Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

Thank you Dale for your post. Ms. Baechle was my favorite Walnut Hills teacher (Mrs. Levy a close second!) Her Ancient and Medieval History class was fascinating, and I have thought of her so many times as we have found ourselves engaged in the Middle East and Islam. She spoke of how we should never disregard Islam. Their culture would be a major presence in the world once again. Along with the popular films popular at that time I was amazed. Here we are in the present day and I am constantly thankful for Ms. Baechle and her fabulous course. It was my favorite class in all of my 6 years at Walnut Hills. I went on to major in history due to her class! Like you, I wish more could have had such an excellent experience!

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I'm currently a subject in a study at Hadassah Hospital on cognetive assessment of cancer patients, and many of the questions involved memory. Then I read Dale's post about his memories of Ancient and Medieval History (which I take as a given are more accurate than mine!), and am once again dismayed. I would have been willing to swear that he was with me in Mr. Knab's A&M course.....

Florence (Now Jean) Ager

     When I attended Western College (Oxford, OH) there was a summer study trip  to the Middle East led by the college president every 3 years. During the prior academic year we were required to attend weekly ssemblies hosting speakers expert on the region. Since travel to the Middle East floated low on my bucket list, I was mostly inattentive. On occasion, however, my attention was sparked by reference to the importance of the region with regard to future conflict. Looking back, I am struck by how accurate those projections were.

     At that time, Western emphasized having an enrollment of at least 15% of foreign students. It was from my interactions with these classmates that I derived understanding of the Middle East. From them I learned to enjoy Mid-Eastern food. As issues with this part of the world have come into daily focus, my almost subliminal recall of what I think I had not learned provides context. There is something to be said for even partial cultural immersion as a learning tool

Dale Gieringer

Judy, you must be thinking of Miss Hope's AP Latin class, where we did sit side by side.  Now, that was ancient history!

Jerry Ochs

To misquote W. Churchill, those who fail to pass History are doomed to repeat it.

Philip Spiess

Jerry:  Actually, the quote you're misquoting was by George Santayana.

Jerry Ochs

Santayana's is Those who cannot remember the past are condemned yada yada yada.

Philip Spiess

Hmm.  And I thought Yada was an artists' colony at Saratoga Springs, New York!

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

What I was feebly trying to say was that I had Mr. Knab for Ancient and Medieval History, and that I thought that Dale was also in that class. I was mistaken! I trust Dale's memory over mine.....

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

I think I was in Knab's A&M History class. But I'm not sure.

How sad is that?

Paul Simons

I have to say a few words about Mr. Knab. I was definitely in his A & M history class and he was something else! Not a wrinkle in his suit. Not a poorly pronounced word, ever. Knew his stuff forwards backwards and probably sideways too. There were rumors that he had been a Xavier football player but an injury affected his voice so it had that high pitch. No matter- he was a great teacher.

Dale Gieringer

  Last night we went on a hunt for Comet Neowise.  It took a  twenty mile tortuous drive up Mount Hamilton Road to get far enough above the city lights to find it.  Not exactly the most conspicuous object in the heavens.  I used binoculars to locate it, but it's also visible to the naked eye if you know exactly where to look   (in this case, a degree above kappa and iota Ursae Majoris,  the pair of stars directly beneath in the photo - low in the northwest sky, far below the Big Dipper).     For those of you who have missed it, the next couple of days are the best time to look for it before moonlight becomes a problem.   After that, we'll have to wait until after our 6,800th reunion.

Jerry Ochs

Among my many fond memories of Mr. Knab's class, there is one that is fondest.  In the middle of a lecture, the classroom door swung open and Mr. Barron Wilson took one step into the room.  I don't remember what Mr. Wilson's message was but I do remember Mr. Knab saying, "Out, damned spot!"  To which Mr. Wilson replied, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

Philip Spiess

Judy and Stephen:  Well, it's all ancient history now.

Jerry Ochs

Our two sons feel like old codgers because their younger friends can't believe they once used computers that had no mouse attached.  Our sons can't believe I participated in early interactive TV by following a television program called Winky Dink and You that prompted children to draw on TV screens and absorb heavy doses of X-rays.

Did anybody else indulge in that madness?  What about The Mickey Mouse Club?

Jeff Daum

Jerry,

No I don't remember the Winky Dink program nor ever drawing on our TV as a kid.  I do recall somehow ending up on the Howdy Doody Show and won a Horrocks-Ibbotson fishing rod.  At the time, it didn't mean much to me since I had only mild interest in fishing, most of which was done at summer camp in Long Island.  Where more often than not, I ended up catching Blue Point Crabs.

But apparently the Horrocks-Ibbotson rod was a good one.  I did keep it for years and used it once in a while, before giving it to one of our sons.

Philip Spiess

Although I was never on the Howdy Doody Show, I was a regular watcher of it (I also had it on a board game, which I may still have), as well as a watcher of Roy Rogers (with Gabby Hayes).  Also, if I was home sick, I watched the locally-produced "Uncle Al" [Lewis] Show.  At a later date, I did watch The Mickey Mouse Club (original edition) and, on a trip to Disneyland (Cal.) in 1959, met Roy and the other dude (Jimmie, apparently) who were the two adult "leaders" of the club.  Winky Dink I heard of, but never watched.  (Our early TV fun was not drawing on the screen, but listening to the colorful language of our father on the roof, usually during a rain storm, trying to adjust the TV aerial that was attached to the chimney, so we could get a good picture; the "rabbit ears" aerial atop the TV only worked so-so under these circumstances.)

