The Great Intruder

Very few brothers at the age Colin and I were probably ever spent time in the middle of nowhere together, like we did at the farm. I forget how old Colin and I were, but I am guessing it was around the time I may have been twelve or so. Night time in the boonies was intimidating for two kids. The possibility of some crazed hill billy attacking was always foremost in our minds when we went to bed. At the farm was a peculiar manual. It was an actual army manual of booby traps from Vietnam. The manual had illustrated pictures of how to set traps. To get to the house one would normally cross the creek on a foot bridge. That was the first line of defense for Colin and I. The foot bridge was guarded with punji sticks. These were sharpened wooden spike meant for an intruder to fall on. Of course there was a trip wire around the punji sticks that would help you trip in just the right place to fall on the sticks. If you had such an unfortunate encounter you would likely be dead impaled on a couple of sticks. If for some reason you made it past those sticks you had to go up the steps. The steps to the house were also protected by the same system.

Assuming you were a skillful intruder and made it past the punji sticks, there was one last defense for the two helpless boys inside. At the top of the steps was a trip wire that led to a tin can inside a large steel cauldron. When the inbread guy from Deliverance tripped the wire and rattled the can it was time to take on of the many guns in the house and shoot him.

With some sense of protection Colin and I settled down for the night. It must have been just shortly after sun down. Our worst nightmare occurred, the can rattled. With gun in hand we peeked out the window ready to do what shooting we had to. The culprit was short and white and had feathers all over. Only a simple minded chicken could have made it harmlessly past the punji sticks, but this one did. Relieved we went to bed knowing the alarm worked.

The Shack in the Back

Some of you Woodsdale Kids were lucky enough to visit the Quinn farm at some time and I have heard some of the amazing stories you tell about it. The farm was a great place to run around unsupervised, work your tail off, and generally get away from the city.

There was no electricity or running water so an outhouse was a requirement. When we first bought the place there must have been a close family living there before us because they left us a four-seater. We had to move it every few years once the pit filled up and Dad told us that the building should be the most inconspicuous on the property so I'm not sure what prompted us to paint it orange with blue/purple spots. Brother Michael built a delux version (see photo) with a dutch door and skylite in 1971. This particular outhouse was movable which was handy when it came time to dig a new pit.

We all learned to "lime the pit" after use and the peals of laughter coming from the shack were due to the joke books that my dad kept down there for extracurricular reading. The worst thing about the place was you had to check for snakes and spiders before use and going at night was out of the questions so we had a few covered potties around the porch.

Taking their children down to the farm was popular with my siblings. One group of my nieces and nephews took a flashlight down to the outhouse to peer in the hole and of course, dropped it in. For days they went to see how long the light lasted.

I'm hoping Kim Butler or one of the Leibolds will jump in here and share their rememberances of the farm we called "Booneyville".

Contributors and Plans

We have four new team members...my sister Patti Quinn Greeneltch, Charlie Swart, Lee Frizell, and Howdy Meagle...all good writers who I hope will round out this column with lots of neat memories. If you would like to be a contributor...just leave a comment saying so. I will need your email address and you will have to open a Google account (free)...but then you can post blogs here on any topic that you think will be of general interest to all "Woodsdale Kids".
Lee and friends are planning a dance at the White Palace like in the 50's and 60's. Hopefully it would be the same weekend as the picnic (first weekend in July) for out of towners. We need some feedback as to what you would like in the way of music (DJ, live bands, Kim Butler playing oldies), and food. We are going to have to charge and take reservations so we know how many we are catering for. Input please?
Hopefully, some of you have neat pre-Christmas or winter memories that you would like to share. I still have lots of neat photos and stories and writings to come.

Thanksgiving at the Quinnery meant going up to the Turkey shoot at the Carriage Barn at Oglebay and winning our turkey. Melissa and Tom, the oldest Quinns were the best shots and usually managed to bring home a turkey. One year Melissa won a radio instead.....how do you cook a radio?
It was necessary with a family of nine children to have the three youngest sit at a small table instead of the main table. So Michael, Colin, and Patty were exhiled to a tiny table on the side.
On the main table, the one decoration that was mandatory was a Fostoria glass turkey. I don't really remember going around the table saying what we were thankful for, but I do remember Thanksgiving poems or songs being performed.
In later years, my dad and the boys were down on the farm for deer season. Yuk, venison for the WHOLE WINTER....to this day, I just can't stomach venison.
There was no Macy's parade on tv and I sure don't remember anyone watching football at our house (we didn't even have a tv until 1956 or so). I think the entertainment was either outside play, ice skating at Schenk lake, sledding, or inside board games...parcheezi, monopoly, or Scrabble. I'm thankful to have grown up in a safe, fun neighborhood with a loving family.

