Dear Family,

When the snow began to melt and the birds started chirping it was time to get out the old baseball glove, wipe it off, and give it a good coat of neats-foot oil, and to check over the fishing tackle. My best fishing buddy was DeVane Smith, called "Smitty" of course, who was in my school class and lived just across the street in the second house east of Dr. Curtis. Smitty and I usually kicked off the fishing season on Good Friday. School was closed, the stores shut down for a decent interval in the afternoon in favor of church services, but we went fishing. And never on all those Good Fridays did we catch a fish. I remember one year when we hied ourselves up to the paper mill pond only to find that it was still frozen over. We walked on the ice all the way to the upper end where the river entered before we found open water. Smitty backed up and, in turning around, knocked the worm can off into about three feet of ice melt. I had a choice of watching him fish or going in after it. I think that was the earliest that I ever went swimming. Sometimes we fished in the south branch of the Chagrin River just outside of town (the south branch was clean, the north branch that went through town was odorous and turgid). But mostly we fished in the paper mill pond. In time we figured that not only were we expert anglers with our cane poles but also that we knew every fish in the pond, his first name and home address. So, of course, we got our comeuppance. One day two city slickers came along wheedling fly rods, and proceeded to take a half dozen fish out from under our noses, fish that we didn't even know were there. We waited until they moved on, then rolled up our lines, went home, and didn't come back until we had each managed to get a fly rod.

Baseball and softball, interchangeably, started early also and continued all through the spring and summer. This was all pick-up ball, needing only three or more kids, and some could be girls, and a flat piece of land. We played in the school yard at noon, and in our side yard, thereby sacrificing a few window panes, on Uncle Charlie Burnett's land back of May Court, and just about anywhere. Between the ends of May Court and Elm Court was a two-to-three acre parcel of land, flat and almost devoid of vegetation called "The Flats" and on it were two softball diamonds built by and for the village men's softball league. We used those, too, but we never got to play on their teams. That was for young, and some not so young, adults, and teenage boys were not welcome. There was a baseball diamond in a natural amphitheater just south of town, and usually a town baseball team that played on Sunday afternoons, provided they could raise enough money by passing the hat. Later there were more diamonds built by the WPA up on the old Fairgrounds.

One year when I was, I think, seventeen, I caught on with the town baseball team as second string catcher. We won our league and were invited to a postseason tournament at Wakeman, Ohio, near Sandusky. That was the first time any of us had seen baseball played under lights. Our pitcher was "Tommy" Thompson, a compactly-built, tough-as-hickory twenty-two-year-old who worked on the railroad section gang and threw nothing but fast balls. It was the only pitch he had. Under those somewhat primitive lights the batters couldn't even see his pitches, and the more strikeouts he racked up the harder he threw. Steve Cseh was catching. After one inning he put a sponge in his mitt, after two innings he sent out for a slab of the toughest beef the butcher had, and at the end of the game he had a mitt full of hamburger. We won the tournament and were invited to another, a semi-pro tournament at Mansfield, but not enough of our players had time to go.

Our high school baseball was a sometimes thing. If a male teacher could be found who was willing and able to volunteer as coach, and the school board could afford equipment, there was a team, but most years there was not. We had one designated coach on the high school faculty, Mr. Ted Gurney who coached football, basketball, and track, taught math, and served as assistant principal. He said that was enough. The only organized sport for girls was high school basketball, and that was also a sometimes thing, and for the same reason. First, they had to find a woman teacher to coach. Girls basketball in those days was really three-on-three. Each team put the standard five players on the floor, but only the center was allowed to play both ends. The two guards had to stay in the back court, the two forwards in the front court.

We lived in a small town and we had a small school. There were thirty-one kids in my graduating class, thirty-three in my brother's. Everybody that wanted to play football was automatically on the team. Those lacking the requisite ability at least were given a jersey and allowed to sit on the bench during games. The coach handed out equipment as far as it went; helmets, shoulder pads, jerseys, and pants. The helmets and shoulder pads were soft leather, although later on we got some of molded leather, the jerseys were of several colors, and the pants were canvas with insertable thigh pads. Players furnished their own shoes, or, if they couldn't afford cleats, either played in their street shoes or borrowed from someone who probably wouldn't get in the game anyway. Protective gear was not required and there were always a few macho types that scorned helmets. The substitution rule at that time limited the number that got into the game: any player removed for a substitute could not reenter until the following quarter. Upon entering the game, the player reported to the referee (there was only one official) who wrote his name, number, and position in a little notebook, and noted the name of the player he replaced. Another rule long gone prohibited the coach from communicating with the players on the field by voice or sign or gesture, including during timeouts and between quarters. Even walking up and down in front of the bench was regarded with suspicion and might draw a ten or fifteen yard penalty.

