Early driving lesson

very early in my life I learned (the hard way) to NOT touch things in the car. Back then, all cars were standard shifts and Dad had a habit of not using the parking brake - simply leaving the car in gear when he shut it off. One day as I pretended to drive, I shifted into neutral. Our driveway being on an uphill slope from the road, meant the car started rolling backwards towards the street. Apparently Dad spotted it and raced out, running alongside, trying to open the door and stop the runaway vehicle. We did all end up across the street in the neighbors yard but managed to miss any traffic and the telephone pole on the corner.
So kids, don't shift when you are pretend driving.
(PS: that cigarette lighter push button thing with the bright red coil inside -- don't put it on your chin to see if it really is hot. Just take my word for it, OK?)

Marshfield Fair 1975

I was never a big Fair/Carnival lover although we occasionally went to them. The best time tho' was when Mark & Dave Tanner and a few other friends (who's identities escape me now) and I went to the Marshfield Fair. That year the "prize of the year" were big glass goblets - sort of like holds a "Jim Dandy" at Friendly's, or a hefty brandy snifter - that had various Beer brand names and artwork on them. We played all the games that were actually winnable - particularly the "squirt the water into the target to make your toy racehorse go up the board" one, or any game you directly competed against others. We could monopolize a booth so that one of our gang was guaranteed to win. By the end of the night we were having serious trouble getting our bounty back to the car. We drove back to the Tanners house to show off our collection. As we removed glassware from cardboard boxes and paper bags, somebody decided to build a pyramid on the kitchen table with them as we tallied our take. Five tiers of over 40 goblets stacked impressively on the table until somebody got up to leave, bumped the table, and started a glass avalanche. About half of our winnings (and our macho enthusiasm) were shattered. I only got to arrive home with 4 glasses, which survived a number of years longer. The story of our exploits and the following disaster lasted much longer.

Ellen's mustard and ketchup sandwiches

No - that is not a typo or secret code. As a young child, neighbor and later step-sister Ellen liked to eat mustard & ketchup sandwiches - no balogna or ham - just condiments and Wonder Bread. I still have a clear image of her in our back yard on a hot summer day, eating her sandwich while yellowjackets buzzed around and even landing on the bread while she - apparently oblivious or unconcerned - continued to chomp away.

I Wanna Dance with the dolly with the holes in the stocking

1960?

Laurie got (for Christmas?) a 3ft tall raggety ann type doll with elastic straps on the bottoms of her feet. You would stand the doll on top of your own feet, with the elastic straps to keep them there, and start dancing around the room. This made for the perfect dance partner for a 5-7 year old. The doll would not try to lead, complain that you went the wrong way or too fast, only stepped on your feet because she was strapped to them, and could get dumped on the floor when you were finished without feeling rejected. We might have a radio or record player providing music, but mostly we simply sang while we took turns dancing. Mostly we sang the old song about "dancing with the dolly with the holes in her stocking and her knees kept a'knocking" and waltzed her around the upstairs front bedroom. For real excitement, we would un-strap her feet and do the twist - her legs flapping spasticly in the air - or just spin as fast as we could with her legs like helicoptor propellers and slapping and any brother or sister who didn't get out of the way.

(a little sibling can turn anything into a weapon against a rival sibling!)

The Ocean Spray Cranberry Buildings

We were closely tied to the Ocean Spray Cranberry company, as Grammy was the switchboard operator, Dad worked nights doing janitorial work, Nenna worked some evenings doing secretarial work, Uncle Mac did some part-time evening warehouse work there, and of course we lived across the street – our yard abutting the employee parking lot. Not only did the family grownups receive income from the company, but thanks to Grammy we sold lots of hand made Princess Pine wreaths and streamers there. Each winter she would bring us a list of who wanted which or how many door decorations, we would tromp through the woods filling our onion sacks with the bushy little ferns, empty them out on the cellar floor, and produce whatever the list required. This generated a rather nice Christmas income for us kids.

When I was in 7th grade I would occasionally help dad buff the floors at night. After supper I would cross Main Street and go in the front door. Just inside was the receptionist/telephone operator who would greet visitors and send them in the proper direction, and connect incoming phone calls to the intended recipients using an old fashioned switchboard system.

