Back to School and Lunch Boxes

What more needs to be said? Summer is over, and it's time to head back to school. In our case, that would have been Hambright Elementary. Located a convenient two blocks from Wagners, it was the elementary school most of us Manor Ridgers went to. Those on the outlying areas in Fairway Park and Colonial Manor may have been bussed to ER Martin, Eshleman, or another elementary school. But those of us nearest Wagners went to Hambright.

The approach of the new school year was always heralded by an ominous development - the appearance of "Back To School" sales at JC Penney's, Sears, or Two Guys. These advertisements would always begin to appear in the newspaper, and even on TV, sometime in early to mid August. Like the geese returning to their winter nesting grounds in the south, the coming of the Back To School advertisements meant autumn, and school, were right around the corner.

It might have been time to get a new lunch box for the new school year? Mine is pictured above - from the famous 1960's TV show Gomer Pyle USMC (which I never much cared for and was thus rather disappointed in my parents selection of my lunch box). The great retro-60's, 70's, 80's site Retrocrush even included my crappy Gomer Pyle lunch box in their list of crappy lunch boxes kids had to carry to school. But it got the job done. I never carried the enclosed thermos and instead bought my milk - it cost a nickel and you got a pint bottle of milk complete with push down cardboard cap. You had to return the empty bottle at the end of lunch to the empty bottle rack or risk retribution from one of the lunch ladies.

My Gomer Pyle lunch box typically contained a sandwich, maybe some pretzels, but always, some TastyKakes - Butterscotch Krimpets or Chocolate Cupcakes. My dad bought these at Wagners for me and my brothers and sisters lunch boxes - my dad was a big lover of what he called "goodies" (and pastry). He himself always had TastyKakes in his lunch bag he took to work at Armstrong.

For me, the presence of TastyKakes on a regular basis in my lunch box opened up an entrepreneurial opportunity. Many of my fellow lunch mates never got TastyKakes, either because their parents could not afford them or refused to buy them. I would sell a single TastyKake cupcake or Krimpet for anywhere from a nickel to a dime (depending on the going rate of exchange and the number of kids willing to get into a bidding war over them). Since there were three TastyKakes in a single package, I could sell one, or even two of them, and still have one left over to eat for lunch.

With the pocketed 10 cents to 20 cents in profit from my lunchtime trading activity, it was, of course, time to visit Wagners on the return journey home after school. Since a pack of TastyKakes cost ten cents, I could replace what I had sold, and have some money left over for penny candy, or spend it all on a soda, candy, what ever. It was, for me, quite a lucrative business for a couple of years in elementary school. It seemed there were always those willing to exchange milk money for a TastyKake.

Those old lunch boxes, pieces of brightly colored stamped American steel with pop icon images of the day, now are collectible items that sell for hundreds of dollars in good condition (with the thermos bottle). My Gomer Pyle disappeared shortly after I left elementary school, never to be seen again. I never missed it.

A Picture Tells a Story - Part II

Old Manor Ridge photographs are, for me, a type of archaeology. When I see one I am instantly transported back to that time and place and I want to reconstruct as much of what can be known about that instant as I can, both from memory, and by piecing together the clues every photo offers.

Take this family photo from summer 1966. How do I know it was taken in the summer of 1966?

Well, I know I broke my leg that summer, so that is a pretty strong memory - confirmed by the cast on my leg.

And what a great Manor Ridge story that is!

I broke it at the Maple Grove pool one bright sunny summer day in June. We had just left for summer vacation and as I liked to do on days that were especially hot and especially boring, I begged my mom for the money to go to the pool. We were not members so I had to pay the admission. My mom gave me enough to get in and with the change; I always had enough for a soda and French Fries at lunch. What a treat! There is just nothing like the good taste of French Fries and chlorine. More on the Maple Grove pool days in a later post.

Anyway, I was walking along the edge of the pool – you know – the thing your parents tell you not to do at the pool or you will get yourself hurt (like running on the concrete)? Unlike getting cramps if you went in the water sooner than 30 minutes after you ate (which was one of those diabolical tricks your parents played on you to get you to stay out of the water with them for a few minutes), the “don’t walk along the edge of the pool!” warning was real! As I was about to found out.

I slipped and my left foot went into the water and all my weight landed on my ankle. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I was at the deep end of the pool, but I wasn’t – the water was shallow. I felt the pain of the snap of my ankle right away. I hobbled out of the water but a little thing like a broken ankle was not going to ruin my day at the pool! Or so I thought. I tried to tough it out for a while, but eventually I gave in to the pain and decided it was time to walk home.