Football games were played on Friday afternoon after school, a full day of school. Spectating were such students and teachers as were willing to trudge the mile uphill to the Fairgrounds, and a few dedicated parents. We didn't have a band (although we did have a small orchestra) but we did have cheer leaders. Playing games away from home involved another element, transportation. Our school owned one or two buses but they were not to be used for extracurricular activities. Transport was by private cars driven by willing mothers, and since some games were played as far away as Dover (now Westlake) and Bay Village, this was no small commitment. Mother was usually agreeable to helping out and I well remember being squeezed into our family sedan with four or five muddy, sweaty, football players. In the fall of 1934 when I was in the tenth grade we had, in talent, experience, and depth, the best football team our school had had for years, but that team didn't win a game, in fact did not score a single point for the whole season. Our coach went right out of his mind, even painted some footballs white so we could practice by moonlight. We played the two co-championship teams to scoreless ties and everyone else beat us. Our high school yearbook that year listed only the schedule and nary a word about the outcome.

High school basketball had the same rules on substitutes and sideline coaching as did football, and the same transportation problems only, of course, there were fewer players. I was for four years a student manager, as was my brother before me. In the ninth and tenth grade years that meant being essentially a "gofer." In the eleventh grade year the manager was also the official scorer, wore a shirt, tie, and sweater to games, sat at the scorers table and kept the official score book, together with his opposite number from the other team. In the twelfth year, I was the official timer and kept the official stop watch. As senior manager I was also regularly drafted to referee scrimmages and practice games. I didn't like that much, though, some kid bigger than I as always threatening to knock my head off when a call went against him.

We played pickup football, of course, whenever enough like-minded boys got together on a vacant lot, but with the game being physical those contests usually ended up in fights. And we played pickup basketball. The Federated Church had a full-sized gym set up for basketball and we were free to play there anytime. Al and Don Jones' family had a barn with a suitable loft and so did Julian Cary's. At times we just nailed a hoop to the side of the barn and shot baskets from the driveway. My athleticism was, to be honest, somewhat wishful thinking, but I tried anyway. Following my bout with diphtheria when I was six, and whether from that or preceding childhood diseases or whatever, I was pretty weak and puny. Recovering from the diphtheria I needed supports on both ankles just to stand up and walk. These resembled canvas shoes with the toes and heels cut out that laced up the front and had vertical pockets on the sides for whale boned stays. When I went back to school and for the next few years I was not allowed to participate in gym classes or the rough and tumble activities of growing boys. Of course that simply whetted my desire to be like the other kids, and I tried hard to build up strength. I remember Mother taking me up to the pond on the Little Farm and patiently holding me up as I wobbled around on a pair of iceskates tightly clamped to my shoes. I think it was during this period that I learned to enjoy reading books, to be content with my own company if that was all I had. I walked and practiced running and as I grew gradually stronger began following the other kids around as long as I could keep up, but I never had the strength and stamina to really compete and besides I kept spraining my ankles.

There was a world of things to do. We had the whole village to explore. We had rivers and lakes and ponds and creeks. We had meadows and fields and pastures and woods, and a rail road track to walk along. All that property clearly belonged to someone but we never gave that a thought, and we never asked permission. Nor do I remember ever being ordered off. Well, it was a small town and well settled. Most folks had lived there for years, some families for generations, and everybody knew everybody else or at least knew who they were. Complaints about kids, whether by citizens, police, or school authorities, were filed directly with parents, and there was no escaping that jurisdiction nor was there any appeal. We roamed the whole scene subject to the two cardinal rules - stay out of trouble and come home when the paper mill whistle blows.

March's pasture was a favorite area. Actually there was a pasture and meadow that lay between May Court and the railroad tracks, and between the Flats and the houses on the south side of Washington Street. The March family lived there on the south side of Washington just opposite the end of Philomathian Street. They had two sons, George, who was a year older than I and John, who was a year younger, but they went to private schools and didn't mingle much with the village lads. Here there were hills to climb up and slide down, a creek, willow trees whose branches we whittled for bows and arrows, and a pile of abandonded fence rails from which we built a cabin with a secret door. Willow didn't make the best bows, it lost its springiness pretty quickly, about the same time that our interest ran out. In the creek we built dams and sailed stick boats, caught minnows and crawdads (and let them go), and had water fights. Late in the fall we would dam the creek and divert the flow through a shallow ditch across the meadow and down onto The Flats to flood the whole two or three acres to a depth of about two feet for ice skating. We had to be careful to stop the flow before the water began running down the pavement on May Court though, because that made the homeowners there kind of nervous. In the pasture were kept two brown-spotted white ponies. The March boys didn't pay much attention to them, but the Lumme kids did. The Lummes were a wild bunch of tow-headed Finns who lived just south of town. They would come down the railroad tracks at night, catch the ponies, rig rope bridles, and ride them bareback. First thing they did was teach the ponies to jump the fence and then they rode all over parts of two counties to turn them back into the pasture, muddy, sweaty, and exhausted. I don't know if the Marches ever caught on, but after awhile the ponies were gone.