To the right was the main hallway into the sprawling building, and instead of drinking water in the water dispenser they had it filled with chilled cranberry juice. I never failed to grab the little triangular paper cups and take a swig or two. I quickly became adept at operating the powerful buffing machine, making it slide back and forth simply by changing the tilt of the handle – careful not to let it get away and crash into walls or furniture. [This skill (and Dad’s network of friends) helped me get my first paid summer job at the Maquan School – cleaning and buffing.]
Once I finished my buffing duties, I would wander around and explore the nearly empty and mostly darkened multi-level complex. The main floor was comprised mostly of various meeting rooms and hallways. In the front/right there was a sort of sunken meeting room built into an enclosed converted loading dock space. Turning towards the back of the building a sloped hallway went uphill and then turned left into the mailing room area. Passing through there, you entered a warehousing area with berry sorting machines and elevators. Uncle Mac taught me how to drive the forklift in there and let me practice – until I got it stuck on the elevator. He had to figure out how to work it free for me. Upstairs was where most of the offices where, with one large open room which contained probably 30 desks, surrounded by the smaller private offices of the managers and their personal secretaries. John was the upstairs night janitor and never minded if I explored his part of the building.

On the third floor was a large cafeteria with lots of windows overlooking downtown South Hanson (i.e. not much), and a large ornate office/meeting room which seemed more like a fraternal lodge gathering space to me – heavy drapes, plush cushy chairs, and dark paneled walls (there might have been deer heads or such). Down in the basement they had a laboratory where the cranberry scientists would experiment and test new drink flavors or whatever. There was even a trap door which when opened exposed the underground river that flowed out of Urann’s Pond, under the parking lot, Main St, the main building, the railroad tracks, the ‘cold storage warehouse’ and into the Great Cedar Swamp beyond. The railroad tracks ran smack between the office and the cold warehouse buildings, splitting into three sets wide, leaving just enough room between the tracks and the front building for a vehicle to drive along. Often a handful of freight cars would be parked between the buildings, but I never tried to get into or onto one. Although we occasionally walked the tracks between the buildings, mostly we rode our dirt bikes through to get to our gateway to the swamp. Literally, when we reached the end of the building where the enormous chimney is (built by great-great grand-dad McClellan) we would cross the tracks and ride through the generally open chain link gateway into the cold storage warehouse lot. From there and through another chain link gate, a quarter-mile long dirt dike road led to the cranberry dump. Mountains of left-over cranberry shells from product trials and tests, and bad berries removed from the sorting process were brought here via dump truck and piled around the perimeter of a roughly 2 acre lot. How much of the lot was on solid ground and how much was simply cranberry backfill was hard to tell but the piles were fun to run up and down. The odor of biodegrading berries was sometimes too strong to hang around in, but usually it wasn’t too bad. Many bog roads and dike roads and old woods roads and power line paths branched off from here – leading all around to places like Burrage (Reed St), Monponsett (rt 58), Halifax (rt 106), Bog 18 (off of Elm St), and beyond from there. The Ocean Spray parking lot was our playground. Once the employees left for the day, we had all that open space to ride our bikes (and later – dirt bikes), play street hockey and touch football, or long-toss baseballs and Frisbees. The warehouse between our back yard and the pond was used for storing empty cranberry crates. Two stories high, the lower section would be loaded from the front of the building facing the parking lot. The upper section was entered from the rear, facing the woods. The empty crates would be packed almost to the 15 foot ceilings, leaving just enough head room for us to crawl over and through – when on occasion we discovered a broken window that allowed us an entry point. We never broke windows ourselves (well, maybe a stray hockey puck shot from the pond might accidentally find itself launched in through a pain of glass – but that was always hard to pin blame on someone – maybe the shooter, maybe someone deflected it maybe the goalie was bad) but were not against being opportunistic. We carefully and considerately only ever burned broken crates when we needed a bonfire for a late-night skating party. I’m sure we never broke them by crawling around on top of them or shooting poorly aimed slapshots at them.



