Chuck Cole

Steve--fireworks were definitely not availble in Ohio.  And we didn't drive--weren't old enough for that at time. Fireworks were something that (mostly) boys were into and probably not much into beyond about 9th grade. I don't remember any girls being involved, but if I'm incorrect, please tell me.

When we were growing up, we were allowed to do things that are more dangerous than you can easily do today.  I got a chemistry set when I was in 5th or 6th grade, and set up a chemistry lab in my basement.  My mom would even let me order chemicals from the local Matheson, Coleman and Bell chemical supply company. I got some books from the library and would mostly make sparkle bombs and stink bombs, depending on what we added to magnesium ribbon, activated charcoal, and potassium nitrate--sulfur for stink bombs, and I don't remember what was added for other effects.  Chemistry sets today are so boring--there's nothing in them that isn't safe whereas in the 1950s and 60s, they came with many of the ingredients needed to make interesting and even dangerous things (though the amounts of each chemical in a set was pretty small).  

Halloween--does anyone rememer a three night sequence-- damage night, penny night (for UNICEF) and regular trick or treat?  I remember using duco cement (the kind we used to put plastic model planes together)--if you put a stripe of it across a street extending into the bushes, you could hide in the bushes and after a car passed, use a match to make a fire stripe across the road.  Sometimes someone further down the street would do the same thing before the car got there, and for 15 or 20 seconds the car was stuck in the middle.  That didn't ever get me into trouble, but probably should have.  Of course, there were times I did get into trouble but I'll save that for another time.  

Richard Montague

Chuck,

I can't remember our classmate who was selling fireworks but do remember he was selling packages of lady fingers for a dollar that cost ten cents.. When we found out where he was buying them we rode the local bus downtown and hopped on the Green Line bus that took us over to Ky to Pike street and Sams. Philip must have had a sweet tooth where we were into making explosives. Two bolts and a nut crammed with match heads thrown down would explode.

I remember going into a drug store and buying salt peter. As a kid you could even buy 22s from the local sporting good stores.  I guess we were lucky none of us were seriously hurt playing around back then.

Gene Stern

Hey Steve:  I used to "snikk out" when I was 15 by taking my Dad's car about midnight, drive over to Schneider's house, pick him up and cruise the city.  The last time I did it was July1961 when I had Goose Gossling in the car and I was stopped by a cop who was on a burglary stakeout near Knowlton's Corner. I had three cop cars around my car. My Dad had to take a cab to pick me up from the police station. I think I may have driven over to your house once.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

For Mary Benjamin about skipping out on Sunday(Saturday?) School at HUC

We used to get off the bus from Wise at HUC and walk the other way into the village area. Maybe we got ice cream? Most of the time we made it back in time but once I think we had to take a cab. It's fuzzy now.

Were you there at a different time from a different Temple? I am unclear about it all. 

Mary Benjamin

Barbara re: HUC. Funny, I don't remember a bus from Wise to HUC. But I definitely remember heading in the direction from HUC to anywhere else! I don't know about getting to class on time. HUC was my place to act out as I felt I had to always be so "good" and well-behaved at WHHS and Wise just didn't count in the same way! I remember at some point in my Wise education spitting spitballs made out of aluminum foil. That was probably elementary school!

Philip Spiess

Back in for comments on fireworks and chemistry sets (but first, Jon Marks, I'm sure you were the Cincinnati Opera's super "super"; I always enjoyed watching you, any number of times, I'm sure, as an animated waiter in Act II of La Boheme):

