A Trip to the Dentist

Going to the dentist was a torture as a child. I remember one particular trip with my father to see Dr. Hennen. First, the waiting room where we were given mercury to play with. Yes, that's right! One of the most dangerous elements on the planet. We would roll it around in our hands and marvel at the incredible silver sheen it left on our skin. No one cautioned us about dropping it...it was considered harmless. I wonder if mercury poisoning accountants for my current eccentricities.
Dr. Hennen was very OLD!! His hands shook so badly that you feared he might miss your mouth all together and extract something necessary from your nose or another orifice. On this particular trip he informed my dad that my teeth were so crooked that I needed braces. As my dad explained that he had nine children and could not afford braces I secretly cheered. Years later when I could afford to pay for braces myself, I asked my dentist about getting them (I was in my 20's) and he said, "Look at my teeth, they are crooked and I had braces!"...so I guess that was not a recommendation.
Times have changed, but a trip to the dentist is still no Strawberry Festival.

Nice Neighborhood!
I have so many fond memories of Woodsdale. To repeat a phrase that you have read over and over again, it really was a great place to grow up. Actually, to be more honest about it, it was a great place to be a kid!
We roller skated up and down the street (sometimes we even stayed on the sidewalk); we rode our bikes everywhere (or I would hitch a ride with my brother, Jim, whenever I could); we visited each others’ homes to play (I guess today that would be called a play date?!); and as mentioned by others, we played outside all-l-l-l day long and up until the street lights came on at dusk.
We lived next door to the McCluskey’s. It was Taylor, Judy, Kathy, and then Miriam and Olivia. My poor mom. The McCluskey family kept growing and I kept asking my mom when we were going to have a baby. It didn’t happen, so fortunately for me, I am the baby of our family! I’ll bet I drove my mom nuts, though. I probably drove Mrs. McCluskey nuts, too. Actually, I probably drove several mothers nuts! I guess I was lucky some of them liked me. I don’t remember being particularly bad. That could be because I have a poor memory or because I have such high regard for myself. Listening was always a challenge for me; I’m getting a little better in my old age (I think). I do still react though when someone says, “you can’t do that!” Sure I can; watch me.
I remember riding the bus down town to shop at Stone and Thomas. I have fond recollections of walking through the Market with my grandmother on our way to go shopping. I remember waving to a Santa on the top of Wheeling hill (across from the statue of the Indian). Does anyone else remember that? I mentioned it to a couple of people who looked at me like I had grown up in another state. Please let me know; it is a very vivid memory for me. I always had a thing for Santa. I still do. To this day, I have my picture taken with Santa Claus every year!
So much has changed, but I go back to the old neighborhood and so much has stayed the same. The homes have been kept up so well and it is a joy to go back and walk around the neighborhood. It brings back wonderful memories. Thanks to all the current home owners for keeping our legacy alive! I wonder if the kids who live there now play together as often as we did and if they enjoy it as much as we did. I hope that they do so that they, too, can have pleasant memories when they are old (I mean older!).

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.