Remember?
Bob Woeber's Comments at 50th Reunion:
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR WORLD IN 1948
I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO TRY TO PUT THIS OCCASION INTO PERSPECTIVE BY
REFLECTING BACK FOR A MOMENT TO FOCUS ON HOW VERY DIFFERENT OUR LIVES WERE IN THE FORTIES,
AND HOW VERY DIFFERENT THE WHOLE WORLD WAS THEN. OUR PARENTS, FOR EXAMPLE, SEEMED LIKE
EVERYBODY ELSE'S PARENTS. THEY WERE NOT DISPOSED TO GETTING A LAWYER TO GET US OUT
OF A BEER BUST. THEY DIDN'T BELIEVE THAT "THEIR JOHNNY WOULDN'T DO SUCH A
THING". THEY KNEW DAMMED WELL THAT HE WOULD DO SUCH A THING AND PROBABLY DID!
THEY KNEW ALL OR MOST OF OUR FRIENDS. THE TEACHERS KNEW ALL OR MOST OF OUR
FRIENDS TOO, AND WHAT WAS WORSE, THEY KNEW MOST OF OUR HABITS. SOMETIMES THEY WERE
VERY FRUSTRATING AND RESTRICTIVE, BUT MOST OF THEM REALLY CARED ABOUT US. MANY OF US
REMEMBER GOING BACK AFTER WE HAD BEEN OUT FOR A WHILE TO VISIT SOME OF THEM .... USUALLY
THE TOUGHER ONES.
TO OUR CHILDREN AND CERTAINLY OUR GRANDCHILDREN, WE ARE TRULY UNIQUE. WE
WERE BORN BEFORE TELEVISION, PENICILLIN, POLIO SHOTS, FROZEN FOODS, CONTACT LENSES,
FRISBEES AND THE PILL. (WHICHEVER ONE IS USEFUL) THERE WAS NO RADAR, XEROX,
CREDIT CARDS, LASER BEAMS OR BALL POINT PENS. THERE WERE NO PANTY HOSE, DISHWASHERS,
CLOTHES DRYERS, AIR CONDITIONERS OR VCRS. WE GOT MARRIED AND THEN LIVED TOGETHER.
QUAINT, BUT IT SEEMED TO WORK WELL. IN OUR TIME, GAY MEANT HAPPY AND CLOSETS
WERE FOR HANGING CLOTHES, NOT FOR COMING OUT OF. BUNNIES WERE LITTLE RABBITS AND
RABBITS WEREN'T VOLKSWAGENS. DESIGNER JEANS WERE SCHEMING GIRLS NAMED JEAN, AND
HAVING A MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP MEANT GET71NG ALONG WITH YOUR COUSINS.
WE THOUGHT FAST FOOD WAS WHAT YOU ATE DURING LENT AND OUTER SPACE WAS THE BACK
OF THE DENIS THEATER. WE WERE BEFORE HOUSE HUSBANDS, GAY RIGHTS, COMPUTER DATING,
DUAL CAREERS, DAY CARE CENTERS AND GROUP THERAPY.
WE NEVER HEARD OF TAPE DECKS, ARTIFICIAL HEARTS, WORD PROCESSORS, YOGURT AND
CERTAINLY GUYS WEARING EARRINGS! FOR US, TIME SHARING MEANT TOGETHERNESS, NOT
CONDOMINIUMS. A CHIP WAS A PIECE OF WOOD OR SOMETHING YOU PLAYED POKER WITH AND
HARDWARE WAS HARDWARE. SOFTWARE WASN'T EVEN A WORD. JUNK MEANT "MADE IN
JAPAN". WE WERE ON THE SCENE WHEN THERE WERE 5 AND 10 CENT STORES WHERE YOU
COULD BUY SOMETHING FOR 5 OR 10 CENTS. ISALY'S AND BARDS SOLD ICE CREAM CONES FOR A
NICKEL AND A DOUBLE DIP FOR A DIME. FOR A NICKEL YOU COULD RIDE A STREETCAR, MAKE A
PHONE CALL, BUY A COKE OR ENOUGH POSTAGE TO MAIL A LETTER AND TWO POSTCARDS. A NEW
CHEVY COUPE WENT FOR ABOUT $600, BUT FEW OF US COULD AFFORD ONE AND THAT WAS TOO BAD
BECAUSE GAS WAS 11 CENTS A GALLON.
