Holidays were always special times for children. They offered time off from school, special gifts, good food, family get-togethers, and did I say, time off from school, oh yeah. Anyway, Christmas was top of the list. Decorations changed the house into a wonderland. Bright colored lights, ornaments, carols playing on the Victrola and the delectable smells of cookies and pine put one into that "Christmas Spirit". The tree was the center of it all. My mother skillfully draped beautiful shades of spun glass angel hair over our decorated tree. The colored glass bulbs, shiny icicles and tinsel garlands shimmered through it making it appear a fairy tree. Dad made a platform for under the tree and nestled on top of it in white cotton were little houses sprinkled with artificial snow. Around that tiny town a Lionel train chugged the tracks with "real" smoke encircling the wee smoke stack. And in the center of that little place was the creche with the holy family and the shepherds and Magi gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
There was the annual trip to crowded downtown Wheeling streets for the Christmas parade. My sister and I were bundled up in woolen leggings and coats, hats, and mittens to ward off the frosty air. Afterwards we were filled with anticipation of the trip to Murphy's 5 & 10 to choose small gifts for mom, dad, and our grandparents. Then mom would treat us to a hot dog at Louie's or a cherry or vanilla coke or milkshake at Walgreen's before we got on the bus to go home. We'd wrap our tiny treasures with festive paper and ribbon and hide them away until Christmas morning. Several days before the"big day" we'd help cut out sugar cookies and top them with colored sprinkles, getting more on the tray and the table then on the actual cookies. We'd nibble on chocolate chip dough without any thought that the raw eggs could make us sick. We'd watch Santa Claus and his elf on WTRF for weeks and then on Christmas eve track the progress of the jolly old elf with the TV reporting just where he was in the world right then. There was always the worry that there might not be any snow for his sled to travel and heaven forbid that he would have to fly in rain or fog.
Finally it was the night before and we put out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots and sometime even a sugar cube for the reindeer. Mom would tuck us in a little bit early to await the arrival of Christmas morning. Lying there in the dark together, whispering to each other, we thought that we would never fall asleep. Sometimes we even imagined that we heard the prancing of hooves on the rooftop or even the rustle of presents being laid under the tree. Sleep would finally come.
Next morning when you woke up was the most exciting day of the whole year. We'd jump out of bed and run down the steps and there under the lit tree were the packages just waiting to be opened. Oh, it was good to be a kid at Christmas - the magic of it all would never reoccur as an adult; but the memory of it brings back the sweet naivety of childhood

Remember

Though this is not original, I thought it was very relevant for Woodsdale Kids:

Someone asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?".
"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up", I informed him. "All the food was slow".
"C'mon seriously. Where did you eat?"
"It was a place called "at home", I explained!
"Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the kitchen table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it".
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.
But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:
Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, Never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.
In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 13. It was of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6am and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 16 before I tasted my first pizza; it was called pizza pie. When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my shin and burned that too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home but milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. My brother delivered a newspaper six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6a.m. every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you many want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing. Growing up isn't what it used to be is it?

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in in. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it was the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to sprinkle clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I'm old!

How many of these do you remember?
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor?
Ignition switches on the dashboard?
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall?
Real ice boxes?
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards?
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner?
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals?

Older than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.
1. Blackjack chewing gum!
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8. Newsreels before movies (and cartoons!)
9. P. F. Flyers
10 Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until shows started again in the maorning. There were only 3 channels (if you were fortunate).
12. Peashooters
13 Howdy Doody
14 45 RPM records
15. S & H Green Stamps
16 Hi-fis
17 Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper (with ink that smelled very funny)
19. Blue Flashbulbs
20 Packards
22 Cork popguns
23 Drive ins
24 Studebakers
25 Washtub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
6-10 You are getting older
11- 15 = Don't tell your age
16 - 25 = You're older than dirt

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Operators are standing by

Was Woodsdale truly this youthful wonderland that we so fondly reminisced about 50 years later at the July reunion? 'The experts' say that, arguably, our minds are mapped by age 5 molded by the family, peer and socio-economic neighborhood environment we were impressioned by in our youth.

To clarify... 'the experts' are an esteemed blue-ribbon panel chosen by Woodsdale's own 'Out the Pike Gang' (OTPG) who graciously took time away from their important work to attend the reunion, take data, drink beer, elicit poignant sound bites on Dan Criswell's video and were a lot of fun to be with. The fact that they chose Lady Gaga, Carrot Top, Eddie Haskell and Guido 'three fingers' Batchotori to chair this panel should in no way demean the important findings of the Woodsdale study spelled out in their final report.

