MELHORN'S CORNER

      The Four Tops' "Same Old Song" blared from the jukebox in the corner while the four of us puffed away on Old Golds, blowing smoke so thick you could have cut it with a knife pawned at Richie Wallace's.  We were nursing our bottles of Coke, about 15 cents a bottle and deposit- worthy those days, when suddenly Lou Melhorn swept his arm from his side toward the exit.  "All you boys do is come here to smoke behind your mothers' backs," he cried in that reedy voice of his.  "Now get the Hell out of here."
      Hell was a smokey place we had heard, perhaps not so smokey as the ledge upon which we were now smoking outside Melhorn's overlooking the sidewalk.  We were somewhat critical of Lou's entrepreneurial skills.  How could any T-town businessman risk losing such big and influential spenders to perhaps Happy's up the other side of the block or even to Rudy's near the high school.  Crossing over the north end boundary of Cleveland Street was akin to scaling the Berlin Wall because a few north end toughies always seemed to materialized out of the Ohio Valley pollution and participate in their favorite pastime: rearranging your face simply because they didn't like your looks.
      Me, Tim Maple and the two Jocko twins would take our 27 cents elsewhere and tell Lou where to stick his Popsicle sticks.
      Back then tobacco companies like Lucky Strikes, Marlboro, Winston and Old Gold advertised on television how relaxing, soothing and James Dean cool cigarette smoking was.  The only side affects that we knew of was that smoking stunted your growth.  So whenever a faintly familiar car would approach along Trenton Street, we would deftly cup our mouldering smokes inside the palms of our hands because we did not want the Red Knight coaches thinking the next Don Sutherins and George Deideriches were going to develop into some puny weaklings good for only practice dummies.
       Coming from the direction of Lenny's Sunoco down our side of Trenton was Doughnuts, stooped over as though looking for money, hands folded behind his back.  Occasionally, he stopped inside Melhorn's to drink tea from a saucer.
      A cocker spaniel yapped along the white picket fence two lawns above us.  Doughnuts slipped a hand into a pocket of the baggy hobo jacket he always wore--even in the dog days of summer as was this day--and stuck his hand inside the fence, the dog licking the treat from his hand and Doughnuts's face.
      One of us, probably a Jocko, would have asked Doughnuts how he was doing, but Doughnuts would have most likely told us "None of our God-damned business" as he did the day before.  We watched Doughnuts shuffle down Trenton Street onto the overhead bridge, only seeing his blue ball-capped head appear as he ascended the summit of the bridge.
      We knew any moment Lou would beg us to go back inside to spend the 27 cents remaining amongst us.  Five, six…15 minutes later we were still awaiting the apology when Bill Jaco came lumbering toward us toting a black umbrella with a wooden hook despite the cloudless sky.  Bill was making his early evening rounds and we could tell by the pizza sauce and chocolate on his white sleeveless T-shirt he had already made his stops at Johnny's Pizza and the Dairy Aisle.
      "How's it hanging, Bill?" one of the Jockos asked.  I couldn't tell which Jocko; they both looked the same that day.
      Bill stuck out that footlong pointer finger of his and poked Jocko right in the stomach.  "Whoops!" Bill said.  His voice sounded as though it trumpeted through an elephant trunk.  To us, his shoulders were as broad as an elephant's.
       A white Ford Fairlane rolled to a stop at the corner.  "Ford junk," Bill tooted as though he were reading a fact from the Encyclopedia Britannica.  "Ford junk.  Hit a bump and the seat falls down."
      The driver rolled his window down, asked Bill, "Can you tell me where Clarke's Funeral is?"
      The man was obviously from out of town.  Only out-of-towners got lost in this town of 7,000 residents or stopped for the stop sign at the bottom of the overhead bridge.
      "Up bay," Bill trumpeted, "Up bay."  Toot fix Fords.  Fix junk.  Clarkie's goosey.  Clarkie's full of stiffs."
      Bill was talking talk only T-towners could interpret while the out-of-towner just shook his head from side to side.  Bill must have seen the guy's wife in the car and said, "Man marries woman something loose--something loose."
       Finally, the man poked his head out the window and shouted, "Man, you are completely nuts!"
      Bill merely eyed the man as if adding another nut to a town already full of nuts and then said," "Not lost."
      The man peeled rubber onto Trenton, smoke fountaining from his wheels still crossing Findlay.  Bill philosophically said, "Town's full of nuts" and then lumbered his way toward downtown.
      The four of us figured we would let Lou off easy and returned inside, lit up four Old Golds while we listened to "The Same Old Song."
   