IN OUR DAY, GRASS WAS WHAT YOU MOWED ON SATURDAY, COKE WAS A COLD DRINK, POT WAS
SOMETHING THAT YOUR MOTHER COOKED IN AND AIDS WERE HELPERS IN THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE.
IT ALSO OCCURS TO ME THAT IN 1948: WE HAD NO ACHES OR PAINS. WE ALL HAD A
GLEAM IN OUR EYE. MOST OF US HAD LITTLE BLACK BOOKS. WE WERE OUT EVERY NIGHT
THAT WE COULD ESCAPE. MOST OF US WERE 17 AND HAD A 24 INCH WAISTLINE. WE
DIDN'T HAVE ALL OF THE ANSWERS, BUT WE THOUGHT WE DID.
AND NOW IN 1998: A LOT OF THINGS HURT AND WHAT DOESN'T HURT DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK.
OUR LITTLE BLACK BOOKS NOW ARE FULL OF NAMES ENDING IN M.D.
MOST OF US NOW LOOK FORWARD TO A DULL EVENING AT HOME. MANY OF US ARE 17
AROUND THE NECK, 40 AROUND THE WAIST AND 96 AROUND THE GOLF COURSE. AND PROBABLY
WHAT HURTS MOST IS THAT NOW WE KNOW ALL OF THE ANSWERS, BUT NOBODY ASKS US THE QUESTIONS.
IT'S NO WONDER THAT WE WERE SO CONFUSED IN THOSE DAYS AND WHY THERE IS SUCH A
GENERATION GAP TODAY. BUT WE'VE MADE IT THIS FAR AND THAT ALONE IS REASON TO
CELEBRATE AND TO HAVE A GREAT REUNION!
Memoirs of a (Excuse the expression) Dormont graduate of 1945:
A TIME OF INNOCENCE: PITTSBURGH, 1945
by CHARLES F. GREINER
206 SOUTH COUNTRY ROAD
EAST PATCHOGUE, N.Y. 11772
Before television, and computers, and jet engines, before technology
leaped across time and squeezed space into a tight little ball, the world most of us
inhabited extended not much further than Kaufman's clock and Kennywood Park. Perhaps
because our world was so limited, we looked at it more closely and found that it was rich
with simple pleasures. In her fine book, "My Antonio", Willa Cather tells us,
"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen
again." As we grow older, we depend more and more on reliving the simple pleasures of
the past. Those memories become our realities and although they may not be better than
anything that will happen again, they are surely as good. Those of us who went through the
rites of passage in Pittsburgh during the 1940's most certainly have a storehouse of
memories that have become treasured realities.
How is it decided which of our past experiences will be kept and which
discarded? Memory, it seems, has a mind of its own. Long after we've forgotten the
splendor of the magnificent cathedral, we will recall vividly the old lady wearing the
long black dress feeding pigeons on its steps. It is the details, the small, exact details
that the reservoir of memory sends bobbing to the surface. It is these details that give
substance to our memories and make them real. We can go home again, through memory.
I grew up in Dormont, but every suburb of Pittsburgh and those
communities within the city were much the same. We who grew up in them during the 40's
shared a time and place that were unique and, except in our memories, unrepeatable. Do you
remember ten-cent hamburgers at the Brass Rail, drenched in pepper and fried onions,
topped with a Heinz pickle slice and ketchup? Tall, wobbly, conical cones at Isalys for a
nickel and huge foamy milkshakes for fifteen-cents? After the Saturday night movie, at the
South Hills Harris or the Hollywood in Dormont, we would head for Pearces and spicy
barbecued, chipped-ham on warm fresh buns. And, after school, packs of "Nabs"
and cherry Cokes at the counter of Dickson's Drug Store. Lemon-blend at the Canary Cottage
in booths with white latticed arches and painted-on ivy. The warped and creaking wooden
floorboards in the "5 and 10". Krogers and the A. & P., before shopping
malls and shopping carts, where the man behind the worn wooden counter filled your order
and the butcher gave you a slice of liverwurst.