As we roamed the village we often stopped to watch men at work. Heading for the paper mill pond to swim or fish we would look in at old Mr. Kermode's blacksmith shop and watch him ply his trade despite having only one arm. (Our town also boasted a one-eyed barber and a one-legged automobile dealer.) If we went up the north side of the pond we probably walked through the paper mill yard and gaped at the piles of old cordage and paper waiting to be recycled. Diagonally behind our house on the corner of May Court and South Main Street was the Sheffield Monument Works where we played among the blocks of granite and marble and sandstone displayed for sale, and looked in the shop where the two stonecutters cut, polished, and engraved tombstones and cemetery markers. One was Mr. Alley Gordon who was related to Mrs. Sheffield and lived next door. The other was a Mr. Venchiarutti, an Italian immigrant who lived up on American Street with his wife and seven or eight children. Their four oldest daughters were slender, dark-haired and dark-eyed, the prettiest girls in town. Their only son, Henry called "Hank" was chunky, blond and blue-eyed. He was the fullback on our football team, and we clerked together at Fisher Brothers Grocery. I liked Hank, most everyone did, and we never understood why, one cold winter's night, he walked alone all the way up to Whitesburg Pond and out on the boat dock and off the end and drowned, and never left a clue.

Up next to the railroad tracks, the Rowe & Giles Lumber Company had a plant where concrete blocks were made and stocked for sale. The sole employee, a Mr. Werner Stahlder, didn't mind at all if boys stopped to watch him at work. We would climb up into the towers where sand and cement were fed to the mixers below, then come down to watch the blocks being cast, stacked on little trams, and moved into steam-heated tunnels for curing. Just across the street was one of our two feed mills, and we would wander in there to watch grain being ground and bagged. Sometime during the summer we would decide to go into pigeon raising. The Green twins, Bill and Bob, who lived at the end of Elm Court just above The Flats, had a barn with a suitable loft so all we needed were pigeons and that was easily arranged. We trapped them up on the feed mill roof. We would set an orange crate upside down, prop up one end with a stick, tie a string to the stick, and thread the other end with kernels of corn. It never failed. The Greens' loft had nest sites among the rafters, and as long as food and water were provided the pigeons stayed on. When we tired of the project and stopped feeing them, they all flew back to the mill.

We also looked in regularly at both the Chevrolet garage and the Buick garage, watched the mechanics at work, gazed with awe at disassembled engines and asked all kinds of questions. And we never failed to inspect the discarded junk out back for possible treasures. Boys then, as boys now, were fascinated with automobiles and dreamed of having one of their own. A boy's first car was almost always a Model T Ford, recently fallen from popularity and usually available at a junk yard for about ten dollars. The purchase price took all the available cash, so next was to go back to the junk man and swap for pieces and parts to get it running, When the car was running, the next small problem was the lack of license plates and insurance, so most of the driving was done in the fields and back lots. The Green twins got a Model T which they drove around the Flats and up through March's pasture. My fishing buddy, DeVane Smith, came up with one but, having no direct access to the back lots, mounted out-of-date plates, smeared them with mud, and skulked through the back streets. The police knew about it, but they didn't hassle him. Bob Cathan, brother of my hunting buddy Tommy Cathan, was given a Model T by his father in payment for painting their house, but Bob spent so much time working on the car that the house didn't get finished and his dad took the car back and sold it. My first car was a 1934 Ford Cabriolet (a roadster with a rumble seat) that I bought during my senior year in college. I paid one hundred and twenty five dollars and financed it.