http://www.answers.com/topic/ocean-spray-cranberries-inc?cat=biz-fin

BIGFOOT

In one year while in jr. high school (7th – 8th grade) my shoe size went from a size 7 to a size 10. This was the cause of lots of jokes aimed in my direction, as at that moment in time I officially had the largest feet in the house. The teasing was good natured and I didn’t particularly mind having something that I could lay claim to being #1 at. Then one night JR stopped by to visit and presented me with a gift he found at a yard sale – a pair of size 20 hightop sneakers. This produced a tremendous amount of amusement for everybody. I gratefully took them and placed my already sneakered foot inside of them and laced them up. Needless to say, they flopped loudly as I walked across the floor and they were quite cumbersome as I tried to shoot baskets on the court out back. Over the course of time I actually got lots of mileage (literally and figuratively) out of them. On the last day of school, people were allowed to dress crazy so I wore them to my classes. Classmates were certainly impressed, although with the harder core kids – not favorably. In high school there were occasional “dress crazy” days that I would get to wear them. On one of these days, the grumpy gym teacher looked at me and then assigned the whole class to run laps before going to our assigned activity. Those laps were torture, but once I got to the tennis court – I still managed to beat Gary Brine in three straight sets. Other members of the family also got use out of the absurd sneakers. Laurie was completing her Red Cross Life Saving training and one part of the test required her to “save” a drowning “victim”. One of the Williams brothers volunteered to be the victim, but just for fun laced on the size 20’s and jumped off the end of the dock. After a momentary appearance that he might actually walk on water, they filled up and he went down. Unable to come back up and do the stereotypical thrash and splash “help, I can’t swim” routine, Laurie had to leap in and ACTUALLY save him. Failing on her first attempt to bring him up for air, a second student jumped in and together they got him to the surface alive. They both passed and became lifeguards. Nobody ever made the mistake of trying to swim with huge basketball footwear again. The last time I remember seeing them, we played a Halloween fundraising concert at Camp Kiwanee and Marlene put them on at one point – trying to get some good old “foot stomping” music going. Various band members took turns clomping around in them throughout the evening. The crowd loved it, but apparently somebody that night loved it too much because as we packed up at the end of the night it was discovered that the beloved sneakers were stolen – never to be seen again.

Happy 5th Birthday

My mother wasn't at my 5th birthday party. She was at the hospital delivering a baby. At some point during the day I was told that I had a new brother. I remember a few days later she brought David home, sat me in a chair, and put him in my lap/arms and said "you got a brother for your birthday". I don't remember being impressed.

(No offense, Dave. You've grown on me since then!)