In Dormont on the Fourth of July everyone came to the park. From the
taps on the back of the Otto buttermilk truck, free ice cold buttermilk flowed all day
long. In the early afternoon we gathered beside Dormont's huge pool to watch the diving
and swimming contests. Later, it was baseball on the high school field. Once, the
Homestead Greys came to play and changed the game for us forever. At night there was a big
band in the open dance pavilion and everyone danced: the little kids, their teenage
brothers and sisters, their parents and grandparents. If there were social, or racial, or
generational gaps, we didn't think about them, perhaps because they were small and
temporary. If we had a strong sense of community and a stronger sense of family, we were
not conscious of them either. We never thought about such things. No one did. We took the
splendid seamless fabric of our lives for granted.
More than any other holiday, the Fourth of July reflected small town
America at its best: "Life.. liberty and the pursuit of happiness", equality,
justice, independence, freedom.... the words were solid, the pride was real, and the
Fourth of July was a star-spangled celebration of these truths. Just after dusk, the
fireworks began: the sky ablaze with color, the ear-shattering explosions, the crowd
oohing and awing together, and together caught up in the sense of prideful belonging to
that Iarger community The United States of America. We all knew the words to the national
anthem and hats went off when the flag passed by.
Do you remember the summer sidewalks lined with maples and elm? Almost
all of the houses had front porches with striped awnings, and on the front porches were
milk boxes, and gliders, and wooden swings, and metal chairs. In the backyards were
"victory gardens", and hollyhocks lined the alleys. Do you remember sleeping on
the porch on hot summer nights? And the bright school-free, care-free, sun-splashed days
of July and August, when everyone who could, gathered at the local pool? Entire days of
playing comer tag, trying flips off the high board, dealing cards in a grassy spot near
the fence, falling in and out of love and always, always fantasizing about some impossibly
perfect but absolutely unattainable girl or boy who was only one or two years older? And
coming home smelling of chlorine, tanned and tired, the screen door slamming behind you,
crossing the linoleum kitchen floor that bulged in unexpected places. The chores: hosing
down the porches, hanging rugs out on the line and beating them with a wire rug beater,
the damp basement smelling of ashes, its gray walls lined with curtain-stretchers; that
collapsed as soon as you punctured your finger on the last needle-sharp pin, and, of
course, eternal soot piling up on the window sill. Washing and waxing the family car, the
soft, spinning rhythmic click of the Iawnmower, and in the evenings fathers in shirt
sleeves watering flower beds and vegetable gardens.
Before 1950 you could be born, live a full life, and die without ever
having to go to a store. As predictable as sunrise, men, familiar and strange, bearing the
necessities and some of the luxuries of life would call out to you from the street or
knock on your front door. The bread man, the milk man, the umbrella man, the man with the
black suitcase full of buttons and thread, the fruit and vegetable man, and in the early
days the iceman with his heavy black iron tongs and shiny pick; the ice-card in the window
with 25 lbs. on one side and 50 lbs. on the other.
Remember in the dark, dark days of winter the smell of coal smoke, the
sound of distant locomotives, the thump of broken chains against car fenders, the scrape
of heavy shovels on sidewalks deep in snow? Wasn't it odd that until we were fourteen,
most of us thought snot and spit were naturally black?
Remember standing under Kaufman's clock on winter afternoons, how the
streetcars would be backed up all the way to the Smithfield Street Bridge, and snow and
sleet would be coming down, and it would be dark as night already? The trolley lines would
spark and crackle. Inside the old orange car, the lights flickered and you could hear the
heavy ticking of the motor and the slow, agonizing groan as the conductor inched his car
forward.
