they wanted I was so nervous that I had to quit. Then I went to work for my father in the painting business. My first job was painting a wooden railing down to the lake at a cottage on the West Lake Road. I started out at fifty cents per hour. My father used to take all the jobs, arrange the work and do the collection. We had a very good line of customers and in all the years I worked with him, we only had one customer who refused to pay all of his bill.
About 1937 Dorothy was working for a state official as a secretary, in Hornell, New York and she had a 1929 Ford coupe that she wanted to sell. She and Barney had been married and they didn't need two cars. They were living in an upstairs apartment and Barney had started working as a plumber for the man in the lower apartment who ran a plumbing business. My mother bought the car for me for $50.00 and I went to Hornell to get the car. I had just got my drivers license and driving alone for the first time I didn't dare stop the car on the way home. I just slowed down a little at intersections and I remember making a right turn in Dansville through a red light as I didn't dare stop. I soon got used to the car and admired the rumble seat in the back. Ray Smith and I used this car to go to all our baseball games and take our dates to all the square dances. I named the car "Little Eva".