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Page 23 text:
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CLASS OF 1939 • Recollections of our days together would be half-hearted without a mental trip back to our grammar school years at Center and Rhame Avenue schools. To those of us who attended Center, the sight of the monument of our childhood brings back a flood of memories, some wistful, humorous, or sad but still typical of every day occurrences. Recalling these days, we find pictures of ourselves not too flattering and a little unbelievable in our present status. • For many of us, our first memories originate in kindergarten where we can faintly visualize a vegetable garden tended by such earnest agriculturists as Edgar Schultz, Dorothy Simonson, and Joseph Gleason. • Our grammar school days on the whole were mostly carefree days marked by such events as the daily mid-day bottle of milk, all-too-short recesses and the advent of home work. JOHN McNAMARA ELAINE GRIFFIN • Several of our most president vice-president amusing incidents were caused by such incorrigibles as Frankie Arnoth, Jimmy Rothston and Alexander Maloney. 1 wonder if we will ever forget the day Frankie Amoth locked the sixth grade door and threw away the key much to the consternation of the principal and janitors who spent fifteen anxious minutes with stubborn skeleton keys. And of course you recall that great lover of aquatic life, Bobby Holmes, cooing kitchie, kitchie at Miss Pease's gold fish? • A familiar grammar school scene was that of those two ambitious girls, Totts Peabody and Janet Walker, vying for the honor of washing the black boards. Similarly fa- 9 miliar was the sight of those three women-haters, Jimmy Rothston, Harvey Columbine, and Mortimer Jewett Husted, pushing fair damsels into the bushes. Need we remind you of the hectic day that Evalyn Jelley heartlessly placed a tack on the substitute teacher's chair while the class breathlessly anticipated the result? ® One very clear memory is the feud between Mildred Nitshke and Elaine Wood over the Beau Brummel of Center Avenue, Herbie Frank, who was hurt in a fight. Both girls wanted to aid our hero so they finally compromised—Mildred applied mercurochrome and Elaine bandaged him with her hanky . Perhaps what we remember best of all was the day William Greis brought an oil can and a screw driver because his desk squeaked and annoyed him! The child is father to the man. o As we of the Rhame Avenue Clan reminisce about our grammar school days, the thought that we must have been some brats is uppermost in our minds. We senior girls blush when we think how stylish we must have looked in our long black gym bloomers with white middy blouses and the inevitable big red bow. Then we are none too proud of the fact that we spent our recesses playing house in the dirt. But, of course, the fact that the boys played cowboys and Indians makes us even. • Doreen Payne, our dramatic star, lacked finesse in those days, for her nervous giggle echoed everything she said. Jackie Sterett was the cause of palpitations of the heart, experienced by the majority of the girls. But the fact that this Romeo's favorite comment on the feminine sex was that all ELAINE WOOD FRANK MATZKE SECRETARY TREASURER
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Page 24 text:
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girls were silly, made no difference, for he was voted the handsomest in a popularity contest. Bobbie Wilson was voted most popular. The feminine trio consisting of Evelyn Morano, Bernice Clemente and Elaine Griffen was probably the cause for the boys' early interest in coming to school with their hair slicked back and their suits neatly pressed. • The feel-sorry-for-dumb-animals instinct showed itself in our sympathetic little hearts the day we took it upon ourselves to go down to the creek during recess to get some killies for an alligator; as a result we came back almost an hour late much to the distress and anxiety of the teacher. Oft remembered with great amusement is Everett Hick's chewing gum incident. It seems that Everett’s passion for chewing gum was too much for Mrs. Flint. After warning him against the desecrations of this evil, she decided to use other tactics so she made Everett chew about six sticks of gum at once. • Oh, days of jumping rope and hop scotch, marbles and tree-climbing, how far away and yet how pleasant you seem! • • Turning from thoughts of grammar school, how can we forget those riotous days we spent in old Woods Avenue ! Remember that leaky roof, those squeaking stairs, and the old bell that pealed each morning to warn us to hurry! Remember how at eight o'clock on snowy mornings we waited for the bell to tell us that there would be no school! And how we prayed for snow! Days on which we went to Center for gym classes were momentous, for most of us scrambled to reach the basketballs and parallel bars first; of course, a few always lagged behind, hoping to miss a few minutes of class. The real stampede came, however, on assembly days when the student body moved en masse to Center except for our vagrant comrades who tried to leave for parts unknown by way of the railroad tracks. • In the eighth grade we started learning the etiquette of modem dancing under Miss Barron’s instruction. About this time, too, some of the boys under the leadership of Bobbie Keith and Jack Nordine started an epidemic of covering the girls' desks with caterpillars. Speaking of Bobbie Keith reminds us of his two Mexican fleas that appeared in the open one day in Mr. Langworthy s math class. • Our memories go on in this disconnected vein, as we recall June Kucken’s automobile accident and the resultant change of our classes from the second floor to the first, so that she wouldn't have to hobble upstairs. Pictures of the typing room as it gradually became a swamp on rainy days fill our minds as well as visions of our first rally at the Eternal Field when we had a wild snake-dance from the bonfire in the field, through the village, to Woods Avenue. • When the time came to move into the new school on Ocean Avenue, we swaggered about, proudly comparing our new edifice with every other one on Long Island, to the detriment of all competitors. When we were the first class to graduate from junior high in the new school, conceit was our most noticeable characteristic. • As sophomores, juniors, and seniors, we have had typical carefree, light-hearted student lives colored by many gay times. In Rock Rivalry we started off as sailors of the fleet during our first year, changed to capering circus characters in our second, and found our childhood again as dolls in a toy shop, in this, our last year. Our school lives, in general, have become more interesting and more diverting as we have been given more responsibility in running social and recreational affairs. Our growth might be likened to the change that has come over the parking field which used to be a barren ground but is now interesting with gay jaloppies . • Since the pages that follow picture in serious and humorous details the important events of our lives this year, we conclude this account of our younger years with the hope that our future lives will hold as much of comradeship and exploration in new fields. 10
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