If you were bound for anywhere in the South Hills, there was first the
tunnel smelling damp and musty, the rocking car, the porcelain handles swinging, the straw
seats creaking. And after the tunnel, the fearless motorman launching his huge heavy
machine out into the high pitch-black empty spaces that separated Beechview from the rest
of the civilized world. Remember how those fragile trolley bridges swayed on dark and
windy winter afternoons? In the days of our youth, a trip downtown and back on one of the
old orange streetcars was as much adventure as one could hope for.
Remember Saturday afternoons when movies cost eleven cents for a double
feature, a serial, a newsreel and a local talent show? Remember your mother waking you up
to say it snowed last night, the heayiIy frosted window glinting in the morning sun? Then
shoveling the walk and steps before going to school.
Before TV and MTV, there was the innocence of radio: One Man's Family,
Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, Your Hit Parade and Lucky
Strike green has gone to war. When you had a bad cold or the chicken pox and could stay
home from school there was Our Gal Sunday, "the story that asks the question, 'can a
young girl from the west find happiness as the wife of a titled English
nobleman?’". After school you would rush home to Jack Armstrong, the All
American Boy. On Saturday mornings, it was a wonderful program called Let's Pretend. In
the evenings we listened to The Lone Ranger, Gangbusters, The Shadow, The First
Nighter,
Fred AlIen, Jack Benny, and LowelI Thomas signing off with "So long until
tomorrow". Remember the Joe Lewis fights against Jim Braddock, Max
Schmeling, and
Billy Conn? Remember Bobby Lane and the early Pittsburgh Steelers? Radio, unlike
television, involved the listener. We actively joined the writers, performers, and
broadcasters. Tonto, and Rochester, and Ma Perkins were real to us because we helped to
create them. Without our realizing it, radio drew us into the community of artists.
Instead of being passive viewers, we participated in the experience and helped to complete
it. In our growing up, it was just words and music coming out of a small, raspy speaker
and the rest of the magic happened in our imaginations.
If the schools did not ask much of our creative talents, they certainly
required a physical commitment. Some school systems owned one or two busses, but most had
none. We walked. Even though districts were small, it was no short hike for those of us
who lived on the fringes. But we had sidewalks, and trees, and usually several best
friends to walk with. I can't remember anyone complaining about it or feeling ill used,
except perhaps the poor girls who had first period gym with Miss Simmons who often
required them to begin the day with a "healthy walk". No matter how deep the
snow we never, not even once, had a "snow day".
Instead of beer and wine, we drank double cokes and milkshakes. And, in
the pre-plastic days, lemonade that was made in glass pitchers where you could see it, and
hear the ice cubes clink against the glass, and it tasted like lemons instead of the
inside of a plastic container. On summer days there was always, in the refrigerator, a
kettle of iced tee and a ladle. I think most of us graduated from high school without ever
drinking more than an occasional glass of wine on holidays-and without ever haying dinner
in a fancy restaurant.
In the days before adults plugged speakers into their heads and
teenagers destroyed the peace with portable sound-blasters, we whistled a lot. Along the
shaded late night streets there was often the sound of a young man whistling. Perry Como's
"Full Moon and Empty Arms" was a particularly good song to whistle when you were
walking home after work or after a date. In every household there was usually someone with
a bit of musical talent: a grandfather who could play the spoons, an uncle with a
harmonica in his vest pocket, a female cousin who was taking piano lessons. Of course,
there were recordings, scratchy seventy-eights: Goodman, Dorsey, Harry James, Ellington,
Basie, all the big bands that used to perform at the Stanley. The singers, too: Crosby,
the Mills Brothers, June Christie, Mel Torme, the Ink Spots, Paula Kelly and the
Modernaires. Remember Elie Fitzgerald's, "A tisket, a tasket, I lost my yellow
basket", Kate Smith's "Harvest Moon". and Dinah Washington's heartbreaking
"Yesterdays"? Remember Nat King Cole, someone named Ishkibble, Spike Jones and
the City Slickers, Louie Armstrong, and a skinny kid named Sinatra?