Chuck:  I'm stunned (in the stun-gun sense of that word) that you think boys left off being interested in fireworks in about the 9th Grade; I turn 71 this month, and I'm still interested in fireworks:  I've thrown a large 4th of July party (and two Bastille Day parties, 1979 and 1989) in my backyard every summer in the 38 years we've lived here, always concluding with a giant fireworks show (sometimes complete with patriotic music).  A little related personal history:  apparently when I was very young, you could buy small-bore fireworks in Cincinnati, for we used to have "flowerpots," "snakes," "sparklers," and "firecrackers" ("lady fingers"), to say nothing of caps (hit with hammers), in the backyard.  Much later, when I was in college at Hanover, Indiana, and you could no longer buy fireworks in Ohio, I'd drive for an hour and a half each way down to Milton, Kentucky (across the river from Madison, Indiana, near Hanover), to buy really good fireworks for the 4th of July at a favorite store I knew there.  (These were set off for years at a family friend's house on a hill in Wyoming, Ohio, from which you could see the aerial fireworks from about 7 local jurisdictions along the Mill Creek Valley.)  When I moved to northern Virginia in 1973, I discovered that Fairfax County prohibited most fireworks, but that I could get really good Chinese ones ("Red Lantern") at a tourist souvenir shop 40 miles south in Fredericksburg, Virginia (again, a worthwhile, but long, round-trip drive for our party).  More recently, northern Virginia has fireworks sales stands set up only in the ten days around the 4th of July, but these stands do stock sufficiently varied and powerful enough (but expensive!) fireworks for a really great show in my backyard on the 4th; we also have a large Ohio farm bell in our backyard, which I ring twice a year -- once on the 4th of July (usually at noon), and once on New Year's Eve at midnight.  Two final anecdotes:  when my son was young and we were visiting my parents in Cincinnati, as we returned home through Ohio, we saw FIREWORKS for sale (yes, you could buy them in Ohio, but you couldn't use them in Ohio!).  My son insisted we stop, so we did, ending up buying some large rockets I knew were illegal in Virginia.  However, my nephew-in-law, a fireman, lived down the street, so we got him to fire them off from large cardboard mailing tubes (as a kind of mortar); three went beautifully into the air, but the fourth went over the backyard sound barrier onto the Washington Beltway (I-495) -- we cringed and hoped for the best as we heard the squealing of brakes.  And the first year (1978) that we lived where we still live, on the 5th of July, my wife and I, both heavily hung over from the 4th, were sitting on the front stoop staring aimlessly at nothing.  My wife picked up a large package of unexploded firecrackers, lit them, and tossed them into the street.  They went off with loud BANGS just as a police car drove over them!  (And yes, Steve Collett, it was well reported that it was a cherry bomb that was flushed down that toilet at Walnut Hills.  I won't even mention the stupid fellow Scout who tossed a Silver Salute onto my shoe -- where it went off, numbing my foot for half an hour -- as we Boy Scout staffers were doing a fireworks show for the Scouts at Camp Edgar Friedlander in 1963.)

As to chemistry sets, I had both my mother's and mine, both Gilbert Hall of Science sets, and I set to work, as with you others, in the basement of our Clifton home (where we actually had gas burners with gas jets, a left-over from earlier laundry processes).  I found I could purchase chemistry glassware, and certain chemicals, at Woecker's [sp.?] Medical Supply, across the street from Shillito's (near the Temple Delicatessen), and sometimes at Pahner's or Stier's Drug Stores in Clifton.  Why, after all my basement practice, I did not do better in Mr. Welsh's senior-year Chemistry class, I don't know (well, yes, it was the math equations) -- unless it was because I was distracted by all of the possibilities and uses of Magnesium ribbon!

Sandy Steele (Bauman)

It's been fun reading about everyone's memories. I enjoyed summers at Cabana Swim Club, and recently found pictures of Laura, Kristin Pierce, Teedee,, and I playing cards there. I also remember a restaurant on Madison Road called Big 60. My parents would always bring me a sandwich when coming home from an evening out. 

