MISS NELSON AND JACKS:

Lowell was a great memory.  Miss Nelson's class had this old jacks set with a ball that she must have bought when she was student teaching.  The thing was so dried up that it hardly bounced. 

Miss Nelson was also known for her hanky drills . . . and you had better have yours ready when she announced it.    Miss Nelson was known to rap students on their knuckles with a ruler to help to focus their attentions as needed.

ALICE WEADOCK:

In fifth grade, seems I remember thinking that we wouldn't get Weadock and we were upset because of the ceramics.  But when we came back in 5th, fall of 67, we had her .. a great surprise. 

Ceramics were her thing:

§     pouring the mud into molds,

§     trimming the greenware,

§     baking them the first time in the kiln in the Lowell kitchen,

§     painting them with special paints . . .

Santa Red: had little stony pieces in it that you would position at the top of your piece when painting it for a cool special effect.  The stony pieces melted under the extreme heat and dripped down the piece in a blaze of deep color . . .

§     putting your name or initials on the bottom for future posterity,

§     baking them a final time.

It was a privilege to be asked to unload the kiln.  I had a few of those ceramic pieces for a while but I may have thrown them all out ... darn).

(From Dennis Burns:

“I remember my days as one of the designated "kiln unloaders".  I always felt pretty important, like I was working with some kind of sophisticated nuclear reactor or something.  I remember getting one of the real shocks of my young life when I went back there to check on it one time and found Miss Leedy and that art teacher - was it Mrs. Moyer?- sitting back there puffing away on cigarettes.  Wow.  For a little Baptist kid like me, that was like finding out that your school principal was into devil worship!”)

Mrs. Weadock had two sons.  At least one was tall and she once told us that during one of his growth spurts he grew 11 inches in a 12 month period.  Unbelievable, but if Mrs.. Weadock said it, well...

Her husband was a judge.   I think they lived on the SW corner of Hazel and Nixon.

Guatemala … she traveled there (at least with her husband and possibly with her family) and many of her lessons had to do with this country. 

Can you imagine ... Guatemala . . . in the late 1950s and the early to mid 60's! I wish that I had paid more attention!

Oh --  and Mrs. Weadock was very much into track and field (“she didn't need a PE teacher .. she had raised 2 boys”) ..she would teach us how to high jump using the scissor kick .. Western roll was very new .. Fosbury flop unheard of until ‘68.

LEEDY’S SUCCESSOR:

Mr. Speakman was the new principal when Blanche Leedy retired.  He was tall and the word was that he knew karate or some martial arts.  He didn't have to do much, as he was quite intimidating compared to Miss Leedy.

ORCHESTRA, and DAVE RADO

Now, if a student chose orchestra, she or he began in the 4th grade.  Since Lowell was a small elementary, with just one class for each grade, there were only 3 of us from Lowell in that 4th grade class in orchestra --  Sally Rado, Polly Gooding, and me.  As we lived relatively close to each other, we would get together to practice.  Sally and I both were on South Charles and Polly lived on Lakewood at Lincoln.

Likely, this was our mothers' idea but, looking back, it seemed logical.  Going to Rados' was where I ran across Dave and had a few chances to talk with him.  He was always into something new and cool . . .  radios and other electronics.  The cassette tape story in his eulogy rang a bell.  I remember after talking to Dave about cassettes, I told  my dad about it, who was into stereo ("hi-fi") and often used reel-to-reel. 

There was an electronics store -- I can't remember the name of it -- it was downtown, maybe on the 100 or 200 block of South Main or South Elizabeth St on the east side of the street [Radio Hospital?].  In 1969, I talked Mom into buying Dad a Sony cassette player / recorder for Christmas.  I wore that thing out! 

After reading the eulogy of Dave, I wished I had tried to hang around him more.  I had a pretty deep geek streak but not the drive, follow thru, and passion that Dave had.  He didn't just talk about it . . .  he did it, he built it, he tried it.  He worked at Radio Shack or another electronics store, or maybe both I think.   I remember  the airplanes and the skis, and the engines in the garage.

What was that song that stuck in Dave's mind?

[It was, literally, called "Manah manah".]

NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS

As a 10th grader, I ran around some with Alan Rice.  We decided to run track that year. (That experience reminded me of Dr. Murray's stories about playing football!)  During the winter I would jog over to his house in the early morning before school . . .  must have been January 1973 . . . . and we would jog together through the park and along North Shore Drive to LSH to train in the halls for Coach Dotson. 

I spent time with Alan down at the skating pond that winter at the bottom of Cole St hill. "Rice-a Roni "was a nickname we kicked around for Alan.  He would always correct me and say, "No Jon, 'Rice-a-Roni' is my sister Jean.  I'm Beef-a Roni!" or something like that.   We also played some good pickup football games in Rice's big back yard.

Here's some more names for you . . . the Morris brothers, Mark and Chris (sons of Mayor Christian P!) . . . Alan Kingsberry -- speaking of him, I do remember going to Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Encore.  I was impressed by it.   I'm thinking that the cast was in the 5th or 6th grade?  This would have put me in the 1st or 2nd.  Could that be right?

Were you in the Rotary Boy's choir?  We met in the East wing basement of old Central Junior High.  Mr. Richards directed.  Remember Speedy McDonald?

My neighbors were Meredith, Daley, Kohli, Shanahan (LCC), and some others.  Knew of them all.  Was friends with Robenalts and would hear of them partly through Shanahans  and partly from Betsy Murray.

At Lima Senior, I didn't know Boyer but heard of him.   The math teachers during my stint in LSH were Jim Bright (young, new-ish, 6' 6"), Mrs. Conklin, Lloyd Merrick, and maybe some others.

 THE PARK:

 All right, let's talk Faurot Park. 

First of all, did Cole Street Hill rule in Limaland when it came to sledding or what?  That was the place to be. 

Lots of different kinds of sleds, inner tubes, toboggans, and saucers. ("Bingo!")  The city would sometimes put hay bales against the fence on Diamond #2. 

Tons of big kids.  Fires in the shelter house at the bottom ... great!  Burning wood, cardboard, creosote-coated railroad ties, whatever the city guys would drop off. 

Did you ever fall into the skating pond at the bottom of the hill?  I did once and it was only about 3 feet deep. 

OK, now top of the hill.  What do you call that pond?  That's where all of the “serious” hockey took place:  shovel off the snow to make the rink;  then pile some snow up behind each goal and pick up sides.  We thought we were awesome!  (the older I get the better I was). 

Now east, to the playground area.  Bear Pit pond with the bridge.  Carp (goldfish) and catfish.  Not near as popular for ice skating though. 

Later, we would run across that bridge in Jr. High cross country.  In the summertime the playground turned into a Tot Lot, the city recreation dept. name for a staffed playground. 

Janet Jolly ran the playground for a couple summers and there was always something going on.  She was nice.  I kept a black and white certificate for years that said 'Honorable Mention' for a sand castle building contest held in that playground's huge sandbox across the road from Bear Pit pond. 

One night they held a hot dog roast in the big sandbox.  I burned my hand on a hot coal that night and still carry a little scar. 

Now, back to the west,  to the 'new park'.  Did you call it the new park?  When was it new? 

(Robb, on the new area: 
“it was always there and had more forest before.  Then tney "improved" it, around 1965.  There was some bureaucratic name for it, like the "Improvement Zone" or the "New Annex".  Something that sounded like it would never be a fun park anymore  I would ride my bike on those new asphalt trails with the red oil cans posted officiously every several yards -- to get any shred of litter -- and felt like I was in a science maze or some hideous European social experiment area, that I was being watched or clocked or studied.  The smell of the asphalt was so strong, and the creosote poles were probably some kind of toxic hazard.  I grew to like it, though, and would fly kites a lot in the summer there.”)

I'm talking anything west of Cole Street now.  Two new ball diamonds and a new pond. (Did anyone ever catch anything from this pond?  I think not!) 

(Robb:  “pretty much a fungus patch from what I ever knew.”)

Now, if you were bike riding you had to make the run through Dog Hollow (Did you call it that?  No.  We thought it was called  ‘Frog Hollow’.  Sometimes we called it "Dead Man's Hill" cause when you skateboarded down it, which we often did, you really took your chances. ---RM ).

It was paved all the way from Rosedale Ave., just south of the intersection of Rosedale Ave. /Spencerville Rd. running ESE and coming out at the west edge of the skating pond. 

You never knew what you might see down in Dog Hollow!