By the way, after you contact Dan or Kathleen to receive for a scant $10 his cool reunion video which may or may not include some of the OTPG's poignant sound bites, you will at no extra charge receive a leather bou ..no wait...a genuine simulated-leather-bou...um remember that cheap table cloth like drawer liner stuff our parents used to wrap our books in? That's the “Woodsdale Report” binding.

But wait there's more. Act in the next 30 minutes and we'll also include a three disk set of Mr. Hile singing such immortals as 'Dill Pickles', 'Our Whistling Servant Girl', 'Danke Schoen', 'Tiny Bubbles' and my personal favorite 'Yes, We Have No Bananas'...the third disk includes the same songs but sung in falsetto shortly after Mr Hile's 'accident'.

Lee Frizzell and I are pouring over the Woodsdale Report and as arduous a task as it is, we will some how break it down into a very enjoyable read to be posted for all very soon.

John Hershey

Dare to be Stupid

One fond memory I have of my brother Colin was his fine sense of humor. When we were late teens some evangelical group was traveling the country putting on a show the called "Dare to be Great". Colin quickly changed it to "Dare to be stupid". I have always loved the concept. As a sailor when we start to get ourselves in to a bind I always think about the Dare to be stupid concept.

When we first became close to legal driving age we did a host of Dare to be stupid projects. Many times we were in cars we should not have been in, and often we did not have the necessary credentials to make driving the borrowed car legal. To make it simple we were driving stolen cars without a license.

Once we cooked up a scheme to borrow Benny Powell's grandfather's old Chevy. Grandpa had taken a pretty good dose of heart medicine which he purchased from the state store. As grandpa slept on the couch so the heart medicine could work we took off for a ride with his car. Ben was not a good driver so part of the mission was to teach Ben driving skills. As we made our rounds someone informed us that "The Kraut" as Ben fondly called his grandfather had awakened, and reported his car missing. It seemed in the best interest of the Dare to be stupid society to get the car home quickly. Ideally the car could be put back in the driveway without the police noticing. With the need for speed, and Ben's poor driving skills I agreed to drive the car to his grandfathers house. I knew there was not future in driving into that driveway with what was essentially a stolen car. So we devised a plan. I would get the car close to Ben's grandfathers. Benny would drive the car the final distance. I had to instruct him on shifting and so on. As we neared the house Ben would slow down and I would jump from the moving car. We approached his house I opened the door rolled out and behind a neighbors hedge. Benny turned into the driveway and drove the car up the driveway. It looked like the plan worked until Benny drove into a window well that protruded into the drive way.

Benny grew up living with his grandparents. I always remember being at his home and hearing a sudden shout for Benny to bring grandpa heart medicine. Quickly Ben would pour a stiff shot of heart medicine that came in fifths and rush to save his grandfather. I am sure after a strong dose of heart medicine the car incident cleared up. Perhaps grandpa was convinced he had drive it into the window well himself during a minor heart attack. To this day I enjoy a good glass of heart medication. I am one of the few Quinn's who has not had any heart problems. I attribute this to regular medication. In the winter my doctor recommends Johnny Walker red to keep the cholesterol in check. With warm weather Tanqueray thinned with tonic in the summer seems to help cool the heart and relax the arteries.

SOFT DIRT
I have had so many requests for this story that I had to post it. It was written by my brother Mike Quinn and has become legendary in Wheeling.

My first foray into capitalism began with recognizing the need for quality dirt. Since my mother had plants everywhere on the front porch of the house, the need for quality dirt was evident. The problem with most dirt was that it was too hard. In this spirit soft dirt was invented. Now, what you may ask is soft dirt? Soft dirt is made by carefully screening normal dirt through an old piece of window screen. The result if you use good, high quality dirt was ready for the consumer.
Ideally, soft dirt could be used for your plants, however it could be used wherever dirt was needed. It was like instant dirt. since it was packaged very dry, you could just add water and have high quality soft mud. As the demand for soft dirt expanded, it became necessary to surface mine it in the backyard. The net result was a very large hole.
Our father was for some strange reason tolerant of the excavation which was about ten by ten by three feed deep. He insinuated to our mother that it could become a swimming pool. In retrospect, it seems like a make work project to keep a bunch of little kids busy.
Every kid in the neighborhood wanted to help dig the hole, so it became the practice to charge the employees to work. As luck would have it, the soft dirt factory had no insurance, and sure enough a disaster hit. The fine crew of young boys managed to dig up the gas line leading to the house.
My recollection is not complete, but I think we managed to break it. The net result was we needed a new gas line laid into our house. Luckily by some imaginative bickering, my father found out the gas line had been improperly installed in the first place, and it was up to the gas company to replace it. Fortunately this kept the soft dirt factory from being forced out of business. The sales department of the factory went door to door in Woodsdale with quart jars of dirt. It sold well to old ladies who could always use a quart for their plants.