Jeff, it sounds like you only used the fishing rod on the fly; that's reel bad.

Jeff Daum

Oh Philip, you had me hooked at 'on the fly.' 

Jerry Ochs

Now that Phil's chiming in, did he know about this?

 "Double Doody", the Howdy stand-in puppet, now is in the collection of the Division of Culture and the Arts at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

I can only assume that Double Doody was Howdy's body double for the stunts and sex scenes.

I the Internet.

Philip Spiess

Well, Jerry, I didn't know about it (or had forgotten about it), though I worked at the Smithsonian for some years, and my wife Katherine was the assistant director in charge of collections management at the said Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, so I'm sure she knew about it.

As to the "Double Doody," I'm guessing that may have been because the original Howdy Doody puppet was destroyed in an accidental fire (or maybe he wasn't; see below) that destroyed most of "Buffalo Bob" Smith's puppets at some point, and they had to be reconstructed (I think that this was long after the show had gone off the air, and Bob was doing guest appearances in various places with his puppets -- though I am told that the original "Howdy Doody" puppet resides at the Detroit Institute of Arts).  I myself still own a Howdy Doody marionette from my childhood.

The National Museum of American History also has the puppets Charlie McCarthy, Effie Klinker, and Mortimer Snerd, the famed puppets of Edgar Bergen, well-known ventriloquist -- um, though he was famous, I guess for his humor, for he was a ventriloquist on the radio!  (Go figure.) 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I remember Winky Dink and You. I actually had the "magic" screen that would cling to the tv screen to write on. My mother relented and bought it after I went through too much Saran Wrap (new and terribly expensive to waste) which was too thin to draw on. All you did was connect the dots shown on the screen to draw a very simple image, usually a star like Winky Dink's hat!

Interestingly enough, I just subscribed to the new Disney Plus channel for 30 days for $6.99.  I subscribed only to watch the movie made of the Broadway production of Hamilton.  We (my stepdaughter, granddaughter, my wife-in-law [my stepdaughter's mother], and me, known as the Babes of Broadway)have had Broadway Series tickets for years. We saw the live touring production here in Cincinnati in 2019 and it had been scheduled to return in the spring 2021), but the 2020-21 season has been canceled. I think $7 was a bargain for better than an orchestra seat to see Hamilton.  After watching three times, I still had 25 days left to watch what was offered. I'm not much on superhero movies (they have ALL the Marvel movies) and EVERY nostalgic Disney movie, some remade from animated to live action. Lady and The Tramp was one of my favorites, but lost something with real dogs. However I did find the ENTIRE first week of The Mickey Mouse Club!  Those first 5 episodes were from October 1955. I watched that show every day and even had a subscription to Mickey Mouse Club Magazine. Each day of the week had a special theme: Monday-Fun With Music, Tuesday-Guest Star Day, Wednesday- Anything Can Happen, Thursday- Circus Day, Friday - Talent Round Up. 

I had also forgotten that the first shows were an hour long. There were pretty interesting newsreels, cartoons, a serial about two kids learning everything about TWA (Trans World Airlines), and the Mouseketeers.  They included more names and faces than I remember. I recognized two, who must have left MMC early to be on tv series. Paul Peterson, who went on to play Jeff on the Donna Reed Show, and Johnny Crawford, who played Lucas McCain’s son Mark on The Rifleman. The first year of the serial The Adventures of Spin and Marty, boys sent to the horse camp The Triple R Ranch was fun to watch too. 
What I don’t think I ever knew was that Jimmie Dodd was from Cincinnati!  I googled him. He died in 1964 of cancer. Many of the Mouseketeers have passed too.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Before we completely go down the rabbit hole with the Mickey Mouse Show (not that I didn't love it, mind you), I have a question:

There was another early children's show that I've been trying to remember for years. The puppet was Lambchop, and maybe the ventriloquist was named Sharyn or Sharon? Can anyone remember the name of the show?

Chuck Cole

I remember being part of the Peanut Gallery when I was growing up and still living in the NY city area.  We received a letter a few weeks before the date of the show to which we (or at least I) had a ticket. They told us that they had begun broadcasting the Howdy Doody Show in color and that we should wear pastel-colored shirts because white shirts looked a bad shade of purple or blue in the then new and exciting color television technology.  Acoording to Wikipedia, the HDS was among the first to be shown in color, in part to stimulate sales of color TV sets.  Color TV on networks began in Dec, 1953.

My cousin (Jimmy Heldman, WHHS '67)  won a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britanica Junior when he was in the audience of the Rootie Kazootie Show.  We got the big Encyclopedia Britanica a few years later, and I still have it, though I no longer ever look at it--wikipedia almost always provides what I am pretty sure is an honest answer to my questions.  It's particularly useful for definition of scientific terms.  I've often wished that Facebook was controlled by "the people" as is Wikipedia today (to some extent at least).

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Jerry, My sister and I loved Winky Dink!  You had to send away for the cover for your screen so you could draw on it and we did. 

Is that the show that also had Twang your magic twanger froggy? 

We were also fans of Uncle Al and Captain Windy.  We loved Mickey Mouse Club but I think that was later? I am not sure of when everything was. My sister, Linda, and I are 2 years apart and we watched shows together. 

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Judy, if nobody answered you yet you are thinking of Shari Lewis and lamb chop her lamb puppet.