Philip Spiess

And here's one for Steve Collett:  I was a Boy Scout (as were many of my WHHS classmates from Clifton) from 6th Grade through 12th Grade, and I've been a Scout leader (for my son) from his Cub Scout days through his Eagle Scout award, and I'm still involved as a hiker / camper and Assistant Scoutmaster to this day.  So I'm pleased to report that the Scouts still use "throwing knives" and "throwing axes" at wooden tree trunk targets as part of their Woodcraft skills.  (I myself, I will immodestly say, am pretty damn good at both sports, at least if the axes are well balanced.)  I will add that I got my 6th Grade students excited at axe-throwing through Kirk Douglas's The Vikings (1958), though I couldn't convince them that the axe-throwing scene was a trial of justice, rather than just some edgy social entertainment.  I also did some axe-throwing activity out in Colorado at an "old West" fort and restaurant (where I ate rattlesnake salad and elk, bison, and, yes, "Rocky Mountain oysters" -- a.k.a. sheeps' testicles -- which do indeed taste like fried seafood oysters!).  Speaking of male genitals, you refer to bull whips -- the 19th-century ones were made from bulls' penises -- hence the name -- and you can still get real leather ones (though probably not made from bulls' phallic members) in, among other places, Nashville, Indiana (and, I'm sure, elsewhere).  And, yes, although we are in suburban (almost urban) Virginia -- our yard backs up on the Washington Beltway (I-495) -- we regularly have mature deer and the occasional fox in our backyard, driving our puppy dog crazy.  

Henry Cohen

JMarx, W Bachrach was actually a distant cousin of mine and the Wheel Cafe was famous for clearing your plates while you were still eating off of them. Izzy's when owned by the original Izzy Kadetz was purported to at times charge people by what spot marks you had on your clothes when you were checking out. I did not witness this, but I heard tell that one time the comedian Jack Leonard came to Izzy's and there was great entertainment when Izzy and Jack traded hilarious insults for twenty minutes. 

David Buchholz

Are judges from Hawaii the only ones that seem to make good decisions?

Philip Spiess

Laura Pease:  Going back to your question of perfume:  "What did the guys wear?"  I assume you're referring to after-shave or some other cologne; I can't speak for other places, but I can speak for Hanover College, where you and I went.  In my Fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, and elsewhere on campus, the after-shave/cologne of choice was "English Leather"; any sandalwood-scented cologne was a second choice; "Old Spice for Men," though heavily advertised in those days, was a distant third (kinda "low-class").  (Much later, when I was teaching Middle School from 2006-2014, the 7th and 8th Grade boys would douse themselves with "Axe" deodorant at breaks and lunch; they used so much -- I still can't figure out why -- that the second floor reeked with it, as did they -- I hated it!)

Oh, and the vodka in the watermelon:  I've seen it done several times; as a serious drinker, I'm not particularly impressed with the results.  (I believe it was once actually done at WHHS while we were there; the watermelon was used in a water polo game [Bruce Fette:  I think you were goalie; any comments?].)

Philip Spiess

David:  Hawai'ian judges are also incisive, that is, they also make good incisions, i.e., judgments that cut through the crap of poorly executed executive orders.

Philip Spiess

Jon Marks:  Re Your comments at #2752:

The pre-movies flip-cards you mention were indeed the origins of Edison's movies.  You can still see (and use) some at Canobie Lake Amusement Park, Salem, New Hampshire, which also has a classic Mirror Maze.  There's also a Twist-o-Rail coaster, which my son, connivingly, got me on, and which was connducive to my going on the Olympic Bobsled Run at Lake Placid, New York, two days later (oh, god!). 

Jonathan Marks

Thanks, Phil.

I'm flattered you remember by turn as the waiter in Boheme.  I did it a number of times, and then got to repeat it at an opera company in New London.

I too was a Boy Scout, In Troop 11, which met at the Public Library in South Avondale, a lovely old Carnegie library.  When I joined it became de facto an integrated troop.

Chuck Cole

I remember May 1 as "Orange Day".  The idea was to inject vodka into oranges and then have oranges for lunch or snack.  I was surprised that even a minor could buy insulin syringes at the local drugstore, which is what we used to inject the vodka (at 1 cc per injection--28 for an ounce).  The  needle was not quite long enough to penetrate the thick rind of a watermelon, so the approach was to cut a hole the size of the neck of the vodka bottle in the rind and then invert the open bottle into the hole. I don't believe there was enough alcohol in the oranges or watermelon to cause much intoxication.  

