Catching Up

The last post covered in part more than a year and there is some information to catch up with to keep this whole thing cohesive and coherent. I’ll try to do that with this post

The biggest and best news occurred the Christmas after we moved back to the East End—and it was all due to a Christmas present. We were visiting my dad’s sister, Laura and her husband Jim. I don’t remember what mom and dad got Laura, but Jim collected electric trains and they had purchased a fancy dining car for his set. Laura and Jim had gotten a walkie-talkie for us kids. This proved to be one of those magical gifts which did so much more than intended.

As I mentioned earlier, Mom was nearly deaf and Blondie served as her ears. She had been deaf since she was young and though she had seen many doctors all had told her nothing could be done. As a result she was resigned to her condition. She learned to be an excellent lip reader, but often felt left out of conversations because of her inability to hear.

One of my sisters (I don’t remember which one) had one of the receivers and I had the other. My sister wanted to talk to mom, and mom, to please her took the set from me and got ready to pretend to have the conversation. Instead she broke into tears. Everyone wondered what was wrong, dad especially. But the problem wasn’t what was wrong—it was what was right. Mom could hear through the toy set!

A walkie-talkie set similar to the one mom first heard on.

For a while she didn’t dare believe it was true. She sat stock still on the edge of the couch and then ask to have a receiver again. Each time it worked, and each time she cried.

The next day dad made an appointment for her with an ear doctor (audiologist?).  They now had hearing aids that could improve her hearing. Dad immediately bought her one.

The memory that sticks with me the most is how she hurried outside to listen to the rain for the first time after getting the hearing aid. She had a huge smile and tears were running down her face as hard as the rain was falling.She hadn't heard the rain in years.

The hearing aid did not totally eliminate her deafness, but it allowed her to hear the radio and watch our little TV. It also changed the lives of us kids. I can’t count the times I heard her say, “Stop that right now! I can hear you.” Today the thought makes me smile, but at the time it put a damper on our fun.

We also had a TV for the first time. That was pretty exciting. However, we could only watch Saturday morning cartoons, the big westerns like the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid and Sky King. There were others, too, but the above give you the idea. TV or not, most of our play was outside with neighbor kids. Mom liked a couple of variety shows (I’ve forgotten all the names except Dinah Shore) and dad liked Dragnet and the Friday night fights. On the rare weekends he was home I had the pleasure of watching the fights with him.

Once each summer we would all pile into our car, a gray 1952 Plymouth, and go eat at a Frisch’s Big Boy before heading to an outdoor theater. On the way home dad would announce that he was going to take a shortcut. Mom would begin complaining that he’d just end up lost, etc. Looking back I believe he did it just to get a rise out of her, and he always managed to take a few “extra” roads so she could be right. He would just sit there and smile.

One thing I should mention here. Our trip to Big Boy was the ONLY time all year we ate out, unless we went on a picnic or were invited to dinner at one of mom and dad’s friends. Mom cooked every meal—breakfast, lunch and supper—at home.

Our other big family trip would be to Coney Island, Cincinnati’s renowned amusement park. Both mom and dad had worked there during the summers before I came along, and dad still worked there. It seemed everyone at Coney knew "Mac." Ben Siegel, the owner of several games would make certain we had plenty of tickets to ride the rides. Mom always packed a picnic lunch and we had a great time.

The mall area at Coney Island
(L) My favorite picture of mom. (R) Mom and I at Coney, 1949.

As I was older I had more opportunities to get to Coney than my sisters. I could go in with dad, team up with a couple of other “park rat” kids whose mom worked there and spend the whole day at the park. Their names were Dinty and Pat. Dinty was a year older than me; Pat a year younger.

We would roam the park, getting free rides sometimes from workers who knew my dad or their mom and eating salt water taffy that from time to time would just “fall” into our hands.

The neatest thing to do was to go around to the back of the two roller coasters, the Wildcat and the Shooting Star. We would hop the fence and search underneath the coasters for whatever booty had dropped out of some rider’s pocket. We always found lots of change, a comb or two, and one memorable time I found a silver dollar standing on end half buried in the dirt. Sooner or later we’d be spotted and have to skedaddle back over the fence to escape.

Dad let me have the run of the park except for one place: the Sunlite Pool. It was the largest recirculating pool in the world: 200x401 feet. Dick Clark used to hold American Bandstand there a few times a summer, and of course that is exactly where I wanted to go.

I took some of the rollercoaster loot and bought a ticket one day. What I wanted to do was dive off the diving board. They had boards of all heights up to at least ten feet. It looked like fun once I got in line, but after I reached the board it didn’t look like fun anymore. I turned around but there was nowhere to go. There was already a bigger kid on the board behind me and the ladder was full behind him.

I froze for a minute and then the big kid said something like, “C’mon jump. I’m not going to wait all day.” I jumped. Only one problem. I didn’t know how to swim and I was in ten feet of water. 

Since I couldn’t swim I did the only other thing you can do in that situation—I began to drown. Fortunately for me the big kid who had scared me into diving grabbed me and pushed me to the edge of the pool, yelling at me all the way. 

When I got out of the pool I did the only smart thing I had done all day—I ran out of there as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was for dad to hear about it. I didn’t learn to swim until after I had become a lifeguard—but that is a story for farther down the line.

There was some pretty big news for me, too. In fifth grade Ohio (or some company they hired) administered tests to all students. They were set up like the SAT's--They were divided by subject, timed, and you filled in little boxes with a number two pencil. There were extra sheets for you to work out problems. I didn't use mine.

Tests have never caused me much difficulty. Some kids would worry and freeze and have a tough time. I actually looked forward to them, so this new kind of test sounded like fun. I took it and forgot it because we were told we wouldn't be given grades.

A couple of weeks or so after the tests, the arithmetic teacher who had proctored the tests, Mr. Darpel, a pretty good guy, asked me to speak with him after class. He stunned me with what he had to say. He asked me where I had gotten the answers for the math section. I told him I didn't get any answers I just worked out the problems myself. He gave me a funny look and let me go.

Not long after that a letter arrived at home that said in effect, that there was reason to believe I had cheated on the test. Dad was upset and asked me if I had. I said no and he believed me. I think the episode with Mr. Wilhoit had strengthened his faith in me. The upshot of the letter was that I was to be retested.

In the original test the only proctor was Mr. Darpel. He oversaw the process, kept time, collected papers, etc. For the second test, which was to be conducted after school, there were just five people present: my dad, Mr. Darpel, two representatives of the testing company and me. The reps also asked me if I had cheated. I said no but they looked at me like the didn't believe me.

They had me retake the math section. Again I didn't use the worksheets and finished well before the time limit. This time when the results came back they showed I had the highest possible score--again. Mr. Darpel, to his credit, apologized for doubting me, and wrote a letter to mom and dad and apologizing to them, too.

I'll leave what the fallout was from the second test until the next post and some of the changes it made in my life. Some seemed great and some turned out poorly. But that test was a major event in more ways than one.