More Snow Stories and Pics

Yes, it was a big snow. Most of the kids in the neighborhood went up to the Etz hill to sledride. It was fun dodging the trees.
The kid down the street had a St. Bernard which we tied our sleds to and let the dog pull us up the hill at the end of the street. Steering a sled was an art form. Another favorite site for sledding was the "hill" across from St. John's chapel on Heiskell. I can remember seeing a daredevil of a kid go between the wheels of a car as it sped down the street...a miracle he survived...you just can't cure stupid so I doubt if he is still alive.
I often wondered what flatlanders did for fun when it snowed.
If the outdoors got too cold, we always had our basement. The floor was concrete so it was perfect for rollerskating. We also had an archery range at one time, put on plays, had a schoolroom with authentic desks with inkwells and a huge blackboard. My brother Colin had his imaginary restaurant in the basement ...motto?...Eat Out at Ooter's Inn.
Best of all was the fireplace that my dad built out of huge stones all containing fossils. In the middle of the fire an iron statue of a pioneer woman hung by the neck...don't ask me why. My father built a chair out of a barrel. The seat had a trap door and in the bottom half of the barrel was stashed all our Halloween candy...nine kids, A LOT OF CANDY!...enough to last most of the winter. Our favorite thing to do was turn out all the other lights in the basement and sit around the fireplace while my dad told or read a story. One of the classic favorites was called "Shingabis" . If I remember right, it was an Indian story about a penguin.
The plays were elaborate as well. One written by a my sister Louise was called "Seven Days on the Frontier" and involved a frontier family. I got to play a bear. Our wardrobe was extensive. The bear wore an old full-length fur coat backwards and growled and raged at the window outside the cabin. My dad would sit in the back row and bonk kids in the audience on the head with a long clothesline pole with a tennis ball on the end of it, if they played up.
Basements were a necessary part of life. Dr. Maury built a boat in his, but couldn't get it out. The Leibolds' basement was a teenage hangout where we would listen to Bo Diddly and Jerry Lee Lewis. Almost everyone had a usable basement...great place to send noisy kids to play when the weather was too bad to go outside.

The Big Snow

In this photo, the Carters (of Everbreeze) are shown bringing milk down to Edgington Lane during the Big Snow of 1950. The milk was for the hospitals.

The Big Snow began just before Thanksgiving in 1950 and left 22 inches behind. The kids had a field day being out of school, but it was so deep they couldn't easily get anywhere either.

I remember my father digging a trench between our house and my grandparents house on Maple. There is a famous picture somewhere, of one of us going along the trench and all you can see is a hat sticking up.

Rosemary Front told me that the doctor who lived next door to her spent an hour digging out his car only to realize that he could not drive anywhere. I sure don't remember any snowplows! And I don't think there were any complaints of cabin fever...at least not at our house where there were so many people to interact with.

In winter we used to fight for possession of the "register". The furnace grate that gave off that warm heat. The one in the front hallway was always covered with wet mittens giving off a damp sheep smell to the whole house. The coatrack in the hall was so covered with big winter coats and scarfs that it looked like a giant. And leggings....how many of you remember wearing wool leggings? In our family if you lost your mittens you had to wear socks on your hands instead so mittens were guarded carefully.

One year my father built a giant sled in his workshop in the basement. I can remember him planing and sanding the runners. We gleefully awaited the launching. When we finally got it up to Sled Riding Hill at Oglebay it stubbornly stayed put and refused to go down the hill loaded with many Quinns....needed metal runners, I believe. Using our old sleds we would tear down that hill and my dad would take the car down near the Pine Room, let us tie our sleds to the back bumper and ride up the hill to start all over....never mind the exhaust fumes or the fact that we could have swished out sideways in front of an on-coming car...and when we would be completely exhausted...we would have hot chocolate from the refreshment stand. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