Wasn't there also a day in the spring when people threw water balloons at each other?  I remember seniors taking over Mrs. Dobbins' room (I think it was her room that was over the back entrance to the school, which is where the balloon throwing came from) and unleashing a barage of water balloons on the underclassmen (underclasspeople?) below.  

Phil--I think you nailed the proper answers on the men's cologne question. 

Henry Cohen

Dave B, what on earth would prompt you to say that about judges from Hawaii? Oh yeah, I get it. Looks like we need to put a lot of faith in the judicial branch. 

Steven Levinson

Dave B:  The short answer is that Hawaii judges aren't the only ones, but they make good decisions.  

Phil S:  Please!  It's "Hawaii" judges, not "Hawaiian" judges.  Although US Federal District Court Judge Watson is, in addition to being a federal judge, also Hawaiian by ancestry.

Philip Spiess

Steve:  I stand corrected, taking your grammatical and ethnic points.  I'll have to plead the Fifth -- that is, the late hour during which I usually write on this site, and the 5th of Scotch that I'm usually examining as I write.

[And Chuck:  I think you've explained why I was never very impressed with vodka-infused watermelons:  you get more vodka out of a Martini olive.  (Joke of my own creation which I'm sure I've told before on this site:  What Dickens novel does a bartender invoke when he takes your order for a Martini?  "Olive or Twist?".)]

Chuck Cole

Phil--if I'm remembering right, a watermelon can absorb (if that's the right word) a surprisingly large amount of vodka--something like more than 1/3 of a fifth (somewhere along the line, however, whisky and wine moved to 750 ml bottles, no longer truly  a fifth of a gallon (0.8 quarts).  

Bruce Fette

Phil,

I do remember being the goalie in water polo,; definitively a not easy game. I dont remember the watermelon or the oranges with Vodka. Maybe you can refresh me over dinner sometime? We have an AWFUL lot of politics to further discuss!  AND I so approve of our Hawaii Judges.

Dale Gieringer

    I remember Orange Day.  We tried to celebrate it by injecting an orange with vodka, but it didn't taste any different.   The problem may have been that the "vodka" we had came from that package store on Reading Rd. by the Twin Drive-In  that was willing to sell to minors.   The strongest stuff they had was around 20% alcohol, making for quintessentially watery vodka.   After our Orange Day disappointment, we tried a different tack.  We injected vodka into a cardboard milk carton from the cafeteria, carefully sealing up the tiny injection hole with wax.   Then we placed the carton back amongst the other milk cartons in the lunchroom, in the hopes someone would buy it and be quite astounded.  That may have happened, but if so we never found out.  That's the problem with untargeted practical jokes.  On another occasion, Dennis Montgomery and I created a minor stir by bringing an empty Budweiser bottle to the lunchroom, fillling it with orange juice and drinking out of it with a straw.  We caught the attention of the eagle-eyed Mr. Lunsford, who scolded us and confiscated the bottle, but didn't punish us.     

Philip Spiess

Hmmm.  That milk carton might account for the Effie (ca. 1962) who passed out in the lunchroom and had to be carted upstairs in a pillowcase (or perhaps he had just learned about the Sex Ed class).  It was rumored he hiccupped the rest of the afternoon in rhythm with the Golden Eagles Marching Band, practicing their football game show on the back forty.

Stephen Collett

Hail, hail Chuck Berry.

Jerry Ochs

First gag of spring

Nelson Abanto

Hey Steve,

Yep, another charter member of Rock and Roll heaven.  Ricky is going to have company.

And Jerry, I have been pondering your ice cream question for a couple of months and I have come to the conclusion that I reject your vision of a distopic world where there are only three flavors of ice cream.  But if there were such a world, I would choose chocolate .