That’s right – walk home, on a broken ankle.

Before the days when parents drove children everywhere, we got to where we wanted to go by bicycle, or by foot. As I was all of seven years old and would not get my first “real” bicycle (a Schwinn 3-speed) until my eighth birthday, it was hoofing it on foot for me. And as we lived on Hawthorne Drive – my walk to Maple Grove pool was just about as far as a Manor Ridge kid had to make back then. The journey was all the way down Hemlock and then left onto Stone Mill Road to Columbia Avenue, across the bridge at Boas, and in the main entrance to the pool. That was quite a hike for a seven year old on a good day, and this was decidedly not a good day. But somehow, I managed to hobble home on a broken ankle.

Back home in the very same living room where this picture was taken, my mom was mortified that I might have seriously damaged my leg. My dad took one look at it after he got home from work and pronounced me with a broken leg. So it was off to the hospital for the first time ever and a new cast. This was putting a serious damper on my summer vacation – the crutches sucked! Fortunately, after a week or so, they put a plastic heel on my cast (you can just see it on the bottom of the cast next to the one crutch), which allowed me to get around without crutches. This meant only one thing……..kick ball and wiffle ball were back!!! You could really clobber the ball kicking with that cast. My parents told me it was like I didn’t even have a cast on – I seldom if ever used the crutches after I got the heel. But one thing I could not do was get it wet – so no more Maple Grove pool trips for me that summer. Taking a bath was a real trick – my mom would wrap my cast in plastic bread bags and use rubber bands to try to create a waterproof seal (hah!). And there was no stopping a seven-year-old boy from playing in the grass at night – grass covered in dew or still wet from a summer rain. By the end of that summer my cast was in tatters and the heel appendage was hanging on by a few pieces of plaster of Paris. But it got me through.

Some more evidence of the age of this picture can be found seated next to me – my little brother and sister. My brother appears to be about a year and a half to two years old, which is just right for a kid born in January 1965. My little sister – the one with the most beautiful smile in the world, looks to be about the right age – five. So that makes me seven as I am two years older than her.

Note the summer pajamas we are all wearing. That’s right – even though it was sweltering hot and humid and we had no air-conditioning, we still wore pajamas to bed (but lighter weight and short sleeved compared to the winter variety). And speaking of no air-conditioning, note the Two Guys blue floor fan along the wall. Every Manor Ridge house came equipped with at least one of those floor fans – the only way to move the hot air in the summer. That and the ever-present window fans.

I think the photo was taken closer to July than June. One reason is the tan my sister and I have. We are both pretty well tanned so we had been out in the sun playing for a couple of weeks already.

Another hint - we moved to our new house in Manor Ridge in November 1964. My first memory of that house was playing on that very carpet with my Army men. I pretended the edge of the carpet was land and the hardwood floor was the ocean. There was no other furniture in the living room – just that ugly old area carpet. Since we still had that carpet – this was an early photograph from soon after we moved in – so summer 1966 is just about right.

The living room furniture was classic mid 60’s Americana in a style then known as “S&H Green Stamp décor”. I love the ugly lamp, the hideous floral pattern drapes, the touch of seasonal color my mom added with the little white vase and plastic flowers, and especially, the groovy green sofa with the puke orange pillow. I’m guessing someone slept on the sofa the night before because there is a sheet on it – probably so hot they had to sleep in the living room. But that’s what you did back then, anything to try to beat back the heat and get a nights sleep (good luck!). The S&H Green Stamp catalog folding metal coffee table is at the end of the sofa.

Another form of confirmation is the Lancaster Sunday Newspaper at my feet. It had to have been tossed there by my dad, who loved the sofa. Obviously he plopped it there when he was done reading it (my mom always read the Sunday paper in her chair – as a matter of fact, she still does). You can just make out the Sunday supplement (in color) more proof that it was a Sunday paper. Also, the TV supplement for that weeks TV shows always came with the Sunday paper and you can see that on the floor too. It says “Daniel Boone” and “WGAL TV 8.”

This gives us another clue as to the date of this photo. The TV series Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker as the intrepid frontier explorer ran on NBC from September 24, 1964 to September 10, 1970 (isn’t Wikipedia amazing?). Of course WGAL was (and still is) an NBC affiliate, which carried Daniel Boone during that time period. So we know the photo had to have been taken between 1964 and 1970.