One of the most amazing things about Woodsdale was for every kid who lived there it was the center of the universe. We lived on Poplar and knew the name of every person who lived on our street. All our parents knew each other and every mother went to school with your mother so there was little chance of getting away with anything.
If you lived on Upper Poplar you were okay, but anyone above Heiskell Avenue was a bit iffy and dangerous and above Edgington Lane was "Canada". If you lived past Orchard Road or Hamilton Avenue...you were a foreigner too.....perhaps that was "Mexico". There were other neighborhoods we would associate with like Claytor or Washington Avenue, but even then kids were considered tougher and more dangerous. Walking to our neighborhood theater The Mayfair through the shortcut by Kenwood Place (the old trolley path) was okay in the evening when it was still light out, but NOBODY went that way after dark....especially after a horror movie....who knew whether the Blob or the Giant Praying Mantis was lurking there behind the bushes? So it was up Chicken Neck Hill instead...the safe way home.
Despite the Edgington Lane gang, that street was sort of declare neutral territory because that is where you could get Wizards at the Colonel's store and buy cheap toys at Jakes. Those Lane kids called a War at Stratford Hill once and the fighting only ended when one kid got hit in the head by a BB. They had THEIR end of the hill and we had ours....ours was a lot tamer with a neat path, the big rock, numerous forts, vine swings, etc. Time passed in a dream there. You could spend the whole day and not come home til dark...and best of all...your parents were not worried...they may or may not even know where you were. Ahhhhh, the good old days!

One more from Brother Mike:

The Fulton carnival was a wonderful place to get your pockets cleaned, and your mind dirtied. Fulton was a little neighborhood down by Wheeling Creek. It was close to the Blw Knox factory that turned out the tanks for WWII. You could get your pockets cleaned by playing any variety of rigged games that gave the illusion you could win. Another technique was a ride that would turn you upside down until the change fell out of your pockets.

My favorite was the Alligator Woman. The barker would stand on the stage and yell "She walks, she talks, she slithers on her belly, Come see the Alligator Woman". It turned out to be a poor quality strip show, but to a junior high kid it was the big time. Then there was the hermaphrodite, this poor person made a living by showing people that his/her condition was actually possible. It seemed in the old days there were certain instances where all forms of decency could be temporarily suspended.

When dogs were noble

This is my favorite of my brother Michael's writings about the good old days:

In the old days back in my neighborhood of Woodsdale, all professions, were much more professional. The doctors really cared, the lawyers were honest and respectable, and even the dogs were professinal. The dogs were much more human then. Our dog Ski8ppy was a prime example. In those days you did not train a dog to do anything. The dog decided what its job was and did it. Skippy was the neighborhood policeman. Skippy protected all the children in the neighborhood. If a tough kid from outside our area tried to assault or threaten any neighborhood kid, Skippy quickly made it known that it wasn't going to happen.

One of the best things about Skippy was you never had to feed him. He had a route. After dinner, he went from door to door, and everyone saved left overs for him. Often Skippy went to Smoot's to watch TV and relax after a hard day. I always thought it was interesting to go across the street and see our dog resting in an over-stuffed chair watching television.

At our home Skippy would spend a little time on each bed checking on each of us nine children. After he was sure everyone was asleep and accounted for he would settle in my parents room. Skippy knew the sound of each family member coming up the steps to the second floor. If anyone came up those steps at night that did not belong all hell broke loose.

My grandfather' dog, who was named Jeff for Thomas Jefferson accompanied the mailman for years. The Wheeling paper did more than one story on Jeff. Jeff met the bus everyday that brought Wilbur, our mailman from town. Wilbur and Jeff walked toghether all day delivering the mail. Jeff left Wilbur at the bus and went home to my Grandfather's house which was close to ours. I don't know for sure, but I imagine Jeff had a glass of Bourbon at the end of the day with my grandfather. In the old days dogs were never a problem. The dogs roamed freely and no one cared. Unfortunately dogs have lost a lot of their humanity in recent times, but I fondly remember when dogs were noble.

Cooks and the Janitor

To start off this brand new blog, I have decided to start with a photo of the cooks and janitor at Woodsdale Grade school.

For those of you who didn't go home for lunch, you could get a hot meal for 25 cents and as many butter or peanut butter sandwiches as you could beg.

There was a small table where they sold candy as well. My fav was the long, salty pretzels which I think were 2 cents each.

The cooks were always nice and kind to the kids...I never saw one lose her temper. These were the same ladies who cooked for us at Nature Camp in the summer, I think.

In the cafeteria after school, Mr Hile, the Principal taught French to anyone who was interested.

Were we not lucky to go to such a neat school?