Remember Sunday drives with the whole family? Remember reading the
Burma Shave signs? Remember Friday afternoon football games: the marching band, the school
colors, the majorettes in silver satin, the cheerleaders in wide pleated skirts, saddle
shoes, and heavy wool sweaters, the low rickety stands, and winning every game except the
one with McKees Rocks in the mud? Remember "away" games on bright October
afternoons: the excitement of actually being in some foreign place like Baldwin, or
Carnegie, or Clairton? The best part of it, though, was that whatever high school you
attended, you were all friends: the players, the band, the kids in the stands. Most high
school graduating classes were small enough so that we could know one another well enough
to care. When you stop to think of it, there was never very much difference between the
popular halfback and the quiet kid who wrote poetry and failed everything but English.
The 1940's marked the end of the small, local school. Someone convinced
us that large, comprehensive systems would be cheaper and better. It turned out that they
were more expensive and worse. When we traded walking for riding, homeroorn teachers for
psychologists and guidance departments, brown beg lunches or lunch at home for huge
cafeterias, rickety stands for concrete stadiums, and graduating classes of 100 for
classes of 2,000, we did irreparable harm to our children and to theirs. Except in a few
isolated places, the schools we knew are gone and we, not realizing their importance, let
them slip away.
In discussing this with an old schoolmate, she said that ours was one
of the last classes in America's Age of Innocence. Almost none of us drank, only a few of
us smoked, and most of us were still happily unacquainted with the "F'" word. As
a matter of fact, there is considerable proof to support the claim that the Dormont High
Class of 1945 was the last in the United States of America in which 100 percent of the
graduating girls were virgins. The Smithsonian Institute has been engaged in a study and,
so far, it looks as if our young ladies were, on graduation day, fully intact. Before
attributing that splendid achievement entirely to the strong principles and high morals of
the girls of "45", it must, in all fairness, be said that ignorance and lack of
opportunity also played a part. There is no doubt that most of the girls in our graduating
class thought hymen was the name of a Jewish druggist. Perhaps in our class, as in yours,
there were a few young ladies who might have been persuaded, but in 1945 most of the boys
were too shy to ask.
Even our most outrageous behavior was essentially harmless: sneaking
into the pool at night, soaping windows on Halloween, throwing spitballs in music
appreciation class, lying about our age to get into the burlesque show at the Casino on
Saturday afternoons. I don't remember much swearing beyond an occasional hell or damn, no
violent fights, no overt defiance of authority, very little booze and no drugs, no
suicides, only one serious car wreck, no stealing or vandalism, no real sense of
alienation, frustration, and anger.
We seemed to belong, truly belong in a way that is no longer
possible: to our nation, to our community, to our high school, and to each other. That is
indeed a reality better than anything that can ever happen again. How lucky we are to have
had it, to be members of the last generation to grow up in America's Age of Innocence. Of
course, the world was much less simple and pure than we were led to believe, but that
didn't matter. Around us we saw that the old values were in place, that such virtues as
honesty and courtesy, and courage, and hard work, and caring and contributing were
important.
Dormont in those days was, for us, much like Thornton Wilder's
"Grovers Corners" , and we were George and Emily sipping strawberry sodas in
Dickson's drugstore. In 1945 "our town" wasn't much different than it had been
in 1925. Our high school education was, in almost every respect, the same as our parents
had experienced. I don't mean to suggest that we lived in a carefree time and place. In
fact, we were well acquainted with adversity. As children of the depression most of us
learned very early what it meant to do without. Then,, in our teens the war taught us once
more the meaning of sacrifice and introduced many of us to personal tragedy. Yet, looking
back, it seems we were happy in our growing up. Perhaps the human mind tends to forget the
shadows and remember only the sunshine, but I'm sure most of us can say with conviction,
"those were among the best of times"!
Last Revision: August 1998
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