Ruthie McDonnell

Ruthie McDonnell - upper left in photo
In 1979 the Hanson Girls Softball 13-17 yr old team had a 6-8 record playing in the North River Girls Fastpitch Softball League. I was the head coach of this wild and crazy and diverse collection of teenage softball players. Many of the girls had unmistakable and strong personalities of various types. Some were shy or quiet and just sort of blended in without being particularly noteworthy, which is how I had tended to be as a teenager and young adult. But after getting talked into helping coach this team, and then becoming the head coach – I was forced to learn to interact in a more vocal and demonstrative way. These girls were the best thing to happen to me at that point in my life.
One of the best players and strongest personalities on any of the teams I coached over eight years was “Ruthie”. She was a big strong girl who could hit for power, had a cannon of an arm, and would gladly run over the opposing catcher if she tried to block home plate. AND, she would laugh about it the whole way – as if to say “I can’t believe you thought you were going to stop me”. In any moment of competition, Ruthie had a determined scowl which instantly gave way to a proud and beaming smile. She LOVED doing her job well. As a shortstop, she would throw so hard to first base that Nancy (our 1st baseman) would complain that she was throwing too hard. Ruthie hated pitching because she couldn’t throw as hard underhand as she could overhand. What she excelled at was being the catcher.
Stereotypically big and slow moving, and happily bossy, Ruthie at 16 and 17 years old was the field general. She would pump up the pitcher, wake up the infielders, joke with the umpire and batter, and let me know that I wasn’t really needed here – she had it all under control. Our pitchers quickly learned that their own head was directly in the line of fire when Ruthie tried to throw a runner out stealing second base. She would sternly remind them of that fact and warn them to be ready to duck – not to save their own lives, but so their head wouldn’t interfere with her throw. This public and confident announcement was sometimes enough to convince a baserunner NOT to try stealing second. On plays at home plate, she KNEW she had a size advantage over most girls and would practically DARE anyone to try to run through her to score. She knew she was big and strong and relished in being able to take advantage of her “physical talent”.At bat she was fearless and always grinned at the opposing pitcher – her way of trying to psych out the opponent, no matter how fast the girl could pitch.
In batting practice, she was murder. When Ruthie stepped into the batters box, most of our own pitchers were too scared (or too smart) to pitch to her, and because we didn’t have many girls who threw real fastballs (but many of the opponents did) I would throw a lot of batting practice so our own batters could practice hitting against speed. Ruthie had an uncanny knack of hitting line drives back through the pitchers circle – anywhere from head high to “just-below-belt-high”. She would have me ducking and leaping throughout her whole BP session, with the rest of the team laughing at my predicament and rooting her on. Every body loved Ruthie – you couldn’t help it, unless you were on the other team. She learned that her power zone was hitting towards right-center field, and that most teams weakest players were in right field. She needed to hit the ball into that gap, because Ruthie didn’t particularly run around the bases – she thundered around them. Team-mates good naturedly complained about earthquakes and thunder, and joked about the 3rd baseman running for cover as she huffed and puffed into 3rd base. She just smiled and laughed with them.
Playing down in Plympton, the opposing star player was also their catcher. Ruthie was on 2nd base and a ball was hit to the outfield. She rounded 3rd and headed for home –ready for a close play. The throw was high causing the catcher to leap. Ruthie – not one to be polite or to avoid a collision - went low and took the girls legs out from under her, and they landed in a heap. The umpire called “Safe”, the catcher got up looking for a fight, but Ruthie just casually got up and triumphantly walked away – beaming as always, and to a chorus of cheering from her impressed team-mates.That was Ruthie in all of her glory. Never to be a prom queen, she held court on 95 degree hot July afternoons, full catchers gear on, dirty, sweaty, and personally victorious no matter what the final score was. She was the hero of all the pretty girls who wished they were “ballplayers”, the shy girls who wished they were outgoing, and any other girl who simply marveled at the person who was “Ruthie”. She was a joy to coach.

When Lau laid down the Law

Laurie played hockey on Urann’s Pond for years with the neighborhood kids, so she knew how to play pretty well.

She was friends with many of the High School hockey team players, so she ended up playing in some of the pickup games at our outdoor rink. One day we had a number of high school kids, Eric and David, Uncle Mac and a handful of fathers all involved in a big game on a clear sunny day. Glen P happened to be the big body builder football player of my grade, but as he skated up ice with the puck, Laurie demonstrated the old adage of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. With a picture perfect legal hip check, Glen went down in a dramatic heap while Laurie (white figure skates and all) skated away with the puck – much to the very loud vocal amusement of everybody present. Well, every body but Glen’s father – who in an effort to get revenge for his shamed son started chasing Laurie in an obvious effort to even the score. Uncle Mac lived by the theory “mess with my family and you mess with ME!” so he started chasing Mr.P around to head him off before he got to Laurie. Glen tried to become invisible – hiding from the fact that he got decked by a girl and that his Dad was making a fool of himself and that a brawl was on the verge of breaking out over the whole deal. Cooler heads prevailed, Laurie became a folk hero, Uncle Mac was comfortable in knowing that he would have killed Mr. P if necessary, and Glen went on to lift enough weights to become as big as a house and compete in men’s body building competitions (where he would certainly never get shown up by a girl!). He eventually joined the Police Force where he could carry a gun and be really manly. That Christmas I bought Laurie shin guards on the theory that she would never get a date with shins black and blue from getting slashed in a hockey game.

How I started the Whitman-Hanson Youth Hockey program.

OK – so it took a little bit of initiative from some other people who copied an idea of mine and expanded it and improved it, and that led to the formation of the first WH youth hockey team (and I didn’t even get to play on it).