So I know the photo was taken on a Sunday – but which Sunday?

Well, I don’t know the date I broke my leg but I remember it was soon after school had let out – early summer vacation. I know this because I had to wear that stupid cast and use crutches for a whole summer! I got the cast off just before school restarted.

Judging by the amount of signatures I had on the cast, I must have had the cast on my leg for at least a couple of weeks to garner so many autographs. That puts us at June 19 or 26 at the earliest. But I am thinking this photo was probably taken the weekend of the Fourth of July Holiday – on Sunday July 3^rd 1966. Possibly a week later – Sunday July 10^th.

Mining Manor Ridge history – one photo at a time.

Glass Steel and Aluminum

These are some old soda crates Mrs. Horn (the Wagners daughter) gave me along with the cooler.

Today it is hard for people who did not grow up in the 50's-70's to believe that soft drinks used to come in two forms:

1. The bottle - which had no screw off cap - you needed a bottle opener to open it up.

2. The can - which had no pop top or tab opener so again, you needed a can opener to open it up.

The Wagners cooler only held bottles - at least I do not recall there ever being cans of soda in it. Of course this made sense since the cooler had a bottle opener right there on the machine. All you had to do was pop off the cap, hear it 'clink clink clink" as it fell down into the bottle cap holder, and drink away.

There was just nothing like the taste of soda from one of these ice cold bottles. Of course, those from an earlier generation would scoff at that - they would say the real soda came from a soda fountain, hand made for you by the "soda jerk". This is probably so, but by my generations time, the soda jerk was about as common as the Polio virus. By the 1960's-1970's they were all but gone.

We drank plenty of canned soda too of course - mostly A Treat (which you can still buy today here in Pennsylvania - though you can find it only in plastic). Trust me - the good taste of soft drink does not come in plastic. Also - Two Guys Department store and Weis Super Market soda. Those of course because they were cheap and all our parents could afford to buy and bring home from the grocery store/department store.

I recall the early variations and experimentation to develop pull tabs for soda cans. The first ones you lifted and pulled off, having a nice little "key" in your one hand, the soda can ready to drink in the other. These pull tabs usually ended up on the ground. People with metal detectors looking for coins are still finding these early pull off steel tabs today like we still find Native American arrow heads. The pull tabs will probably last even longer.

With the first Earth Day and the environmental craze of the 70's, can manufacturers were trying to come up with a pull tab that did not separate from the can itself (so millions of soft drink and beer can tabs did not end up on the ground). The first such "pop tops" didn't work too well, and one could easily cut their finger pushing these awkward devices into the can. Sometimes the little "pop top" circle of steel or aluminum ended up in the can (as a matter of fact, I seem to recall that happening quite a lot) where they could be swallowed by those who liked to chug their beverage.

Finally, after many tries, the can manufacturers came up with the pop top opener that stays with the can (but does not separate and fall into the can) that we have today. Ah....evolution.

Once of the many great thing about those old soft drink cans was they were made of steel - none of these aluminum cans you find today that puncture if you sneeze on them the metal is so thin. No - these were steel cans made of thick sturdy steel. And as such, they were useful for something all kids created back in the 60's-70's - the soda can cannon. Simply cut the tops and bottoms off about six or seven soft drink cans (using the electric or hand operated can opener every house had back then) - tape them all together end to end using black electricians tape - leave the bottom can with the bottom still on - puncture s small hole in the center of this bottom can - add liberal amounts of lighter fluid - put in a tennis ball - strike a match to the pin hole at the bottom, and Boom! One ready made soda can cannon.

I recall vividly when the old steel can began to be replaced by the thin aluminum ones. Not only did the soft drink not taste as good out of an aluminum can - you could not construct a cannon out of them.

Many years later (well, it wasn't that many years really) I discovered the fine taste of Fosters Lager beer out of the steel cans we called 'oil cans". They were large steel cans of beer containing about 25 ounces - similar to the old oil cans that had metal tops that needed an oil can spout to open and pour (another long forgotten tool that was replaced by screw caps and pull tabs). Then Fosters stopped shipping their beer to the US in steel cans and switched to aluminum. Once again, something was lost in the taste. I have not had Fosters in an "oil can" since they switched to aluminum.

When it comes to beverages - give me the good taste of steel any day.