CHAPTER 80. 1959 Facing Adulthood
Stuart brought his glove, but no fowl balls came up toward our
seats, somewhere behind hime plate in the second deck. There were some Milwaukee fans sitting in front of us and we had some friendly jibing back and forth. The Phils won the first game and we were gloating, but the Braves took the nightcap. (Right, old Shribe Park/Connie Mack Stadium.)
This was only a week after graduation. I am not sure if there were many more times the three of us went anywhere together. We might have gotten together a few more times during that coming summer, but in August 1959 Stuart went off to Franklin & Marshall College and pretty much out of our lives for a long time. (Photo right Stuart and his Pi Lambda Phi brothers. Stuart is the third from the left in the second row.) There were a few intermittent and chance meetings during the 1960s, but then it would be close to forty years before we really hooked up again.
Stuart said at a reunion Ronald and I had with him in 2011 he remembered watching Twilight Zone at my home. This was wrong. Twilight Zone didn’t debut on TV until October 2, 1959 and Stuart was gone by then. I think he confused it with “Shock Theater with Roland”, which we did watch together at times.
“Shock Theater” began in Philadelphia in 1957.
Roland was a voice actor named John Zacherley (pictured left). The show showed old horror movie. Roland, looking like a skeletal undertaker, introduced the films and appeared at every commercial break with a pithy comment or two. It was very successful in Philadelphia and after a
couple of years the host moved to a New York station using his own last name for the same persona. During the years John Zavherley was on in Philadelphia he had a hit record, “Dinner with Drac”, and recorded an album,”Scary Tales”.
Stuart wrote in his autobiography that after watching “Shock Theater” at my place he was scared to death walking home afterward. I probably would have been too. “Shock Theater” didn’t come on until 11:00 at night. It would have been around 1:00 AM when he went home.
Except here again his memory is faulty. “Shock Theater” with Roland debuted on Philadelphia WCAU-TV in October 1957. I moved from Downingtown to Bucktown in June 1956 and although for a while I spent weekends visiting my grandparents at their Washington Avenue home, this ended a few weeks after my Grandfather died in January 1957, well before “Shock Theater” premiered. If he was walking home to Downingtown from my place in Bucktown, no wonder he felt scared. It would have been a 15-mile hike in the dead of night.
There is a show patterned after Shock Theater on now out of a Chicago station called “Svengoolie” It has a host that makes comments and snide remarks about old horror movies being shown. Rich Koa (right) plays the host, having replaced the original Svengoolie back in 1979. I’m probably prejudice, but I think Roland was better.
Ronald and I used to watch and discuss “The Twilight Zone” during the period after we graduated. I remember watching it at least once in his parent’s home on Hopewell Road.
“The Twilight Zone”, like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, influenced my own writing. Especially
the stories by Charles Beaumont (pictured left below), one of its many writers. I had three of his short story collections, The Hunger and Other Stories, Yonder and Night Ride and other Journeys, as well as Remember, Remember, essays about pop culture. Beaumont died at age 38 from a somewhat mysterious wasting disease.
It is funny the crowded memories that flood in about this time, disjointed stuff, yet almost as if some finishing touches had to be put on my boyhood. Little things and silly things and confusing things that happened. For instance a little thing like taking a birthday gift to Iva Darlington in Downingtown. After all these years we were still close enough to exchange gifts. We even still exchanged Christmas presents.
On June 3, which was the day after Graduation, after spending the afternoon at Ronald Tipton’s, I got him and we picked up Tommy Wilson. I am not sure why I did that, because Tommy and I weren’t the friends that Richard and I were. That night we just went out cruising around through the evening, except I ran out of gas. I guess we found a nearby house and called home and asked my mom or dad to bring us a can of gas. We got home somehow, I just don’t remember how.
As we were driving the conversation around me drifted off to the subject of sex. I really didn’t have any experience in the matter, or none I wished to talk about. The problem was this guy George began speaking about oral sex. He went on and on about the pleasures of it. It was a subject I had never even thought about at that point of my life. He was getting ever more explicit and then he began poling us on who had experienced this form of activity. I felt more and more uncomfortable and was very anxious to get rid of these guys. He was beginning to suggest we should try it and fortunately we had reached one of their homes and all three decided to get out there. What they might have done there I cannot say. I was just glad to be rid of them.
(Left, Bill Brookover as he looks in more recent times.)
After that night neither George or Ed popped up in my life again, although Ronald remained close friends with Ed for the rest of Ed’s life. Ed died in Rehoboth during January 2015. I have no idea whatever happened to George. Bill Brookover is still an occasional friend of both Ronald, Stuart and myself and still lives around Downingtown.
I didn’t follow the oral sex conversation very well, except for it making me nervous. It was a new viewpoint to me and I think I was repulsed by the idea at that time. I did not realize that the discussion might have certain implications for the future.
Suzy Cannell. On May 29 I took her to the Senior Party at OJR, on the 30th she was with me and my parents to attend stock car races in Hatfield. On the next Sunday, May 31, I spent the whole afternoon with her before attending the Baccalaureate Services in the evening. Right, Suzy at graduation.)