I was in high school and didn’t feel like walking over to Urann’s Pond just to skate. I had noticed how melt water would drip onto the cement back steps and freeze into a pretty thick layer. I thought if I could spray water onto the patio bricks, maybe I could form a good enough ice surface to skate on our basketball court. I had learned that an outdoor water spigot won’t freeze if you keep the water turned slightly on, so I did – and waited until after dark when the temperature dropped to below 32. Slowly and patiently I repeatedly sprayed a mist of water onto the backyard bricks. This would freeze rather quickly and I found I could re-spray about every 15 minutes until I had maybe a ¼ inch layer over the entire patio/court. This didn’t hold up well to skate blades, but after a couple of nights of diligent spraying, I had close to an inch of ice to skate on. Jim R. stopped by one night as I was skating and became intrigued at my home-made rink, and asked how I accomplished it. I demonstrated my spraying techniques, and a new idea was hatched in his head. Jim was friends with Charlie Oertel – the grandfather of my friend Russell Dean on West Washington St – who owned a large field across the street from his house and abutted by a small stream. Charlie gave his blessing and a bulldozer was brought in to scrape clean and level a spot for an outdoor hockey rink. Assisted by a borrowed generator and pump, we would take shifts spending a few hours late at night pumping water onto the rink. Before long we had a solid 2 inch ice surface surrounded by telephone poles layed flat for the “boards”. A good snow storm and a lot of shoveling it off to the sides made the boards a little easier to get checked into. Jim had a couple of goals built at his work, invested in the nets, and also bought some plywood for sturdier boards behind the goals. On our new rink, we would have pickup games with all of the kids (and a handful of Uncle Mac’s friends, who just so happened to have kids too). But Jim was friends with a guy from Duxbury who was involved in their youth hockey program. A scrimmage game was set up with them, so of course we needed a team to play against them. David and Eric were about the right age to participate. An assortment of 4th to 6th grade kids– basically anyone who claimed to have a clue about how to play hockey - were assembled. After a couple of practices, they didn’t look very formidable. Much to my dismay, because I was clearly too tall and old to possible sneak in, I couldn’t play. Even worse, Chipper Cane – who was in my grade – got to play, simply because he was very short for his age and a very good hockey player, therefore giving us a cheating chance at being competitive. A few games against Duxbury were played that winter, and not long after that The Hobomock Rink was built in Pembroke by George Gould (also a friend of Jim’s). The Whitman Hanson Youth Hockey organization was officially created, with Jim as the President, and along with Pembroke and Duxbury were the very first teams to play at Hobomock Arena. And to think it all started when I ingeniously iced the backyard patio brick basketball court at 30 Phillips St. just to save a few steps.

The Human Zamboni

Friday Night public skating at Asiaf Arena in Brockton was where we went to practice our skating skills when pond ice was not available. Nenna’s friend Jim would pack a bunch of us into his Thunderbird or Bronco and off we would go. David was about 8 years old and still just learning to skate. Learning to skate means falling down a lot. Before you master all of the maneuvers, you fall when you stop, when you turn left or right, when you skate backwards, when you get cut off, bumped, tripped. At a busy public skating session, all of these would happen and David spent a LOT of time “learning”. Actually we spent a lot of time watching him sliding across the ice – on his belly, side, or back. The ice would be pretty scratched up by so many skate blades, but every fall and slide would leave an 8 yr old sized swath of freshly cleaned ice. David “cleaned” the ice so often we started calling him “The Human Zamboni”. Smartly, Nenna always had him thickly dresses with layers of warm clothing , ski pants, gloves, and a hat. He never got hurt, or cold, and he just loved skating so he never minded the falls or the nickname. When we got home he would proudly tell mom just how many times he actually fell (Mom! I only fell 35 times tonight!), and we could gauge his improvement as the number shrunk.

David eventually became the most accomplished hockey player in the family – starring in Youth Hockey, High School, and still playing weekly 40 years after his Asiaf ice cleaning days.

The Whitman Movie Theater & The Yellow Canary

So one night we travel to Whitman as we often do to visit with the Tobin’s. Nenna and Aunt Edie drink tea and chat and Wes, Laurie and I – along with Skip, Bill and Tom – Invent some game to play or some investigation to conduct around the Roberts St neighborhood or through the graveyard behind their house. But one night while Nenna and Edie visited, we were given money and allowed to walk the few blocks to downtown to catch a movie at the Whitman Movie Theater. Now we had been there before to see Disney Movies like Sleeping Beauty and such, always preceded by cartoons – Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Tom & Jerry, Mickey & Goofy. But now we were big kids (I was 8 and the youngest, so Wes and Skip were 12 or 13) and we got to go without parental supervision. The movie being shown was called “The Yellow Canary” – and it was scary!!!

