FIRST
PRINTED IN THE SUMMER OF 1997
By Al Owens
Doesn't a 70 degree and rising morning make you just want to run to your nearest playground and pop somebody with a dodge ball. It does me.
June always makes me forget what winter was like. Oh if everyday could be about the 15th of June, about what could anybody ever complain.
I miss the days when by ten A.M. I could hear the clanging of a tetherball chain before I'd rounded the corner heading to the playground.
I miss the mid afternoon sessions when our wonderful playground director, Mrs. Nancy Jenkins, would happily instruct all of us in the fine art of taking some milky substance, then putting it in some rubber thing, then letting it dry in the June sunlight, until it hardened and formed some unrecognizable clump of something or other.
For some reason my parents would always keep those unrecognizable clumps around the house for years. And I never once heard them ask the obvious question. "What is that?" They were just happy I didn't come home someday covered in plaster of paris.
30 years ago Uniontown, Pennsylvania was nothing if not a giant playground. Not just at the "Playground of Champions". I'm talking the entire town. Not some babysitter for hyperactive youngsters, but a group of places with play happy youngsters in good hands, covered in goo and loving it.
But that was our summer job. To go to the playground clean everyday and to come home dirty. On Monday in the East End, we'd all stay after work while Ken Misiak, with the city's Recreation Department, pulled out a projector
and tried his darndest to keep us in front of a makeshift movie screen.
Misiak and "Bus" Albright took turns making the rounds of every playground in town. They must have known those Captain Video serials by heart by the end of every week.
Then there were the summer competition periods. We'd play our hated rivals, Lincoln View in every imaginable sport.
It's a wonder that by the fall of each year we'd always mend whatever hostilities that would arise in July. Playground rivalries are the easiest to forget, I think.
And speaking of mending, hard play meant constant casualties. And there were always lots of those.
I think Mrs. Jenkins used to wear out three whistles a week. She'd break up fights with them, close the playground with them, start special events with them, signal inclement weather with them...and everybody, in those days, responded to the slightest
tweeet!!
There was Patty Thomas, Mrs. Jenkins' diligent sidekick. Ms. Thomas taught us all how to Patty Cake (which I thought rather odd considering her first name) and to do the hokey pokey (which I thought was equally odd since here sister's nickname is Pokey) And with all the hand clapping and children's games I still managed to fall in love with Patty Thomas. It didn't matter to me that she was nearly three times my age at the time. June sunlight does that to a 6 year-old.
And speaking of a crushes, every Wednesday we'd all have fun watching our older brothers and sisters crushing each other on the basketball court.
They'd have a playground dance and we'd all watch, and wonder what the big deal was about moonlight.
We preadolescents had a better use for the darkness. Playing tag in deep shadows can really be a lot of fun, when you think about it.
Uniontown, Pennsylvania back then was full of things you delight thinking about in your middle age. There were dozens of wonderful sounds. We had a man I only knew as "Teeny Trent", who would fling open his front door across the street from the playground. Every evening he would serenade everybody with the sweetest solo piano this side of (maybe even on both sides of) the Mississippi.
And all summer long "Mugsy" was everywhere. At Bailey Park he'd dispense his popcorn and "ice balls" nonstop. On every playground in town on movie nights he'd do the same. "Mugsy" had the best popcorn in the whole United States, but he dropped to second place in the "ice ball" category. "Creeper" Calloway, down on the corner of Main and Grant, seemed to have been born with a little metal ice scraper in one hand and a bottle of syrup in the other. And he used them both with surgical precision. Six year olds needed fork-lifts to carry off one of his specialties.
Ah Uniontown, Pennsylvania in the summer! There was Smith's Bakery up on Coolspring where you'd get paralyzed by the aroma of fresh glazed donuts.
The folks at Smith's Bakery were smart and devious. They knew just how to torture six year olds. They positioned their exhaust fan at nose level in the adjacent alleyway to achieve the desired effect.
My parents always thought the people who ran that bakery should have been convicted of some federal crime.
They would have gladly offered me as exhibit A. They thought I was living proof the folks at Smith's Bakery helped spoil more appetites, with their incredible donuts, than any bakery anywhere! But when you're six years old you just can't convince your parents there simply are no federal Glazed Donut statutes on the books.
I long for the days when the guys over at Enamy Motors would rehearse their barbershop quartet. They'd open every window on the second floor and sing all evening.
We all preferred Motown, but an evening of Enamy Motors wasn't at all bad! While on the subject of singing groups, there were lots of fall Friday evenings, just before dark, when the whole town would be beckoned by the sound of glee club music over the loudspeaker at Uniontown High School.
"On Wisconsin" and all those other college fight songs were the sure sign another out of town victim had come to Uniontown for a Friday night bloodletting.
In those years, there were lots of sound that could be heard across this great little community. Remember what the town's fire alarm used to sound like? There was something a little creepy about running to a card taped to your refrigerator when you heard that "Berrump, Berrump, Berrump" sound. And there's something really creepy when a visiting friend turns to you and says, "1-1-3, Oh that's my street!!".
I've lived in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Cleveland and near Seattle. None has those great sounding canon blasts before the May Day Parade. Not one of them. (probably because none of them have May Day parades)
Those cities just don't know what they're missing. Especially the canon fire part. I can remember me and "Ray Ray" Gillian and both of our mothers standing at Five Corners waiting for the 1954 or so May Day parade to begin, when suddenly and without warning, BAA-ROOOM!!!
And just as suddenly I was standing behind as many people as I could find. I saw nothing for the rest of the parade, except the backs of peoples kneecaps and the horses that always left their mark on the street as the parade ended!
Let's face it, a six year old will even brave heavy canon fire to see a horse! When that canon went off, "Ray Ray" Gillian never flinched. He stood there through each one of those canon blasts and saw the whole parade.
I've always admired "Ray Ray's" courage under fire since that day. Personally, I haven't been able to walk past Five Corners without a flack jacket since.
Then there were exciting Air Raid drills. When the whole town used to turn off its lights as soon as there was the hint of an Air Raid siren.
There we'd all sit in the dark, waiting for Russians to come knocking on our door. What a nice collective community experience.
The Owens family was one of the few families in the entire country to have actually been visited by invading Russian Soldiers in the 1950's. They were pretty nice guys too. All they wanted were the directions to Smith's Bakery!
e.a.
owens
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