At this point Suzy suddenly disappeared from my life. Between the Baccalaureate Services and Commencement, she returned to Jon. It wasn’t really going to matter to me, because something was going to happen the night of Commencement that shortly after would take my mind off Suzy completely.
After the graduation ceremony at Owen J. Roberts on June 2, I was loitering in the hallway. I saw Mr. Elliott leave school with one of my classmates, but had no idea where they were going together. It struck me as odd, to tell the truth. I stood and watched them get in his car and drive off. They both seemed happy, smiling, laughing. Perhaps he was simply driving my classmate home after the ceremony, but I have always wondered.
I was about to leave and go home when Dorothea Lederer and her family walked by me. She stopped and introduced me to her mother and suddenly they invited me to join them for a Commencement Party. It surprised me because I was never really tight with Dorothea, although we were friendly to each other and she was part of the little group I often hung around with. She was also one of the most popular girls in school and I considered her out of my league.
There were two older women, somewhat exotic looking, sitting across from me. There was a blond girl with glasses seated to my right. I knew the girl, but only by her face.
One of the older ladies leaned over the table toward me. “You yust graduate?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Den what you are do now?” She sounded to me a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor, some kind of middle-European accent. “You go college?”
“No,” I told her.
The girl to my right cleared her throat and the older lady looked toward her.
“Ah yes,” she said with a small laugh. “You know, of course, my niece?”
I nodded yes, but no name would come to mind. “I’ve seen her at
school,” I said.
She play de piano quite vell, perhaps you have heard her.” Said the Aunt.
Yes, that was where I remembered her from. She played the piano in the variety show where Ray and I did “The Barber and The Boy” sketch. What was her name? I couldn’t recall. She also co-wrote the class song., “As We Say, Farewell.”
Twelve long years have passed us by.
In our hearts we hold a sigh.
Of the days of toil and pleasure,
Rewards without a measure
As we say farewell to thee, dear Roberts High.
Loyal ever, always true.
Roberts high, we'll be to you.
As we leave these halls of learning,
Our spirit will remain.
As we say farewell dear Roberts High.
As we go along our way,
We'll remember long this day.
Of our graduation splendor,
The memories ne're forgotten,
As we say farewell to three, Dear Owen J.
-- Gale Anderson, Nancy Bright, Sonja Kebbe and Wilfred Still
I knew she was in my class, and although she was also in the Academic Program we had never been in any of the same classes. Frankly, I had hardly noticed her at school. I knew she was one of the quiet people that faded into the background. I knew she wasn’t one of the popular girls. I had never seen her at anything, except for her occasional piano performances. I wasn’t sure she had even been at the prom, and I would later learn she had not. She didn’t have a boyfriend and she had had very few dates, if any.
with the funny accent was her aunt. The other older woman was her mother, who didn’t say much during the evening. Her family had come to America fleeing the Soviet takeover of Latvia during World War II.
At the end of the evening she gave me her telephone number along with her full name, thankfully, Sonja Katherine Kebbe. She told me I must come visit, that they had a pool and we could swim. I thanked her. I thanked her Aunt, I’m not sure why. I thanked Mrs. Lederer for inviting me. I probably thanked the waiter on my way out. I tucked Sonja’s number in my wallet and came home. I didn’t give her a second thought and didn’t expect I would call her.
I had all but forgotten Sonja by the next day. June 4 was clear, bright and with a temperature of 82. It proved a perfect day for Downingtown where the Class of 1959 was holding their Commencement in the football stadium This is the group I would have graduated with if I had remained in Downingtown, so obviously I knew a lot of the graduates. Ronald Tipton (pictured left), Stuart Meisel, Bill Brookover and several others I had been good friends with were getting their diplomas. My grandmother, mother and I attended the ceremony. Afterwards I visited with Iva Darlington (right) for a while. She also graduated that afternoon.
Both Owen J. Roberts and Downingtown had closed their chapters on the classes of 1959.
After high school most of my classmates went their way and I went mine.
Ray Ayres disappeared from my life and the next I heard anything of him, he was in Seattle. From what I can piece together he was probably serving in the U. S. Navy. Five years later I learned he was a student at West Chester State Teachers College and married.
He had not seemed to have settled down to anything steady over these first fifteen years out of school, certainly there was nothing that represented what expectations for him may have been. His address changed at every reunion (but then so did mine). Nobody was hearing anything from him and he never came to the reunions. By 1974 he was a father of a daughter.
Around that same year, one of Ray's sisters became the wife of a man named Coffee. The Coffee family were restauranteurs and that year they purchased the Black Angus.
In the obituary of Mary DeAngelo, who with her husband owned the Black Angus, it says the DeAngelos owned the Inn from 1960 to 1974. I first ate there with my parents well before 1960. The Inn was a landmark restaurant most of my life and before me. It began long ago as Mosteler's General Store, then evolved into the Ludwig's Corner Inn and eventually The Black Angus Inn and then perhaps most famously as DeAngelo's Black Angus Inn. Now in 1974 it turned another page as it fell into the hands of the Coffees. It later became the Ludwig Corners Oyster House.