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The Yellow Canary
Genre: Crime
Director: Buzz Kulik
Main Cast: Pat Boone, Barbara Eden, Steve Forrest, Jack Klugman, Jesse White
Release Year: 1963
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
Written by mystery master Rod Serling, The Yellow Canary stars Pat Boone as insufferable singing idol Andy Paxton. Barbara Eden plays his wife Lissa, who is fed up with her husband's egotistical attitude and is ready to leave him. When their baby son is kidnapped, Andy Paxton refuses to enlist the help of the police. He still does not cooperate even after three people are murdered in crimes apparently related to the kidnapping. Finally, acting on his own, he agrees to pay $200,000 in ransom, but the kidnapper never shows up at an arranged meeting. In desperation, the singer finally gets more involved in tracking down the kidnapper. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
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Now Laurie always loved to be scared by TV shows or movies, but this was tense and suspenseful with kidnapping and murder and we were all hiding our eyes. Unfortunately, our eyes were open and we were unsuspecting when at a critical moment Pat Boone enters a darkened room and shuts the door behind him – and although HE doesn’t at first see it, we DO – the dead body of a man hung by a noose behind the door.
I don’t actually recall too much detail about the movie, other than the key clue is that the killer had beech sand in his shoes (I’m guessing that I not spoiling the plot for you as you are likely not running out to rent it!). Walking back through Whitman Center to Roberts Street in the dark was nerve-racking tho’, and Wes was particularly traumatized by the whole ordeal. For days and weeks (and months) afterwards all I had to do was to say out loud “THE YELLOW CANARY” and he would cower in fear. Even years later I could get a rise out of him by uttering that movie title to him, and now – if you were to walk up to Uncle Wes and say “look out for the Yellow Canary” he will either fake-scream in fear or grab you and fake-beat-you-up. Try it. It’s fun.

Family Politics

1963 – Aunt Edie had been a Whitman Town Hall secretary, but decided to run for town treasurer. Her 1^st husband George Tobin had been a town official for many years – it was actually how they met. Now married to Uncle Bud – a town policeman – she recruited her children and niece and nephews to canvas the town and pass out fliers. Laurie & Wes & cousin Skip were given stacks of fliers and a route to follow and instructions. Being only 8, I went with Aunt Edie to help her. Down sidewalks, up driveways, sticking leaflets in people’s front doors was easy enough, but I was amazed at how many back doors and side doors had to be approached as well. Hanson had almost no apartments, so the concept of 2 or more different families living in the same house was new to me. I remember feeling invested in the outcome due to the effort I put in on her behalf, and the disappointment I felt when she didn’t win the election. It was almost like I had lost the election and it just didn’t seem fair.

Shredded Wheat

(To my surprise, I saw these on sale still – possibly a leftover box from 1965!)

Our winter time breakfast menu had two notable additions – Hot oatmeal with raisins and Shredded Wheat. Fairly often, Nenna would cook up a pot of Quaker Oats with raisins mixed in. The pot would stay hot on the stove all morning and we could help ourselves at whatever time we were ready to eat, scooping out a bowlful and adding milk and sugar (lots of sugar) or maple syrup. If oatmeal wasn’t on the stove (or the occasional substitutes Cream Of Wheat or Maypo) and we wanted something hot, there was always a box of Shredded Wheat.

Decades before Frosted Mini-Wheats were invented, Shredded Wheat came as what looked like a large steel wool pad made out of (as the name would indicate) shredded strands of stiff brittle wheat. We would put one of these “bricks” into a bowl and pour boiling water from the tea-pot over it. This softened the block into a limp wet pile of wheat strands. Then one would drain the hot water out of the bowl, trying not to let the mushy form of the pad fall apart (for some reason it seemed very important to maintain the resemblance of it’s original form), and would slowly pour about half a cup of milk around it.

Topping it off with a generous supply of sugar completed the production.

We invented Frosted Mega-Wheats! (best served hot)