As you may have inferred from previous installments (if you have been paying attention), guns played a large part in our growing up. Dad was the finest marksman in our part of the country, both at hunting and at target shooting. In the 1920's, his forte was trap shooting (formalized shooting at thrown clay pigeons but not to be confused with skeet). In 1927, he tied for third place in the national trap shooting championship The Grand American Handicap, held then as now at Vandalia, Ohio, and lost in a double shoot-off. He might have done better had he not broken a firing pin and finished the match with a borrowed shotgun. He was invited to turn professional and go around the country giving shooting exhibitions but he turned the offers down and came home to his job and family. Sometime around 1930 the cost of shotgun shells rose substantially, the Great Depression bit deep, and trap shooting was no longer affordable. Dad and many of the others in our local gun club turned to small-bore rifle shooting, punching holes in paper targets with .22 caliber match rifles. They organized The Chagrin Falls Rifle & Pistol Club, built an outdoor range with a club house that was usable all year, and a smaller indoor range in the basement of an old factory. We built an outdoor range for our family up at the Little Farm, and Dad set up an indoor range in the basement of The Brewster & Church Co., where he worked. We all shot, including Mother, and between practicing, intra-club matches both formal and informal, and inter-club matches all around northeastern Ohio, we were firing somewhere at least once a week.

Once dad was convinced that my brother and I could and would handle guns responsibly, treat them with due respect, and keep them clean and oiled, we were free to use them anytime. Rifles and shotguns were stacked against the wall in my parents' bedroom off the living room, ammunition was kept in a drawer in the sideboard in the dining room. Many afternoons I would come home from school, grab a sandwich, change my clothes, pick up a gun and head "up back." During hunting season I would probably choose a .410 gauge shotgun, outside of hunting season it would most likely be a single-shot .22 caliber rifle with open sights. Just about every boy in town owned a .22 rifle, and had access to a shotgun, and boys walking through town carrying guns (unloaded of course) were a common sight and no cause for concern. We might walk along the railroad track and plink at tin cans, we might not shoot at all, but we never shot indiscriminately and never, ever, at each other. In fact, I cannot recall a single case of a person being shot, accidentally or otherwise.

Dad, and my brother, and I hunted together when we could, usually on holidays. On Saturdays I might go hunting with Tommy Cathan, or "Archie" Shanower, or John Harvey. My most faithful hunting companion, though, was Branigan, a dog of uncertain ancestry belonging to my Richardson cousins. He had the size and build of a bulldog with the coat and color of a Labrador and the ears and tail of a spaniel, sort of. I would whistle as I crossed the Flats near the Richardson's house on Elm Court (they lived next to the the Green twins) and old Branny would come running. My cousins said that if he was in the house he would still hear me whistle and demand to be let out. We would tramp to the fields and woods, and heading home he would shear off as we crossed the Flats with never a backward look. One year, I think it was 1932 or '33, we spent to the entire fall and winter hunting cats, with to the blessing of the conservationists. The woods were full, literally, of cats dumped by people that couldn't or wouldn't keep them any longer, and wild game totally disappeared. The cats quickly turned feral and became dirty, ragged, and fierce. There were so many that our Chagrin Valley Fish & Game Association staged contests with a prize for the hunter that brought in the most cat tails; a contest won by Mr. Earl Silsby who was part-time constable in Geauga County and drove the back roads at night.

After the cat problem was more or less settled, attention turned to what was considered to be an overabundance of foxes and we spent a couple of winters participating in fox drives. Folks, all kind of folks, would gather early Saturday morning at a designated country school or crossroad, and from there we would be distributed by trucks along the roads on all four sides of a two-or three mile square block of farm land. Guns were not allowed but nearly everyone carried a stick of some kind. At the starting signal, a siren or dynamite blast, we could all begin walking inward, whooping and hollering and whacking the bushes with our sticks. When we reached the center there would be a ring of people maybe three-deep, and the foxes would be inside the ring. There they would be run down and bagged in burlap sacks. People always said that the foxes would be taken to a zoo, but I strongly suspect that their pelts ended up hanging in someone's shed. One Saturday we, that is my brother I and Mr. Willard Stoneman, took part in one drive in the morning that bagged six foxes, paused for some lunch at a truck stop, and participated in another driven in the afternoon on an adjacent block of land that netted two or three more. Mr. Willard Stoneman was a coal dealer and local trucker whose brother, Mr. Roy Stoneman, was half -owner of the Buick agency. My brother sometimes worked with him delivering coal and gravel and such. Now Mr. Willard Stoneman was smaller than my brother but was probably the strongest man I've ever seen. A favorite Saturday evening trick was to bet some city slicker that little old Willard here could pick up the back end of a half-ton pickup truck, clear off the ground. He could and he could also pick up a front quarter of the same truck. Our Chagrin Valley Fish & Game Association one time staged a little different kind of fox drive. The plan was to drive three sides of the block, and man the fourth side with selected marksman armed with shotguns who would shoot the foxes as they ran past. It almost worked. Mr. Walter Lenhart who was Association president appointed himself one of the guns and selected a position in the middle of the line where a shock of corn stalks standing in the field would give him cover. We knew we were driving foxes ahead of us, we saw their tracks in the snow, but we heard no shots. When we came up to the gun line, all became clear. Mr. Lenhart, comfy in his corn shock blind, had dozed off and the foxes had trotted by unscathed. He never did live that down.