Ray, home from Seattle, went there to work for a while and then shortly thereafter the Coffees opened a new restaurant in Birdsboro called The Angus Pub, and Ray was co-owner and manager. The Angus Pub did not stay in business long and when it closed Ray Ayres basically disappeared from sight for a number of years.
Richard Ray Miller contacted me in the fall to go to Philadelphia with him on a job interview. He didn’t get that job and soon after he also disappeared.
were still taking rides and cruising around that summer, but Ronald and I were also looking for jobs. Richard was still at OJR high school and would be entering eleventh grade that autumn.
Richard, Tommy Wilson and I were on our way to Reading one afternoon. I wanted to stop at a drugstore in Stowe for something, I forget what. I found my purchase and went to the counter to pay. Richard was waiting in the car. Tommy had come in with me, but went off in his own direction. We got back in the car and on our way. Tommy is pulling items from his shirt, bragging about how he stole this and stole that. I was furious. I told him he ever did something like that again I’d ban him from my car. The darn fool, if he had been caught I would have been suspected of being his shill, distracting the clerk so he could pocket what he wanted. I didn’t like Tommy; he was too sneaky.
Not that Richard couldn’t be as sneaky. One time we, along with his parents, visited his grandparents in Pottstown. During the visit, Richard excused himself and went out for “a walk”. When he came back he was all smiles. Later on the way home he gave me a wink and pointed to the floor. He had stolen a set of hubcaps off of a parked car.
compartment. He didn’t tell me. My father borrowed my car for some reason and he found the gun. That was the angriest my father ever got with me. I thought this time he might hit me. He went on and on about how serious this was. If a cop had pulled me over I would have been arrested, he said. I didn’t know anything about the gun. I was in turn furious at Richard, but he kind of laughed it off.
School days were over for Ron and me. Our parents told both of us to forget college. I was a nowhere man after graduation. I wasn’t going to college and I didn’t have many resources or skills.
Earlier that year the Stock Market dropped into a Bear market. The economy was down. It had begun falling in 1957 and hit its low point in 1958. The Eisenhower Administration did little to boost the economy because of inflation fears and unemployment remained high. For men Ronald and my ages it was at 15.3 percent. For men in their early twenties it was 8.7 percent. Jobs were not easy to come by.
My father owned his own rig now. The tractor was a Brockway. There was a sign on the front bumper, “A hour late and a dollar short”. The trailer was a flatbed.
In early summer he constructed wood rail sides for the trailer and began hauling tomatoes. He built it sturdy. He didn’t want to repeat what happened to a friend of his. This trucker was hauling tomatoes up a steep hill near Parkesburg when the side gave way and spilled tomatoes across the road, premature ketchup.
Dad was hauling now as a gypsy. He took me up to the dispatcher’s office in Lancaster County and I got a job as a truck loader.
Not much to the job. You go to a Lancaster County farm. The farmer comes up to the truck with a horse drawn wagon stacked with bushel baskets of tomatoes. You transfer the baskets from wagon to truck, stack them seven to eight feet high down the thirty-foot length of trailer. It is not hard on the brain, but can be a killer to the back. I was making ten dollars a day.
It was funny when you got to a field. You’d no sooner park when the Amish girls would gather nearby and watch you work. There was a similarity about them. Not just their clothing, but in their faces. They seemed happy enough as they watched you work, shyly smiling and sometimes whispering to each other. Most of them were pretty. Their faces glowed with red cheeks.
Near the end I helped load dad’s truck and went with him on his run to a Heinz factory. Dad always got Heinz Ketchup. He said he had delivered to several companies and Heinz always got the best tomatoes. I don’t know where this plant was located. I thought it was in Pennsylvania, but can’t swear to it. (Photo on right is the old Heinz Ketchup factory in Pittsburgh. This may be where we went.) We could have gone into Ohio. We loaded up in the morning and we arrived at the plant well after dark. He parked behind a few trucks that had beat him there and we slept in the cab. He said if we had not driven to the plant before sleeping we would have found a much longer line in the morning. Getting offloaded would have kept us waiting for hours.
where the restroom was. I found it and went in. I never saw a restroom like it before. It was very large. In the center was this large circular fountain. That is what it looked like anyway, but it wasn’t a fountain. It was a wide metal bowl perhaps twelve feet in diameter. (Much like the picture on the left, but many times larger.) In the center was a slender pyramid with water flowing down its sides. Some men were standing around its one side and I realized this was a giant urinal. I walked out determined I could hold it in until our next stop. Nothing had changed on my shy bladder front.
We returned home and dad contracted to haul for some company. Tomato loading season had ended and I was Nowhere Man again. I went back to searching the want ads for work. It was late June and the weather turned warm. I thought about that girl I met after graduation and decided to call her after all. She answered the phone and sounded pleased to hear from me. She told me how to get to her house, which was near Spring City. She lived down a long winding lane connecting to Stony Run Road. The area was country sixty years ago. It is a continuous line of homes today. I don’t even know if her house still exists. I looked for it in 2012 and could not find it.
She said wear my bathing suit.
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