Editor's note: I can still see my poor mother out in the back yard trying to fill that hole in! She never succeeded because as fast as she shoveled in, the boys would dig it out again...seems this went on for several years. I also remember being in the hole with a makeshift roof of some kind when it was raining and watching the water roll down the sides filling the bottom. I think there was a charge for this as well.

To begin with, I'm not a Woodsdale kid, I'm an Elm Grove kid. Yet after spending a few hours reading what the Woodsdale kids had written, I realized we were not all that different. Just a few miles apart, but so much in common. Most of all we all grew up in a time that most of us wouldn't trade for any other time or place before or since. Life was simpler and people were kinder and more giving. Moms could be stay-at-home moms without either feeling the need to "go out in the world and find themselves" or the necessity to have to be one of the bread-winners. Kids didn't need to be put on diets because they didn't sit in front of a TV or computer screen all day and eat junk food and they didn't need to be entertained...and never bored. In fact, I remember when most small children took an afternoon nap(so moms could get some rest). I still can remember laying on the double bed with my mom and my sister and thinking of all the things that I could be doing instead of being "made to take a nap". The only loud music I remember being heard from a vehicle coming down the street was from Ice Cream Joe and it didn't rock your house; but it did disturb some mothers because the ice cream truck always came in our neighborhood when we were taking that afternoon imposed rest.

Most neighborhoods had their own Mom and Pop store which was just around the corner. Ours was on Cracraft Avenue just up from Wheeling Avenue where I lived. It was called Red's because the man who owned the store had red hair, I suppose. He was a big man with a gruff voice and I was a little scared of him as a child, especially when I was behind the candy counter with my little brown paper bag and my change clutched in my hand, trying to pick out the most candy and the best for the money. He would be patient to a point and then you'd hear him say, "You about done back there." Sometimes, I would say, "could you put it on the tab". Everyone had a tab and sometimes mom would send me with money to pay "on the tab".

Everything tasted so good then. I don't know if it was because I was a kid, but more likely because everything was really fresh. The "icebox" in our house was only a small space that could hold about one ice cube tray and a small carton of ice cream or maybe a pound of meat. This meant someone had to go to Red's or the By-Rite at the corner of Stone Church and National Roads every day or so. That was quite a walk from our house, but it was normal to walk farther than that. Buses ran every 20 minutes or so, but if you had to go anywhere in the Grove, you mostly walked or skipped beside your mom or dad, holding their hand. We lived with our grandparents and my grandmother was one of the "best cooks in the world". We had a roast every Sunday and it fed the 6 of us and there was still enough left over to have hot sandwiches with gravy on Monday and sandwiches to take to school for a few days...they must have been gigantic cuts of meat. Nanny's noodles were to die for and were laid out on linen towels to dry; enough to cover the entire large kitchen table. When she put them in her home-made chicken soup...ummm, it was "to die for". When we came home from school and opened the front door, the smells wafting around your head made your mouth water. She canned all summer and those homemade vegetables were better than anything that you could buy today canned or frozen...especially her combination of stewed bread and butter tomatoes and sweet corn. One thing that I was terrified of as a small child was the pressure cooker. I was afraid to walk by that "beast", constantly sputtering and steaming. My grandmother did a good job of convincing us about the dangers of us being burnt or the possibility that the thing could "blow-up". She didn't need to worry about that with me...I didn't need a bogeyman...as long as the pressure cooker was on the stove.