Winter also brought trapping season. A lot of the boys trapped but it was never one of my favorite pursuits. We had a good assortment of Victor steel traps out in the barn, and a large collection of skinning boards for stretching pelts ranging in size from small ones for weasels to large ones for fox. Incidentally, those old skinning boards are now collectable folk art (see Smithsonian magazine for February, 1996, pages 42-44.) I just didn't like getting up at 5:00 AM to tramp two or three miles through the cold and dark checking traps, and you had to check them every day. About the coldest thing I remember was breaking the ice on a swamp and reaching into the water bare-handed to check muskrat traps. Besides, trapping didn't pay all that well; possum skins sold for, I think, a quarter, weasels for maybe twice that, and muskrats for maybe seventy-five cents. Skunks were worth more depending on the color, but there was always the risk of being sprayed with scent. We all knew ways of avoiding that, but I don't think any of them really worked, and our school all winter long smelled faintly of skunk, mixed with the aroma of wet wool and drying leather.

More fun by far was sledding, skiing, and ice skating. We had all sizes of hills, and close at hand. In Mrs. Emma Button's yard next door was a hill maybe six feet high from her back porch down to her driveway, just right for toddlers. The next house east had one about twice as high. Across the street in Dr. Curtis' side yard was one that dropped some eighteen or twenty feet, and behind May Court was the Big Hill. With a good icy, surface you could come down that one a mile a minute, bounce all the way across to the flat and end up in the creek behind May Court. There was a good-sized hill in the Ober's back yard on South Main Street and another in cousin Warren Smith's yard on Bellvue Street. We had Flexible Flyers, just like yours, and used them wherever the kids gathered and the snow was good. We had skis, too. Yes, Janine, real store-bought wood skis that were just like the skis today with one significant difference. Our skis had foot-to-ski attachments consisting of a simple toe strap, no bindings or ski boots. You aimed the skis where you wanted to the go, stuck your toes in the straps, and pushed off. They worked fairly well skiing cross-county, but going downhill could present a problem. It was almost impossible to change direction. If you found yourself heading for someplace you would rather not go, like into a thorn bush or a rusty wire fence, you could either fall down, which carried certain risks, or jump off, and hope you didn't fall down anyway, and then pursue the skis on foot to wherever they finally stopped. A few of the kids had toboggans. My brother and I built one from a long plank and a cheese box but it didn't work very well. With good snow on a Sunday afternoon, we would be out of the house right after dinner, grab skis or sled, and head "up back" whistling for the other kids as we went. The Green twins would come out and Dick Ricker and maybe some others. My Richardson cousins would show up and maybe their neighbor Esther Schultz. Someone would bring a toboggan, and we would all head for the really big hills behind the old Fairgrounds. We would use one hill, then move to another, and another, usually ending up at some shallow caves in a ravine on the east end of Mr. Clayton Ober's sugar bush. There we would build a big fire and sit around trying to thaw out and dry out before finally heading home. When the snow was deep we went sledding or skiing, when it was thick on the ground we skated. The Flats that we had flooded made a marvelous skating rink that had an advantage over the other sites. Being only a couple of feet deep there was no danger of drowning and we could skate there before the ice was thick enough to be safe. When you broke through, which we did, you simply grabbed your boots and high-tailed for home as fast as you could with skates on your feet. Kids came from all over town to skate there, and sometimes adults, too. We didn't skate very much on the paper mill pond, it was a little too big and too deep. Just east of the railroad yard, the state fish hatchery kept one of their ponds filled all winter. It was just the right size and shape for hockey, and play hockey we did. If it became cluttered with girls and little kids, we would hike about a mile south along the railroad to Gardner's Pond tucked away in the wood, and they never followed us there.

When the ice melted on The Flats, we had raft fights. The softball league placed old telephone poles alongside the diamonds to provide seats for spectators and players alike. Those poles floated, of course, so we would tie two or three together, cut push poles, and ram away until we all got so wet we had to go home. There were as I said, lots of things for boys to do. Even a rainy day was not necessarily a bummer. We had raincoats and rainhats and rubber boots; puddles were made for wading and flowing gutters for research into hydraulics and flood control. Simple pleasures? Yes, they were.

Love,

Dad

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