THE OLD TORONTO POOL

Looking east from Little League ball field.

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Baby Pool, circa 1956

     In the mind's eye, the best way to lap around the old Toronto Memorial Pool would not be performed by swimming around its white-walled basin.
      Rather, it would be by padding barefoot along the gritty, puddled concrete deck, past the powder-blue sliding board, past the white wooden lifeguard chairs, past the buoyed rope separating the shallow and deep sides of the topaz water and then onto the high and low diving boards, the stroll enriched with the shrieks and laughter of children, the piercing whistle of a teenage lifeguard, the coconut aroma of Coppertone suntan lotion mixed with the pungent taste of chlorine while the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" blares from a transistor radio.
       The stroll back in time is nearly complete when the aluminum ladder of a diving board is ascended, the fiberglass bows and catapults, and a "kerplunk" resounds and soon follows is the well angled geyser of a can-opener, drenching the few fully clad adults leaning upon the white railing of the spectator section, the lap finished, the water receding and receding--swept away with the waves of nostalgia.
      For a little more than three decades, the Toronto Memorial Pool provided local youths with their primary source of summer recreation and social activity and, years later, still fresh memories.
      John Romey, longtime recreation supervisor and civic leader in the Gem City, grew up during the 1950s, putting in plenty of recreational time at Memorial Park.
      "The old pool was exactly the same as the one at Marland Heights in Weirton," he said.  "Identical.   There were two levels.  The bottom level was for women and men to change clothes, the same level the present pool is located.
       "It was fun, exciting for a kid," continued Romey.  "We had pretty good crowds.  People came to view as spectators."
       Being a longtime recreation supervisor, Romey pointed out that many laws regarding the operation and maintenance of a municipal pool have changed, including one from a period that did not shine so brightly in the Gem City.
       "Way back in the beginning, it was segregated," Romey said about the town's swimming pool.  "I could never understand it.  That was a part of segregation those days.  It was not unique to Toronto.  It was part of the times."
      African-Americans were granted access to Memorial Park Pool only on Tuesday.  Segregation ended at the public facility around 1966, two years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
       A lesser change occurring to the park, Romey recollected, was the positioning of the Little League ball field, which sits approximately 30 feet in elevation above the current Olympics-style pool.  In 1951, the first year of junior baseball in town, Romey played catcher for Kaul Clay.
       "Home plate was where the concession stand now is," he said.  "Below left center was where the pool stood.  It was always a dream for me to hit a home run into the pool.  Of course, I never came close."
       A decade and a few years later was the era another longtime Toronto resident, Mark Rebres, fondly remembers.
       Rebres said that a typical summer day started out walking with friends Paul Morris and Tommy Lang from their Clark Street homes to the pool, their suits rolled up in towels, and then participating in morning swim lessons.  They would return home and walk back to Memorial Park to swim again.
       "You picked up wire baskets with numbers from behind the counter," Rebres said upon paying the ten-cent admission fee.  "You had to walk on the wet, cold, musty concrete all the way around and step into a little tub of water right before you took the steps to the pool deck."
       Rebres said that the pool and its lifeguards had their own peculiar rules.  "You were supposed to be able to swim the width of the pool before you were allowed to go off the dives.  You would get yelled at by lifeguards for hanging on the ropes separating the shallow and deep ends."
       Clinging on to happy pool memories of the period is Karen Walker, who lived a Frisbee's throw away from the pool on Jefferson Street and walked from there to work at the concession stand.
       "I remember all the kids coming up to the concession stand," Walker said.  "It was penny candy.  You could get a lot for your nickel then."
       During that time, the Trenton Street-based Melhorn's Dairy provided many of the pool's refreshments, including banana Fudge Sicles and blueberry, cherry, root beer, orange, lemon, lime and even licorice Popsicles.  "Fudge Sicles were seven cents.  Popsicles were a nickel," Walker said.  "Kids would ask you at the beginning of the day if they could pick up papers around the playground so that they could get ten cents worth of candy.   It's hard to believe what you would do for ten cents back in those days."
     Besides working at the concession stand, the 1971 Toronto High School graduate spent plenty of time at the pool level.  "That was a hangout," she said about evening swim parties. "The big thing was whether you got  thrown in with your clothes on."                                                                                                     Traditionally the old pool opened on Memorial Day and closed on Labor Day, but on closing day the park staged its biggest events of the swimming season and sponsored races, diving competitions and stunts, the crowning of Little Miss Lions and dances at the tennis court.
       "You would have to go hours before so that you could get a seat," Walker said about the pools Labor Day festivities.  "Some people would be sitting on top of the monkey bars."
       The last year for operation of the old Memorial Park pool was 1980, being replaced the following year at the same site by the current Olympics-style model.
    