Things were so much simpler back then. A kid could spend an entire afternoon in the back yard and never run out of things to do. Imagination was king. We had a sandbox, swing set and a log cabin ordered from Kaufman's in Pittsburgh, and of course the backyard pool. If it rained we ran out and jumped around in the raindrops. I don't remember having as many "bad" storms as we have now, with the high winds and thunder and lightening...how about any of you? When we made chains out of clover we were queens covered with beautiful necklaces and bracelets and tiaras. We set imaginary plates out of flat stones and served up weeds as salads and mud pies as meat. We dressed up in mom's clothes and high heels and paraded around the back slab porch like ladies going out to fancy dances.

You knew that summer was coming to a close by the sounds of the cicadas and the shortening days and the trips to the stores to get school supplies and clothes. Summers always passed too quickly and you would soon be trading in your roller skates and swimming suits for shinny new lunchboxes and book satchels and dresses. Moms would see you off to school and heave a sigh of relief. But the school year flew quickly by and soon it would be summer again in Elm Grove.

Fifties Fashions

Fifties' fashions were unique and compared to today, very conservative. Let's start with hairstyles. Girl teens preferred a "bob", bangs, and/or a ponytail and really cool guys had a DA (duck's ass) greased to the hilt, but not many Woodsdale boys would be caught dead wearing their hair like that, as it usually signaled either a "hood" (short for hoodlum) or a drag racer-type. There was some drag-racing going on, but it was not "advertised". I can remember home perms (Tony) and now and then going to the beauty school above Murphy's for a haircut, but generally I preferred it long which was a real nuisance when swimming at Oglebay as there was no such thing as a hairdryer there.

Skirts were full in the 50's...the better for twirling on the dance floor. So a netted slip called a crinoline was required. (See above). My sisters and I shared several crinolines .... one that I remember best was multi-colored in about six layers. Drindle skirts were full, but had a hemline that came straight down. For school many of us wore straight skirts with wide belts...a required fashion accessory. Though there were poodle skirts in abundance, my sisters and I sported "Lady and the Tramp" skirts. My dad brought home these printed panels with the characters from the movie (two dogs) on them and you sewed them together into a skirt. Didn't set any trends that I know of.

Shoes? Well, if you were a girl kid you wore MaryJanes...black patent leather with a strap across the arch. Boys wore Buster Browns after sticking their feet in the fluoroscope at the shoe store to see through the shoes so Mom could tell how much growing room she was going to get out of THIS pair. As a girl teen, saddle shoes or penny loafers were required and if you opted for the loafers...you had to have two very shiny pennies to put in them. Shining saddle shoes was a bummer as the white would get on the black and vice versa....mine had corrective insoles because I tended to stand on the outside edge of my feet so these magic shoes (recommended by Dr. Maury) were hopefully going to keep me from getting bowl-legged. In eighth grade as an experiment, I wanted to see if I could start a fad so started wearing plaid, multicolored shoe laces and sure enough it took off...at least at Woodsdale Junior High.

Oh yes, and what did you wear with your penny loafers??? Bobby-socks! They had to be turned down a requisite number of times and some farout radicals "rolled" their socks down.

One fashion I really liked was wearing your father's old white shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the tails hanging out over jeans or "pedal pushers" . Many a teenage boy came to our house to get his pants "pegged". That meant sewing a seam down the legs to make them skin tight. As a result we often had a living room full of guys sitting on the couch with a blanket over their legs in just their underwear while we girls were upstairs at the sewing machine. The guys also used to sit in the bathtub (theirs, not ours) in a new pair of jeans to get them to shrink tighter to their skin.

Have I forgotten any? Do you have any to add? If so please post them! Just add a comment to this with your email address and I'll send you an invite to be a contributor.

More Sounds of Woodsdale

In my piece about the sounds of our neighborhood, I missed a few. One of my favorites was the sound of chains on tires rolling down our snow-covered street in winter....that was so musical. Summer brought the sound of locusts which could drowned out even a conversation on the porch. Another favorite was the call of "Allee, allee oxen free" from the kids playing tag or hide and go seek. Rakes gathering up leaves in their teeth was a good sound....power mowers??? no such thing it was a push mower usually attached to a teenager. Two sounds that bring back memories are the squeak of a grocery cart being pushed around a supermarket and the slamming of a screen door. There are also sounds you don't hear anymore like the flutter of a playing card attached to the wheel of a bike or even a "bike bell" warning people that you were coming. I guess if I had to choose my all time favorite summer sound it would be the crunching of the ice as the churn on the back porch produced the most delicious ice cream in the world.