  

WE ARE MARSHALL

     Andy Warhol once said everybody has fifteen minutes of fame.  Eight of my fifteen minutes probably were spent in the 2006 movie We Are Marshall, starring Matthew McConaughhey.
      Fellow THS 1971 graduate Bob Eshbaugh and I played on the Young Thundering herd team that followed the one devastated in the tragic plane crash November 14, 1970.  We won two games that year, the big one against Xavier just our second contest of the 71 season.
      I tell everyone that I am the long-haired skinny blond kid who disrespectfully picks up the Falls City beer and drinks it inside Reggie Oliver's dorm room.  I was probably the skinniest player on the team, undoubtedly the main reason my football career was short.  Truth of the matter is that we were not allowed alcoholic drinks in our rooms.  Even truer, I did not like Falls City, despite the fact it fit a college boy's budget.
      Despite the Hollywood fictionalizing of a true story and all the slow motion sport cliches, We Are Marshall conveys the loss, grief and suffering of a college and a community in an artistic and sensitive manner.
        I am very proud to have been a part of the rebirth of Marshall football.
       PICTURES:  Me on the sidelines against Potomac State.
       My Young Thundering Herd Certificate
       Matthew McConaughey, who played head coach Jack Lengyel and Matthew Fox as assistant coach Red Dawson.
       Number 43 Bob Eshbaugh, holding football Jack Lengyel, number 58 me, Bob Petras.
       1971 football team and coaching staff--the Young Thundering Herd.

THE FIRST BAND CAMP

Some of our favorite memories soon come to mind when certain songs play across the radio, but no experience is so sweet as making the music that makes the memories, such as the case with the participants of the inaugural Toronto Band Camp.

This Toronto high School tradition started in 1949 when the band fathers converted a Yellow Creek farm into a practice field for the marching band and the barn into a cafeteria. As the years progressed, succeeding band fathers added more modern amenities; the first year, however, they simply roughed it.

We slept in tents," then high school senior Dolores (Argentine Graceffa said, "five or six tents, as I recall, about eight to a tent. There were individual tent counselors, one for each tent."

"It got very cold in the mornings that summer, down into the forties," said Ruth Ann Campbell) Davis. "Two of the girls in our tent had to go home with ear aches. We had old iron double-decker beds. I was fortunate to have a big feather comforter that had been in our family for years. I slept on it and pulled the other half over me."

Reveille awakened the campers from their chilly slumbers every morning and then before breakfast, under the leadership of band director D.W. Hover, the 70 members of the THS band exercised and marched and then attended breakfast.

"When I think of band camp," Madonna (Smith) Baker, class of 50 said, "I think of reveille played at 6:00 every morning. So I left a nice, warm blanket and went to the lower part of the barn for a shower. Breakfast was held in the barn dinning hall, and we sat at picnic tables."

The band marched and practiced during afternoons and repeated their routines in the evenings, the early morning coolness soon forgotten.

"It was terribly hot," Mrs. Graceffa said. "It was a lot of fun. John Sabol, a graduate and band member of Ohio State University came out and taught us single line formation across the field, and we did it admirable. I think we were the first small school around here to perfrom this formation."

Band members did find some play and mischief time during the evenings.

"We had the lake back then and the kids swam," Mrs. Graceffa said. "In the evenings we had bonfires and sing-alongs."

There were the usual raids by the boys," Mrs. Devlin said, "but none of us got in big trouble. We really had a wonderful time and certainly needed the practice."

Before the inception of Toronto Band Camp, THS practice alongside the football field during summer while Director Hoover gave individual lessons at the Roosevelt Building. Attending the Yellow Creek camp broke up the monotony and created a tradition celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Graceffa summed up the sentiments of the thousands of band members from the various high schools who had the experience of marching upon this hallowed ground. "It was an experience for a city girl. I wasn't rich enough to go to a summer camp. I wouldn't have taken anything for that experience."

Band members from the classes of 50, 51, 52 and 53, if interested in forming a reunion, should call Doloroes (Argentine) Graceffa at 740-537-2106.

Picture of drum major is Dale Westlake.

Campers in front of tent are, left to right: Dolores Wagner, Ruth Ann Campbell, Joan Paisley, Letilia Arehart, Madonna Smith, Dolores Argentine, Marilyn Williams, and counselor unknown.